Read Online Seer: Reckless Desires (Norseton Wolves Book 8) by Holley Trent - Free Book Online

at reading the mood in a room, but her thrashing heart and involuntarily quick breaths had her nerves far more frazzled than they should have been. Her gut clenched and brain may as well have been wolf chow given its poor performance.
    “I—”
    Can’t read them.
    “You said wives ,” Alpha said.
    Leo closed her eyes and suppressed a cringe. That word might have come out of her mouth somewhere in that stream of garbage she’d spewed, but she couldn’t remember for sure.
    “I’m just trying to make sure I heard you right,” he said. “We don’t know very much about you, Leonora, and I’m wondering if we need to take certain safeguards.”
    “I could leave.”
    Arnold tugged her back more, until her calf bumped the leg of his chair.
    She opened her eyes in time to see Alpha shaking his head and dancing his thumbs over his phone screen.
    “I didn’t ask you to leave. I need to know where you’re from—whether you’re from one of those places me and the boys always did our best to steer clear of.”
    “Uh, Wolverton wasn’t much different than any other one-stoplight town.” She nudged a bit of lint on the carpet with the toe of her shoe, and added in a mumble, “Except for the polygamy thing.”
    Arnold’s next yank had her on his lap, clutching Kinzy for dear life.
    “Are you freakin’ kidding me? That’s what you meant by ‘depends on who you ask’ when I asked you how many times your husband has been married?”
    The growly quality of his voice seemed to penetrate her like a Wyoming wind through a cheap coat.
    She winced, and then gulped again.
    He was too close for her to think, and he smelled too good—like a newly opened Cracker Jack box or something.
    Biteable.
    She rolled her eyes at the silly wolf in her head. The beast would have probably had Leo gnawing on him like a chew toy if she weren’t vigilant.
    Concentrate on the baby.
    Kinzy seemed entirely unaffected by the goings-on around her—a benefit of her extreme youth. Leo’s mother said Leo had been able to sleep through Armageddon at the same age. A little commotion probably wasn’t likely to startle Kinzy.
    Arnold gave Leo’s left arm a squeeze. “Answer me.”
    “Dang it. Ugh , maybe I disagreed with his tally, is all.”
    “In what way?”
    “That it was too high by one.”
    “That one being you?” Alpha asked.
    She nodded. “Not gonna lie or try to hash my words, I guess. I think everybody knew I wasn’t cut out for the job, but he got his hooks into me before I could get away.”
    “No one knew you were thinking of leaving?” Alpha asked.
    “I just bided my time. Went through the song and dance. The stupid little so-called wedding ceremony, because what choice did I have, right? And then came the so-called wedding night, and two weeks later, I found out I was stuck.”
    “ Stuck ,” Arnold whispered. “You mean you were pregnant?”
    “Yeah. I didn’t think running was a good idea then, which is dumb, I guess. Running would have been easier then when I was a little pregnant compared to after I’d had Kinzy and the jerk had bitten me.”
    Alpha retook his seat, forcing out a harsh exhalation in the process.
    Leticia stepped back into the dining room doorway and made a well? gesture at Leo. Then she mouthed, Never mind , obviously seeing that Arnold held Leo in a bit of a quagmire. Not that she wanted to move.
    She should have moved. She hadn’t been raised to sit on strange men’s laps, but he’d been the one to put her there and, again, he smelled nice.
    Wait…
    She turned a bit and tried to look at him. “Don’t I stink of my mate to you? Isn’t me being this close to you hard on your wolfy nose?”
    Arnold rolled his eyes and let out a ragged breath. “No.”
    “Why not?”
    Leticia heaved a dramatic sigh from the doorway. “We might have had a little chat about that if you’d come and nuked your omelet in the kitchen like you were going to.”
    “Well, tell me now. I hate feeling so behind the