Tempted by My Evil Lycan Stepbrother novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Terms

The bond is real; Teagan and Leander agree that nobody knows, nobody touches, and she refuses him at the Rite, until a photo of them on the terrace, taken from inside the Hall, hits the gossip sites.

I let go of him.

The light went out.

My palm kept buzzing.

Behind us the terrace was packed with lycans in black tie.

Nobody was looking our way.

"What was that?" I said.

Leander set his whiskey down on the wall very carefully.

"Nothing."

"It came out of my hand."

"Keep your voice down."

He took my elbow through my wet sleeve and walked me down the terrace steps.

Under the steps there was a dark corner by the boat ramp where the party lights didn't reach.

He let go of my sleeve and stepped back.

"Do it again," I said.

"Absolutely not."

"I'm a paramedic. When something lights up that shouldn't, I check it twice."

I held out my hand.

He looked at it for a long time.

Then he pressed his palm flat against mine.

The silver came back brighter than before.

It ran up both our wrists and lit the black water behind him.

His hand was shaking.

So was mine.

It felt like grabbing a live wire, if a live wire felt good.

His fingers slid down between mine, slow.

The light got brighter.

His eyes went from my hand to my mouth and stayed there.

I pulled away first.

"Okay," I said. "So what does it mean?"

"It means the moon has a sense of humor."

"Use words a human understands."

"It means you're my mate. Really. The thing I made up in front of two hundred people is true."

I sat down on the boat ramp because my knees told me to.

"So you lied, and you were right."

"Apparently."

"And at the Rite?"

"The Speaker puts our hands together under the roof, and the whole Court watches us light up like a Christmas tree."

"And my mother can't marry your father."

"If the moon says you're mine, you can't be made my sister."

He'd stood up in that hall to get exactly this.

"You're happy," I said.

"I'm not anything."

"Is there a way out?"

He was quiet for a second.

"A claimed mate can refuse at the Rite. Out loud, once. The bond breaks. It hurts both of us. Then the wedding can go ahead."

"Then that's what I'm doing."

"I assumed."

"Terms," I said. "Nobody knows. Nobody touches. On the tenth I refuse you in front of everybody, and you leave my mother alone."

"Fine."

"You agreed fast."

"I don't want a mate, Paramedic. I definitely don't want one who smells like a hospital."

"Ambulance."

"Worse."

"Why do you hate her? She's a vet. She fixes cows."

He picked up a flat stone from the ramp and turned it over in his fingers.

"My mother died three years ago in March. A cancer lycans almost never get."

I waited.

"My father was at a Council summit in Montana that week. He didn't come home. I sat with her for four days by myself. He walked in the next afternoon in his good suit."

He threw the stone. It skipped five times across the lake.

"Eighteen months later he's carrying flowers into a cow clinic every Tuesday. So no, I don't hate your mother. I hate that he had it in him the whole time."

My dad died in a fire when I was fourteen.

My mother still came to every one of my track meets, straight from the barn, in her boots.

"That's on him," I said. "Not her."

"Thank you. I hadn't thought of that."

I stood up too fast and my socks slid on the wet concrete.

He caught my hand without thinking.

Silver flared between us like a struck match.

"Oh, come on," said a voice above us.

Rupert was leaning over the rail with a plate of cake in each hand.

He looked at our hands. He looked at the light. He looked at his brother.

"You weren't lying?"

"Rupert," Leander said. "Go back upstairs."

"You weren't lying! Lee. Lee, that's a real one."

"If you tell anyone, I'll drown you."

"You'll drown me? She's the one who's going to be my sister and my sister-in-law at the same time. That's illegal in most states."

I let go of Leander. The light died.

"Rupert," I said. "Do you like doughnuts?"

He came down two steps. "Is this a bribe?"

"There's half a box of maple bars in my truck. From the station. They're two days old."

"From an actual ambulance station?"

"The real thing. Some of them have sprinkles."

He thought about it with his whole face.

"I've never seen anything," he said, and held out a hand for my keys.

At one in the morning I was lying on top of the covers in a guest room the size of my whole apartment, staring at the ceiling.

My palm still hummed.

My phone buzzed on the pillow.

It was Rupert. He'd taken my number in exchange for the last maple bar.

"Don't freak out," his text said, and under it was a link.

It was a gossip site I'd seen in the break room a thousand times.

The photo was the two of us at the terrace wall, my hand wrapped around his.

The silver looked like a camera flash.

The caption said: "His mate, or his new stepsister?"

I zoomed in on the corner of the picture.

There was a window frame at the edge of it, and the glint of glass.

It had been taken from above us, through a window.

From inside the Hall.

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