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Chapter Eleven

Ryder

“R yder, you need to deal with this bullshit,” Dane said.

As Dane stormed out of our office and into the club’s communal dining room, I looked up from my coffee. He thumbed over his shoulder toward the office. “Gate, asap. Before we have a damn riot on our hands.”

I put my coffee down, rising slowly, scowling at the fucker. After that tense conversation with Emma, I was in a bad fucking mood.

“What the fuck is it?” I brushed past him…and stopped dead.

There, on the surveillance monitor, was the new bane of my existence—the brat. As if the visual of her rattling the fence wasn’t enough, the voiceover on the intercom between her assault on the gate brought an involuntary snort.

Dane tossed a set of keys at me. I caught them on reflex. “Sort your shit out. Snake might be out of commission for now, but he’s got plenty of assholes in his pocket.”

Coffee forgotten, I stalked toward the elevator, jabbing the button five times, even as I dragged out my cell and hit the dial icon next to her name. No fucking answer.

I messaged her.

What the fuck are you doing?

No, I didn’t care that I was cursing.

And no, she didn’t fucking reply. I hoofed it out of the building and all the way down to the gate.

There she was, standing at the gate, a sweet BMW idling a short distance away. Seeing me, she turned and called something to the driver, who backed up and sped off.

“The fuck are you doing, Em? Call them fucking back!”

“No!” She folded her fucking arms. Brat!

“What the fuck are you wearing?” It was a rhetorical fucking question.

I could see everything she was wearing because there wasn’t a whole lot, just sneakers, some kind of skimpy shorts, and a T-shirt that hugged her perky tits and woke up the brain in my dick.

I could see her fucking nipples. My throat went dust dry.

“I want to see my sister.”

“No can do, Em. Call your buddy back and get your ass back home.”

“I don’t have a home! The agency took it! I want to see Sloane.”

Her lower lip trembled, and her eyes glistened.

They were red-rimmed and puffy. It was clear she’d been crying a lot, and her vulnerability hit me like a sucker punch.

I sighed and fished out the keys to the gate.

“Come on, brat, I’ll take you up. I can’t make any promises about your sister, but I’ll see what I can do. ”

She was small and quiet beside me as we walked back to the club.

I wanted to take my T-shirt off and use it to fucking cover her up.

I wanted to take her hand in mine.

I wanted to rip that little scrap of clothing away and plow her with my cock so that both she and the alpha fuckers eyeballing her understood who she belonged to.

Only she didn’t belong to me, and if this shit hadn’t gone down with her sister, she probably wouldn’t have given me the time of fucking day. Which was my own fucking fault.

I took her to the communal dining room, which was now fucking full of the crew, tucking into platters of crispy bacon, scrambled eggs, and toast.

“What’s happening?” she asked, staring about the room, inspecting the occupants before turning back to me. “Sloane’s not here.”

“I already told you she was in heat and with Jace. You can wait here until they’re done.”

“Wait? For how long?”

Damn, her haughty tone made my palm itch to color her fucking ass.

“A few days.” I smoothed out my face and got ready for the explosion.

“A few days?!”

Yeah, I wanted to smile. It took a near heroic effort to keep my amusement locked down.

Her eyes narrowed. “Take me to her, now!”

“No.”

She darted past me and stabbed the elevator call button.

“What the fuck?” I grabbed her arm and hauled her ass out of the way.

“You don’t even know where to go! You can’t go wandering about the fucking building.

” The mulish set to her jaw said I’d need rope and a ball gag to keep her ass locked down, which was definitely on the table as far as my dick was concerned.

“Fine, I’ll go and check, but if they’re fucking busy, you need to deal with it.

And by deal with it, I mean sit your ass down and chill until your sister is ready, which might be a few days. ”

She nodded once.

“Emma,” I said, voice dropping. “Give me the fucking words. Tell me you’re going to wait like a good girl while I check if you can see her yet.”

Her eyes flashed to mine, and her pupils dilated.

My dick perked right up at that little tell.

She was still interested. Perhaps I hadn’t fucked things up beyond recovery.

Still, there was Jace to consider. Was Emma now officially under Jace’s protection?

While he knew I’d been with her, it was kind of an unwritten rule.

Just like neither Dane nor I put our hands on Ella, touching Em felt much the same.

The more I thought about it, the more it fucking rankled.

“Emma?”

