Tarian Alpha (New Tarian Pride #1)(29)

“You got the balls to post up?” Carl scoffed. “What’s your job here, Orion? To wrangle a bunch of scatterbrained women? You’re a glorified babysitter, not a guard.”

“I’d rather be a glorified babysitter than a goat-licking douchetart, Carl.”

“Oh, shit,” Emerald murmured. Her eyebrows were so far up in her hairline, her forehead ached.

“You really want to do this?” Carl yelled.

“Been waiting my whole fuckin’ life,” Orion said with a grim smile. His eyes flickered to Annamora. “Get her out of here,” he gritted out as he turned to lead the trio of giant assholes out the front door.

By “get her out of here,” Emerald honestly couldn’t tell if he meant out of the living room or out of the territory. Orion was confusing.

“He’ll be fine,” Annamora whispered, grabbing her by the hand and yanking her toward the kitchen.

“H-how do you know?” Emerald asked, watching the four behemoths shoving their way through the front door.

“Trust me,” Annamora said. “They’re barking up the wrong tree with Orion. They keep testing him because he ain’t from here, but they keep coming back with their skulls nearly bashed in. And no one’s got him pissed off enough to Change yet. He’s been beating them fist to fist, but you can just tell his animal is a monster. Probably got white eyes and looks like a damn demon…”

Someone suddenly grabbed the back of Emerald’s hair and shoved her forward, then released her so she blasted toward the kitchen island. She barely caught herself before her nose hit the hard edge. Chest heaving, she turned slowly to find Derek chuckling to himself and stalking toward her slowly. “That was close,” he murmured.

“Cassius won’t like your hands on me,” Emerald said, straightening her spine.

“Cassius won’t give a shit. It was supposed to be your pairing day, and where is he?” Derek looked around at the jeering males around him. “Are you Cassius?” he asked one of them.

“Not I,” said the monster.

“You?” he asked another.

The man with a scar down his face and only one eye looked her up and down and said, “I wish.”

“This ain’t just a meeting, cupcake. This was supposed to be your celebration. Your coronation. You were supposed to be one of them already.” He gestured to the blonde, Sora, and the two brunettes who had been serving Cassius when she’d come here. The other mates.

She let herself get lost in a merry-go-round memory. She was scared, and sometimes it was easier to escape to a pretty picture in her head than face reality. She was new to this bravery thing, and it was a lot with all this attention on her. The memory didn’t hold though. It was a kiss from Ronin and then the vision flickered and faded. Dominants were everywhere, and they all looked hungry. For her. It felt like bugs were crawling under her skin, and she wanted to retch as Derek brushed her hair off her shoulders. She leaned back away from him as far as she could, but the countertop was blocking any escape.

Trapped. Trapped. Trapped.

“Hey, man, leave her alone,” one of the males said from the crowd.

Derek rounded on an unfamiliar man and snarled, “Or what, Cason?”

The man dropped his head to the side, but his eyes were full of anger. His gaze flickered to Emerald, and he twitched his chin toward the other side of the kitchen.

Okay then. Emerald sidestepped to the other females, who had stopped their meal preparations and were staring leerily at Derek. One of the mates of Cassius, the submissive blond one, brushed her fingertips against Emerald’s back and then held her shirt gently to keep her in place. “Stay in the middle of us tonight,” she whispered shakily.

Oooooh, something was happening. There was a tension here that she didn’t understand. Dissention in the ranks. A Pride wasn’t supposed to squabble like this. She was beginning to think that not all of the Old Tarians were bad. Perhaps they’d just gotten stuck in a situation they couldn’t escape. Like her.

The saying that it took one bad apple to ruin the bunch? Well, what if here it took a few good apples to ruin the Old Tarian Pride? They could ruin them with morals.

Hope fluttered in her chest. She wished for the hundredth time today that Ronin was here and she wasn’t navigating this alone, but maybe this was meant to be. She’d always believed that some people’s destinies were beige. They weren’t meant for anything exciting, weren’t meant to make a ripple in the ocean of their generation. She’d always thought that was her, but now…she felt something building, something growing, some storm that was much bigger than her, and she was right in the eye of it. And her lioness, the Fury now, was watching and waiting like a wild lion in hip-high grass, the same color of her fur, every muscle tensed, eyes steady on some prey Emerald couldn’t figure out yet.

Derek turned around to find her gone from where he’d cornered her. Emerald smiled at him. She shouldn’t poke at the rattlesnake, but today she couldn’t seem to help herself. He’d hurt her dad. She would never forget him dragging Dad behind that snowmobile while he laughed.

She’d never been able to hold a dominant’s gaze before today.

Something had really broken inside of her.

Or maybe Ronin had put her together, she didn’t know.

Hurt them back.