Chapter 83

Conrad’s POV

Anger oozes through my entire being, trickling through my veins, seeping into every square inch of me, every nerve. I can’t sit still, my thoughts are too wild. So I punch, and I punch, and I mindlessly punch again and again, ready to exhaust my body and hopefully my rage.

I’m known for my intensity, and I show it on the ice, giving every game and practice the whole of my focus and my talent. This isn’t like that at all. On the ice, during the game, I pride myself in my control, only letting myself slip when an opponent tries to check someone on my team, or a fight breaks out.

Right now, I feel like control has entirely left the building. It’s unobtainable, totally gone from my purview.

In its place, fury. Rage. A desire to break and smash and run.

My wolf is no help. He’s as amped up as I am. His strength doubles mine as I push my fists into the harsh sand-filled punching bag. It creaks and groans on its chains. The bag has been reinforced specifically to endure against werewolf strength, but I’m pushing it hard. I know it will break soon.

I don’t care. I keep punching, keep pushing. I’m sweating, and the exertion feels good. Though my anger remains.

How could my brothers keep our mate from me? Yes, I understood that she wanted anonymity, so that excuse might have worked if only Hugh knew. Or only Wes.

But Hugh, Wes, and Declan knew about her. I am the only one who was left in the dark. And my brothers had seemed perfectly content to keep it that way.

After I found out, they all tried to tell me that they had each talked to our mate about coming forward with me, to allow me into the collective secret.

For her to be with me too.

Yet she had pushed back on them, not wanting me to know. Me? The eldest. The strongest! Why was I the one chosen to be left in the dark?

The entire thing was infuriating, and worse still, I could only truly blame myself. If our mate didn’t want me to know about her, then it had to be a reflection on me. Did I frighten her? Was she not attracted to me?

It was easier to fight with my brothers, or to blame my mate for her poor taste, but the truth was, the majority of my rage was turned inward. At me. At my wolf. At what we could have done to convince our mate that we were trustworthy, and would treat her right.

If she could trust Declan, arguably the coldest and most stand-offish of us, why did she turn her back on me?

I kept punching, desperate to exhaust myself, not wanting to think or feel any of this self-loathing anymore.

Behind me, a woman softly cleared her throat.

Something in that voice kicked my heart straight up into my throat. Wildly, I thought perhaps my mate had changed her mind and had come here today to see me, to apologize and demand that I love her as much as my brothers do.

I turn, ready to face my destiny.

Disappointment floods through me, freezing my red-hot blood to ice.

It’s only Ollie standing in the doorway. She’s holding a plate of food and looking at me with a small measure of concern. She’s also blushing, her eyes fixed on my face like she’s afraid to look lower.

Interesting…

I step closer.

“What’s this?” I ask, lifting my brow at the food. I know exactly what it is, but it can sometimes be fun to put her on the spot and watch her squirm.

“It’s dinner…” she says. “For you.”

I move closer still, enjoying how her gaze lifts and lifts to stay on my face and not look lower. I know I have a good physique. With daily workouts, I take pride in how well-defined my muscles are. It wouldn’t offend me for her to look. That she is trying so hard not to is amusing.

For the first time, some of my rage ebbs away.

The closer I get, the more her gaze lifts, the deeper her blush becomes. When she’s a nice cherry red, I can’t help a smirk.

Glancing down, I trace the length of that blush down to where it disappears under her collar. I wonder just how far down it goes…

Ollie does have nice, round breasts… Does the blush extend all the way to the swell of them?

For a moment, my mouth starts to water.

In a flash though, I snap back to myself. What the hell am I doing thinking about Ollie this way?

She is a deceiver. A betrayer, who purposefully made us all care about her when she was never who she appeared. And now, she is ungrateful, acting like serving Sylvia was such a difficult task, even if it came with a college education.

She is also a whore, spreading her legs first for that Jake at the ice cream store, and then at the mixer for anyone who wanted to dive between those slender thighs.

Ollie continues to look me right in the eye, even as I come to stand directly in front of her. As I test, I flex my muscles. Still she won’t look.

Not that I want her to.

Not that I care about her at all.

With a huff, I turn away. “Put the plate on the chair and get out.”

I hear her hurry to obey my command. The plate clicks against the chair, and then her soft footsteps pad out into the hallway.

In her absence, my anger returns, so I return to the punching bag.

My rage continues to flare when I’m interrupted yet again.

“You don’t have to be such a brute about this,” Hugh says.

He came here looking for an argument. Stilling the punch bag, I turn to him.

“I’m not being anything. You all are the ones hiding my mate.”

“Our mate, thanks,” Hugh replies. “And it was only at her request.”

“We are brothers,” I say. “Is there no loyalty?”

“If you could see her…” Hugh says. “If you could look into those big brown eyes and hear her ask you a favor… You would have done the same.”

Damn him, he was probably right. But that didn’t solve my problem now.

Perhaps it would have been better to be kept in the dark for longer, than to have discovered her and know she didn’t want to see me.

“I think she’s frightened,” Hugh says.

I scoff. “Declan is the scary one.” Even if I was technically stronger than Declan, Declan gave off a kind of deathly aura. It was stand-offish and cold, often pushing others away without his even having to say a word.

How could she be afraid of me, and not of Declan?

“I think she’s afraid of falling for us,” Hugh says. “It was easier when it was just she and I. We had our fun, but that’s all it was. Then Wes got involved, and things became more complicated. Again, when it was Declan. Now that you are here too, she might find it harder to turn all of us away.”

I consider his words. “She doesn’t want to be tied down…”

“No,” Hugh says. “She’s made that clear from the start. And she’s told Wes that she is planning on leave the pack soon.”

I frown. I don’t like that, at all. Perhaps that’s why she meant to exclude me. Did she somehow know I would be the most possessive one? That once I have her, I wouldn’t want to let her go.

This does present a problem. If she knows that, she will likely work to avoid me, and maybe by extension avoid all of my brothers as well.

“But I have an idea,” Hugh says. “Something that might draw her out of hiding.”

Oh? “I’ll do whatever I have to, to find my mate.”

Hugh nods. “You aren’t the only one.”