12 Chapter 12 Hidden Communication
Elena’s POV
The limo door shut and the world outside went muffled.
Leather. Cold air from a vent I couldn’t find. The faint smell of his cologne, which I used to think was expensive and now just smelled like a warning.
I turned my face to the window.
The gravel drive slid away behind us. Then the long wrought–iron gate. Then the dark road beyond, lined with trees that looked, in the low blue glow of the dashboard, like a row of people standing very still and watching us pass.
Marcus sat across from me.
He did not speak.
I did not speak.
I watched the window. I watched my own reflection ghosted over the glass, the long pale sweep of my hair falling forward, the swollen ridge along my cheekbone that I had not been able to hide no matter how I had arranged the strands. In the window my face looked like a stranger’s face. Someone else’s girl. Someone else’s problem.
The silence stretched.
It stretched the way a wire stretches before it snaps.
“My mate,” he said at last, low, “will not be caught flirting with unmated males.”
I did not turn my head.
“Elena.”
I turned my head.
I looked him full in the face and I smiled. It was not a nice smile. My cheek hurt when I
did it, and I did it anyway.
“I apologize, Alpha.”
His jaw set.
“Do not.”
12 Chapter 12 Hidden Communication
“Oh no, please.” I leaned back against the leather. I crossed my good wrist over the cast in my lap, very neat, very composed. “Let me. I apologize, Alpha, for standing alone at a table for so long while you conducted your very important business. I apologize for taking a glass of champagne when I could not find my escort. I apologize for speaking, when spoken to, to a man whose name I did not yet know”
“Enough”
“I’m only getting started.”
“Elena.”
“You brought me,” I said, and my voice went lower, “to that ballroom to show me off. Didn’t
you. To walk me in on your arm and let every Alpha in that room see that you had a mate and she was pretty and she was quiet and she belonged to you. And then the second a man with a silver head of hair said a word with a number attached, you dropped my hand like it was something dirty and you walked away.”
His eyes were dark green again. Not black. Dark green and narrow.
“You were not to speak to him.”
“You didn’t tell me
at”
“You should have known.”
“How, Alpha.”
He did not answer.
“How was I supposed to know,” I said, “which of the Alphas in that room was on the list of men I was not allowed to breathe near. I have never been to one of those parties before. I don’t know the politics. You did not brief me. You did not even introduce me. You left me at a food table in a room full of strangers and then you were surprised when one of them spoke to me.”
“He knew what he was doing.”
“And I didn’t.”
His mouth tightened.
“I’m sure,” I went on, “everyone in that ballroom saw you drag me out to the garden. I’m sure the ones who didn’t heard about it before the last song was over. You wanted to show dominance, Alpha. You certainly did. You showed it so hard that the other Lunas
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in the room probably went home and told their husbands how the Peak Alpha slaps his mate around in the hedges. Whatever rumor you were trying to get in front of tonight, you just fed it yourself”
The silence that followed was not a wire anymore.
It was a held breath.
He looked at me for a long moment. His face did not move. His hands did not move. Only his eyes.
“Hitting you,” he said at last, very evenly, “may not have been the correct choice.”
I rolled my eyes.
Not a small eye roll. A real one. The whole head went with it.
“Wow.”
2
“Elena.”
“No, truly. An apology. From an Alpha. I am honored.”
“I did not apologize.”
“You really didn’t.” I looked back at the window. “Don’t worry. I didn’t mistake it for
one.”
He leaned forward a fraction.
“Keep the dress.”
I laughed.
It was not a long laugh. It was a short bright ugly thing that came out before I could stop it, and it made my cheek hurt again.
“No.”
“It was a gift.”
“It was a costume.” I smoothed the silk over my knee with my good hand, very calm. “I’ll have it professionally cleaned. I’ll have it pressed. I’ll have it returned to whichever boutique you pulled it from. You can put it on the next girl you want to walk in on your arm and then abandon.”
“Elena-”
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“That’s not a negotiation, Alpha”
He sat back.
He did not say anything else for the rest of the drive.
The limo slowed.
I knew the sound of my own road under tires. The ruts. The uneven places where the asphalt ended and the packed dirt began. I knew the particular way the suspension complained when we hit the dip just before the trailers.
The car stopped.
I did not wait for the driver. I opened the door myself.
“Thank you for a lovely evening,” I said, without turning.
I stepped out in my ruined heels into the dirt.
I shut the door.
The trailer was dark.
I had left a lamp on in the front room before we left. I was sure of it. I had checked on my mother, I had fixed the blanket up around her shoulders, I had turned on the lamp by the couch so she would have light if she woke.
The lamp was off.
I stopped on the step.
Behind me, the limo had not moved. The engine idled. He was watching. Of course he was watching.
I pushed the door open.
I stepped in.
The air in the trailer was wrong. Too warm. Someone was breathing who shouldn’t have been.
Something swung out of the dark at my head.
I did not think. My body thought for me. I twisted, and the lamp – my lamp, the one I had left on, now wrenched free of its cord – cracked against the wall beside my ear with a sound like a small bone breaking. Ceramic shards skittered across the floor.
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I caught a fistful of hair.
Long hair. Silky. Expensive.
I yanked.
She shrieked.
I slammed her face–first into the wall beside the door. The cheap paneling gave a dull thump and a woman’s weight bounced off it and sagged in my grip.
“What.” Viviana spat, “did you do to my man?”
I did not answer her.
I tightened my grip on her hair and I dragged her.
Out the door. Down the step. I did not let her find her feet. She scrabbled. She clawed at my wrist with one hand. I dragged her across the dirt in front of my own trailer and I threw her.
Face down.
In the dirt.
“Stay away from me, Viviana.
I slammed the door.
I threw the bolt.
Outside, immediately, I heard her. Sobbing. Screeching. Then his voice, low, clipped, furious, cutting under hers. I could not make out the words. I did not try. I stood with my forehead against the cold metal of the door and I listened until the limo engine revved, until gravel sprayed, until the sound of the tires pulled away down my road and faded.
Then I walked to the couch.
I sat.
I looked down at the little silver clutch still looped around my cast.
Something inside it buzzed.
I froze.
It buzzed again. A small flat insect of a sound. My phone – the phone Marcus had
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12 Chapter 12 Hidden Communication
given me was on the kitchen counter, where I always left it. I could see its dark rectangle from here.
The buzz was in the clutch.
I worked the clasp open with my good hand.
A phone slid out into my palm. Cheap. Plastic. Prepaid. The kind of phone you bought at a gas station and didn’t have to give a name for.
The screen was already lit.
Several messages.
Elena. It’s Damien. You have this phone because I slipped it into your bag before you left. Don’t say anything out loud.
Are you home? Tell me you made it home.
This line is untraceable. Use it.
I stared.
My thumb moved before
my
brain did.
I’m home, I typed. Thank you.
The dots started immediately.
Good.
Listen to me. Gage and I want to help. I am not being kind. I am being useful. There is a difference.
Keep this phone hidden. Keep it charged. Do not lie to me when I ask you things. If you lie I can’t help you.
I swallowed.
Okay.
One more thing.
–
If it ever comes to it – and it may the things you tell me on this line can be used as evidence against him. Do you understand what I am saying?
I understood.
12 Chapter 12 Hidden Communication
I understood perfectly.
I typed slowly.
Thank you, Damien. I doubt it will come to that.
The reply was almost instant.
It might.
His last message sat on the screen. My gut told me Damien was not going to disappear quietly from my life. This secret line was only going to make my already desperate situation more complicated.
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