Chapter 136 Chapter 136
Elijah
I'd been watching her all evening.
That was the problem, really. The core of everything that had been systematically unraveling my control for weeks now.
I couldn't stop watching Violet.
She stood across the ballroom in that midnight blue dress that should have been illegal, talking to some Luna and I tracked her movement like my eyes had been calibrated to her frequency and her alone.
I noticed every little thing she did. The way she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear when she was nervous. The way her fingers found the stem of her champagne glass and held it with just slightly too much tension. The way she laughed at something Luna Petra said, like she was still learning how much of herself to give away in these situations.
I wanted all of it. Every carefully rationed piece she kept locked down. Every smile she didn't think anyone deserved to see.
"So what are your thoughts on the matter?"
I blinked and looked to the right to the alpha I had been chatting with. He was looking at me expectantly, along with two other founding family patriarchs whose names I'd stopped tracking thirty seconds into this conversation.
"I agree," I said, which seemed to satisfy them.
Tyler caught my eye from across the room and raised an eyebrow as if to ask You good?
I wasn't.
I'd spent the entire evening in a state of low-grade arousal that was becoming genuinely problematic. Watching Violet try to maintain composure during her speech while I controlled the vibrator had been exquisite torture. But watching her eyes find mine across the room with that mix of desperation and heat and frustration had been worse.
Or better or both maybe.
I'd excused myself twice already tonight to the washroom just to splash cold water on my face and force my brain to think about quarterly reports, territorial boundary disputes and literally anything that wasn't the small sounds she'd made into that microphone.
It hadn't helped. Nothing had.
From the second I had laid eyes on her in that restaurant, I couldn’t get her out of my mind.
I still recalled how she watched the small interaction between me and the waitress, the way her face fell when she turned to look at that asshole who wouldnt give her even a lick of attention.
And left her to die in the rogue attack. My wolf reached for her before I did, wanting to shield her from everything. And then somehow fate kept throwing her at me everytime, taunting me, baiting me with that innocent face and dove like eyes.
I didn’t give her that Emerald project just to see how far she would go for her loved ones, how far she would beg.
And boy, did she know how to beg.
Girls threw themselves at me every second, I was used to it. What I wasn’t used to was a fierce little kitten who would glare back at me despite knowing that I was a monster.
She just wasn’t afraid of me for some reason. And that made me extremely curious about her.
Then to make matters worse, I have been stuck under the same roof as her for over a month already at Ironcrest Manor. I hated Nate and Nicole but some part of me was glad I got to be around her everyday.
Even if it was a glaring reminder that she is within arm’s reach, and being absolutely unable to do anything about it. Fate designed a a special kind of hell for me.
It would have been easy to just grab her, kiss her until her lips were sore and her legs couldn’t walk. But then a monster like me didn’t deserve an angel like her.
So I'd increased my training and started running at dawn because sleeping past five was impossible anyway. I spent hours in the gym working myself into exhaustion because exhaustion was supposed to help.
Sadly it didn't.
Because exhaustion meant my control was thinner, which meant I spent more time thinking about the way she looked when she smiled at something she didn't believe anyone else found funny. Or the way her voice got slightly breathless when she was annoyed with me.
Or the way she'd felt in that alcove earlier tonight when I'd verified she'd done exactly what I'd asked her to do.
Goddess help me.
I shifted my weight slightly, adjusted my jacket and took a sip of my drink that I didn't taste.
Across the room, Violet was accepting another glass of champagne which was probably her fourth. I'd lost count but I was tracking it anyway because apparently I was tracking everything about her now like some kind of an obsessive stalker.
I had barely enjoyed five seconds of her expressions after I increased the vibrator’s speed by a level when I saw some alpha approach her.
I had spoken to him briefly tonight. What was his name again?
Something forgettable. I’d call him rat.
But I was already wondering if I should cancel the trade agreement he had offered just because he dared approach her.
What was wrong with me?
Her eyes found me across the room and then she took his arm as if she challenged me.
The jealousy that moved through me was immediate and unreasonable and entirely inappropriate given that I had no actual claim on her beyond whatever this thing between us was that neither of us had named yet.
I hated it.
I hated watching her move onto the dance floor with him. Hated the way his hand settled on her waist. Hated that I'd put us in this position by not just—
By not what? Claiming her publicly? Telling her that she was mine and I was done sharing her attention with anyone else?
I couldn't do that.
She was twenty-three, a decade younger than me as her asshole of a boyfriend liked to remind me a thousand times.
She'd just gotten out of a relationship that had destroyed her ability to trust anyone's motives. She had a career she was building and a life ahead of her that didn't need to be complicated by a man with more baggage than a fucking airport carousel.
She deserved better than me.
She deserved someone her own age who didn't carry the weight of founding family politics and a father like Alaric and secrets that could hurt her if she got too close.
I knew all of this.
And yet watching that rat touch her was making me seriously consider murder as a viable option.
"Elijah! "You're doing that thing."
Tyler had materialized with a mildly concerned expression.
"What thing?"
"That thing where you stare at her like you're planning a kidnapping and trying to talk yourself out of it."
"Is it that obvious?"
"Just move before someone notices you've been standing in the same spot for twenty minutes watching Violet dance."
Thankfully, I didn’t have to wait for long because Veronica approached me soon enough and it was too good an opportunity to let it pass.
Violet frowned and the bulge in my pants twitched.
My kitten was jealous. Goddess help me!