Page 46 of Rejected By the Alpha

Both of us stayed quiet for a long time, just staring at each other in the middle of the living room. I heard scurrying at the side of the house, and in my peripheral vision, I spotted the foxes standing on their hind legs to stare into the window.

“Out of all the places you could’ve run, why’d you go to Davix? Why didn’t you come back home?” Cade asked, the anger flooding through his pointed gaze again. “Why did you go to him when you could’ve come to me?”

“You weren’t home.” My chest tightened. “And I was with Hazel.”

After a few tense moments, Cade gathered my hair in his fist and tugged it to one side, examining my neck. Then he did the same with the opposite side, his gaze traveling across my skin like he was looking for something.

“What are you doing?”

“Did he bite you?” he asked, still scanning.

“Who?”

“That piece of shit.”

“Davix? No!”

“He didn’t bite you?”

“No.” But he did almost bite me. “Why?”

When Cade determined that Davix had not, in fact, bitten me, he released my hair but stayed close, staring down at me intensely. I swallowed and shifted underneath his gaze, the heat growing inside me.

Control your hormones, woman!

“If I tell you to stay home, you stay home.”

“You’re not the boss of me.”

“In Black Hollows, I am. You don’t know what lurks in these woods.”

“Werewolves,” I said. “Werewolves lurk here.”

Cade stiffened and scoffed. “What are you talking about? There⁠—”

I stepped closer and craned my head up to peer into his eyes. “I know you’re one too.”

“Em, I’m not⁠—”

“Sometimes, your eyes flicker gold around me,” I said. “And that scar on your neck … Hazel told me what it means. You don’t have a mate either? Did she die? Did you see her? Meet her? What was she like?”

I didn’t know why I continued asking questions, but I didn’t like the way he was lying to me. While he was doing it to protect me, he had never lied to me before—at least not that I knew of—and I hated it.

“Stop it, Ember,” Cade said harshly. “Stop it.”

“Who was she?”

“Ember—”

“Why do your eyes turn gold when you’re with me?”

Suddenly, he had me pressed up against the wall, his forearm on the wall beside my head, staring at me through his brows with those golden eyes. Even his teeth were sharper than usual, sticking out past his lips.

“You know why they turn gold when I’m with you,” he growled, burying his face into my neck, his bulge flush against my belly. “Because I can’t stand to see you with any other man who’s not me.” He drew his nose up to my ear. “You belong to me. Do you understand?”

“Cade …” I whispered, heat coursing through my body. “I …”

“Do you understand, Ember? You belong to me.”