“Fine, yes,” she said, although she wouldn’t make eye contact anymore, and there was a slight flush to her cheeks. “I agree—I’ll wait, like a good girl.” She layered on the sarcasm, although the pulse thudding in her jaw told a different story.

One thing at a time.

“Take a seat,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”

* * *

My conversation through the apartment door with Jace went about as well as I’d expected it to.

“Handle her,” Jace had roared at me. How the fuck was I supposed to handle a bratty beta while keeping my hands to myself?

As I exited the elevator and was assaulted by a sharp bony finger in the center of my chest, all that went out the window.

“Where’s Sloane?” Emma demanded. “You said you were fetching her.”

“I said I was going to check on her,” I replied, feeling that calm settle over me—the kind that usually foreshadowed someone getting fucked up…or a brat getting the spanking of their life. “And she was pretty busy.”

I didn’t point out that Jace sounded like he would rearrange my face if I didn’t fuck off.

“It was implied,” she snarled, giving another sharp poke.

“For fuck’s sake, Em, stop poking me in the damn chest!”

“Don’t ‘Em’ me, tough guy. I’m not afraid of you.”

On the other side of the room, the entire crew was in attendance, omegas poised with food halfway to their lips, the guys looking on with amusement. Dane chuckled, the fucker.

Why had I let Emma in the gates again?

Yeah, that was right—she’d been shaking the mesh like a madwoman, looking straight up at the surveillance camera, demanding to speak to the manager.

The fucking manager?! Like this was some kind of holiday resort.

She was batshit crazy. It had been a case of bringing her in or having another damn riot on our hands when the rest of the deadbeats in this zone roused themselves to come and check what the fuck was going on.

“Are you even listening to me?” I asked. “You get that your sister is newly mated, right? And from the sounds of things, they were busy alleviating their newly mated needs.”

The frown faded, her eyes went round, and she opened and closed her mouth a couple of times before spluttering, “Newly mated needs!” Her scowl was back in an instant, little chin tipping in a defiant tilt that might as well have been a red flag to the alpha side of me.

“I demand to see my sister, this instant, before your brother ,” —she air quoted with an exaggerated roll of her eyes— “gets any notions of breeding her.”

I rubbed my jaw as though pondering this. I was confident Jace was already balls deep and well into the process of breeding her formerly sensible sister. I offered Emma a fake smile. “How about no?”

Then she poked me one time too fucking many.

“Oh!”

Her screech accompanied me tossing her over my shoulder. Small fists beat against my back while she cursed me out like a pro.

And just like that, all the tension left me because handling brats was a personal forte of mine. All alphas had a beast, and all had a weakness. My beast’s weakness was taming querulous women, and this one needed a firm but loving lesson in boundaries and respect applied to her ass via my hand.

“Keep it down, princess.” I landed the first swat against her backside, chuckling when it roused an outraged squeal.

I nodded my head to Dane, who watched with a shit-eating grin.

“If Jace and Sloane surface, tell them I’m going to be” —I gestured toward the wriggling spitfire hanging over my shoulder— “handling this little problem.”

I didn’t wait for a reply, just punched the button on the elevator, and with Emma still wailing about her rights, exited the room.

* * *

Emma

I was back in Desparion again, only nothing was going quite to plan.

Somehow in my head, I’d pictured my next meeting with Ryder to be more…

something. What, I didn’t know. More romantic?

Did that word even apply to an alpha? So much had happened since I’d last seen him.

I felt like I had aged ten years since Sloane was taken.

Now she was safe, and he expected me to sit on the sidelines and twiddle my thumbs until my sister was ready?

I wanted to fucking see her with my own eyes!

Mated. I couldn’t believe she’d been mated.

Surely there should be some discussion about this.

Didn’t they have a ceremony or something?

“Oh, put me down. What the fuck?” The elevator felt too confined as the door closed on us.

I beat at his back, wriggled, and fought with everything I had, but he paid no attention to me.

His chest was thrumming, but not in a purr like I’d heard before.

No, this was a tempered growl and it was doing riotous things to me.

“I want to see my sister. Why can’t I see my sister? This is ridiculous.”

He swatted my ass. His hands were big, and the result was a sharp sting and a loud clap.

“You’ll see her when I’m fucking ready to let you see her. You’ll see her when her mate is ready for you to see her! I’ve told you she’s safe. We fucking got her out of there. I said I’d handle it. We’ve fucking handled it.”