No way. If I let him inside, he’ll just take Leo away and then... no, fuck no. What about the money? Three million dollars. That's a lot of coffees I don't have to sell. It's life-changing money I need. I want. And if this guy is going to take Leo anyway, why not at least try to get the money? "You cheap, cheap dog," I shake my head with narrowed eyes, crossing my arms, "You want to keep the money you promised. I guess you’re not THAT rich, huh?” The guy lifts his eyebrows and crosses his arms just like me to lean against my gate, all relaxed and amused. "So you want the money?" he asks. He must think I'm stupid or something, who wouldn't want it? "Duh," I let out, "And you want your brother, right? Well, I have him. He's inside my house, either doing my laundry, playing on his new game console or sleeping very peacefully. If you try to get him right now, he'll just grab me and run away as he always does. I mean, if you could just trap and get him, you would've done it alre
{ Leopoldo } The front door opens while I'm still playing in front of the TV and I jump up in that same second, surprised and pumped to see Jolene home so early. Around three hours earlier than normal, this feels very exciting. "Hi, baby. What's up? Why are you home so early?" I ask as I walk up to her and hug her, lifting her up for a couple of seconds. She seems stiffer than normal and she doesn't respond to my kiss right away, so I stop and pull her back down, "What? Something happened?" "Nah, I just got bored in the coffee shop," she murmurs and finally gives me a little smile. I kiss her again and this time she responds for a bit, but then breaks the kiss, "What were you doing? Didn't you hear me yelling?" "No, I didn't, why were you yelling?" I ask, stepping away from her so I can get a good look. Luckily, she looks unharmed, but my instinct is telling me something is up. She’s not acting normal and she smells worried and anxious, "What the hell happened, Jolie? You're actin
{ Jolene } I need to get out of this house expeditiously fast, especially when Leo starts getting handsy as we walk from the table to the couch once we finish eating. I know I'm a bad person and I’ve always been unapologetic about my badness, but for some reason, having sex with Leo –or being intimate at all– knowing I'm going to do something that's possibly going to hurt him, feels really wrong. "Wait, wait," I stop him again when he tries to grab my ass while we're watching TV, "Can we save this for later? I need to go get dressed, I want to go to Jonah's house and tell him about our trip. He needs to get ready too." Leo stops and looks at me, confused. And hurt. "Right now?" he asks, with his sad-puppy face. But thinking 'sad-puppy' just made me remember he's a literal dog so I start feeling anxious again. What if he turns into a fucking wolf in front of me? I would pass out, that looks extremely ugly, "When are we even going on that trip, by the way? We didn't plan a date."
As soon as Jonah arrives the next morning and we get inside his car to start our trip, I start to feel like I want to throw up. I feel like shit, literal shit. Leo is such a good guy, he's been super nice to me the whole time, he’s been super into me, lifting my self-esteem to the max... but I haven't even known him for that long. Tricking him should not he this big of a deal. And five million dollars is a lot of fucking money, he has to understand. He’ll probably be a little mad a me, but once he manages to run away again, maybe we can rekindle our situation? Unless he hates me forever and never wants to see me again. And what if that happens and I lose him for good? I’ll be so sad. Because… what if he's... like, the love of my life or something? Gah, I know he's not, even if my heart is talking at the moment. I need to shut it up. The heart has nothing to do when money is involved. I would never lose the opportunity to have that much money just because I really like
"Hey, hey, hey! Let her go!” Jonah says, stepping out of the car to look at the big guy grabbing my arm, "We just gave Leo some sedatives. He's fine." The big bad guy gives us both wary looks, but finally lets go of my arm to grab Leo's body and pull him out if the car. He looks dead. "He's fucking skinny as hell, have you been starving him?" The BBG growls in my face. "Jace, chill out," the other guy says, realizing he's being super mean to me for no reason, "Let's get him inside." As both of them grab Leo to carry him and move him inside, I finally pay attention to them and I realize they're the guys I saw the second time I met Leo, when he ruined my groceries. One of them is Leo’s brother. The BBG. "Both of you, follow us. King Archibaldo is waiting inside," the nice guy says. Jonah comes to my side and grabs my hand. "Thanks for protecting me, Jo. I didn't know you had it in you,” I whisper, squeezing his hand. "I don't have it in me, I'm shitting my fucking pants,
"All I wanted was to be left alone," I murmur, shaking my head, not making eye contact with anyone, "I’ve already told you a hundred times, don't want to be the Alpha, it's just not in me. I don't want any of this shit." "It belongs to you," Archie says, making me roll my eyes. We’ve repeated this conversation a lot, "Jace has been the replacement Alpha, but people still ask about you. They think they're safer if you're around. They want you. Beatrice is living here, just waiting for your return. She's your fiancée, Leo, whether you like it or not, you signed the contract and we need the connection now more than ever.” “She's living here, where?" I ask, looking at Archie. If she’s here, it means her dad is impatient for this union. I guess that’s why they were being so intense about finding me. "Here, here. In a guest room," Archie answers. I take my hands to my hair in stress and I push everyone away from me because I'm suffocating again. Just five minutes awake in here and I
