When We Were Mates (Demetra and Emris) novel Chapter 139

Chapter 139

Luna Demetra.

I puff one pillow on the side of the bed as I think about the breaking news.

Well, not only the breaking news.

The damn internet.

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Just a few scrolls on my phone while I was taking a slow tub bath which was supposed to be the one quiet thing I got today.

But then I made the mistake of picking up my phone and now I’m sitting on the edge of the bed punching pillows.

We were able to control taking down the footage of what really happened at the pack house during the ball. But after the news, they are graphics on the internet.

Actual, designed, somebody–spent–time–on–this graphics… Emris on one side, Lake on the other, some kind of battlefield between them, and people in the comments arguing about it like they’ve been given early access to football seasonal event. Betting. Literally betting on my mate’s life.

On everything we are trying to hold together while the rest of the world makes it a spectacle and posts about it with little fire emojis and millions of likes!

I punch the pillow again.

“Stop fighting with the pillows.”

I look up.

Emris is in the doorway. Arms crossed, shoulder against the frame, watching me…and I have absolutely no idea how long he’s been standing there watching me assault the bedding.

I roll my eyes and say nothing.

The bed is already a mess now so I get up and cross to the closet to turn the light off, giving myself the excuse of movement, of having somewhere to be that isn’t directly in front of him. When I come back he’s still there and he decides that’s the moment to speak.

“If it makes it better. I didn’t finish.”

I stop and turn around very slowly. “What?”

“I’m talking about the Riley girl.”

“Wow, Emris!”

“It’s the truth.”

15:53 Tue, May 19

Chapter 139

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“Oh, it’s the truth.” I feel the laugh come out wrong. “You slept with my brother’s goddess gifted and you didn’t even finish. Oh, wonderful. Let’s clap for Alpha Emris. What a comfort. What an incredible comfort that is to me right now-”

“I’m sorry.” He says it without the deflection this time. “I shouldn’t have said it like that. Or at all, the way I said it.” He touches the edge of the eye patch with two fingers. “I’ve got a boo boo eye and you were trying to stop me from giving the slit the fight it wanted and I-”

“Get out of my room.”

I push the sheets aside and lie down and turn away from him entirely.

“Okay… the eyes, that’s not – it’s not the slits‘ fault. It’s mine. Completely.”

“Emris. You haven’t looked me in the face today. Every single time there’s a moment, you push me away. You say something to make me angry so I’ll leave. You hide behind bathroom doors.” I stare at him now. “But there was once a time I was the only one you allowed to look at your eyes. So, don’t bullshit me as if this is about the slits. This is about what I told you last night and you not knowing how to be in the same room as that information.”

His spine straightens…almost imperceptibly.

“I don’t feel a way about—”

“If you’re not ready to tell the truth, get out.”

“Demetra.”

He says my name louder. Not quite a command. Something between a command and a plea, which from Emris is basically a declaration of war against himself. I look at him sideways from the pillow, and he looks back at me, and we sit in that for a moment.

“Then come here and kiss me.”

He blinks.

“Even when I hated the shit out of you, that didn’t stop you from kissing me. And now what? You stare at me like you want me, and then you stay still like you cannot cross some damn invisible line. That’s annoying!”

I say my anger out, not expecting him to do anything about it.

Until his body pushes off the wall and crosses the room and his beastly shadow falls over me before I finish processing that he’s actually doing it. Emris pulls the sheets back with one hand like they offended him and his hand finds my waist and lifts, and suddenly I am up, actually off the mattress, suspended in the air with one of his arms beneath me like I weigh nothing at all.

And then his mouth finds mine.

And every coherent thought I was in the middle of having simply dissolves.

It’s not a gentle kiss. It was never going to be a gentle kiss after everything the last twenty–four hours have

put

15:53 Tue, May 19

Chapter 139

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inside both of us. It’s all tongue and Emris tastes like mint and something that makes my toes curl against the sheets. His hand cups the back of my head, fingers threading through my hair, holding me exactly where he

wants me.

I go soft.

Like butter in his arms.

My hands find his shoulders and my spine uncurls and I am, embarrassingly, immediately taste his desire in his mouth.

He gives my mouth no space to breathe when he rests me on the bed. His thumb brushes across my nipple of my sleeping gown and I gasp into his mouth.

And that’s when I feel it something is wrong.

My fingers find the edge of the eye patch and I don’t think about it. I just… I feel him tense the half second before I pull it off.

Emris left eye stares back at me and it’s BLUE!?

BLUE!

Not the yellow–slitted eyes I know. Not the red–rimmed wet eyes from last night—

Blue like the deep part of the ocean where the light doesn’t reach. And in the middle of that frozen blue is a slit that is black as a wound and just… wrong, completely unlike anything I have ever seen in his face in five years of knowing every expression it makes!

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