Chapter 16

Chapter 16

“A wise man doesn’t poke a sleeping bear with a stick.”

Stephen King

As much as I wanted to tell him that I was, in fact, not *his* Elsie, I had a feeling it wouldn’t get me anywhere. I needed to stay on track – stick to the plan. Use logic to convince Alpha Enzo he was better off without me.

Preferably before the water got cold.

“Okay,” I said, my cheeks still red from the way my name rolled off his lips. “My turn again.”

“Ask me anything, sweetheart.” Maybe it was my imagination, but now that he knew my name, he seemed in even better spirits than before. As if he thought he owned some new part of me.

“Does it really not bother you that I’m human?” I asked.

“No,” he shrugged. I waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t.

“Why not?”

“Because it doesn’t.”

I let out a huff. “That’s not an answer.”

“Yes, it is,” he said, “It’s just not the answer you want.” He turned his head just enough that I could see his lips curled into a smirk. The bastard was enjoying this.

“Well –”

“My turn,” he cut me off, “And since that was two questions, I’m going twice.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but then snapped it shut. I’d just waste more time by arguing with him.

“How old are you?” He asked.

I suppose I should’ve been grateful that he was asking me questions that didn’t require me to concoct some elaborate lie, but I couldn’t help but reply, “My age? That’s all you want to know?”

“That counts as another question against you, and you still haven’t answered my first.”

“Hold on, what the hell is wrong with you –”

“Another question. I’ve got three more turns now.”

I clamped my jaw shut.

Hot frustration swelled in my chest, and I gripped the sides of the porcelain tub so hard that my fingers turned white.

I’d officially gone from marginally pissed off to very pissed off, and I just *knew* he had a shit-eating grin on his face even if I couldn't see it.

Asshole.

*Look what he’s doing to you, Elsie. Ten minutes with this guy, and he’s already making you lose your cool.*

*You can’t let him get to you. You need to stay logical.*

With a couple of long, deep breaths, I tried to ground myself. I needed to stay on mission. The sooner I could change his mind, the sooner I could get the hell out of Dodge – and never have to deal with him or his annoyingly-beautiful face ever again.

“I’m twenty,” I told him through gritted teeth. I almost followed up with: *do you want to know my birthday and mother’s maiden name too?*

But knowing the jerk, he would’ve counted that as another question too.

Alpha Enzo nodded thoughtfully at my answer, and then asked, “And do you have any siblings?”

“Nope, I’m an only child.”

“Are both your parents human?”

“Yes, and I hate to break it to you, but they’d never approve of me bringing home an Alpha werewolf. Just FYI.”

If he was offended by that comment, there was no sign of it.

“Are you close with them?”

The question caught me off-guard – it was the first thing he’d asked that required more than a one-word answer. “If this is your way of trying to find out how many people are going to look for me if you continue to keep me hostage here, the answer is a lot. My friends probably already know I’m missing, which means it’s just a matter of time before you’ve got human cops and reporters sniffing around. Country-wide manhunts. National news coverage. My face on every milk carton you buy at the store. Definitely not the kind of hassle you want to deal with.”

He let out a breathy chuckle – which definitely didn’t set off another flight of butterflies in my stomach – and said, “I don’t believe you. But even if that were the case, do you honestly think there’s a limit I wouldn’t pass to keep you at my side?”

His tone was light, but there was a hard edge to his voice – one that reminded me to tread carefully. Even if he didn’t mind my attitude, he was still a dangerous man.

“That’s a question,” I said, “And your third one, which means it’s my turn again. Does it really not bother you that I’m human?” Before he could shut me down, I added, “I mean, according to everyone I’ve met so far, you’re some uber-powerful Alpha with big ambitions. And a mate is supposed to be your equal, right? So, what does it say about you that you’re stuck with a very fragile, very breakable human, huh?”

My heart was pounding like a drum. If there was a line, I was pretty sure I’d just hurdled across it – but I wasn’t done yet.

One more nail in the coffin. One more sentence to show him just how ridiculous this whole “mate bond” was.

I leaned my face over the edge of the tub, water splashing around me, as I said, “Do you really think you, the powerful leader of the biggest werewolf pack in the world, is an equal to some twenty-year-old human receptionist? Either our bond is just a cosmic mistake or you’re not nearly as powerful as you’ve made everyone believe.”

I held my breath, my fingers still clenched onto the sides of the tub, as I waited for his reaction. I waited for him to flip out or lose his cool like he had in the dungeon, but it didn’t happen.

There was a beat of silence, and then he slowly shifted all the way around to make eye-contact with me.

His eyes were full of something intense that I couldn’t quite read. It didn’t look like anger, but it had to be – *surely*, he must be furious after that. I’d essentially called him weak, which might as well have been a slur to an Alpha werewolf.

I tensed up, preparing for the anger – but it didn’t come.

Instead, he opened his mouth and laughed.