As soon as the call ends, I get on my bank app and I wire ONE MILLION DOLLARS to Jonah. The maximum amount I’ve ever wired him is like twenty bucks. Maybe once I finally get Leo to forgive me, the fact that I’m a millionaire now will sink in, but it hasn't yet. I don’t feel anything yet. Just guilt. Since Archie gave me the money and Leo’s mom gave me a disappointed face, a heavy fucking block of guilt got dropped on my heart. I tried to walk out, but I wasn't able to walk past the front door. I can’t leave without Leo, my legs refused to keep walking. So, I made a plan. We’ll run away together, like he already did once, except now we have money, we can live a normal life... together. I know he would be into it because he said he loves me just a couple hours ago, I want to ask if he meant it or if he was just high. But whatever it is, I need to talk to him. However, it looks like it won’t be right now, because he refused to hear me out. I can wait, I guess. I hope it’s
"What the fuck are YOU still doing here?!" Jace growls as soon as I step out. He's shirtless now and angry, so he looks fucking... he looks very good, actually. Just like Leo but with a mean, uglier face and big bulging muscles. I prefer Leo, of course, but I have to admit this guy is ripped. "My name is Jolene," I say, ignoring his snarling. He's not that scary now that I witnessed him get fucking dumped. He’s just as lame as the rest of us, "We have an enemy in common: Bea." "What? Bea is not my fucking enemy," he says, clasping his fists and starting to walk towards me. I move until I'm behind a couch, putting it in between us for safety in case he wants to jump and bite my head off, literally, "Get to fuck out of my house!" "Shh, shh, boy, down!" I order, because I'm clearly dealing with a rabid fucking dog. The way he looks at me... yeah, he wants to eat me, "Do you even have a brain? Can we have a civil conversation?" "Why the fuck would I want to have a civil conversati
The next morning I stay in my room not knowing how to proceed going forward. Should I continue with my plan of invading every little aspect and area of Jace’s life until he can’t think about anything but me? Or do I save my pride and do my best to disappear from his life altogether?Right now, honestly, I want to preserve my pride. So I call an employee and ask for a driver so I can just waste my time somewhere else, not in this house. I take myself on a breakfast date and then I go on a walk, enjoying the fresh scent of nature. Being in that house where Jace’s scent is all around me has been hard, so I let myself enjoy this open space that doesn't smell like Jace in the slightest.Little by little, I start to feel better and less humiliated. Fuck Jace for embarrassing me yesterday, calling me a weird stalker and a bitch. But, mark my words, I'll show him some embarrassment one day. I don't know how or when, but I swear I'll make him feel like this. I sit on an empty bench and then
What? I just look at Beatrice for around half a minute, trying to understand if she's being serious or not. She just crosses her arms and looks at me with her big blue eyes, waiting for an answer. If we are being serious, the truth is that even I don't have that answer for myself. I don't know why she generates so many feelings in me, so much rejection… But I don't want to be serious with her. Why? I simply don’t feel like it. So I’ll give her the simplified, assholish answer. "Because you're weird," I say, opening my arms in surrender. I can tell she wasn't expecting that because she takes a literal step back, "You're very weird, and you're practically harassing me right now. I don't like being forced to do anything, but you looked me in the face and took a stance against me that first day we met, when you told me I would marry you even if I didn’t want it. In my opinion, that was a declaration of war. I don't like you because you're a fucking princess who has no business bein
{ Jacinto } Beatrice Cathalos is nothing more than a spoiled little princess who is used to getting everything she wants. And I don’t know what the hell is it about her, but she pushes every single one of my buttons without having to even do anything. Just her existing is enough for my system to go haywire. I don’t know why. But I hate it. I don’t like feeling all over the place, all out of control. I like my life simple and easy, and she’s neither of those. Of course, she felt hurt when she heard I didn't want to marry her, so she's been a little bitch to me since then, giving me disdainful looks every time I appear in front of her. The only good thing about Leo stealing my place as Alpha is that he'll be the one who has to marry Princess Beatrice instead of me. For the next two days, I don't have to face Beatrice at all because I'm searching for Birdie in Ramada Valley, but then I have to return home. And as soon as I come back, Archie takes my place searching... a
Jace didn't come back to the table after that final statement from moi, but Archie did. We drafted a contract as planned and I signed it. Archie promised me he would get Jace to sign it as well, so I left with my head held high. "What happened there?" My father asked on the way back home, "I know something did." "I had a conversation with the guys on my way back from the bathroom... the Garibaldi family is a very intriguing bunch, daddy. King Archibaldo is very smart and capable and Alpha Jacinto is just as intriguing as he is strong. I'm very excited to marry into this family," I admitted, looking out the window, trying not to focus on Jace's rejection too much. But only because of that comment I made on the way back, my father never gave up on the Garibaldi Pack. Not even when everything changed. When the omega Garibaldi brother turned out to be a True Alpha at the most random age, in the most random way. That only got my dad even more excited to marry me into that family.
