Keeping Secret (Secret McQueen) - By Sierra Dean Page 0,98

to get out of. Putting the pack through drills like that was something I could imagine Lucas coming up with.

Just thinking about Lucas made me sick to my stomach.

It was bad enough I had to be here, at his home. I didn’t want to be thinking about how clever it was of him to put our pack through their paces. Our pack. Was it even ours anymore? Days ago I’d thought I belonged. I’d become a wolf, I’d run among others of my kind and I’d felt like I was finally a part of the thing Lucas had been calling ours for so long.

I’d believed I deserved to be their queen. Or at the very least I’d earned my role as pack protector. Knowing I could meet the pack on their level had made me feel free. It made me feel accepted. I no longer had to hide from them on full moons. They wouldn’t question my loyalty.

And now what?

Morgan was trying to kill me because she would never believe I deserved the position more than she did. She couldn’t be the only one who thought it, even if she was the only one to act on it. And what would the pack think of Lucas’s commitment to me now? Mated or not, he had scorned me, and everyone knew it.

How had he missed the plot Morgan had hatched? Had he blinded himself to her betrayal because he had other reasons to believe he could trust her?

I stopped walking and fought to catch my breath.

Why would any man foolishly believe a woman’s lies? Why had I let Lucas trick me time and time again? Love, sure…but that wasn’t how he’d gotten things past me. No, Lucas had distracted me with passion. Pure, burning lust. It was how he’d activated the mate bond. And what had we been doing before the mate ceremony in Louisiana?

We’d been fucking.

Was that it? Was that how Morgan had made him too stupid to see what she was up to? She’d managed to have her assassins find me everywhere I should have been safe. On the highway and at Callum’s compound in the south.

I’d been an idiot not to suspect her before, but I trusted her because Lucas trusted her.

Had she been the reason he stood me up too? Surely it benefited her to have me there alone, though I can’t imagine she ever meant to get caught red-handed pulling the trigger. I knew she wanted me dead so she could have her chance with Lucas.

But maybe she’d already had a taste.

I gagged.

I didn’t want to believe it. It didn’t seem like something Lucas would be capable of. I knew I hadn’t been virginal and innocent, but he’d known about my relationship with Desmond. He’d even encouraged it, to a point. The soul-bond meant something. It transcended simple lust. He and Desmond had known since before they met me that it might create conflict, but they also knew I would be with the king in the end.

I didn’t like having a polyamorous relationship, but I never lied about it. Lucas knew I spent most every night in bed with Desmond, and Desmond knew I had my nights with Lucas. None of us were thrilled about it. It wasn’t like those happy-go-lucky ménage scenarios that cluttered up romance novels. We always knew a time would come when three would be whittled down to two.

But I’d never dreamed Lucas would find fulfillment elsewhere.

The more I thought about it, the more flustered I became. Maybe I was losing my mind, reading too much into it, but it was hard not to imagine Lucas as a villain given how he’d recently behaved. When this was said and done and Morgan was in the ground, Lucas would answer for his actions.

One thing was certain, though, even if he hadn’t cheated on me…

We were done.

Soul-bond or not. Mate bond. Fucking mate ceremony. None of it mattered now. I didn’t care if the wolves didn’t do divorce, or that I was the queen as far as every werewolf on the East Coast was concerned. I’d never be able to look at Lucas Rain the same way.

I’d never trust him again, and without trust a relationship wasn’t worth shit.

I’d been still so long a thin film of moisture coated my skin the same way it had the grass.

And long enough to hear rustling and a muffled female curse one wall away.

I moved as quickly and silently as I could, praying the next turn wouldn’t