Page 36 of Wolf’s Fated Bride

Runa

Ash pulls in his fire as we burst inside the tower. He carries me into the living room and dumps me on the chair by the fireplace. Wolves don’t sit on furniture, so I prepare to hop off.

“Stay,” he says firmly.

It’s nearly impossible for an omega to refuse an alpha male’s order, so I remain sitting, but lift my upper lip and growl at him.

“Stay until I bring you some clothes.” Ash stalks outside.

In a few minutes, he returns dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt. His boots are unlaced. He tosses me a pair of gray sweatpants and a black T-shirt. “That’s my last T-shirt,” he says. “I’m missing the shirt I wore when Peter died. Can’t find it anywhere. Check if it got lost in the laundry, would you?”

I pick up the clothes between my teeth and leap off the chair.

“Did I say you could leave?” Ash sits on the bigger of the two chesterfields that face each other and laces up his boots.

Fine. I shift back into human and dress in his clothes as fast as possible, then sit back down on the reading chair. “My clothes are in the kitchen.”

“Okay. You can grab them on your way out.” Clearly agitated, he yanks at his laces.

I cross my arms over my chest. “What is your problem?”

“Do you even have to ask? You are resistant to my element. It means I can’t kill you.”

Ash says this as if he’s telling me what he ate for breakfast this morning.

He won’t say it, so I do. “Duh.”

“Exactly.”

I shake my head. “Um, no, not cool. First of all, I thought you willed the fire not to burn me. And second, why would you want to kill me?”

He lifts one finger. “No, I was in the middle of a purge when you slid into the cave and snapped me out of it. When the fire exploded, I tried to pull it back, but it was too late.” He lifts a second finger, the middle one. “Because you’re a Stormcrest wolf who is resistant to my element.” Ash rests his elbows on his thighs and leans in, eyes narrowing. “You’d better tell me how you’re able to do what you did.”

“I wore my fireproof jammies.”

“I’m not amused.”

“Maybe it’s your cooties.” I show him the burn on my hand.

Ash frowns. “You haven’t healed that yet? Are you sick?”

“I don’t think so.”

Ash scrubs his face, rubs his jaw. “I have a confession.”

“Uh-oh.”

He chuckles. It’s a troubling sound because I find it sexy.

He lifts his hand and shows me a pearly glow on the heel of his palm. “I don’t know what this is, but it’s been here from the night we signed the treaty.”

“No,” I correct him. “You signed the treaty. I was the conduit.”

Blade busts into the room and walks straight to the fireplace. Chunks of ice fall off his fur coat, and his fingers are blue from the cold. “Thaw me,” he orders, teeth chattering.

In the fireplace, the fire roars, and Blade crouches near it, a puddle of melted ice forming around him.

“I’ll grab you some clothes,” I say.