16

He grinned around the sucker and stuck his hands in the pockets of his black Under Armour running pants, his eyes twinkling. He wore an old sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off, the black “Syracuse” on the front almost completely worn away by a thousand trips through the washer. He spoke around his sucker. “Considering you met with Max, I have a feeling I know who you meant.”

“He has that effect on people.”

Remy raised an eyebrow. “Want to tell me how it went?”

She glanced down the hall. In a building teeming with wolves with hypersensitive hearing, no conversation would be private, no matter how deserted the hall looked. “Is there someplace we can talk?”

He jerked his head toward the great room. “Come on.”

Remy kept up a steady stream of chatter as they wound their way through the Lodge’s maze of corridors and rooms. Lizette saw a few familiar faces and stopped a couple of times to hug old friends and distant relatives. She could tell people wanted to ask questions about her return, but Remy kept them at bay by barely pausing for breath as he ushered her through the hallways—which was good, because she had no idea how to explain why she’d come back.

Max dragged me home, declared himself my husband, and ordered me to sleep with him? She felt her cheeks flush with anger just thinking about his heavy-handedness. He might be thirty-six but he acted a hundred and thirty-six. Someone needed to drag him into the present.

She snorted. It sure as hell wasn’t going to be her.

Remy gave her a curious look, but said nothing as he led them into the Lodge’s main kitchen. It was a massive room lined with industrial-grade stainless steel appliances that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a five-star restaurant. Although most wolves in the territory lived within a few hours’ drive of the Lodge, the Lodge itself housed dozens of young, unmated males who served as Hunters. Part army, part personal guard, they operated as an in-house security force—and they reported directly to Max.

Although every territory had a similar arrangement, New York had more Hunters than any other pack. A few years earlier, word got around that an unusually high number of latent wolves in Max’s territory were managing to Turn. It hadn’t taken long for him to be inundated with requests to take on latent wolves as trainees. Not all latents who trained with Max’s pack Turned, but anxious parents figured it was worth a shot.

The extra bodies meant that at any given time the Lodge was home to forty or fifty males who ate an indecent amount of food.

Lizette felt a mixture of awe and revulsion as Remy layered ham, salami, and roast beef between two thick slices of pumpernickel, pausing a few times to steady the growing tower when it threatened to tip over.

“Are you entertaining guests?” she asked him.

“It’s a leg day.”

She sighed and climbed onto one of the barstools at the butcher block island.

He set a pint of cookie dough ice cream and a spoon in front of her

“I love you.”

“I know.” He lined the outer edge of his plate with pickle spears. “How’d it go?” he asked quietly.

She swallowed the lump in her throat. She would not cry. She opened the ice cream container and dug out a chunk of cookie dough. “He told me I have to stay.”

Remy paused for a second, then resumed his sandwich-making. “It’s been five years.”

She stabbed at the ice cream, making satisfying divots in the frozen crust. “This may be hard for you to believe, but I have a life in Albany. I have friends…a job.” Shit. She hadn’t even thought about calling work. The stress of the trip home and the meeting with Max had commandeered all her brain power. She balanced on one butt cheek so she reach her phone in her back pocket.

“I don’t know how you even fit that thing in there,” Remy mumbled around a mouthful of sandwich. He cracked open a massive bottle of Gatorade and downed half of it without stopping for breath.

“What do you mean?” She scrolled through her contacts and tapped her boss’s name.

Remy swallowed and gestured to her lower half with his plastic bottle. “Those jeans are painted on.”

She typed a quick message, hit send, and put the phone down. “You’re right.” She gestured at her long-sleeved sweater. “I really should have packed a few petticoats. Can’t have you boys getting all distracted by my ankles.”

He grinned. “I didn’t mean it that way. You just have to be…conscious of that sort of thing around Max. Mated males are possessive.”

She pointed her spoon at him. “First of all, let me be the first to welcome you to the twenty-first century. I hope you enjoy your stay. Second, Max and I are not mated.”

“Lizette…”

She stuck the spoon deep in the ice cream and left it there. “What he did… Before…” She couldn’t bring herself to describe what had happened five years ago.

Anyway, Remy knew. He was there.

She pressed the cardboard edge of the ice cream container lid flat with short, precise movements. “The lux catena can’t be forced. I don’t accept it, and I don’t care why he seems to have changed his mind.” She worked her way around the edge of the lid, folding the cardboard inward. “I won’t go along with it just because he’s the Alpha. Anyway, I’m sure there are hundreds of wolf girls out there who’d jump at the chance to be Max’s chosen one.”

Remy put his hand over hers, stilling her assault on the lid. “I understand how you feel.”

“No, you don’t.”

A shadow passed over his face. “You’d be surprised. Love is a…rough thing.”

She got the impression they weren’t talking about her and Max anymore. “Are you okay, Remy?”

He gave her a lopsided smile and half a shrug. “Yeah, you know me. I’m always okay.” He picked up a pickle spear and waved it at her. “And I know a lot more about love than you might realize. I’m not a total Neanderthal. Just…give Max a little bit of a chance, okay? Or at least promise me you’ll think about it.”

“I’ve had five years to think. I don’t see anything changing.”

“We live long lives. People can always change.”

“That’s exactly my point. Forever is a long time. And I was raised a human. I’m twenty-four. Even if I was head over heels in love with Max right now, there’s no guarantee I’ll feel that way in ten years…or twenty.”

“The lux catena takes care of that. You have to trust me.”

She shook her head. “I’ve seen what the mating bond does to people and trust me, it’s not good.”

He frowned. “You mean your parents? Your real parents?”

“Yeah…” She pulled her hand away and pressed both of hers between her knees. “I don’t remember them much, which is weird since I was seven when they died. You’d think I would have more memories of us as a family. I just remember them always being together. It was like they had a secret, and I guess they did.”

“They lived outside a pack. Maybe they were just trying to protect you—help you blend in with the humans.”

“Maybe.” Lizette shrugged. “One thing was always very clear to me. Their bond with each other was exceptionally strong, even though I had no idea they had a werewolf bond. But when it came to me… I guess I sort of felt like I was in the way.”

Even when she was a child her parents’ relationship had struck her as obsessive—before she even understood what obsessive meant. It had confused and frightened her. Their deaths had shocked her, but in a way the transition to her foster family had provided her with the first stable life she’d ever known.

“You studied psychology, right?”

She nodded.