When We Were Mates (Demetra and Emris) novel Chapter 131

Chapter 131

I’m wanding here watching this omega tear herself apart on thorns, root and bark.

The thorns are cutting through her dress. I can see the thin lines of red opening across her arms where the brush catches her, and something in me tightens.

Listen, the thorns are cutting you!”

I grit with irritation. At her. At the situation. At the moon goddess specifically, who thought it was hilarious to make the one

man I’ve spent weeks thinking about end up being the fated mate of the Trybrid I came here to destroy.

“EMRISTM HERE!”

The faith in that voice.

Three bloodlines in that wolf and she screams his name like he’s the only force in existence worth screaming for. Needlessly faithful. The fact that he has three bloodlines in him doesn’t impress me. I don’t believe he is any match for me. But I guess

I just have to deal with him when I compel him.

Probably compel him to pluck out his own heart. That would be poetic, wouldn’t it? The great Emris Covenant, fallen by his own claw

“It’s not exactly working, is it?”

Eva’s voice comes from my left and her boot crushes softly against the dead leaves as she crosses her arms and looks at me the way she’s been looking at me since we were children.

Tm being soft,” I say.

I noticed”

I turn back to the treeline and Demetra is running away, Again. I blur in front of her and she falls, pressed against the tree this time around.

“I just wanna talk to you. I bet you have questions about what I did to you that day at the bar. I can answer them if you stop running.

I come closer and closer to her as she gets her back against the trunk of a tree. I pull one knee down and look at her.

I forger every word.

She’s more beautiful than I remembered. In the club it was dim and loud and I was moving too fast through the night to really see her. Our here, in the dark between the trees, with moonlight cutting through the canopy and tears cutting down her face..she is devastating. Gorgeous in the way that breaks the machinery of the mind…

A never at a loss for words.

exactly as sharp as I intend to be

And 1 aro koreling in the dirt saying nothing.

10:16 am P P P P

Chapter 131

It is perhaps the single most humiliating moment of my adult life, and I’m so caught inside the wreckage of it that I completely miss her hand moving to her hair. Miss the pin she pulls free. Miss the arm that swings until Eva’s hand shoots out and catches her wrist mid–air…an inch from my neck.

Eva stares at the pin.

“Wow,” she says flatly. “Just wow, Lyc.”

She wrestles for it, and Demetra…this she–wolf, this extraordinary woman she–wolf does not let go. She locks her second arm around the first and holds on, and there’s a moment where the two of them are grappling in the shadow of a hundred- year–old tree and I am just now getting back to my feet.

Eva loses her patience and strikes her!

Demetra’s body snaps back against the trunk with a sound that I feel in my back teeth.

And my eyes flash.

“Do not HIT her!” I growl and light goes out of the forest.

Eva drops immediately to her both knees in the dirt, head down, the way she was trained.

“I’m sorry, Lyc. I’m sorry, I—”

“I have it under control. Go.”

“But-”

Behind me, I hear Demetra get up and start to run again.

I blur and wrap one arm around her waist from behind.

“LET GO LET GO OF ME –

HELLLLP-”

“Keep shrieking like that and you’ll never see your family again!”

I say directly into her ear and the shrieking stops. I’m aware of everything: the perfume at her neck. The smallness of her waist under my arm.

I get her to look into my eyes. When I do, mascara is rolling down her face. I’ve ruined her Luna day as her kid was yelling. don’t believe any words I say can have any effect in this hysteria.

Big mistake with that threat.

My mother taught me this before she taught me anything else. You want to win a she–wolf…don’t make her choose between you and her pups.

“I didn’t mean that as a threat. And I’m not trying to kidnap you. I just needed you to stop running long enough to hear me,

“What did

you

do to me?” Her voice cracks. “You kissed me. You made me… kiss you?”

Now. Finally. She’s asking questions.

“It’s called compulsion.” I hold her gaze. “I’m not proud of it.”

Demetra’s chest heaves in front of me as her face twists in confusion.

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10:16 am Pppp.

Chapter 131

“Emris…is my…mate.”

“Yeah. Which is why the compulsion bounced back. You can’t be told to reject a tru

to reject you.”

I watch the words reach her eyes and scatter into something she doesn’t have a name for and 1.1 4ot worum because the offer is genuinely not cruel.

I believe what all females really want is to be Luna, regardless of the wolf. So here’s my offer. I’m going to like t anyway once we fight for the Alpha seat, and then she’s going to be mateless. But if I make her me. Se

be the Luna. She doesn’t have to lose anything.

She doesn’t have to lose her title. She doesn’t have to lose her kid’s standing in the park. She just has to rate ne hip

better one.

That’s what I need her to understand.

Though I’ll admit…standing here looking at her. I am not sure I can wait for the Trybond to die to have it. The pas was always to kill him in the Alpha contest but there is something in the weeks I’ve spent thinking about this woman ta curdled into obsession, and obsession doesn’t wait well with Lycans.

I might want the rejection tonight.

“You don’t have anything to say to that?” I search her face. “I mean.. you know what they did to my family ng You and your daughter are innocent, so of course I don’t intend to punish either of you-

“Emris?” She says sharply as if she got a whiff of him.

My nostrils flare.

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