My Fated Alpha's Cruel Game (Elena and Marcus) novel Chapter 15

Chapter 15: Chapter 15 First Day Working

Elena’s POV

I made it halfway back through the woods before I heard the engine.

It was not the low, quiet hum of the black car at the drive. It was closer, sharper, and it was coming up the rough track that ran behind the row of trailers on our side of the pack. I cut off the path. I took the shortcut through the pines and I came up along the back of our lot, breathing hard.

The SUV was already parked out front.

I stopped at the corner of the trailer.

The driver’s door was shut. The windows were dark. No one was in the cab. That meant he was already inside my home, and he had walked in nonchalantly without knocking, because of course he had.

I climbed the steps.

The door had been left open a crack. I pushed it the rest of the way with my fingertips and I stepped in.

Marcus stood in the middle of my front room.

He looked wrong there. That was the first thing that hit me. A man in a dark grey three-piece suit in a trailer where the couch doubled as my bed and the afghan still lay pooled on the cushions from this morning. His shoes were polished. The shoulders of his jacket were tailored to a line that cost more than the trailer was worth.

He was looking at the little kitchen table with casual indifference.

The empty kitchen table.

He turned his head when I came in.

I shut the door behind me. I did not take off my jacket.

“You’re in my house.”

“Your trailer.”

“Don’t.”

He tilted his head a little. Not quite a smile. Not quite anything.

“I was told,” he said, his tone lacking its usual sharp hostility, “that you threatened an employee at my front door this afternoon.”

“I asked to see you.”

“Aggressively.”

“Firmly.”

His mouth moved. Not a smile. Just a small acknowledgement that I had hit the word he would have chosen.

“You were received by a member of my household during a meeting with another Alpha,” he said. “You made a scene on the step. Viviana was in the hall. She heard you. She had a great deal to say about it, in front of her uncle.”

I folded my arms across my chest, defensive and glaring.

“How tragic for you.”

“She wants you punished.”

“Is that what this is? Your grand performance to appease her?”

He did not answer.

He moved, slowly, and he looked around the front room. At the couch with the afghan. At the stack of schoolbooks I had left on the table. At the cabinet door I had left hanging open when I tore the kitchen apart. His eyes went over all of it without changing.

“Where is it,” I demanded.

“Where is what.”

“That absurdly expensive dress you bought.”

He looked back at me.

“It was in the closet yesterday,” I said, biting out the words. “It was on the table this morning. It was gone by the time I got back from town. Viviana was here last night. You tell me.”

“Beta Hugo took it.”

I went still.

“What.”

“This morning. While you were in town looking for work,” he clarified evenly. “I had it sent out for professional cleaning. It will be returned this afternoon.”

I stared at him.

“You didn’t say.”

“No.”

“You let me walk across the valley thinking she’d broken in and stolen it.”

“I didn’t know where you’d walked.”

“You could have left a note.”

“I don’t leave notes.”

I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes for a second. I breathed in. I breathed out.

When I dropped my hands, he was still watching me.

“Is that it,” I said. “Is that why you’re here. To tell me Beta Hugo has my dress.”

“I’m here,” he said, “because Viviana wants me to punish your disrespect.”

“Then punish me.”

“No.”

The word was flat. Lenient.

I did not know what to do with it. I stood with my arms crossed and my jacket still on, and I looked at him, completely baffled. I could not find the shape of the man who had brutally slapped me in a garden last night. The contradiction of it made my head spin.

He moved again. He went as far as the little kitchen table and he put two fingers on the edge of it. Then he looked at the books.

“You’re studying.”

“Finishing out.”

“You said at the office you’d tested up.”

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