Page 42 of Sold to Three Alpha Kings

Chris hasn’t moved from the doorway, but the muscle in his jaw is working hard enough that I can see it from here. His fury is under control yet glaring.

Wayne has no such restraint. “Give me their names. I’ll ride out there myself and rearrange a few faces. Nothing permanent. Just enough they remember it’s a bad idea to treat a King’s fated mate like scrap.” He’s already on his feet by now.

“You’d fight my stepmother?” Her brows arch.

“Well, not directly,” he says. “But there’s tons of women in my Pack that can put her in place.”

She chuckles. Real, unguarded.

Even Chris’s jaw loosens slightly at the sound. He covers it fast, but not fast enough that I miss it.

“But seriously though, I’ll send some of my men down there to rough them up a bit. Those kinds of people might try to bother you again later,” Wayne says.

Charlize cocks her head to the side. “I don’t think so. They have always wanted to get rid of me and now that I’m gone, I doubt they’d ever try to find me again. Besides, news travels really slowly to my village. It’s so backwater that we didn’t even hear that you were looking for a mate.”

“Oh, that makes sense,” I say.

Wayne mutters something to himself, but he doesn’t say anything anymore.

The talk gets easier after that, lighter, until Wayne—never one to leave well enough alone—brings up the kiss.

“For the record,” he says, far too casually, “I kissed her first. Before Chris. Just so everyone’s clear.”

Her cheeks flush, her eyes dropping to the floor. Chris’s head turns toward Wayne fast, something dangerous behind those pale eyes.

“Don’t look at me like that. It happened. She kissed back too. And I wasn’t a dick about it afterward.” Wayne shrugs off the glare aimed at him.

Chris’s expression hardens, hinting that Wayne’s words had poked the bear.

“Did you really have to say that?” I rub my eyes.

“Say what?” He looks at me. “That we kissed or that I wasn’t a dick about it afterward?”

“Why’re you back here anyway?” Wayne pokes some more. “Finally grow a conscience and want to apologize?”

Chris doesn’t say anything else.

I don’t say anything either, though something uncomfortable stirs in my own chest anyway. Jealousy, probably, though I don’t much like the word or what it says about how far gone I already am for a woman I’ve known less than two weeks.

I watch her face instead, flushed, flustered, caught between two men who’ve both apparently crossed a line I haven’t come near.

We leave not long after. The three of us file into the corridor while she settles back into her nest, and I make it almost to the end of the hall before I stop walking.

“Hey, um…you two carry on. I think I forgot something,” I say, already turning back before either of them asks what.

Wayne raises an eyebrow but doesn’t push it. Chris doesn’t even glance back.

I knock again, softer this time. When she opens the door, there’s real surprise on her face, followed by a smile—small, but real, the first one she’s given me all night.

“Hey,” she says, eyes sparkling with something I’m yet to name.

“Hey.”

“What’re you doing back here?”

I hesitate. “Honestly, I’m not sure.”

She opens the door wider and gestures for me to come in.