Chapter 316

My sour mood lingers into the next morning, when I wake up alone. The bed is cold beside me; Archer is long gone.

Things only get worse when I head down to breakfast. Beau stood ready, I swear, just inside the door, ready to jump me, because the moment I stepped through, he’s all over me, asking me more about my birthday party.

“What food do you want?” he asks. “What color balloons? And we still need to decide on the guest list. I don’t think we invited enough people with our last selection.”

“I don’t know,” I say to each question.

Beau gets more and more frustrated with me. “Your birthday is coming closer, Chloe. We need to be ready or it will be a disaster.”

“You think I don’t know that?” I snap louder than I mean to. I’m not mad at Beau for being so thoughtful about this. I know he’s just trying to be considerate. He doesn’t deserve my anger. “Sorry,” I say at once.

“Who stepped on your tail this morning?” Beau asks. “To get you in that mood? Archer not fully satisfy you last night?” He steps closer into me and drops his voice into a sexy purr. “Do you need another round with someone who you know can give it good?”

I’m certainly tempted by what Beau is offering, my body coming alive again, but remembering the disappointment of so many near bites now, I’m able to step back.

They want me physically, but they don’t want me long term. Else they would claim me.

And with my birthday coming up so soon, they’re perfectly okay with losing me.

It hurts. It shouldn’t. I don’t want it to, but it does.

I want them to want me enough to mate me.

I don’t want to rely on my wolf and my birthday or anything else. Screw fate. I want the Hayes brothers. So why don’t they want me?

“Nanny?” Beau asks. He has a look of mild concern on his face, watching me. At least he’s not asking me more questions.

“Maybe… we can move the party to the day after my birthday, just in case.”

“Just in case what?”

How to explain? “In case things go sideways.”

Beau frowns at me. “Nothing is going to happen, Nanny. You are going to have a birthday, eat and drink too much, and then get sick behind the bouncy house. That’s not anything to be overly ashamed about.”

I’m not the biggest fan about how he has planned my day. I don’t want to be sick behind the bouncy house. I’ll need to make sure not to eat and drink too much.

But that wasn’t what I was talking about.

“If I start to feel my mate,” I say, looking down at the floor. I don’t want to see his face. His lack of reaction would hurt me deeply. “I don’t want that to happen in public. I’ve heard stories about people who really embarrass themselves.”

Beau is quiet for a long time. Then, when he does finally speak, his voice sounds funny. Kind of wobbly. Not very strong. “We won’t let that happen to you, Chloe.”

He so rarely uses my actual name that it startles me enough to look up. What I see takes my breath away.

He’s not just angry, he’s downright furious. His eyes are flashing with rage, his hands curled into fists. His aura is trembling, like he might shift at any moment.

I’ve never seen easygoing Beau quite this riled up, not even when we had been fighting for our lives.

Yet, here, now, it’s talk of my potential mate that has him nearly wolfing out?

“How can you know?” I ask him.

“My brothers and I will personally see to it,” he says, his voice now a deep growl. He coughs some, as if catching himself, and retakes control. “But you might be right. Having the party the day after might be for the best, after all. If not for you, then for us.”

For them? “Why would you need it later?” I ask.

“It might take that long to clean the blood out from under my claws.”

I still don’t understand. “Who would you be fighting?”

“Whoever is foolish enough to try to say they are your mate,” Beau says. Then he storms out of the room, leaving behind his notebook of birthday plans.

I try to stop him, but when I say his name, he’s already gone. I go to the notebook and notice one line near the top. A sentence so important, Beau underlined it twice: Chloe needs to have fun.

Taking the notebook, I head out into the hall, eager to follow Beau and give it back to him.

My sour mood was unwarranted. I do want to have fun, and planning with Beau could be fun. I need to stop letting my fears of the future get in the way of my present.

I’m wasting time I could spend being happy.

I search out Beau. He’s not in his bedroom.

Raised voices lure me toward the living room. All of the brothers are inside. Mia is in a playpen near the television.

“She seems certain that she will feel the pull of her mating bond on her birthday,” Beau says. This is clearly the end of his story. Likely he just finished telling them everything that happened between us this morning.

“Her wolf is manifesting at a fast rate,” Steven says. “It is possible that it will manifest soon and she will feel him.”

“The party is out then,” Archer says flatly.

“We can’t just keep her locked in a dungeon, Archer,” Neil says, ever the level-headed one. Though the tension in his shoulders shows his own unhappiness.

Wait. Do they have a dungeon?

Focus, Chloe.

“She’s ours,” Beau says, as if it is a simple fact.

“She is not,” Neil replies. “She is a free woman, who, if you recall, has been under our employ.”

“She’s not anymore,” Steven says. “She’s here of her own free will now.”

“That doesn’t mean she wants to stay,” Neil reasons.

“Like hell it doesn’t,” Archer snaps.

Neil looks at him and he stifles himself.

“The matter is complicated, as you all already know,” Neil continues. “We’ve always been selfish assholes, taking whatever we want. Chloe deserves more than that. We cannot claim her simply because we do not want anyone else to have her. To claim her, to bite her, is to take her for life.”

Neil meets the eyes of each of his brothers. Each time, the other brother looks away first.

“Is anyone willing to make that commitment?” Neil asks. “When we know she could have another, more perfect mate waiting just in the wings?”

Steven frowns. “That person could make her happy… Happier than us…”

“We have brought a lot of misery and drama into her life,” Neil concedes.

“A lot of happiness, too,” Beau says. “Don’t rule that out.”

“But what is most fair for Chloe?” Neil asks.

As I listened, my heart sunk further and further, so far down that it sat in the pit of my churning stomach.

Listening to this, it was clear to me that the brothers did not want me as I’d assumed.

A bite is for life, and not one of them wanted to make that commitment to me.

As I feared, my birthday would come, and I would have to leave them.