My Fated Alpha's Cruel Game (Elena and Marcus) novel Chapter 12

Chapter 12: Chapter 12 Hidden Communication

Elena’s POV

The limo door shut and the world outside went muffled.

Leather. Cold air from a vent I couldn’t find. The faint smell of his cologne, which I used to think was expensive and now just smelled like a warning.

I turned my face to the window.

The gravel drive slid away behind us. Then the long wrought-iron gate. Then the dark road beyond, lined with trees that looked, in the low blue glow of the dashboard, like a row of people standing very still and watching us pass.

Marcus sat across from me.

He did not speak.

I did not speak.

I watched the window. I watched my own reflection ghosted over the glass, the long pale sweep of my hair falling forward, the swollen ridge along my cheekbone that I had not been able to hide no matter how I had arranged the strands. In the window my face looked like a stranger’s face. Someone else’s girl. Someone else’s problem.

The silence stretched.

It stretched the way a wire stretches before it snaps.

“My mate,” he said at last, low, “will not be caught flirting with unmated males.”

I did not turn my head.

“Elena.”

I turned my head.

I looked him full in the face and I smiled. It was not a nice smile. My cheek hurt when I did it, and I did it anyway.

“I apologize, Alpha.”

His jaw set.

“Do not.”

“Oh no, please.” I leaned back against the leather. I crossed my good wrist over the cast in my lap, very neat, very composed. “Let me. I apologize, Alpha, for standing alone at a table for so long while you conducted your very important business. I apologize for taking a glass of champagne when I could not find my escort. I apologize for speaking, when spoken to, to a man whose name I did not yet know.”

“Enough.”

“I’m only getting started.”

“Elena.”

“You brought me,” I said, and my voice went lower, “to that ballroom to show me off. Didn’t you. To walk me in on your arm and let every Alpha in that room see that you had a mate and she was pretty and she was quiet and she belonged to you. And then the second a man with a silver head of hair said a word with a number attached, you dropped my hand like it was something dirty and you walked away.”

His eyes were dark green again. Not black. Dark green and narrow.

“You were not to speak to him.”

“You didn’t tell me that.”

“You should have known.”

“How, Alpha.”

He did not answer.

“How was I supposed to know,” I said, “which of the Alphas in that room was on the list of men I was not allowed to breathe near. I have never been to one of those parties before. I don’t know the politics. You did not brief me. You did not even introduce me. You left me at a food table in a room full of strangers and then you were surprised when one of them spoke to me.”

“He knew what he was doing.”

“And I didn’t.”

His mouth tightened.

“I’m sure,” I went on, “everyone in that ballroom saw you drag me out to the garden. I’m sure the ones who didn’t heard about it before the last song was over. You wanted to show dominance, Alpha. You certainly did. You showed it so hard that the other Lunas in the room probably went home and told their husbands how the Peak Alpha slaps his mate around in the hedges. Whatever rumor you were trying to get in front of tonight, you just fed it yourself.”

The silence that followed was not a wire anymore.

It was a held breath.

He looked at me for a long moment. His face did not move. His hands did not move. Only his eyes.

“Hitting you,” he said at last, very evenly, “may not have been the correct choice.”

I rolled my eyes.

Not a small eye roll. A real one. The whole head went with it.

“Wow.”

“Elena.”

“No, truly. An apology. From an Alpha. I am honored.”

“I did not apologize.”

“You really didn’t.” I looked back at the window. “Don’t worry. I didn’t mistake it for one.”

He leaned forward a fraction.

“Keep the dress.”

I laughed.

It was not a long laugh. It was a short bright ugly thing that came out before I could stop it, and it made my cheek hurt again.

“No.”

“It was a gift.”

“It was a costume.” I smoothed the silk over my knee with my good hand, very calm. “I’ll have it professionally cleaned. I’ll have it pressed. I’ll have it returned to whichever boutique you pulled it from. You can put it on the next girl you want to walk in on your arm and then abandon.”

“Elena—”

“That’s not a negotiation, Alpha.”

He sat back.

He did not say anything else for the rest of the drive.

The limo slowed.

I knew the sound of my own road under tires. The ruts. The uneven places where the asphalt ended and the packed dirt began. I knew the particular way the suspension complained when we hit the dip just before the trailers.

The car stopped.

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