Compounding Traumas (Artemis University #6) - Erin R Flynn Page 0,50
or some shit—”
“No, but I did,” he sighed. “Before we met. It had been set up since before I could talk even. That’s why I was such a slut. I was trying to sow all my oats before I was mated off after I graduated, to do what was right for my sloth.”
“What happened?” I asked gently, noting how stiff his body was, the anger coursing through him at the bullshit he’d been sold.
“She ran off with someone right after she graduated from college, my freshman year. She didn’t go here, but she was several years older than me, the only daughter of another Alpha close to us with whom my father wanted to combine the sloths. She was completely in love with someone—I think maybe even her mate, since she risked everything to run off—and didn’t want the mating, her family either.”
“I thought you said it was in the works forever? Didn’t her parents set it up?” The pained look he gave me said it all. “Your father was screwing them over to get more power. Your mating would combine the sloths, and you’d take over one day, but he was in charge now and until you did.”
“Yes.” The one word hung in the air between us. “I don’t want to give you more reasons to hate him and not want to be near me, but yes. I know my mother didn’t show you her best side the first time you met, but—”
“But she didn’t know me from any psycho off the street,” I defended, shrugging when he gave me a surprised look. “I don’t blame her at all. I didn’t know how nuts Artemis and this society was back then, so yeah, I don’t blame her at all for standing with her mate and your family. She did the right thing when she figured out what I am and what your father was plotting. I’m completely cool with your mom.”
The brilliant smile he gave me made him look even sexier, and my heart actually fucking fluttered. Damn men were dangerous sometimes.
“She flipped when she found out my father was putting the screws to that sloth, and everything else he had done. She forced him to undo it all and not seek retribution for humiliating him because my betrothed ran off on me. She also put her foot down that he got his one chance to make an alliance for our family and fucked it up, so the next chance for a good match was mine as the one-day leader of our sloth.”
“I really like your mother now. I don’t know how she mated to such a—”
“It was an alliance mating, but I know they did really fall in love,” he mumbled. “She says he was a different person once.” He sighed. “I remember him different as a child, but sometimes I wonder if he really was, or that was just what I saw through the eyes of a child.”
“Lucca, I’m the last person to ask about what families or healthy relationships are.” I gave him several minutes to settle with that, finishing our burgers and the food. “So seriously, what’s the number?”
“Please don’t make me answer that,” he groaned. “At least until you’re a fraction as into me as I am you.”
Fair enough… For now.
11
Lucca was ridiculously sweet and attentive the rest of the day, not even blinking at the spread Izzy had ordered for us. He kept fussing over me, amusing Ray and Zack, so I was pretty sure it was a shifter thing. And he was not happy he couldn’t spend the night after the first time we had sex—or just always—but Izzy had put her foot down and said she wasn’t going to listen to me beat him because he got frisky.
He couldn’t even deny it, which made the whole thing even funnier.
The next morning, I went for my run and picked up Keya, immediately noting the color change of her skin that told me she was worried.
“People are talking,” she warned me. “Be careful, Tamsin.”
“I always wear the fairy rune to keep my aura calm and muted,” I told her. “The rest, I’m well equipped to handle. Trust me.”
“I do,” she promised. “Implicitly.”
Good. Mourn had the place set up to go next and was working on a plan. I did make sure to find Chief and explain the change, so we were keeping people on their toes, promising to keep him updated.
In turn, he filled me in on the hundred or so dead birds