Page 14 of Broken Arranged Mate (Badlands Wolves #4)

“ Ash .”

Oren’s voice booms through the work tower, bouncing off the walls and layering over the music I have playing.

He’s furious, which I see from the moment I turn around and watch him barrel through the doorway at the top of the stairs.

I have a paint roller in my hand, which I set back in the tray to keep from dripping on the floor, which we’ve just finished sanding.

“I told you not to come out here—”

“Hey, man,” Aidan shoots me a look, then sidles out, raising his hand at the alpha leader glowering in the doorway.

Oren looks between the two of us for a moment, then his shoulders start to relax.

“I’m not alone,” I say, gesturing at Aidan with a paint-covered hand. “See?”

Oren bristles. “The deal is that you would tell me you were coming. You can’t just choose to bring someone else and think it’s going to be okay.”

“I can do whatever I want, actually,” I return, scowling at him. “I texted you about it last night, and you said you wouldn’t have time today.”

I didn’t think it was possible, but Oren’s frown gets even deeper. “What part of that makes you think you should come here anyway?”

“The part where this venue has to be ready for a party, and—”

“I, uh—” Aidan clears his throat, dropping his paint brush into the tray and doing little finger guns toward the door. “I’m just gonna go, leave you guys to it.”

Oren glares at him as Aidan scoots by, but says nothing. Aidan, in return, flashes him a shit-eating grin, then slips through the doorway and takes the stairs down, it sounds, two at a time.

I expect Oren to launch back into his chastising, but instead, he just draws one of his large hands over his face, picks up the brush that Aidan abandoned, and looks around until he finds the last spot Aidan was outlining for me.

“Uh,” I stand stupidly, watching as he crouches down, dips the brush in the paint. I’m not used to this—with an alpha leader who is also my brother, I’ve received my share of hour-long lectures on my behavior. The last thing I was expecting was for Oren to drop it completely. “Are you good?”

He glances at me, then lets out a little, sardonic laugh. “Good at what?”

For some reason, the sound of that sends a little shiver down my back, and I bite my tongue, hoping he didn’t see the way I reacted to it.

I know precisely how good he is at some things, but he’s made it clear he doesn’t want to talk about it. Wants to act like it never even happened at all.

“No, just—you dropped that pretty quick.”

Oren stares at me for a long moment, those brown eyes so dark they almost look black, and I swear I catch a glimmer of that red from his coat in them. “You’re right.”

I am so surprised that I actually stumble backward, forgetting about the paint and bringing my dirty hand to my chest. “ What ?”

Oren shakes his head, turns back to the wall, and paints another perfect line just under one of the many windows. “The venue needs to be ready, and you’re my fiancée. I should make time for you to have the wedding you deserve.”

Before I can think about what I’m doing, or stop myself, I cross over to him and press the back of my hand to his forehead.

He tips his head up to me, his eyes flashing as he looks up at me.

I see the scene from the outside, him on his knees, me standing with my hand on his face, and my stomach flips. The sight of him like this, gazing up at me, makes my body feel molten. And the contact between our skin—like a wire to the positive side of a battery—isn’t helping.

“Are you feeling okay?” I attempt a weak follow-through on the joke.

To my surprise, Oren reaches up, takes my hand in his, and holds it loosely, like he’d rather have it in his palm than on his face.

“Ash.” His voice is pure gravel. “This might be a marriage out of political convenience, but I’m going to treat you well. You know that, right?”

Once again, a shiver runs through my traitorous body.

“Well.” I swallow. “I do now.”

The way he looks at me is like he wants to eat me alive. I drown in it, letting myself catch on his eyes, standing there long enough that my heart feels like it beats longer, slower, and attempt, maybe, at morose code.

Finally, after what feels like eons of my hand in his, he rasps, “Good.”

With that, I go back to my side of the room, and we work together on painting the room, silent aside from the music pumping through my speaker, not touching or looking at one another except for when I pour more paint into the tray, or when Oren alerts me to the fact that some of it is dripping down the wall.

