Chapter 20

Adryan

“The fact that you had the steel balls to come to my home when I specifically told you and everyone else to leave me the fuck alone,” I snarled and looked at James, “really pisses me the fuck off, man. Like it really pisses me off.” I turned from my desk, leaned against it with my arms crossed, and glared at the prick.

Aside from seeing her once, I stayed away from Kayla the rest of the day. Although I’d found myself standing on the other side of the closed bedroom door, my forehead resting on the wood, listening to her breathing, moving around, so close to me yet so far away.

Being away from her was painful, not just because my body and soul—well, whatever fucking soul I possessed—knew she was mine, but because I was walking around with a fucking hard-on from hell. I needed to be buried in her, to fully claim her, mark her pale neck, making sure she smelled like me so every bastard knew their demise if they fucked with her.

But when she ignored me, I knew she had been dropped into a fucked-up situation and needed time. Hell, just being mated to me would have been hard as hell on anyone.

“I mean, what if I needed some RR because I was tired of looking at all your ugly fucking mugs?”

He nodded slowly and shifted on his feet.

“I should kill you on the spot, but that rug you’re standing on is new, and I don’t want to make more work for the housecleaners. They deal with enough from my demanding ass. I’m trying to, you know, think things through more.” I grinned, but it was far from easygoing.

“And because your mate is here?”

I growled andwas on James a second later, my forearm pressed to his throat, my other hand gripping the hair at the top of his head and keeping his body pressed viciously to the bookcase in my study.

“Man, James, you’ve been pushing and pushing, butting up against me for a while now, yeah?” I leaned in and added more pressure to his trachea with my arm. “Wanna tell me why the fuck that is? You trying to gain supremacy, to take me down and gain control? Is that what all this bullshit is about?”

His mouth opened and closed, and he tried to shake his head. Even though I’d asked him a question, I was making sure the fucker couldn’t talk, let alone breathe.

“I’m trigger-happy on a good day, James, bloodthirsty when I’m in a good fucking mood. But you here, now, intruding on my time with my female… even speaking about her in any way, man?—”

“I—” he wheezed out.

“Nah, you even thinking about my female makes me want to take you apart bit by bit, slowly. Real fucking slowly.” I added even more pressure, enough that his trachea was on the precipice of being crushed. It wouldn’t kill him, but it would fucking suck for him and his healing process. I waited another heartbeat, then one more for good measure, James’s face becoming an enticing shade of purple by this point.

I let him go and took a step back, not enough to get out of his personal space though. The prick needed to feel the tension and danger rolling off me.

I hadn’t told anyone about Kayla aside from Kane and Sebastian finding out. I knew they wouldn’t have said shit to anyone though, so James assuming anything about my mate meant every other soldier in my army probably assumed the same just by the change in me.

And that just pissed me off.

“I tried calling, but it kept going to voice mail.”

“Maybe you should have sent a carrier pigeon,” I said blandly. “Or, I don’t know, take a fucking hint that if I’m not answering, that means to leave me the fuck alone.”

James cleared his throat and nodded.

I stared at him, and he stared… everywhere but at me, his body language nervous as fuck. “You know, James, I think you forgot that I don’t give second chances.” He snapped his head up and locked gazes with me. “You should keep that in mind next time you say anything about my mate—hell, if she even filters through your head.” Yeah, I was still pissed about that. “Thought maybe you would have remembered that from the one and only chance I gave you all those years ago, yeah?”

As if James were pulled back to the past, he lifted his hand and ran it over the scar across his neck.

“You remember the day I gave you that one and only chance, James?” I watched as his throat bobbed when he swallowed.

He nodded slowly before saying through clenched teeth, “Yeah. Believe me, I remember. And I didn’t forget my gratitude.”

“Good.” I clapped my hands together. “So now, tell me why you showed up uninvited to my place of residence, fucking up my night and wasting my time.” On the outside I would appear calm, collected. But on the inside I was a prowling, chaotic mess, as my thoughts were only on Kayla. She was right upstairs, so fucking close. I could go to her room, kick the door open, and let the intense sexual chemistry and angst moving between us finally free. Because I knew she was close to breaking. So damn close.

