When You Were My Mate (Demetra and Emris) novel Chapter 111

Chapter 111

Demetra Pride Convenant.

Contd

64

20 vouchers

“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.”

I 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.

It 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 me 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 you guys see that man over there.”

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

“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 face, but that long tattoo that covers the whole of his hand…vines, maybe, or smoke, twisting up from his knuckles to disappear 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 sharp 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 a leather jacket-but his attention keeps drifting, scanning the room like he’s looking for something.

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

His hand is moving to the back pocket of his pants, pulling out his phone. He glances at the screen, dismisses whatever it says with the indifference of someone whose attention is genuinely difficult to earn, and slides it back into his pocket. Then he tilts his head slightly toward the person talking to him.

He is, objectively, dangerous looking.

“He looks hot, Sabrina confirms.

“So. Tiffany turns back to me. Since you and Emris are in a not-quite-a-relationship relationship… you’re completely free to talk to other men-

“Tiff-

“Yes or no, sis.

I pause. “Well. Yes, technically-”

“Great. Go meet that man.”

12:37 Tue, Apr 21 JO

Chapter 111

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

“Doesn’t matter-”

64)

20 vouchers

“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.”

I open my mouth to disagree.

I 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 it.

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

A 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 who grabbed my wrist and stood above me on a floor and chose, very deliberately, not to reach down.

I 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.”

I start walking.

I keep my pace even, chin up and my heels doing exactly what heels are supposed to be doing all toward the dark shirt dangerous aura dude. Tiffany had absolutely no business selecting for this dare when there were plenty of normal-looking college-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 numbers. 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 bar is more intricate up close. I slow my steps slightly.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify