“Thank you,” I said fervently. “Everything will be fine. I swear it will. And by the way, he was the best sex ever. Oh, my God.”
Corwin clapped his hands over his ears. “Nooo! Remember how we just said we’re your family? Think of me as your big brother. Do not think of me as your girlfriend you can confide everything in. Would you tell that to your big brother?”
I burst out laughing. “No, for God’s sake. Okay, Bess, this is very very important. Remember that blind date that I have on Sunday?”
“Yes.”
“I’m going to text you his name and number. You need to call him and cancel. I’d do it myself, but I don’t actually want to tell Maxwell that I made a date on our wedding weekend; it’s possible he might not be really understanding about it.”
“Huh. Who could have seen that coming,” Bess mused thoughtfully.
“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “You were right. I was wrong. Happy?”
“I won’t be happy until you’re out of that place,” she said. “I still really don’t like it. What if he doesn’t want to let you go?”
“He’s not the type to hold a woman prisoner. Honestly,” I said.
As we drove back, I thought about asking Max about his plans to start his own pack in the Timber Valley territory. How far away would he move? Who would join his pack?
I didn’t really want to know his plans, though, because then we’d have to start talking about a future that wasn’t going to include me in it.
He’d already admitted he wasn’t in love with me. I was beginning to suspect that perhaps he’d gone through with the wedding because he was a really decent guy, and didn’t want to embarrass me, or maybe he was even trying to protect Camille somehow.
However, I couldn’t expect him to stay married to me forever. Once Camille had mated during the full moon, he’d want to end things.
That was what I wanted, wasn’t it? No matter how hot Maxwell was, no matter if he was the best sex I’d ever had, I wouldn’t want to trap a man into staying with me out of a sense of obligation.
It was very rare for Alphas to divorce, but not unheard of. I was sure there’d be no shortage of eager, and much more appropriate, candidates lining up to take my place once I was out of there, and he’d be able to move out and start his pack.
The thought stung, so I didn’t talk about it.
“Your friends have an attitude,” Max said, scowling as we drove back towards his place. “Is the jealous guy an ex-boyfriend or something?”
I laughed at that. “Didn’t you see Bess’ ring finger? That’s her fiancé. He’s from the Briarthorpe pack, she’s from the Redwoods.”
“He seemed jealous,” Max insisted.
Actually, Max was the one who seemed jealous. “Oh, good heavens. Corwin is totally besotted with Bess. Let me bore you with our history. We all went to college together. We all started out as friends, and then he started acting all weird and distant, and then I found these love poems that he’d written to Bess. He wrote these poems about her shiny hair and beautiful eyes and blah blah blah gag me. Long story…I told Bess…she’d always been in love with him…so she called up her pack Alpha to get permission for her to marry him. She had to beg and wheedle, because she was from a very wealthy pack and Corwin’s pack is poor. The second he got permission to marry her, he was all over her. All the time. I mean ALL the time, it was one of those things where I was constantly having to leave the room.” I laughed at the memory.
“Well, all right,” Max said, but he didn’t seem mollified. “Why were they acting like I was kidnapping you?”
“They’re just very protective of me,” I shrugged. “I don’t have any family, really, so when I showed up at college they kind of took me under their wing.”
“What do you mean, you don’t have any family? What about your pack?”
I grimaced at the painful memory. “My father got my mother pregnant, and my mother was…troubled. She became an alcoholic. She just wanted to be loved, and man after man kept rejecting her, and she drank more and more…”
“Anyway, she pretty much drank herself into alcoholic dementia by the time I was in my mid teens, and eventually wandered into the woods and died of exposure. When I was growing up, I sort of drifted around from one family to another, learned to take care of myself young, got a waitressing job when I was fourteen…”
“Your pack should have taken better care of you,” Max said fiercely. “They failed you.”