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

This isn’t the first time I’ve been around Oren since that first time, but this is the first time in months. He looks tired, with dark circles under his eyes, but still just as striking as usual.

I don’t know how every person in the room isn’t staring at him.

Impossibly tall, that shock of black hair, those dark, piercing eyes.

There’s a woman in one of Beth’s groups who can see a person’s aura—I imagine Oren’s is black and gray, snaking out from him in dark tendrils.

I picture it wrapping around my ankle, snapping me down, eating me up.

The worst part is, I’d almost gladly let it happen.

It feels like the moment in which Oren and I stare at each other lasts decades, but when he turns away from me, facing the head of the table, reality comes rushing back at me, snapping into place and reminding me that it was less than a second.

Less than a second, and my mind already feels like a pile of goop, drifting out and away from me faster than I could ever possibly collect it back to myself.

“Ash?” Kira says, and I jump hard enough to bang my leg on the table. I bite my tongue almost too hard to keep from cursing under my breath. Here I am, with the Luna on my left, letting my emotions walk all over my face.

It takes everything in me to sound nonchalant. “Yeah?”

“Oh,” Kira says, her golden eyes flicking over me when I turn to look at her. “I just wanted to make sure you’re okay. You kind of zoned out there for a second.”

“You know me,” I joke, leaning into her a bit, but not letting her skin touch mine. “Not a morning person.”

“I know,” she mutters, rolling her eyes. “Why Dorian insists on having these meetings at the crack of dawn is beyond me.”

But the meeting begins, and that reason becomes quickly apparent—because they last for a really, really long time.

Emin happily helps himself to the donuts in the center of the table, only interjecting occasionally with a joke or little comment.

Sometimes, they’re surprisingly astute. Aidan is mostly a helper, fixing the projector when it doesn’t work, reminding Dorian of a date for something, though he does occasionally supply his own input, which turns out to be pretty thoughtful for a guy who turned down leadership of the Grayhides.

At first, I force myself to pay attention to the meeting, listening first to Claire, the head of the casters, then Leta, Dorian’s main leader for intelligence and border control.

They don’t talk about sensitive Ambersky information, but rather relay information specifically pertaining to our relations with the Grayhides.

After an hour, I let my eyes drift. Oren is so definitively not looking at me that it feels safe to look at him, drink him in.

It feels completely wrong, but also like I can’t stop myself.

When I was a kid, I had a terrible time with loose teeth.

Actually, with all things dental. Gramps had me in and out of the dentist constantly, and it took a lot of work to get my teeth to the way they are now.

Teeth grew in where they shouldn’t, and when the old ones were finally loose, I’d tug at them, push at them until my eyes watered with the pain.

That’s what looking at Oren feels like. Like pushing at a loose tooth, letting the pain strike through me, morphing to something almost like pleasure.

All that to say, my feelings about the alpha leader of the Grayhide pack are complicated. And when he was here last year, they felt even more so. Every day was a struggle, and each time I saw him, it was like a bucket of ice over my head.

What made it worse was the fact that he didn’t seem to have the same reaction to me—that much was obvious. He practically told me so.

All those years ago.

Even thinking about it brings back the acrid, awful sting of rejection, so I throw a wall up around my mind before the memory can anchor itself and replay in my mind like it always does.

“Skirmishes at the border continue,” Leta says, dropping her gaze to the tablet in front of her. “Just yesterday, we had two shifters badly injured in a fight with three Grayhides.”

“They have been dealt with,” Oren interjects, sitting up perfectly straight in his chair, fingers laced together.

“It’s undetermined who actually initiated the violence,” Leta adds, eyes flicking to Dorian, who crosses his arms and speaks up.

“As of now, and until further notice, we’re treating all of these incidents as mutual fault,” Dorian looks to Oren. “All of our men have been instructed to disengage, practice non-violent management.”

“Mine as well,” Oren says, though there’s a look on his face that tells me there’s something he’s not saying. I wonder if Dorian sees it, too. “You can trust that any Grayhide jeopardizing our relationship with this pack will face swift retribution.”

Glancing at my brother, I’m once again thinking about how Gramps inadvertently raised two alpha leaders—but only one of them could ever take over the role.

When I was a little girl, playing with my toy soldiers and conducting fake meetings in a princess dress, I’d fantasized that Gramps would change the rules, make omegas contenders for the role of alpha leader someday.

But Gramps couldn’t change biology. A fight to the death may not be required in the Ambersky pack, but that doesn’t mean other alphas wouldn’t be champing at the bit to take me out if I’d ever managed to get in the role another way.

“It might be helpful to find another way to bring the pack together,” Dorian says, steepling his hands. I can tell that he’s changed the subject, maybe sensing whatever I did.

“We could work on an exchange of information,” Leta suggests, tapping on her tablet. “That may create more trust.”

I hold in a laugh—leave to her to try and find a way to gain more leverage wherever she can. I know Leta—not very well, but well enough—and she’s not about to give away Ambersky intel.

Claire shrugs one shoulder, “We could work with the casters from the Grayhide pack?”

For the first time, Oren shows a ripple of emotion, shifting uncomfortably, and I know why. Emaline isn’t here, but she was there with me in that awful, rancid room where all the psychics and casters were chained up in the Blacklock mansion, forced to provide information.

At the time, I’d thought it was only psychics, but Emaline said she saw a caster in there, too, chained up so she couldn’t use her magic.

It’s not likely he wants to ask much of his casters yet, especially when he’s probably still trying to earn their trust.

“I’d be willing to make the trip to Grayhide territory,” Kira says, speaking for the first time during this meeting. All eyes around the table swing to her—maybe this is the first time an omega has ever spoken during one of these meetings.

I watch my brother carefully, knowing he’ll hate this idea vehemently.

Of course, we’ve been to the Grayhide territory before, but that was a surprise visit to one of their festivals, not a planned, political visit.

If I know him as well as I think I do, he’s already considering the possibility of some sort of targeted attack against his wife, his mate.

Dorian works his jaw, and I can tell he’s trying to walk a fine line—turning down Kira’s idea without also immediately turning down the first omega input at this meeting.

“An arranged marriage?” Emin interjects, glancing at his sister for only a second. He’s leaning back in his chair casually, a donut in his hand and a loose grin on his face, but it’s clear to me that he’s done this to defuse any potential tension.

To my left, I can basically hear Kira rolling her eyes. Whether it’s from her brother interjecting or from his statement alone, I’m not sure.

But besides the antiquity of the phrase, the first thing that strikes me about the proposal is that it’s not totally ridiculous.

Gramps made us do a lot of studying up on history, even outside the Edune valley, and there have been quite a few cross-pack marriages that manage to curb violence in the long term.

Obviously, the more intimate details—like whether the omega actually liked the alpha—are less robust in texts, but the fact remains that it’s not, overall, a terrible idea.

It sounds ridiculous, but it might actually work.

“Right, sure,” Dorian says, letting out a long sigh and closing the binder in front of him. He’s clearly making a joke, going along with Emin’s proposal. “Go right ahead, Oren. You shall have the pick of any free omega in this pack.”

Even the thought of that makes my stomach sink, mouth turning sour. A jealous heat rises to my cheeks, and I hope nobody can see it, that it’s not evident as ever, blazing behind my eyes.

“Fine,” Oren says, and I have to bite my tongue to keep myself from looking at him. But then he says something I never would have expected. “I’ll take her, then.”

And when I raise my eyes, finally giving myself permission to glance his way, his finger is pointed right at me.