Layla’s pov.Damien is surprised when I come to him.There’s a tinge of disbelief leaking into his purple eyes and he looks away almost as fast as he looks at me. The next time he looks at me, there’s a determined glint there now.I can almost imagine the words running through his head right now.~An Alpha does not cower.An Alpha does not feel shame.An Alpha does not feel regret, or remorse.~I find myself feeling a bit sad for Damien, just a brief flash of pity before it’s gone. The memory of the rejection comes back again, but with that memory comes a lot of other memories.Memories I had locked up before, not wanting to let them surface. I remember how hard his father was on him. He and Alek.I remember how he would be the one bearing the brunt of most of the pain. How he would protect Alek, and how that turned his expression stonier, his heart colder.I can’t say I understand who Damien is right now, but I know a bit of who he was, and that might have shaped who he is, so as b
Alek is chortling as he looks at Damien’s face. Damien looks softer with the band-aids on him. It’s a new look on him, and I can't say that band-aids are a fashion statement, not that I know of, but Damien looks like he can pull it off.“You look tame, brother.”Alek smiles wide, showing his teeth and I have to look away from him too because his smile, it’s something.Then there’s Ryan, who I want to avoid looking at, because just like Damien he’s covered in a number of band-aids, but his are not solely on his face. They’re on the side of his arms too, and while he looks like he’s okay and doesn’t care about them, I'm sure they hurt and he’s not taking too well to them.Damien looks tame.Ryan looks wild.And Alek looks like he’s having the time of his life.“I’ll be out in the gardens if anyone needs me.” I get up and make my exit as briskly as I can because sitting in the same room as all three of them does something to me I don’t think I can wrap my head around right now. There’s
~~~~~~~~~~~~ “He won’t like that. Men don’t like that.”I try to smear butter onto my toast and keep a straight mind on what Breanne is saying. My cheeks are flaming. My heart is pounding.“Men like a challenge, they like an easier challenge more but trust me, at the end of the day, those who put up the longer challenges always win out.They’re the more exciting ones.”She stops and then her voice comes again,“Are you even listening to me, Layla?”Breanne sounds like she’s already tired and exhausted with me already so I put on one of my most pitiful faces, making puppy eyes as I turn to look at her. Her expression changes immediately, like a person trapped in the spell of a particular image, and while I realize that image is me, she bursts into a light chuckle the next second.“Okay, that was very good, but no need to look so pitiful in front of him.” I pause and Breanne pauses too, looking at my expression and chuckling before she sidles closer,“You ARE doing this because of him,
I go back into the manor to look for them.The strangeness of this action feels like ice on my skin, because two days ago, if anyone had asked me what I would be doing at this moment, I'd have said I'd still be in my room, not doing anything and waiting to die from hunger or lack of sunlight.Yet here I am, looking for the same three people I consider the current punishment the world is dealing to me.Their scent fills the whole place….It’s almost like everywhere I step foot, there’s a slight fragrance that tells me Damien has been here, Alek has been there,Ryan has been… literally everywhere in this house.I find them in one of the relaxation rooms, and the moment I come in, all three of them snap their heads to me. It’s an eerie sight, but it becomes less eerie when I feel the mate bond pulsing. Damien and Alek must have sensed me, and Ryan… must have heard my footsteps.They’re reading books.They each have a book in hand, and the sight of it makes me feel something squirm in me
Ryan’s pov.Layla leaves and we are plunged into silence again.Damien sits to my far right, by the window and nursing an astrology book, Alek sits to my far left, nursing a book on music and musical chords.I am also with a book, because I couldn't bear to sit here without anything to do when they came in, yet when I look at the book in my hands, I see that it isn’t one I like.I never really liked books.My father never really liked them either. My mother did, and she almost taught me to, but when she died, my father killed it.Alek and Damien seem like people who like to read, genuinely like to read, and I guess with reading comes silence, and so they have been silent.They have been silent ever since we came here, but right now I can feel the tension in the air. Layla is gone now, probably back to her room.She’s announced that she has agreed to stay for four months, the way I had asked her to agree to it, yet something feels bitter in me at the fact that she is actually giving th
Layla’s pov.I am left alone and the moment I get to my room, I close the door and crumple right behind it - my heart pounding in my chest and my breath coming in decidedly short bursts.I don’t know why I feel like this. Or why this even affects me, yet I can't get the image of their faces out of my head, and I wonder if I'm not in over my head.Ryan and Damien seem to have made up, and if they have then I'm guessing he’s going to be helping them in… wooing me, or getting me to trust them. I suspect he’s doing that already, and I know Ryan.Ryan does not do anything that does not benefit him first, and this is a game we’re all playing - a sly game, and to succeed, I have to be as smart as they are. If not smarter.I go through all Breanne said to me earlier again and I recount the points in my head.Men do not like an easy woman, or sometimes they do, depending on the type of man, but to be on the safer side, be the difficult type.I tuck that away in my mind and move on to the next
Damien is the first to show up at my door the next day.I feel surprise run through me when I open the door to meet his face, and he also looks surprised when he sees me, all dressed up, all ready for whatever the day might bring. He swallows awkwardly, and then he drops a statement,“You forgot this outside yesterday.”I frown, lost at first as to what he might mean, then I look at what’s in his hands and I see it’s a bracelet. My bracelet.How…I snatch it back almost selfishly, because this is one of those things I do not joke with. How did it even get outside?Damien huffs, a sound that I think is laced with amusement, and I recollect myself immediately because this isn’t what I'm meant to be doing. I’m not meant to be grabbing things so greedily. I should show them I am as in control of myself as I need to be.“Thank you.” The words, thankfully come out sincere, and also aloof at the same time. I clear my throat and go on, “I didn’t know I'd taken it out yesterday.I must have fo
Ryan’s pov. Layla is standing outside my door when I open it and I can see it in her eyes. She’s caught me.She caught me red-handed, And while I don't want to let her know if that affects me, I know it does.There’s a stilted kind of hurt in her green eyes, and then it seems she gathers herself rapidly, pulling on a brave face and giving me the kind of look that tells me she understands this game, she’s brought herself to understand it for a while now and she’s done all that for a reason. Her eyes tell me if I want to screw half the population of the help in the mansion, then I can. If I want to have more girlfriends that she can count on the fingers of her hand, then I can too. She’s not going to stop me. It’s not like we had an agreement that I wouldn't take my fun where I could find it.Somehow that makes the reality of all this even more depressing, because as much as I can, I’d like her to know it’s not like that. This was just a one-time thing, but before I can even formulate