When he hit the room and slammed the door so hard that the sound it made seemed to undulate through the room like a shockwave, she didn’t take that as a good sign either.
The instant she saw the look on his face she realized that today was not the day of reckoning.
Today was the day of the apocalypse.
Without hesitating, he walked right up to her, jerked the book out of her frozen-with-fear hands and tossed it across the room with such force, the sound it made when it hit the doors of the wardrobe all the way across the room was like a gunshot.
She stared at her book on the floor for a second, lips parted in shock then she looked back at him. What she saw terrified her to such an extreme, the only thing she could think to do was flee.
So she tried.
She shot out of the alcove and ran past him as fast as her feet would carry her, her heart beating a mile a minute and her mind totally blank.
She wasn’t fast enough.
He hooked an arm across her waist and lifted her up, her back to his chest, her legs kicking out and her hands pushing at his arm.
“Let me go!” she squealed but he just turned, took three long strides and tossed her on the bed.
She instantly rolled and kept rolling until she rolled over the other side, got to her feet and glared at him standing opposite the bed to her. His chest was heaving and he was visibly having difficulty controlling his anger.
Sonia was panting with fear but that fear was replaced by fury on the spot.
“What’s the matter with you?” she shrieked.
“You didn’t come to the study after breakfast,” he replied, his deep voice even but far from calm.
He was enraged. His voice said it. His face said it. Every line of his big, tall body said it.
But Sonia didn’t care.
“You just slammed the door, accosted my book and tossed me across the room because I didn’t come to the study?” she shouted.
“I didn’t toss you across the room but I did tell you we were talking this morning and you didn’t come to my goddamned study!” he shouted back.
“Don’t you yell at me, King Callum,” she yelled.
He put his hands to his h*ps and leaned forward, yelling back, “I’ll yell until I find out what in the f**k is wrong with you, Queen Sonia!”
“There’s nothing wrong!” she screamed her lie, leaning toward him too.
“There isn’t?” He leaned back. “Then my wife is denying me her affections because…?”
He let the last hang but Sonia didn’t.
She lied again, “I’m not denying you my affections!”
“Really?” he asked mockingly. “Have you been f**king me in the night and I haven’t felt it?”
Her hands clenched into fists, so angry she couldn’t have stopped herself even if she’d tried.
Which she didn’t, she’d been holding onto this long enough.
So she just let loose.
“Well, I figured, since you’re out f**king whoever at night, you wouldn’t need me!”
His body jerked but he scowled at her through the movement, muttering angrily, “What the f**k?”
“You’re cheating on me, Callum. I know it. Remember? I have gifts! I can smell it! You go off in the middle of the night, come home and you reek of it!” she screamed.
He stared at her looking both stunned and furious and shouted, “Fucking hell, are you mad?”
“No!” she shouted back. “I’m not mad!” She shook her head and threw out an arm, looking away and talking mostly to herself but still doing it heatedly. “I shouldn’t care. I keep telling myself I shouldn’t care. Why do I care?”
“You shouldn’t care?” Callum muttered, low and dangerous, his tone making Sonia’s eyes go back to him and if she thought he was angry before, she was wrong.
Now he was incensed.
But she was too far gone.
“No, I shouldn’t care,” she hurled at him.
“You shouldn’t care that you think I’m f**king around on you?” he asked, still in that low tone.
“No!” she shouted.
“Why?” he shot back. “Because you want me to get it elsewhere now that you know I’m wolf and you don’t want that sweet little body of yours defiled by an animal?”
Sonia gasped in outrage at his words and screeched, “How dare you! I love wolves!”
“Yes, honey,” he said cuttingly, “and three weeks ago you told me you loved me. The next day I find my f**king rings in the fire and you f**king avoid me all day and then you find out I’m wolf and do everything you can to avoid me for the next three f**king weeks! Is that what love is to you?”
“No, Callum. I did all that because you made me tell you I loved you while making me sit in your lap after you’d come home from f**king someone else and still reeking of it!”
“I’m not f**king anyone else!” he roared, losing what little hold he had on his temper.
But something broke inside Sonia. It had broken before, time and again, and it still hurt so much it was a miracle she didn’t fall to her knees.
Instead, her anger and heartbreak keept her breathing, standing and fighting.
She turned and rounded the bed, her eyes locked on her mate, her hand lifted with finger jabbing the air at him all the while screaming back, “You are so full of it! You don’t want me. You never wanted me! I’m just your duty. Another in a long line of duties.” She was still screaming as she made it to him and she used both hands to shove his chest, rocking him back on a foot as he stared down at her looking shocked. “You said in the beginning we were a farce! Your brother said you wanted to get the claiming over with, that you felt forced to be at the cabin with me and that I’d have to understand your need to f**k around with your own kind.” She shoved him again and kept screaming. “Your other brother called being up at the cabin with me ‘dicking around’. That crazy Desdemona woman said you hated blondes and I’m blonde! And everyone, but everyone, Calder, Yuri, even Titium, talks about your legendary prowess with women.”
He caught her wrists and hauled her up to his chest, muttering, “Sonia –”
“No!” she screeched in his face. “I’ve got good news. This is over for you, Callum! Over. You don’t have to pretend anymore. You don’t have to playact. I promise, I’ll do my duty as queen and you can just go off and do… whatever it is you have to do and somehow I’ll deal with it. I’ll cope. I’ll find a way to be happy even though I’m with you but I’m still, like I’ve always been, alone.”