Total pages in book: 122
Estimated words: 116662 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 583(@200wpm)___ 467(@250wpm)___ 389(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116662 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 583(@200wpm)___ 467(@250wpm)___ 389(@300wpm)
As someone who’d never been able to exercise the full extent of his dominance until Quinley, Isaiah knew how it felt to have to hold back. It was like boxing away a part of you. It meant leaving certain needs unmet. It stopped you from feeling completely fulfilled. And there eventually came a point where that lack of fulfilment nagged at you.
Isaiah suspected it had been nagging at Zaire for some time. The black-foot had likely ignored it, sure it would disappear once the position of Alpha became his; sure that was what he needed.
“My relationship with Nazra is none of your fucking business,” Zaire hissed.
“And my relationship with Quinley is none of yours. Doesn’t stop you from coming here and expressing opinions I don’t give a shit about.”
“The only reason I’m here—”
“Is that you’re hoping you can push me into starting a brawl,” Isaiah finished. He’d picked up on that pretty much straight away. It was why he hadn’t planted his fist right in the black-foot’s face. Isaiah was feeling no inclination to give Zaire anything he wanted. “Then you get to have an excuse for why violence broke out—you were just defending yourself.”
Zaire’s nostrils flared. “I’m not here to challenge you.”
“But you want a full-on duel. So does your cat. I can feel his rage. He wants to gut me open. I have what he thinks belongs to him. Only he’s wrong. Quinley’s mine.”
Zaire’s eyes briefly flashed cat as an animalistic growl eased out of him. “If you give such a damn about her, why has she been shot twice while under your watch?”
Isaiah didn’t point out that the second shooting had resulted in a bullet-graze, not a full-on shot. He didn’t owe this male anything, regardless of what the dick seemed to think. “Pride business is pride business. You’re not entitled to know shit. You never were, where Quinley’s concerned. And yet, you’ve kept an eye on her through others.”
Surprise rippled across Zaire’s face.
“It was an easy enough guess,” said Isaiah with a slight shrug of one shoulder. “You ‘overhear’ far too much. Having people report back to you anything interesting regarding her all these years—that’s where you fucked up. By indulging your need to know what happened in her life, you kept her in your mind’s eye; in your cat’s mind’s eye. It would have been better for you to go on as if you’d never met her.”
Not that it would have been simple. Isaiah knew that personally—he’d kept watch over Lucinda, unable to help himself. The difference here was that he had stopped once he claimed Quinley. Zaire hadn’t done the same when he claimed a different female.
“You really didn’t know about her plans to enter an arranged mating, though,” Isaiah mused. “My guess is that your sources kept it from you—probably at the bidding of Nazra, who worried you’d otherwise put a stop to it.” He slanted his head. “She was right to worry, wasn’t she? You would have stopped it.”
Zaire ground his teeth. “I wouldn’t have wanted Quinley to bind herself to a stranger, so I would have found her a different mate.”
Isaiah snorted. “You couldn’t even bring yourself to stop monitoring her. How could you have given her to another male? You definitely wouldn’t have consented to her leaving the pride. It would have suited you and your cat to feel that you had some control over her. You hate that you don’t. You hate that I have her. But what you hate more is that you have everything you thought you ever wanted … and it still feels like something’s missing. Which, you’ve come to realize, is Quinley. You’re here to vent all your shit on me.”
“No—”
“I’d warned you last time you showed up here that I’d take your return as a challenge, so you were banking on me attacking you instantly. Your mistake was in thinking that I wouldn’t pick up on it.”
“I’m here because I need the dreams to stop,” Zaire burst out. “That’s what happens when I fight any urge to see her, or I know she’s in danger. I dream about her.” He paused, his eyes narrowing perceptively. “You know what that’s like.”
“Yeah, I do. It sucks. But it doesn’t change that you have no right to be here.”
Hearing the dick claim that Quinley featured in his dreams, it was hard for Isaiah not to lunge forward and claw the fucker’s face right off his skull. The only thing that stayed Isaiah’s hand was knowing it would give Zaire the reaction he wanted. Why else admit to a man that you dreamed of their mate?
A shuffling sound came from his left. Isaiah looked to see Quinley’s cat edging out from under a car. He tensed, not wanting her to be exposed to this.
He expected her to snarl at Zaire or swipe out a paw in warning, but she didn’t. She deigned the guy with a disinterested look and padded over to Isaiah. She then scrabbled up his side to settle on his shoulder like she belonged there, paying the Alpha zero attention.