Betrayed Forced Mate - Page 70

I don’t envy his position. Not at all.

“Okay,” Bigby relents, “he was big! But size isn’t everything, come on Aris, surely you know that—”

Aris punches Bigby in the arm playfully, and Linnea leads the conversation in a different direction. As stealthily as I can, I pull Olivia away from the crowd and tug her along, up the stairs, until we’re standing in a different wing of the house, in the hallway between two bedrooms.

“What are you doing?” she giggles, still holding tight to her eggnog.

“This is where it all started,” I say, taking her drink and setting it on a table beneath a large portrait of Bits the Pig. Olivia giggles again when she sees it, and I settle my hands on her hips, pressing her against the wall. Her laugh dies in her throat when I drop my mouth to hers, and just like that, her body is pressed against mine, her nipples hard against me.

Since returning from Veronica’s rescue mission, Olivia and I have been unable to keep our hands off each other. We also took Bigby—and Percy’s—advice, and started seeing paranormal therapists, more equipped to help shifters work through issues like my evil Alpha killed my parents and my parents were murdered by vampires.

“We could disappear into one of these rooms,” I murmur against her lips, pressing my cock, which is already hard, against her. “Nobody would miss us.”

“Everyone would miss us,” she murmurs against my lips.

“Liv,” I say, swallowing.

“We can’t right now, By—”

“No, not that,” I chuckle, pulling back and tucking a piece of her hair behind her ear. “I—I’ve been thinking, and—I would like to start trying.”

“I thought we were already trying, Byron,” she says, smirking. “I thought that when you woke up in the medical bay, telling me you loved me, that we were trying—”

“No,” I say, reaching up and putting a finger to her lips. “I mean, I want to try. For kids. With you.”

Her mouth drops open, and she stares up at me, her eyes darting back and forth between mine. I watch her throat as she swallows.

“Byron,” she says, dropping her gaze. “You know I want to hear that, but I don’t want you to do it just to make me happy. I want you to do it because you want to.”

I nod, chewing on my lip and looking down at her. She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. My mate. My wife. The future mother of my children.

“After reconnecting with my brother,” I say, clearing my throat. “And talking to the therapist, I’ve realized that my insistence on not having kids wasn’t—well, like there are some people who really just don’t want kids, right? But that’s not me. I want them, but I was like, punishing myself. Or living by this idea that family couldn’t be real or mean anything when I had the truth about it around me the whole time. The Rosecreek pack is our family, and with you, I’d like to make it a little bigger.”

When my eyes refocus on her, I realize she has tears in her eyes.

“Shit, Liv,” I say, reaching up and wiping a tear away with my thumb. “I’m sorry—I didn’t mean—”

“No, Byron,” she says, laughing wetly, “that was just—it was a beautiful thing to say. Thank you for saying it.”

“Thank you for waiting all this time,” I say, tugging her closer to me and burying my head in the crook of her neck, “for me to come around.”

“I didn’t have much of a choice,” she jokes, and I shake my head, leaning in for another kiss when Kaila, Araya, and Bubba round the corner, each erupting into laughter and squeals of disgust when they see us.

“Yeah, yeah,” I say, “cooties this and that—I’ve seen you eat your boogers, Araya!”

They laugh as they continue their game of tag down the hall, and Olivia takes my hand, squeezing once, before leading me back down the hallway. Right at the bottom is Rafael, Maisie, Triste, Zane, and Ado, all holding a glass of eggnog or wine and chatting.

“Oh, shit, Byron,” Zane says, “I was just telling them about how you killed me.”

“I didn’t kill you,” I mutter, rolling my eyes at him. Olivia squeezes my hand again and slips away, moving toward the group in the kitchen. Linnea is saying something about taking the rolls out of the oven. “I knew it wasn’t you.”

“How could you have known?” he asks, eyes daring, and I can see that, somewhere beneath the question, he’s wondering if I really would have thrown that knife at his throat. Since that day, we’ve talked more, and Zane has even agreed to come to some therapy sessions with me, but neither of us brought up what happened on the boat.

Now, in front of everyone, is the perfect place to hash it out.

“I knew it wasn’t you,” I say, taking a deep breath and knowing nobody else is going to understand what I’m about to say, “because the fake Zane said that he chose the genocide path on Undertale.”

Zane genuinely, honest-to-Gods, sucks in a breath, bringing his hand to his chest like he’s a damsel in distress.