Page 27 of Undertow
“Is she?” Kole grumbled. “I don’t know. My uncle said I’m the jerk and—”
“He’s like everyone else and programmed to do whatever a member of the royal family wants,” she interjected. “He’s not an Alpha like you are. He’s your father’s baby brother and not much older than you. Does he really have any business giving you advice?”
He was quiet a moment. “No, you’re right. I didn’t think—thanks, Elira. You’re so easy to talk to and so much more understanding than Sagan. She never listens to me and—I wish I could get through to her and she would hear me like you do.”
I was going to turn and leave, but I blinked and I was closer, almost touching the door that was mostly closed. It was enough to see what I needed to and feel one of the last threads of my feelings for Kole snap.
Namely, them sitting together on his bed.
Maybe that sounded innocent to some… But the stakes were too high for presumed innocence.
He was with me publicly and sitting on his bed with another womanin my castlewhen he should have been at my side at my parents’ funeral feast.
There was no world where that didn’t get turned around and people looked at that innocently. And that was only if they didn’t see the rest. Her hand on his back, head on his shoulder—probably rubbing his back.
His hand on her thigh. Her knee was folded in and partially on him, his hand on her fucking thigh. They were leaning in together and… There was nothing innocent about it.
They weren’t old friends. They weren’t relatives.
And they were talking about my failings and how he wished I was more like her.
Rage burned through me and the stress made my heat roar to life in a way that blinded me. I tried to get out of there, realizing things were too far gone and I needed help.
Needed… I wasn’t sure. It had never been like this for me.
Ihad never been like this. I had never felt so uncontrolled and out of my head. Too much hitting me and then it was as if it physically hit me too.
No, I ran into a wall in my confusion.
No, a person. I stumbled back and then my back bumped into the wall and I couldn’t stay standing. Maybe? I wasn’t sure.
He helped me when I asked, when I begged.
He handled the heat in a way I didn’t know possible—made mefeelthings I didn’t know possible.
But when I woke alone in my bed with everything a vague blur, I couldn’t help wondering if I’d made it all up. What was real and what was the heat twisting things in my head?
This was exactly what I fucking needed.
