Watching Out For Fangs (The Cloverleah Pack Book 7) by Lisa Oliver Read Free Book Online Page A

the pale blue looked incongruous against the dirty concrete floor.
    “You would die rather than accept your true match? Why would you do such a cruel thing to your wolf? Is he that disfigured from the attack on him that you cannot look past it?” Vadim realized his mother was not only shocked, she was hurt as well, and damn it all, Vadim didn’t like it when the lovely woman was upset. So he answered as honestly as he knew how.
    “Josh is beautiful, mother,” Vadim assured her softly, remembering all too well the lovely features of his mate’s face. They would be scorched in his brain until he took his last breath. “He is a loyal fighter, a beta wolf, with tanned skin and light hair that glows like a halo in the sun. There is nothing wrong with him at all.”
    “Then why?” Easily asked, harder to answer.
    “Because I made a promise, mother, surely you can understand.” Vadim’s voice hardened. “My true match, my mate, he’s a wolf and he deserves to be loved with an open heart. To be held and cared for, to be protected and cherished in the way of a wolf, not bonded forever to a vampire with no heart.”
    “Our kind can be loving, gentle, and affectionate. Your late father cherished me every day of our lives together.”
    “I’m not like that. I made a vow, mother. A vow never to love again when my heart died over four hundred years ago. I will not subject my mate to a loveless union with someone as broken as I. I will not stay with him and put him in danger. That’s why this is all so fucked up. If I take the Regency then I won’t hold it for long – but listening to Ermine just made me so fucking angry that I had no thought at the time, but to strip him of his title.”
    “I have enemies that would use Josh to hurt me – people who don’t understand that I am just so tired of all the politics and the stupidity of their petty lives and they try to take me down simply because of my age and station. I can’t work out what to do, but I know Josh needs to be safe – and he won’t be safe as my mate and I won’t have him miserable and in danger as well. This is all so fucked up. I couldn’t let him die and now…”
    Eloise stared at him for the longest moment, her eyes searching his face as though checking for the truth. She raised her hand and Vadim wondered if she would slap him, or caress him like she used to do when he was a child. He would rather she did neither. He hated to be touched which was yet another reason for staying away from Josh. Wolves were a touchy, feely lot. The hand was lowered, as Eloise perhaps remembered the same thing.
    “You have a heart, Vadim, a very strong one that is more than capable of loving your wolf and giving him everything a mate deserves. You already have feelings for him otherwise you would not have tried to kill your brother and his wife yesterday. For any other wolf you wouldn’t have cared what this coven did, even if that little pack was decimated. You would have hidden yourself in your mansion and ignored us all, regardless of what was going on around you.”
    “Don’t deny this wolf is someone special to you. You do care for him, enough to protect him and his pack, enough even to think that he was better off without you. Don’t you see that if you didn’t care, then you would have taken him without thought of the consequences regardless of how your solitary ways or your enemies might affect him and his safety? Don’t you see how much you care already from one brief meeting? Can you even begin to imagine for one moment that this wolf of yours wouldn’t be able to open the heart you keep so tightly guarded? You haven’t been living, Vadim, you have been subsisting, and it is about time you made the decision to live.”
    Vadim didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything he could say, especially to his mother. Eloise must have realized that too because she stepped back and turned as if to leave. Looking back over her shoulder she said softly,