When We Were Mates (Demetra and Emris) novel Chapter 111

Demetra Pride Convenant

Contd

How do I prove it to you? What do you want from me? I set my glass down with more force than necessary. “You think I’m going to just stay with the wolf who looks at me like I’m a monster while his actual monster of an ex–wife is walking around my pack house in a silk robe ordering room service on the pack’s platinum card?”

I shake my head. “He can do whatever he wants. I can do whatever I want. That’s the arrangement”

raise my hand toward the waitress for a refill, because this conversation has officially consumed my first drink

You’re free to do whatever?” Tiffany repeats, and the way she says it is like she’s filing it away for future use.

t doesn’t matter. Whatever she’s thinking. I’ll prove it.

Especially when I can still hear Emris’s annoying voice in my head, telling me that my dress is too short or trying to remind ne of the time like he’s a guardian or something. Gone are the days when he was my guardian at high school!

Oh my gosh. Tiffany suddenly sits up straighter, dropping her voice to the kind of loud whisper that isn’t actually quiet. ‘Do ‘ou guys see that man over there”

he tilts her head in the direction she means… just barely and Sabrina and I both turn our heads like synchronized

wimmers.

Where-

There. Tiffany physically takes my chin and redirects it, and then I see what she’s talking about.

black shirt. Black pants. And a build that is literally making every woman in this club turn her head. I don’t need to see his ace, but that long tattoo that covers the whole of his hand_vines, maybe, or smoke, twisting up from his knuckles to lisappear under his sleeve. The half side of his face is cast in shadow from the way the lights are hitting, but I can see the harp line of his jaw, the way he’s standing like he owns the floor beneath his feet. He’s talking to someone–a shorter guy in

leather jacket—but his attention keeps drifting, scanning the room like he’s looking for something.

teally, every woman within fifteen feet has found a reason to face in his direction.

fis hand is moving to the back pocket of his pants, pulling out his phone. He glances at the screen, dismisses whatever il ays with the indifference of someone whose attention is genuinely difficult to earn, and slides it back into his pocket. Then

e tilts his head slightly toward the person talking to him.

de is, objectively, dangerous looking.

He looks hot, Sabrina confirms.

“So. Tiffany turns back to me “Since you and Einris are in a not–quite a relationship relationship you’re completely free lu

talk to other men—”

Tiff-

‘Yes or no sis

I pause “Well Yes technically-

1/3

Chapter 11

“Great Go meet that man.”

“He doesn’t look anything like a man you just go and meet-

“Doesn’t matter-

Tiffany, you are terrorizing her.” Sabrina says, waving at the waitress for her next drink, but she is absolutely also doing this to me, I can tell by the way she hasn’t once told Tiffany to stop.

‘Go over there.” Tiffany continues, tap him on the shoulder, play damsel, and ask him to buy you a drink. It’s a dare Simple.

‘I don’t just… WALK up to wolves I don’t know-

This isn’t about how you walk up to someone, darling. This is about proving something to us. But of course, if Emris is the only man you’re ever going to want, we completely understand. We just thought you should know that that’s what you are.”

open my mouth to disagree.

close it.

Nothing I say in the next ten seconds is going to win this argument without physical evidence, and I know it, and they know

L

Leave her. Let her be a lover girl. He is her mate after all.‘ Sabrina says.

lover girl. To a man who left me in a horny state I will not describe out loud and never came back to address it. To a man vho grabbed my wrist and stood above me on a floor and chose, very deliberately, not to reach down.

push my chair back and shake my hair out of my face.

OH- Sabrina actually grabs the edge of the bar. “Don’t do it, Demetra—*

Watch me.

start walking.

keep my pace even, chin up and my heels doing exactly what heels are supposed to be doing all toward the dark shirt langerous aura dude. Tiffany had absolutely no business selecting for this dare when there were plenty of normal–looking ollege–age wolves scattered across this bar like sensible options.

But no. She picked this one.

As I get closer, I notice the group around him has grown. Four people now, maybe five, orbiting him. I’m not looking at the Jumbers. That’s not the point. The point is the dare, tap shoulder, ask for drink, return victorious, prove I am not a lover

girl.

His back is to me.

He is, up close, even larger than the distance suggested. The tattoo we clocked from across the bat is more intricate up close.

I slow my steps slightly.

Should I tap his shoulder or just say hi? Tapping a stranger’s shoulder feels aggressive, but just saying hi to the back of someone’s head feels unhinged, and I’m standing close enough to be aware that I don’t actually know how to do this, and maybe I should have thought about that before I pushed the chair back with so much conviction —

2/3

6:19 pm P PPP

Chapter III

All of a sudden, someone e barrels into the space between us from the left.

$6 vouchers

Not into me… toward him, shoving past to get to his side, and in doing so, swings directly into my path and puts herself between me and him so fast that I barely have time to catch it before HER face is suddenly in mine.

“Back off. Fucking thief-”

She called me a thief.

3/3