She was fighting this, fighting me, and a part of me didn’t blame her. Her human mind couldn’t quite wrap itself around any of this. She wanted me with a wildfire that burned out of control inside her. We didn’t know each other, had hardly spent any time together, and to her, all of this shit was moving at light speed.

But for me, it painted a whole different picture. I’d waited one hundred and twenty years for her. And so only “knowing” each other for a few short days, and being unable to claim her, was fucking brutal and the worst kind of torture.

And that was saying something, since I’d experienced some hard-core pain in my life.

I gestured for James to get the fuck on with it.

“We have problems, and it’s in the form of some very pissed-off Lycans heading this way. As in tonight. Now.”

Interesting turn of events. “Huh,” I said conversationally. “Go on.”

“From what I’m gathering, they sure as hell aren’t coming here for a friendly social get-together.” James gave his neck one more rub.

“Obviously, James. They want to head to Vermont now. And I’m their way in.” I hadn’t given the wolves the exact coordinates to the farm in Vermont for this very reason. I couldn’t have some feral Lycans going balls-to-the-wall insane when shit could—and probably would—go sideways. All that would accomplish is leaving a mess for me to clean up and even more heat for the Otherworld than there already was.

But I couldn’t keep stalling, even if all I wanted to do was lock me and Kayla in a room for the foreseeable future, just memorizing her body, making her come so many times she became delirious, and biting her so many times her perfect body was covered in my marks.

I turned from James and went back to my desk, grabbing the bottle of scotch older than me and taking a swig right from the bottle.

“There’s also something else.”

I took another long pull before setting it down and cocking an eyebrow, the only response he’d get from me to continue.

“Banner’s flown in.”

Huh. Interesting. “Is that right?” I crossed my arms over my chest and smirked as I thought of my brother-in-law, who was also the Scottish Lycan king. “The bastard probably couldn’t stand that he wasn’t in control of the situation, hated that his boys had to follow my rules.” I grinned as dark anticipation flowed through me. Banner may’ve been married to my younger sister Luna and ruled over his kind in the Highlands, but the bastard had one hell of an ego for coming here.

“He’s brought a few others with him. Tagdh, Cathal, and two of his sons.”

“Damn, Banner’s brought in a family reunion to the city.” I assumed he’d brought my nephews, Tavish and Lennox. The third triplet, Caelan, being newly mated, wouldn’t have left his mate. “He’s gonna try and assert some bullshit dominance. He tries that shit anytime we’re in the same room.”

I could handle my brother-in-law, could handle all the Lycans and the Guard, even if he was the cockiest, most stubborn male I’d ever met. Hell, I was as alpha as they came, but that Scottish bastard came in at a close second.

“I want you to call in reinforcements. I can handle Banner, hell, even Cian and Odhran, but all those wolves will be trigger-happy.” I scrubbed a hand over my jaw and stared at the floor, thinking of the next steps.

There was no way to postpone this. I’d keep Kayla here where she’d be safe, keep a few of my soldiers to stand guard. I felt sick at the thought of leaving her, and every single part of me went against it. It was like trying to breathe underwater, unable to stop yourself from doing the act because your lungs burned and your body desperately needed oxygen. But still, you fought it; still, you thrashed against it.

Fuck.

“It’ll take them a couple of hours to get here. If the wolves want to finish this, then fine, we’ll fucking finish this. I’ll make some calls for transportation, protection, and make sure it’s all set up.” I leveled a hard stare at James. “But after you make the calls, James, I need you to do something.”

He nodded slowly. “Of course.”

James had been rubbing me the wrong way lately, which wasn’t unusual for males in the Otherworld. All of us were alpha deep down, the need for dominance ingrained in each of our cells. So there were always those who tried to go against the grain, to assert their need for more power.

And I was pretty sure that’s what the fuck was going on with James. Harmless in itself, but an irritation I didn’t need, especially right now, so shutting that shit down ASAP and putting James in his place had to be done.

I leveled him with a glare and took a step closer. Bear, who’d been silent up until now, made a deep sound of warning in the back of his throat but otherwise stayed by the fireplace. “Take the underground tunnels and get the fuck out of my house and learn your place, yeah?”