“Anything I can do for you, ma’am?” Mitchell leaned back, stretching his long legs when he did.
She laughed. “You can never call me ma’am again.”
Her companion furrowed his eyebrows. “But you are the Alpha’s mate. You deserve the term.”
“Right.” Were people really going to ma’am her from now on? She sighed and stared out the window. Maybe it was her exhaustion from the day, the emotional upheaval, or the fact that she tended to be spacey when she was this worn out, but it took her five minutes before she realized the numbers were going in the wrong direction.
“Mitchell, I live in the other direction. Brooklyn is downtown from here.”
“Brooklyn?” Mitchell shook his head. “I’m bringing you home, ma’am. To Cyrus’ uptown apartment. By the park.”
“You’re what?” Oh hell. She’d really not seen this coming.
Chapter Seven
“You know she’s basically still human. You’re going to have to do better than that.” Travis shook his head and walked to the window. “It’s not that I don’t sympathize with the problem. I dated Lilliana for weeks, holding back the instinct to flip her over my shoulder, bite her, claim her, and make her mine.”
“The ring was like a thorn in my side all day. I couldn’t look at it anymore.” Cyrus rubbed his head. Part of him couldn’t believe he was even having this conversation with the wolf that less than a year earlier he’d been on the brink of war with. “And the moron in the basement shouldn’t get to show any possession over her. Not in this lifetime or any other.”
What he really wanted to do was tear the asshole’s throat to shreds. Short of that, removing the ring had been the best possible solution. “Do you think I scared her?”
Travis shrugged. “I think you pissed off my mate, who dug her fingers into my knee.”
If he’d done damage to his relationship already, this whole thing might be fruitless. Why had he been given a true mate? He didn’t have the slightest idea what to do with one. She consumed his whole existence. How could he function if it stayed like this?
“Listen, here’s the deal. Betsy’s parents did something bad. I’m not going into the details, but if what I suspect happened, happened, then it would at least explain where Lilliana came from and how she didn’t know of her wolf heritage. Until Lake messed with her, Betsy was the same damn way.”
Travis turned around, shaking his head. “Going to do something about your sister and her inability to leave the latents alone?”
“Man, if I had any idea what do about Lake, I’d have done it a long time ago.” His sister had slunk out some time after Travis arrived. What she did with her nights was her own business, but lately she’d been moping because she couldn’t work in human hospitals because it risked discovery. This wasn’t a new thing for her, and why it had suddenly flared up, he had no idea. Another thing he couldn’t focus on.
“You think Betsy’s parents have done something that may affect my mate, and you aren’t going to tell me what it is?”
Cyrus shrugged and pretended indifference. Truth was he’d be pissed as hell if he were in Travis’ position. But he wasn’t going to share until he was damn well ready, which was why he always tried to know what was going on, at all times.
“Cyrus…”
He rubbed his nose. “This isn’t up for discussion. I assume you have your mate properly protected. She’s not at risk. Nothing I’m going to do in Montana can touch her anymore. Feel lucky I let you know Betsy existed so quickly at all.”
He’d done that for Betsy, not Travis or Lilliana. Seeing her sister, a changed latent wolf who now functioned as a fully transformed werewolf, mated to an Alpha, had to help Betsy in some way adjust herself. Not to mention having family went a long way to making things easier. Or harder, depending on the day.
“You weren’t always like this.”
Cyrus swung around. He needed to collect his stuff and get out of there. His mate waited for him in his apartment. If he’d frightened her, he needed to undo that. He hadn’t scented fear, but maybe he’d missed it because of all his turmoil.
“All Alexei wanted to do was reminisce too. Something in the water making everyone want to talk about our summers with Lucian? I was a fifteen-year-old kid. Who cares how I behaved back then? This is who I am now.”
“The three of us share very little history except those few summers. I think it would be natural for us to want to talk about whatever we do have in common.” Travis paused. “Which now I suppose includes our being mated to sisters.”