{ Beatrice } I can't complain about my life, at all. I've never even had the need to complain. Everything I want, I easily get. I have a very close family that loves and cares for me and I have amazing friends. I have a good life in general. A little boring, sure, but I guess everyone gets bored sometimes. The only thing I want and haven't been able to get, is a man: Jace Garibaldi. But he's not just any man. He's an Alpha, a very strong and sexy one. He became an Alpha as soon as he came of age. He fought against a thirty-year-old man and won, at just eighteen years old. I was in Garibaldi with my parents for that Alpha Challenge and they allowed me to watch it. I guess you could say I developed a crush on Jace right then and there. I was just fifteen, but I knew he had to be mine one day. He just HAD to be, I felt it in my bones. So, when the opportunity of having him came up three years later, I took it. My father talked to me as he always does, in a completely
This is awful, I never, ever want to see it again. But everyone else around us is absolutely loving it, those fucking barbarians are cheering for their favorite like this is just a sport or something. I decide to keep my eyes shut for around ten more minutes, and then there's a huge collective gasp of horror. I open my eyes then and I see Jace shifting back to human -fully naked- to grab Leo's wolf form... his lifeless wolf form. "Jolene, what is-?" that's the last thing I hear. I feel everything going dark. When I wake up, there's chaos around me, my face is wet and Magda in my face. "She's okay now, let's go," she says and grabs me, basically carrying me away. I passed out I guess, "They're taking Leo to an ambulance, he's alive." "Everything is fine, Jolene, relax. It was all for show," Archie whispers in my ear and that brings a little life back to me. Right. Of course it was all for show, that was the whole point of it. I guess I just freaked out at the worst moment
Leo has been so busy lately, we haven't even talked about our baby or our future. We haven't fucking talked that much at all. So now I just cuddle against his body, taking advantage of the moment. "Be honest, do you think I'm actually pregnant?" I ask, hoping the answer is yes. And Leo starts nodding immediately, without even questioning it, "Good, that's good. Then yeah, we have to speed this up so we can have some vacations before we become parents." "You want to know the best part about this plan, Jolie?" he asks, smiling big and lifting a hand to brush my hair back, "We're going to be living on vacations, forever. There's absolutely no reason for either of us to work ever again. I mean, you are a millionaire, right? And, just between us, so am I." "Oh, really?" I ask in a stupid voice and I roll my eyes. "Yeah, but also... we're going to get a lot of free stuff here and there," he warns, as if I don't fucking miss it a lot, "Just because it's fun." "It really is fun," I
For the next stop, I have to ask around for my mom since she's not in her room as she should at this hour. So, I have to get out of the house and run into the greenhouse my mom adores, with all her little flowers. As soon as she sees me coming in, she smiles. "Hi, mommy," I say. Instantly, her smile drops and she squints her eyes at me, "Yeah, I want something." "What is it, Birdie?" she sighs, putting her flower scissors down to give me her uninterrupted attention without me even having to ask for it like I did with my brothers. "I have a plan that can make all three Garibaldi boys very happy. All of us," I say, she crosses her arms and says nothing as I try to let the words out. It takes me while because I'm nervous, but I tell her anyway. Starting with the fake death, ending with the annual family trip, "There's so many human places you'd love, mom, I want you to see them." "If I wanted to, I would've already," she says, but she stays quiet about the other part, "I don't lik
Lion throws a few pieces of clothing at my head, so I get up to put them on, too. As soon as we're both decent, we sprint out of the room and we go downstairs to the second floor. Leo leads me to a door, almost making me eat dirt a few times, then he starts pounding on the incessantly, as if it’s not fucking midnight. This man is on a rampage. "What?!" Bea asks as she opens the door, looking annoyed. She’s wearing cute pajamas and I have to fight the desire to roll my eyes, "Oh, hi, Leo... hi, Jolene. What's up?" "We need to talk to you. It's something very important," Leo says frantically, stepping into her room like a maniac. I just follow him, "Listen to me and do it carefully, would you like to marry Jace? Yes or no. No thinking, just say it." "Yes?" she says, but then she starts thinking it through, "But I can't..." "Shush," Leo says, Bea shuts up immediately looking up at him with wide, confused eyes, "You want to, that’s what you said. So, let's say he becomes the Alpha to