Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 89554 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 448(@200wpm)___ 358(@250wpm)___ 299(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89554 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 448(@200wpm)___ 358(@250wpm)___ 299(@300wpm)
FOUR YEARS HAD PASSED since then. The tragedy had changed Brandy. She was stronger now. But at the same time, softer as well. And irritating as hell like the sister he had never wanted, with the way she would constantly pester him to do something about Alphonse.
If only it were that easy.
He had tried to talk to his brother countless times. But every overture was rejected, and it was Alphonse who now lived in self-exile.
The former alpha’s refusal to communicate and talk about the past was teeth-grinding frustrating, and when he finally lost all patience, it was then he learned about Brandy seemingly having lost patience as well.
But unlike him, she ended up doing something stupid: she said yes to marrying a man she could never give her heart to...but was already in love with her.
What an idiot.
Did she not know that arranged marriages only worked if love did not exist?
He, too, had thought of marriage as a way of knocking some sense into his brother’s stubborn head. But unlike her, he had asked the professionals to handle it. And yes, as it happened, while he did end up with Samira yet again, and the taste of her had created a hunger in him he had never experienced for any other woman, not even Brandy—
That was simply the science of mating bonds at work.
Nothing more.
Chapter Eight
“YOU DON’T LOOK HAPPY to see me,” Brandy said with a frown.
“Would you look happy if you were forced to deal with an unwanted guest?”
“No, not at all. Good thing I’m not that.”
“Actually—”
He stopped speaking when he saw her start sniffing.
Shit.
Brandy was sniffing everywhere now, and then she was turning to him with her eyes full of...shock.
“I can’t believe it,” she gasped. “Who is she?”
He simply stared at her, his expression stony. He had forgotten how Brandy’s sense of smell had gotten a lot better, ever since That Day. It was a phenomenon that was still neither fully explored nor explained, how the vampires’ emergence as a worldwide threat had certain preters either discovering or losing certain skills or—in Brandy’s case—experiencing heightened senses.
“She has to be someone who matters to you. Otherwise, you’d never let her come here.” She looked at him challengingly. “Tell me I’m wrong—”
“If you insist on taking my time, let’s talk about the reason you’ve come barging—”
Brandy dismissed his words away as if shooing a fly. “Don’t change the subject. This can only mean one thing. You’ve found your ma—”
“Quiet.” A command, issued sharply in a dangerously soft tone, and even someone as Brandy had to accede, as any pack member would to their alpha.
Brandy lowered her head in silent apology.
Hexius nodded. Forgiven. But the glint in his golden eyes was a warning that such recklessness moving forward would not go unpunished.
“Do I know her?” Brandy asked after a moment.
“You know of her.”
Her brows furrowed. “So...a celebrity? I never thought—”
Hexius shot her a look, and Brandy grimaced.
“So...not someone famous then? But you said I know of her...”
Hexius simply waited. Hexius and Alphonse had grown up with Brandy since childhood, and even then it was obvious to all that it was Brandy who was the smartest, the one destined to change lives through science. She was the quickest to put one and one together, and so—
Brandy was now looking at him like he had confessed to asking for the Jinn to turn him into a Fae.
“The human?”
He inclined his head in acknowledgment, saying broodingly, “I may have misjudged Alphonse again.” He had thought that his older brother had chosen a human bride for him in a petty bid for vengeance. But with the Concord Agency affirming Samira’s compatibility as his mate?
The only question he had this time was how.
How had Alphonse known Samira was his ideal mate years before the Concord Agency or even Hirsche Laboratories had come out with their mating technologies?
“Does she know about me?” Brandy wanted to know.
“I told her that I rejected her that time because of another woman. But it was Alphonse who supplied the details.”
“Idiot.”
He would not argue with that. However—-
“Don’t you think that’s a bit like the pot calling the kettle black,” he drawled, “considering how you’ve just as idiotically accepted—”
The fact that Brandy only winced at this spoke volumes.
“—the marriage proposal of Alphonse’s former second-in-command?”
“It’s Alphonse’s fault!”
Hexius had a feeling he was about to want to start throttling Brandy again. This, too, was another change resulting from That Day, but it was one he liked the least. Before That Day, Brandy had always been the voice of reason, and was the least emotional of the three of them. It was why he had originally seen her as a challenge, his pride wanting her like she was but a trophy, and whose submission would be another notch in his bedpost.
Now, however?
“Alphonse cannot be blamed for your actions,” he reminded her. “And no one certainly pointed a gun to your head to make you say ‘yes’ to being Vaughn’s wife.”