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CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

ZURI

After Stone bathed with me— yes, my big, bad mate bathed in a bubble bath —he helped me into one of the robes that he had bought me the other day down in Durnbone. I smoothed it out with my fingers and stared into the full-length mirror at him behind me.

For a while, I hadn’t known what had come over me last night when I practically begged him to put a pup inside me. But now, I did. I hadn’t gone crazy. I hadn’t let the Moon Goddess affect me with that heat.

I had been in my right mind.

“Is there a reason you’re drooling?” Stone asked, arching a brow at me.

Biting back a smile, I peered at my mark in the mirror. “Just admiring my mate.”

“Don’t start with me,” he growled. “Or I’ll cancel my meeting tonight to?—”

“Put a pup inside me?” I asked, lifting my gaze to his in the mirror again.

Another growl escaped his lips. “You’d better watch that pretty mouth of yours.”

“Or what?”

He moved closer to me, his large hand grasping the back of my neck and his tongue on the mark he had left on my skin. He flicked it, his tongue ring making me warm in all the right places. “Or I will put a pup inside you tonight.”

I twirled around, my lips curled into a small smirk. “Good.”

“Where has the soft, scared, hates everything about me Zuri gone?” he asked me.

“She’s”—I paused, my voice barely above a whisper—“fallen for you.”

Once he snatched my chin in his hand, he drew me toward him and pressed his lips against mine.

“I’ll be back. James is here,” Stone said, snaking his arms around my waist and pulling me closer to him.

“Don’t let anyone else into the house, okay?

According to our scouts, Derrit is making his way closer to here. ”

“Okay.” I nodded, gently patting his chest. “I’m not going to let your psycho brother in.”

After letting out a low chuckle, he kissed me on the lips and then disappeared out of our bedroom door and into the hallway. A couple of moments later, the front door clicked closed. I fell back on the bed with my arms sprawled out and sighed.

I wished that Derrit weren’t coming at all. I didn’t want to see him or deal with him. I had had enough of him when I was back at my old pack, but it seemed like everything was about to get a lot more?—

“Zuri.” A whistle drifted through the bedroom.

Heart racing, I snapped up to a seated position and glanced around the room.

“Oh, Zuri,” Derrit murmured, his voice like the wind.

My fingers curled around the bedsheets until I gripped them tightly in both my fists. I swallowed hard and squeezed my eyes closed, knowing that this was another one of his mind games. Somehow, someway, he had slithered into my head.

And when Stone returned, I needed to tell him.

“My sweet girl.” The voice came again. “So precious.”

“Stop it,” I growled, slapping myself in the temple with the heel of my palm. “Stop it!”

“So cute, thinking that I’m inside your mind,” he said. “I’m so much closer than that.”

I jerked my head to the side, glancing over my right shoulder in an attempt to spot him. And in the darkness, I swore that I saw those devilish eyes staring back at me. I jumped up from the bed and backed up until I hit the door.

“Get away from me!” I screamed, grabbing the lamp and hurling it in the bed’s direction.

When it crashed against the wall and shattered, I snapped out of the trance he had put on me and blinked a couple of times. He wasn’t here. He wasn’t in the room, behind the bed, or in the closet.

“Zuri!” James called from down the hallway, his footsteps quick. “What’s going on?”

“I-I’m fine!” I shouted.

“Zuri,” he said again, the tone of his voice dropping, becoming lower, morphing into Derrit’s. “Zuri, what’s going on? Zuri, are you okay? Zuri, what was that noise I just heard? Zuri. Zuri. Zuri. Zuri. Zu?—”

“Stop it!” I screamed at the top of my lungs.

The door behind me rumbled, but I dug my heels into the ground so Derrit couldn’t barge into the room and hurt me. Tears welled up in my eyes because I hadn’t been strong enough to hold him away, to push him out of my thoughts.

I tried. I really did.

“Open up, Zuri,” Derrit said again, a dark chuckle escaping his mouth. He pounded on the door behind me with his fists. Taunting me. “Open up, Zuri. And let me in the same way you’ve let Stone in. I want to be inside you.”

As the words left his mouth, the door busted open and off the hinges, sending me flying forward onto my stomach. My arms felt so weak, but I scrambled to my knees and crawled as quickly as I could to the window.

“Get out of my head!” I cried, tears streaming down my cheeks.

“You’re not strong enough to be a luna,” Derrit said behind me, his hands on my shoulders. “And you know it. A luna wouldn’t be crawling in a pitiful attempt to escape. She would be?—”

I grabbed a piece of the shattered lamp and swung it backward, slashing it across his face. When blood spewed everywhere and Derrit stumbled backward, grasping his face, I turned around and backed up to the wall.

My vision began clearing, and I realized that it wasn’t Derrit, but James.

Hands trembling, I dropped the glass. “I-I-I’m s-sorry. I’m sorry, James. I didn’t?—”

When he pulled his hand away from his face, the wound had already healed, and his face contorted back into Derrit’s. My fingers shook because I didn’t know what was real anymore. Was this really Derrit pretending to be James? Or had Derrit taken over James’s body?

“D-don’t move any closer,” I said, snatching the bloody shard and pointing it at him.

“Zuri,” he taunted, hands up in surrender, “you got me.”

“You’re a prick!” I said through gritted teeth, my hand shaking. “Get away from me!”

Suddenly, Stone hurried in from behind Derrit, his eyes wild and his canines lengthened. He scanned the room, his gaze landing on the man in front of me. And then he hurried past him and scooped me into his strong arms.

“D-D-Derrit,” I said through hiccups, pointing at the man. “I-It’s h-him.”

“It’s okay, baby. I’m here.” Stone pulled me to his chest. “I’m here to protect you.”