Chapter 283: Chapter 282

Mason Asher pushed his half-eaten platter of wings to the side. He shook his head.

I “| don’t know what to tell you, Mason. | guess if you need an answer right this minute, it'll have to be ‘no.”

| shook my head. | wasn’t surprised by what he said, but | was glad he wasn’t raging at me about it.

“| get it. All of this is heavy stuff. You need time to think about it. Hell, | wouldn’t want you to agree right away. If you decide to join us, | want you to be a hundred percent certain that it’s the right choice for you.”

He cut his gaze from me and rubbed the back of his hand over his mouth. Finally, he turned back to me. His gaze flared briefly with a hint of his wolf.

“You know s hit’s going to go down,” he said.

| nodded. “Yeah.”

“If the Treaty’s been broken, that means another war, F uck, another Great War.”

“Probably,” | agreed. “Yes.”

There was so much more for me to tell him, too. The existence of hybrids. What the Council was doing with them, and my father’s role in all of that. The fact that Lanie was a hybrid. And her daughter. At least some of that would help explain why Malachi had been around in the first place.

| kept my mouth shut, though.

There was so much we didn’t know, and | didn’t want to open that can of worms with him until | had more answers. Until he’d sworn his loyalty. Until | was sure | could trust him, Asher let his head fall back with a groan. “If all of this had just been over a woman, we could've just brawled it out and gotten over it.”

“| know.”

He eyed me. “That baby is your brother’s, isn’t it? She looked a helluva lot like you.”

“Yes. Lanie was mated to Xander and Zane before she came to Stillwood.” | waited for the next set of questions.

“My sister told me some f ucked-up story that Katie had lost her memory and that’s why she came here.” Asher sat up straight.

“And you never wondered about all of that?”

“What do you mean?” Of course, | knew the whole story, but | was pretty sure Lanie had told Quinn only an abbreviated version of it.

“She shows up pregnant and alone, can’t remember anything” He used air quotes. “Gets you to f her, ends up getting you to go to Constantine lands...

fall for starting to have feelings for each other.”

it.

Asher quirked an eyebrow at me. “You sure about that, bro?”

“What are you getting at?” | caught myself pushing some Alpha energy toward him, and | could tell he felt “Everything cool, bro?” Zane thought to me.

| appreciated that my Beta had my back, but | didn’t need him in my head right now. | put up my shields again, | focused on Asher.

“I'm just saying.” Asher’s tone was sly. “It kind of seems like she reeled you in with the whole damsel in distress routine, got you h ooked on her, got you wanting to be a father to a pup that wasn’t even yours, and she just happened to be mated to your brother? And now all of you are in some kind of tangled up quartet, sharing powers and a Beta? I’m just saying,” he repeated, “it seems a little f ucking contrived.”

“Or,” | replied as evenly as | could, “you’re jealous that Lanie didn’t have feelings for you.”

Asher shrugged and leaned back in his seat. “There are plenty of women. | don’t need to fight you Especially not one who’s already mated to someone else don’t need sl oppy seconds.”

for one.

| was over the table with my fists in the front of his shirt before he could blink...and Asher didn’t even do that. His grin was wide and full of dark humor. He’d been taunting me on purpose.

| released my grip and sat back with a frown. “You’re an as shole.”

“Maybe | get to be, just a little. Don’t you think?” He c ocked his head at me.

Grudgingly, | nodded.

His mouth twisted. “Look, man. | appreciate that you came here alone without your two goons. And I’m glad you were able to tell me the truth about getting a different Beta. I'm glad you confided in me as much as you could about all that other s hit, too. But |

don’t think we are friends anymore. Not sure we ever will be again. If you thought by coming here that we'd be all cool like nothing ever went down, I’m sorry to disappoint you.

I shook my head. “No. | didn’t think that. But thanks for meeting me. | hope...sh it, man. | get it if you don’t want to hang out. But |

hope we aren’t enemies.”

Asher gave me a single, slow nod. “Yeah. Me too. | guess we'll have to wait and see