“Who’s there, Roman?” Mila asked.
Roman dragged his gaze back to the wall, but there was no ghost there anymore. “No one,” he murmured. “No one but you.”
Mila rubbed her ankle against him gently, and before he could stop himself, he reached under the table and gripped her under her knee. So warm. So fragile. She was small, and he could snap her leg without much effort, but she didn’t jerk away. Instead, as he rubbed his thumb along the seam of her jeans, she rolled her eyes closed and released a quiet, shaky breath. So fucking beautiful.
“Mila,” Rhett barked out from the door.
She instantly froze like a statue, every muscle in her leg tense, and the scent of her fear was all Roman could smell. The reaction of her body made Roman want to rip Rhett’s throat out. He released her knee slowly and leaned back on the bench seat, glaring at the alpha of the Bone-Rippers. Another black mark against Rhett, another reason Roman wanted to pull his intestines through his mouth hole.
Mila didn’t say a word but pushed out of the bench seat, eyes downcast, and slunk over to Rhett. His face was red with fury, and he pulled her against his side hard. Roman snarled, but Mila gave him a warning glance. Right…there were humans in here.
“Stay away from my girl, Striker,” Rhett said in a low, gravelly voice. His eyes were too bright. If anyone was going to get them busted in Jack’s, it was going to be Rhett.
His girl? Mila was huddled into his side, sure, but her expression was a mixture of terror and disgust.
“You forgot your purse, Chicken,” Roman murmured. Come back to me.
Mila hunched into herself even deeper and shrugged out from under Rhett’s arm. She walked in jerky steps back to the table, leaned over the seat, then grabbed her purse and jacket. “Look in the freezer of Winter’s Edge. I saved the pictures right before we closed the bar,” Mila said on a breath. Her face was pale as a sheet as she stood with her things. “Goodbye, Roman,” she said at normal volume. Mila looked as if she’d never curved her lips into a grin her whole life.
“For good,” Rhett called. “Mila, I forbid you to talk to him or any of the Strikers again.” Power wafted through his words, and Mila’s eyes rimmed with tears. She looked sick as the power of the order pushed her forward gently, then rocked her back. She hadn’t taken her eyes from Roman’s, and now they lightened even more. There was no snarl or fight from her wolf. Just acceptance. Roman had always thought her lucky to be submissive, to have her life planned out, to have a wolf that would demand protection from the males around her.
All this time he’d been wrong.
“Come here,” Rhett demanded.
And Mila did. She turned and made her way right back under his arm, where she probably stayed when he wanted to manipulate her. Rhett kissed her hard. It was a second, and then it was done, but his eyes had stayed on Roman. When he jerked her back by the neck of her shirt, he was smiling and Mila’s lip was bleeding.
Roman wanted to stand up and put himself between her and Rhett. He wanted to drag the alpha out to the parking lot and beat his ass into a puddle of nothing. Into a stain in the snow.
Roman had given Mila smiles, and that asshole had stolen them away.
Chapter Five
No one but you. You’re my first choice.
Oh, Roman was good. Much smoother than he’d been as a boy, and now she felt like she was in trouble, especially with the order Rhett had just thrown down in the doorway of Jack’s. He wasn’t careful. He never had been. He’d pulled that crap right there in front of six tables of humans.
That order had hurt so bad to accept. But even now, as she thought of sneaking to Winter’s Edge to see Roman again, her stomach curdled with nausea. It would get worse if she tried to disobey her alpha.
Rhett was gripping her arm too tight as he dragged her through the parking lot of Jack’s. He felt terrifyingly heavy right now. So heavy she couldn’t drag the cold air into her lungs, or even catch her breath enough to tell him she didn’t want to get in his car with him.
He shoved her into the passenger’s seat of his truck and slammed the door so hard the vehicle rocked up on two wheels. Frantically, she looked around to see if anyone had seen his show of strength. Rhett was wearing his police uniform, and the truck was a black and white with lights on the roof. He was on duty, so why was he here messing with her?
Rhett slid behind the wheel and slammed his own door, then roared, his breath freezing in front of him like a dragon blowing smoke.
“H-how did you know where I was?” she asked in a mouse voice.
“Because you’re mine!” he yelled as he jammed the key in the ignition. “I can feel you. I can feel when you’re betraying me. Betraying the pack. I can feel when you’re being a little whore.” He skidded out of the icy parking lot and onto Main Street. “I’m taking you out tonight.”
“Out in the woods?” she asked, terrified.
“I want to pretty fuckin’ bad right now, Mila! I want to fuckin’—” He wrapped his hand around her throat and squeezed, and then he shook her as he blasted down Main. “Seeing you with him makes me want to punish you, Mila,” he said in a softer voice, releasing her neck. “It makes me want to give into my urges. Do you understand?”
No, she didn’t understand. What urges? Sex? Murder? Mila was too terrified to ask. Rhett’s wolf had always been broken.
“I hate when you kiss me like that,” she whispered.