His mate entered the room behind him, rolling her eyes as she saw Freya’s annoyance at his teasing. “Leave her alone,” she reprimanded though she was smiling. Liam always seemed to reach her sister-in-law where no one else could. Their relationship was building into something very special and she was delighted to watch it grow.
“She’s ruining her reputation of being a cold hearted bitch,” he continued teasing as he picked up his mate and kissed her soundly despite their audience.
“Daddy!” Liam giggled, hugging his aunt a tad tighter as she stiffened at the teasing before he let go and ran towards his parents to be included in their family moment.
Nors reached down with one arm to scoop his son up and kissed the top of his head as they hugged tightly.
Freya watched the family unit with narrowed eyes. They included her in everything but that still didn’t mean she didn’t feel like an outsider in moments like this. The bond between the Eriksson family was so close knit that sometimes nothing could intrude on it. She felt her irritation rising as she watched them as she stood up.
“I need to go,” she said shortly, drawing a frown from Ashleigh as Nors set her down.
“Stay, Freya,” she said softly. “I was just going to bath Liam and put him to bed. You know he loves it when you stay for his bedtime story.”
“I have plans,” Freya answered looking away from the little boy with the big eyes who appeared to be begging her to stay even though he hadn’t opened his mouth. “Maybe tomorrow.”
She was moving out of the room before they could attempt to convince her otherwise. She appreciated the way they included her in their lives but it was their family, not hers. She was just a sister, an aunt, a sister-in-law. She was part of them and yet she wasn’t.
She had no idea where she was going when she left Nors’ house. At first she had thought she was heading to her own home but instead she veered off into the night until she found herself inexplicably standing across the road from a small Gallery in the heart of town.
Why had she felt the need to come to the wolf’s place? Was it because she knew it would irritate him enormously? Usually when she was feeling this way she found someone to torment to the point of madness. Sometimes she found a particularly aggressive male vampire and led him a merry dance as the idiot tried to bed her. Sometimes she even gave in and let the male win the encounter though she could have bested him.
Tonight she stared into the window of a closed art gallery watching intently for a wolf with eyes that where almost as dead as her own.
Freya watched the female Were arrive and let herself into the Gallery. She tried to scent the other woman but found she couldn’t do so which immediately set her hackles up. She could discern the Were was a wildcat but that was about all. There was something odd about this Were but she couldn’t put her finger on it.
The woman was glorious. Her beauty rivalled even her own and she found her anger ratcheting up a notch as she watched. Was the wolf bedding the cat? She didn’t know if interspecies mating was possible or why it bothered her so much that the man, who was just following the woman out of the office, might be sleeping with the cat.
From her first meeting with him it appeared that a night in his bed would be a frigidly cold affair, that was if a woman could convince him to let her into it. The anger inside her built steadily as they lounged together on the thick white rug, the woman tenderly touching his strong jaw as his eyes sparkled with an emotion she couldn’t quite read from the distance she was at despite her enhanced sight.
She didn’t know who the woman was but she could see that Dayton Alexander responded to her on an emotional level. His eyes were not dead when he looked at her. Hatred for the woman burned deeply within her. It was an irrational emotion considering she didn’t even know her but she couldn’t shake it.
The cat had her hands on the man who had failed to acknowledge her as a woman and that was unacceptable to Freya Eriksson. Dayton Alexander was hers to play with and she wouldn’t think twice about taking any competition out of the arena. Permanently.
To be continued…