Page 518 of The Bonding Games: Part 1

Definitely hiding something.

I snap, “What aren’t you telling us?”

Flinching, his gaze darts up to meet mine, before immediately zapping elsewhere, then ping-ponging around the room, unable to settle. “N-nothing!”

“Don’t lie, you fuckface—”

“Hey!” Tiger cuts in angrily, but his boyish pout takes away any of the intimidation he was trying for. “No one calls my bestie names!”

“Your bestie is lying to us, shitface—”

“Don’t talk to my brother like that, Tate—”

Voices overlap, the volume in the room rapidly increasing as a long-winded argument ensues; curses and insults fly back and forth across the table, and when one aims at me, I whack it right back ten times harder, stabbing my knife at the offender as I imagine skinning him alive.

“OKAY, I’VE BEEN KEEPING A SECRET!”

With the strength of a tidal wave, my focus crashes back onto Alby, as does everyone else’s, the shock of the table palpable.

I don’t think anyone’s ever heard him speak so loud before.

“I’ve been keeping a secret . . .” he repeats in a volume much closer to his default this time, almost a whisper.

“I knew it,” I hiss, grip tightening on my knife, ready to butcher the guy if I don’t like his answer.

“Put that down,” Scotty sighs. “He won’t be comfortable enough to get it out if you’re openly threatening to stab him.”

I glower. “I won’t stab him unless he gives me a reason to.”

“Comforting.” The muttered word comes from my right as Cooper tips his crystal glass back, taking a sip of his water and looking ahead of him at the onyx wall like he’s entirely uninterested in this conversation.

“I’m . . .” Alby’s words are even harder to pick up on now, and my ears strain to catch each one as he continues, “Ezla kind of . . . spoke to me . . . in my head . . .”

Silence.

Then everyone speaks at once, Cooper no longer acting like he’s any better than us as he fixes all his attention on Alby too:

“OMG, Bestie! And you didn’t tell me?!—”

“She spoke to you?—”

“She was in your head?—”

“Does that mean you heard her voice? Her actual voice?—”

“Yes!”

The tiny affirmative is like an itty mouse’s, and yet we all quiet down, every one of us eager to hear more about my Bonded—my because I’m still not so sure about sharing Havoc with these buffoons, not until they give me solid proof of what they can offer her—my wrath put on a temporary hold because nothing is more interesting than my girl.

“Yes to all of them.” Alby fidgets nervously in his chair, gaze trained on his plate again. “It—it was after Game 1. Right at the end—just after I’d bonded her. It was . . .” He gulps up a bathtub of oxygen like he can’t breathe properly, and I understand him there. Havoc really is breathtaking.

Literally.

I wonder if she’d strangle me if I asked?

Preferably with my cock buried inside her with her pussy strangling me at the same time.

“It was beautiful . . .” Alby visibly melts for my girl. “Like a . . . like a sultry purr”—his flush becomes even more prominent that it already had been—“with . . . with an edge of danger that warns you away, but you can’t help but come closer. Like a siren . . .” At this point, he appears as though he’s talking more to himself, forgetting us completely as his mind firmly lodges itself in Ezla Land. “Velvety . . . smoky . . .”