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“…into heat?” Ace asked.
“She won’t,” the other person replied. “She’s too young. She has a few more years.”
Madoc. He is talking to Madoc. Not his father. Thank goodness.
I wasn’t sure why Madoc was at Ace’s house at two in the morning, but it was better than encountering the man who’d acted like he’d wanted to kill me the last time I saw him.
“She basically already has,” Ace said. “Mini ones. I know the real one is coming. I can sense it. She’s supposed to have a few more years, but our mate bond is too strong. It’s pushing us together.”
Madoc scoffed. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“In this case, it is. She’s going to want to complete our bond without knowing what she’s asking for.
“I can’t do that to her. Not until she knows the truth about us. I already feel bad enough about what we did last night.”
They weren’t talking about me, were they? As usual, I understood very little of what they were saying.
But I recognized a few keywords, like mate and heat. Ace had said both to me recently. Did Ace call Madoc over here to talk to him about our relationship?
But then that would mean… Did he regret having sex with me? He just said that he felt bad about what we did last night. Was that what he and Madoc were talking about?
A boulder settled in the pit of my stomach.
I struggled to hear what Ace said next, his tone hushed and distressed.
“What am I going to do when her real heat hits? She’s going to be in so much pain, ruled by her instincts, and she’s not going to have a clue about what’s going on or why her body is acting that way.
“She’s already so confused every time I tell her she’s got a fever. I can’t go on avoiding telling her what’s really going on in her own damn body. But what else can I do?”
“You could put her on suppressants,” Madoc suggested.
“And make her sick for the last month of her senior year of high school? Fuck that. I will never let her go on suppressants.”
An awkward pause ensued, then Madoc cleared his throat. “You could always give her a few days on her own—”
“No,” Ace immediately cut him off. “Don’t even finish that sentence. I will not stay away from her.
“She needs me, especially so close to her first heat. You saw how sick she got during our fight, and I was never even that far from her! She couldn’t sleep, wasn’t eating.
She was barely functioning.
“How would she pass her finals like that? You know how much her grades mean to her. No, giving her space is not an option.”
He let out a groan. “I have to tell her. I can’t lie to her anymore. It’s killing me. It’s killing her.”
“You can’t tell her now. Not when you’re so close. There’s only a few weeks left. You have to stick it out.”
“She’s going to go into heat before that. I thought I had more time but I don’t.”
“But what about what the OPS said—”
“The OPS told me the same bullshit as before. I have to wait until she’s eighteen, or they’ll run a full investigation. Which means spending up to a year apart. She could decide to go back to Mitchell.
“They said I can mate with her if she goes into heat, but I won’t complete the process until she knows the truth. I need her to have time to process it… To hate me for lying for all these years.”
“She’s not going to hate you.”
“Yes, she is. I would hate me if I were her. She deserves to hate me.”
“She didn’t hate you last time.”
“She was young last time. We had just finished making out. And I wasn’t sleeping on a fucking bed of lies. The whole reason I even told her last time was to avoid having to lie to her.”
“How do you even know she’s going into heat?” Madoc said, clearly trying to comfort Ace. “There’s no way to be certain of it. Are you sure it’s not your animal side trying to speed things along?”
“Oh, my wolf would love to speed things along. It’s getting nearly impossible to control him whenever she’s around. It’s like, every time I open my mouth, he says something stupid to freak her out.
“I’m surprised she hasn’t run for the hills yet.”
“Okay, but what else is new? You’ve got a strong wolf who has been deprived of his mate for years. He’s bound to act out.”
“She’s nesting,” Ace stated as if it were enough to prove his point.
Madoc hesitated. “That doesn’t mean anything. She’s always loved nesting.
Remember all the forts she made when she was little? It’s all she ever wanted to do on the weekends—”
Ace snarled. “She called me Alpha. Last night.”
If I wasn’t sure they were talking about me before, I knew it had bothered Ace when I called him that the previous night in the car.
And now, here he was complaining to his best friend about it at two in the freaking morning as if it were information that just couldn’t wait.
If it upset him so much, why didn’t he just talk to me about it? Why did he act like everything was okay? Why didn’t he come to me about any of the things he was talking to Madoc about?
He said it was killing him to lie to me but then left me alone in his bed in the middle of the night to go tell someone else about things he should only be talking to me about.
I wrapped the blanket tighter around me, wishing I had just stayed in Ace’s bedroom instead of coming downstairs to get my heart broken.
“What?” Madoc asked, shock lacing his tone. “How did she even—?”
“Hold on,” Ace abruptly cut Madoc off.
The room went silent as both of them stopped speaking for several long seconds. I held my breath.
“Doe?” Ace called out.
My heart dropped. Shit, shit, shit.
I went over my options. To avoid being caught eavesdropping, I could tiptoe back to Ace’s room and pretend I never left, but I doubted I’d get far before Ace turned the corner to see me fleeing.
I also wasn’t a quiet runner. They would hear me.
I was caught. It was time to face the music.
I stepped into the kitchen and greeted them both with a sheepish smile.
Ace was at the end of the kitchen island, shirtless and wearing only gray sweatpants. Madoc was sitting on a stool next to him in jeans and a T-shirt, his hair messy as if he had rolled out of bed.
I gave them an awkward wave. “Hi—”
Ace moved across the kitchen and in front of me faster than I could comprehend.
He grabbed me by my waist and threw me over his shoulder, causing me to screech and drop the blanket.
“Ace!” I shouted, pounding my fists against his back. “What are you doing? Put me down!”
Ace spread his hand over my bare ass, which was now out in the open as he carried me out of the kitchen.