We work together as the sun sets outside, casting a shadow over both lands, Ambersky in the distance, and the Grayhide territory far to the south. When the sun is finally down, it fills the room with a muffled, inky black, and we turn on the work lights, working in the low glow.

My skin tingles with anticipation, and as I paint, I imagine what it would be like for him to turn and take me in his arms, pull me to the ground, not caring about the paint, smearing it between our bodies.

I think about his large, rough hands, his open mouth, hot against my pulse point. I think about him pulling my hair, moving frantically over me, treating me like something he had coveted, even when we’d never met before in our lives.

“Ash?”

When Oren speaks, I startle, realizing I’ve finished painting and am just running the brush over the same spot again and again. He stands behind me, arms crossed, paintbrush back in the tray.

“What?” I say it dazedly, nearly dizzy from my fantasies of him.

Logically, I know it’s a bad idea. And yet, there’s still a voice in my head chanting, begging, pleading, repeating it over and over like a prayer: Touch me .

“I should probably get you home,” he says, clearing his throat, and the disappointment I feel is ridiculous. Oren hasn’t indicated that he wants anything to do with me, not physically at least, and so I shouldn’t be surprised that he’s not ravishing me in this tower.

Even though we’re alone.

“Yeah,” I practically choke. “Right.”

Ten minutes later, we’re in his truck and headed back into Ambersky, the light from the stars impossibly bright. Oren is quiet, staring out the windshield with a level of concentration that tells me he’s trying very hard not to fall asleep.

I think of long drives with my Gramps, talking to him to keep him awake.

“Any more challengers?” I ask, biting my tongue to keep from laughing when Oren startles, looking over at me like I’ve just let out a full-throated scream rather than a quiet question.

“No,” he finally says, turning his gaze back out the window.

Another beat passes, and I clear my throat, sitting up a little taller in the seat. “Too bad.”

That makes him look over at me, eyebrow lifting. “ Too bad ?”

A smile breaks out over my face, “Yeah. Might have given us something to talk about.”

While I wait for him to answer, I try to predict what he might say. Something like we have plenty to talk about, or why do we need to talk ?

But, instead, he says something that surprises me, genuinely shocking me to my core. I stare at his face, tracing the slope of his face and watching his lips move as he speaks, not quite believing it’s really happening.

“What I was going to tell you…” He swallows, cuts his eyes to me before returning them to the old dirt road.

“My mom used to love this specific vendor down here, who sold these little wood carvings. She’d started a collection—all the animals local to the area.

I have no idea what happened to it, but she wasn’t able to finish it. ”

“That’s…” I bite my tongue, thinking—not for the first time—about everything Oren has been through. Everything his family has been through, all because his father was so desperate for power that he didn’t care about anyone but himself. “Why didn’t she finish it?”

Oren gives me a sad, reluctant smile, almost like he regrets bringing it up. “My father accused her of having an affair with the man making the carvings, and had him killed.”

I don’t mean to be dramatic, don’t mean to suck in the breath that I do, but it’s startling.

The realization that things really have been so starkly different between our two packs.

That a shifter might be sentenced to death in the Grayhides, while our enemies often sit in jails for too long because we’re hesitant to hand down punishments that are too harsh for the crime.

“Gods.” It’s all I manage to get out.

Oren glances at me as we near the edge of Badlands, and the tone of his voice is different than usual, a little softer and unsure. Like he means for it to come out as a joke, but doesn’t quite land it when he says, “Wishing you’d chosen someone else to marry yet?”

The truck comes to a stop outside my place, and I turn, facing him, drinking in the way the streetlight pours over his face, a soft, buttery yellow that makes me want to draw my tongue over his cheek, feel the texture there.

Gods, I’m tired. But not tired enough to stop myself from leaning in close to him, bringing my nose a breath from his, noting how he goes completely still, like he’d hate to accidentally move and bring us even a centimeter closer.

“No,” I say, eyes darting back and forth between his. “And I never will.”