Chapter 148: BREED ME
AMARIS
For the past few weeks I have no known Alpha Corvin, I have gotten to realize he valued honesty even though he rarely gave it.
Well he wouldn’t lie, just perfectly conceive the truth and wait for you to find out yourself.
Corvin walked in and closed the door behind him.
I was already on my feet before he cleared the threshold because sitting while he stood was not something I was going to do tonight, and I crossed my arms and held my position and waited.
He stopped on his side of the desk.
Outside the window the grounds were still moving. Voices carrying faintly. Three hundred people still standing below, the white flowers along the fence going nowhere, the ceremony being taken apart piece by piece while we stood up here in his ordered study doing whatever this was. The room smelled like whiskey and cold air and whatever he used, and I stood in it in an ivory dress with dried blood on the front and waited for him to say something.
He said one word.
"Why."
He did not move when he said it. Did not lean forward or cross his arms or do anything that suggested the question cost him anything. He just stood there on his side of the desk with his hands at his sides and waited for me to answer.
I pressed my thumbnail into my cut palm, sharp, and used the sting to keep my face where I needed it.
I did not know which why he meant. There were several on the table. Why the lie in the first place. Why the public confirmation. Why tonight, why like that, why at all. I went with the first true thing I could reach.
"Because I was going with the lie my father already told you."
He held my eyes for a long moment. His jaw moved slightly. Then he pulled his chair back and sat down, leaned back with his elbows on the armrests, fingers loosely clasped, shoulders relaxed, hands loose in his lap.
"That is not what I asked." His voice came out completely even. "Why did you stand up in front of the entire pack and confirm it. Do you think I give a flying fuck about your virginity."
I pressed my lips together.
I turned away from the desk and walked three steps toward the window. I stood there with my back to him, one hand coming up to press flat against the glass, eyes on the grounds below. Someone was taking down the flower arrangements along the fence.
A sentinel was stacking chairs. A woman I recognised from the kitchens was standing with her hand over her mouth talking to the person next to her. All of it being undone in the evening air while I stood up here with my jaw tight and my mind wandering how I got to this position and how the fuck do I get out not in a body bag.
"So your concern," I said to the glass, "is your image. The heir."
"Yes."
I turned back around and stood where I was for a moment, looking at him sitting there behind that desk in that chair like he had not just watched the ceremony he planned for months fall apart on his own grounds.
Then I walked back to the desk and put both hands flat on the surface and leaned forward until there was less than a foot of air between my face and his. He did not move back. He did not shift in the chair. He just held my eyes and waited.
I had told myself for months there was something underneath the surface of him. Some version that existed below the cold flat front he showed every room he walked into. I had turned that idea over in more quiet moments than I was going to admit, looking for the seam, the place where it gave way.
Standing over his desk now I understood there was no seam.
What he showed was what he was.
I pushed off the desk and straightened, trying so hard to keep my composure even though I was melting inside of me.
"And if I say no."
He held my eyes. "You cannot say no. Not after what you just did out there."
I stepped back from the desk. My hands dropped to my sides.
"So all you want is the heir." I uncrossed my arms and let them hang loose.
"That is all I have ever wanted from this arrangement."
I stood there with my arms at my sides and my hands open and my eyes on his face.
I thought about the bowl. About the blood in it sitting red when it should have gone white. About Ryker in the third row going sober in an instant. About this morning, his hands on my face, the click of my door. About Nia still missing. About Freya in the dungeon below us and what Marco’s face had done when I asked him.
I pressed my palms slowly down the front of the dress, smoothing the fabric flat with both hands, taking my time with it.
"Fine."
I walked to the center of the room and stopped. I squared my shoulders and lifted my chin and kept my eyes on his.
"Let’s get mated, Alpha Corvin. Since that is all you want."
He rose from his chair slowly, straightening his jacket, moving around to the front of the desk. He stopped there and crossed his arms and stood six feet away from me and said nothing, his eyes flat and steady on mine.
"After all." I kept my voice even and deliberate. "Your fated mate is downstairs in your dungeon right now. Freya. The same woman you killed your Luna for. She is right there waiting for you."
He moved fast.
Not toward me. His hands came down flat on the desk behind him, gripping the edge of it hard enough that his knuckles went tight, and his jaw locked and his chest expanded on a breath he held and did not release, and his face morphed into an expression it had not done once in all the months I had been in this pack.
The surface of it cracked open. Just for a second. Just enough. And what came through pinned me from across the room with the full weight of what he had been holding below the floor for a very long time.
I held my ground.
My hands went still at my sides. My heart moved fast under the ivory dress and I kept it completely off my face and did not step back and did not look away.
"Do not speak of her." Each word came out separately.
He released the edge of the desk. Straightened up. Pressed both hands flat against the front of his jacket and smoothed it down once, a single controlled movement, and when his eyes came back to mine the crack was sealed and the surface was back in place.
"I don’t even care," I said.
He stood there and held my eyes.
"Good." He pushed his voice all the way back to flat. "You shouldn’t."
I picked up my wrap from the settee. Slid it over my shoulders. Crossed to the door, put my hand on the frame.
"Amaris."
I stopped. Did not turn around.
"We are going back to the original plan." His voice came from behind me. Flat. Final. "Artificial insemination. No physical contact between us. The heir comes through a procedure and nothing else."
I stood with my hand on the door frame and my eyes on the wood grain in front of me and I let it land properly.
I thought about being seventeen in a hallway with Gideon’s hand already reaching. I thought about my father’s voice through a closed door.
She is not available yet. I thought about a bowl of red blood and a dress that cost more than my father’s entire debt and standing on a platform in front of three hundred wolves and saying the truest thing I had said since I arrived here. I thought about every man who had looked at me and seen a thing and every moment I had walked away from it intact.
I turned around slowly.
He was still behind his desk. Still watching. His hands at his sides. His face giving away nothing.
I dropped the wrap back onto the settee. I walked back to the center of the room and stopped directly in front of the desk. My hands uncurled at my sides. My chin came up. My shoulders went back. I held his eyes from across the surface and breathed out slowly through my nose.
"You know what."
My voice came out quite composed and void of the pain seeping through my heart.
"I don’t fucking care."
I kept my eyes on his and did not blink.
"Breed me, Alpha Corvin. I will be your breeder."
