Chapter 583: Nick?

"How about you mind your business and check me out? I don’t have the whole day to stand here talking," she snapped.

The she-wolf’s smile faded, and she hurriedly nodded before resuming her work, her expression visibly hurt. Normally, Laila wouldn’t have paid attention to another person’s feelings nor look at their face after being mean to them, but this time, she noticed the girl’s reaction and immediately felt guilty and awful.

She parted her lips to tell the girl that she could pick any clothes she wanted from the shop, with Laila paying for them as an apology, when her eyes caught a reflection in the mirror behind the sales assistant. Her hand froze mid-swipe of her card, and the words died in her throat as her heart gave a sudden thud.

Right there in the reflection was a tall man wearing a dark hoodie that covered his head, his hands in his pockets, staring at her with a smirk on his shadowed face, and Laila could recognize that silhouette anywhere.

Nick? She thought as she felt her insides turn hot and cold at once, from both fear of his presence and anger. What was he doing here? Wasn’t he supposed to be dead?!

Laila immediately swirled around to make certain she wasn’t seeing things, but the moment she turned, she bumped into someone, almost knocking the person off their feet. They both found their balance, but by then the man she had glimpsed was nowhere to be seen, and she could no longer tell whether he had ever been there at all.

Laila’s first instinct was to go and confirm it, and to report it to the Alpha if it turned out to be true, but the person she had bumped into hissed in annoyance.

"How rude of you to bump into me without apologizing, Miss Serrano."

The words made Laila turn to the person, finally registering who it was, and that the person wasn’t alone. Both she-wolves were glaring at her heatedly, arms crossed against their chests.

They were none other than Annie and Lorna, Gilbert’s elder sister and his so-called chosen mate, respectively. Laila tried to calm her frantically beating heart as she muttered absentmindedly, "I’m sorry, excuse me."

She began to sidestep them in a hurry, hoping to get past without a confrontation, but the two women blocked her path. It was only then that Laila realized they hadn’t come to shop. Neither of them had any reason to be in the baby section, and she suspected they had followed her there. Unfortunately, she didn’t have the time or patience to deal with them right now.

"Step aside, I am busy."

"Not so fast, Miss Serrano. I have come to speak to you." Came Annie’s gentle voice, which matched her innocent-looking face and brown eyes. She was a petite young woman with brown hair and delicate features to boot.

"I really don’t have the time to speak right now, Anna. I gotta bounce." Laila said impatiently, but the she-wolf replied,

"I heard you have been seeing my man, and I have come to make some things clear with you." Came Annie’s words, making Laila stop and frown. "Lorna told me how Aunt Quinn found you in his apartment, and I have come here to confirm what you were doing there that day."

Laila looked at the she-wolf before shifting her gaze to Gilbert’s sister, who was eyeing her with disdain. Her lips pressed into a straight line. So this was what all this was about? Anna’s man? Laila felt a pang of discomfort at the thought.

"The last I checked, Anna, you and the doctor aren’t mated, so I don’t see why you should question me about why I was with him."

"She has every right, okay, miss high and mighty," Lorna said with a scoff.

"She and my brother are to be mated in a few months, and you stay well clear of him or—"

"Or else what?" Laila challenged, realizing that whether the man she had glimpsed was truly Nick or only a trick of her mind, he would be long gone by now because of these two, who had wasted her time.

It was Annie who replied to Laila’s challenge, stepping closer to her as she said,

"You don’t want to mess with me, Miss Serrano." Annie warned. "Gil and I have been promised to each other since we were little, and I won’t let a slut like you think she can take him by making excuses to see him in his apartment."

Annie hadn’t truly come to Silver for the memorials of the Alpha sister, who she didn’t know personally nor care about, even though that was the reason they had been welcomed into the pack. She had come with the intention of getting to know Gilbert, but the doctor had been acting too polite and cool towards her, and when she had poked around, she learned that it must be because Laila was feeding him her itchy pussy, which had known almost every man in Silver.

Annie had come from an important pack and family, just like Laila herself, but Annie knew that when the two of them were weighed against each other, she was better than this she-wolf.

Laila was barely fazed by the she-wolf’s words as she replied, "What generation are we living in, Anna, for you to claim that you’re promised to him?" She chuckled softly. "And if you are, like you said, then that’s none of my business. Go claim him if he wants you, but don’t you fucking stop me again, or I’ll hit you next time to stop you from buzzing around my ears like a fly." She warned before turning back to finish her payment and get the hell out of there, but it was obvious the two women weren’t done with her yet.

People were already turning to look at them, curious about what was happening. The two she-wolves who had come to confront Laila clearly wanted more than just a public argument. They intended to put her in her place, just as she had often done to others in the past.

Lorna, who was taller than Annie, reached out, grabbed Laila’s arm, and roughly spun her around to face them.

"You think you’re somebody, but you’re not anymore. Your uncle is dead and gone, and very soon, so will the rest of your family be. You go around sleeping with other people’s men and ruining relationships, but you’ve picked the wrong target this time. Gil will never look at you twice!"

"Then could you tell me why he enjoyed kissing me a while ago?" Laila asked with a smirk, watching the expressions on Annie’s and Lorna’s faces change. She hadn’t intended to rub it in their faces, but the two were getting on her nerves so badly that she could barely tolerate them anymore.

"You lying bitch," Lorna gritted out, digging her growing claws into Laila’s arm, which made Laila hiss in pain and jerk her arm back with a force that sent Lorna falling back against the counter. Annie, who was fuming, moved to hit Laila, but Laila easily pushed her away too, and she fell against Lorna.

The commotion brought the mall manager down there in no time at all, and he demanded to know what was happening. Immediately, Annie, who was known as an important guest of Silver, piped in, rubbing her painful arm that had hit the counter.

"Mr. Herman," Annie addressed the man, knowing that his wife had come to Silver Pack from their own pack. "Miss Serrano started this. We were talking to her one moment, and the next, she was shoving us away."

Lorna chimed in as well, despising Laila’s very existence and still resenting how she had humiliated her and her sisters on numerous occasions in the past. "I believe losing her place in society is making her behave so savagely. You don’t want someone like her shopping in your mall, Mr. Herman. Surely, my aunt Natasha wouldn’t be pleased if she heard that I’d been hurt here."

Mr. Herman, upon hearing the mention of the elder, turned a little pale, and he turned to Laila to demand, "What happened here, why did you start up a fight for no reason, Miss Serrano?"