“All right, I apologize. That wasn’t exactly fair.”
That was it? He apologized? But she was rip-roaring ready for a fight. She sighed and sat down.
“Look, I’m exhausted. We’ve already done what we were trying to avoid.
We might as well share the bed. I think we’ll both sleep better.”
“But…”
She held up her hand. “If you try to kill me in my sleep, I’ll kill you, okay? And if there is any way to get us out of this mess called mating, I’ll find a way to do that too.
Okay?”
Moving toward the headboard, she wriggled under the covers. When she was finished adjusting herself, she looked up at Parker.
“Seriously? Did you suddenly become a statue or are you going to join me?”
As she waited for him to respond, she felt an array of emotions inside of her. Even though it might be stupid, she knew she was going to be hurt if he didn’t spend the night with her. She’d just given her virginity to him. Was he going to treat her like he didn’t care? She bit down on her lip. Did the fact that he had some of her soul inside of him not do anything to him?
Without a word, he climbed into the bed next to her. Laying down beside her, he pulled her into his arms until they spooned each other. She could feel his warm breath on the back of her neck and it sent shivers down her spine.
“I want you to know that I will end my own life before I would take yours.”
She smiled in the darkness. “Determination was one of your first traits to come over.
We won’t let it come to that.”
“Do you think the fact that we have each other’s souls would matter if something happened to the other one? Like if I was to die, would your soul return to you?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know the particulars of this any more than you do.
Besides, I think we’ve talked enough about death tonight. It’s too gloomy. I don’t want to think about it right before I go to sleep. I need to be rested so I can get to work on returning your voice to you in the morning.”
“How exactly are you going to do that?”
“I have a book back in my hotel room. It’s the one thing I have from my mother. It’s a collection of family magic. I’m hoping it will teach me to draft a spell to help you.”
“I would be immensely grateful. I feel kind of…foolish that all of this time I assumed I could speak and I couldn’t.”
“Don’t.” She rolled over until her face touched his chest. “That’s the thing about spells. You don’t know you’re under them until you’re either released from it or someone tells you that you are.”
She closed her eyes, loving the way he smelled and the way his scent seemed to enter her bloodstream and not leave. She could swim in his scent, she could live in it…She knew she was falling asleep about a second before she did.
Angel wasn’t sure where she was. She supposed she could be dreaming. She’d dream walked before. It was part of her magic. Usually, they were simple dreams full of images she couldn’t really identify. This time she had a clear feeling of where she was…sort of. She stood in some kind of conference room.
Not that she’d ever been in this room before, she hadn’t, but it was obviously used for meetings. A wooden oval table filled up most of the space with chairs on all sides of it. There were no windows anywhere she could see. A group of people walked into the room.
Her immediate impression of them was that they’d been through some kind of fight.
A lot of them had bruises on their faces or their clothes torn. She did a quick head count.
Eight men and eight women.
One of them moved away from the others. He sat at the end of the table in one of the swivel chairs. Angel shuddered as she regarded him. He had wolf eyes. There wasn’t even a trace of human in them. They made her want to take a step back or look down.
Everything about him made her wolf nervous. Clearly, he was dominant.
Angel had never been particularly comfortable around wolves that were more dominant than she was. Not that there were too many wolves who fit that bill. She was an Alpha wolf, which meant that this man, whoever he was, he was someone’s supreme Alpha. He was in charge of his pack and she wouldn’t be surprised if all of these people around him were his pack members. She sniffed the air and wasn’t surprised that since this was a dream she had no use of her wolf senses. She couldn’t scent a thing. She took a few steps around the room watching the people who surrounded the table. No one had spoken yet.
One of the women ran a hand through her hair and sighed. Angel turned around to look at who it was and almost fell backwards. Scarlett Knoll. She knew her. She was one of the nice women pack members from New Orleans. Not an Alpha wolf, she was frequently picked on. Angel had done what she could to help her.
What was Scarlett doing in this room? As far as Angel knew, this conference area had not existed in any of the pack houses in New Orleans. This was somewhere new. Had Scarlett been kidnapped? Taken from New Orleans? Angel’s heart pounded hard. If Scarlett was in trouble, being trapped with these men, Angel would do what she could to help her. Maybe that’s why she was having this dream. Maybe that was her destiny: to save Scarlett from these wolves…
The man at the end of the table pounded his hand down and everyone jumped. “I refuse to lose any more pack members. Consider it a law I’m enacting. No one else dies.”
“Darling,” a redheaded woman approached him, sitting down on the arm of his chair.
“It’s not like you did this on purpose. None of us saw the attack coming. It was a terrible tragedy. I don’t think, however, that you can outlaw death.”
“Why not?” The man stood up. “I’m Alpha here. They take an oath to obey me, to listen to me, why can’t I tell them they’re not allowed to die saving my life?”
Angel was impressed with whoever this man was. Most Alphas she knew were happy to let others lay down their lives for them. In fact, she’d never met one who put others welfare ahead of their own.
“Tristan,” a male voice from across the room spoke. “My mate would like to speak.”
The man—Tristan—sank back down into his char. “By all means, Scarlett, speak.
You have my permission to speak at will.”
Mate? Scarlett was mated to the tall, dark haired man who had spoken for her? Wow, how much had happened in the weeks she’d been gone?
“I think you’re underestimating, sir, how much it meant to those men to be allowed to give their lives for you.”
“How much it meant to them? To die? I don’t think it was something they particularly enjoyed. I can feel their pain, remember?”
“No,” she shook her head. “Not that they enjoyed it but that they were allowed to be part of a functioning pack with a strong, good Alpha. It was their right, their privilege to help uphold the Westervelt pack.”
Angel took a step backwards and tripped over the chair behind her. Westervelt? She wanted to run. She’d dream walked to Westervelt? What a nightmare.
The room went silent. Tristan stood up. All eyes seemed to be focused on the chair that had flown across the room.
Tristan pointed at the chair. “What made that happen?” He whirled around. “Tell me one of those invisible wolves isn’t in this room with us!”
Angel wasn’t sure how that had happened. In her dream walk, they shouldn’t have been aware of her and she certainly shouldn’t have knocked over that chair.