Chapter 34

ELLA

A day later, Andrea’s leg was healing fast. He was still limping, but when I redressed the wound in the early afternoon, it had reduced in size, new skin had grown, and he was in far less pain than the day before.

It had been a relatively non-torturous twenty-four hours for me too.

After saving his life, Andrea had the decency to leave me alone for the evening, and I sat out on the balcony watching over Bogotá for hours as the pink-chalk sunset was replaced by the bright lights of the city.

I’d always wanted to come to South America.

This wasn’t exactly how I envisioned it happening, but just for a short moment, as I took a deep breath of the fume-polluted air and watched people on the street having fun, everything was sort of okay.

Apart from using me as a nurse for his wound, it wasn’t until the following evening that he bothered me for anything else.

“I’m attending a party in the city tonight, and you’re coming,” he said to me as he sat beside me out on the balcony.

I nodded. “Is it going to be like the last party?”

“No one is gonna die,” he replied.

“You’ve said that before,” I muttered.

“I don’t keep my promises,” he said with a grin. “You may have realized that by now. But if someone ends up with a bullet in their head tonight, I can assure you I didn’t plan it. We’re meeting my respectable business friends.”

By “respectable friends,” he actually means “dirty murdering fellow drug lords.”

“Go shower and there’s a dress laid out on the bed,” he said.

I nodded, already looking forward to a cold shower to rid myself of the mugginess of Bogotá.

As expected, the dress would never be “Leo approved,” but it at least had a certain level of class to it.

I dried my hair and slipped into it before looking at my reflection in the mirror of the bedroom.

My bruises were gone, and after sleeping properly for the first time in a while the night before, I was looking considerably less like a corpse.

Already dressed in a shirt and black trousers, Andrea drew up behind me.

“You look stunning,” he said as he looked over my shoulder into the mirror.

He ran his hands down the dark-red velvet of the dress and then traced the deep V-neck with the tips of his fingers.

“But there is something missing,” he said after a pause.

He then opened a drawer and lifted out a necklace. It was made of diamonds for sure, and when he put it around my neck, I felt its weight on my chest.

“It’s pretty,” I said, touching it with my fingertips.

“I’m going to propose to you tonight at the party,” he said, after kissing my cheek. “And you’re going to say yes.”

I looked up to his eyes in the mirror and blinked while trying to make sense of what he had just said so casually.

“What?” I asked, turning to face him.

“You are going to become my wife,” he stated, looking down at me.

“What?” I repeated.

“What is so hard to fucking understand? You are going to marry me,” he said slowly.

“No,” I said.

He cocked his head to the side. “Funny...I don’t remember giving you the choice.”

“But—”

“Uh, uh, uh, uh,” he tutted. “Don’t argue with me. I’m not your alpha.”

I closed my mouth and turned back to the mirror.

“What happens if I say no?” I asked.

“I will shoot you in the head on the spot. Do I make myself clear?”

As his temper rises, his accent thickens, and it gets harder to hear what he is saying, but I did entirely understand what he meant.

“I said, do I make myself clear?” he repeated deeply, after I hadn’t replied for a few moments.

I looked him in the eye and nodded. “Yes.”

He then leaned forward so that I could feel his warm breath on my cheek. His hand reached up for my face, but I snapped my head away.

“Good,” he replied eventually.

I refused to look up, unable to meet his cold eyes.

“But you won’t say no. Don’t worry.”

“Marriage means nothing to werewolves,” I said after a moment or two.

“I bet it’ll mean something to Leonardo Loren,” Andrea replied.

“So, you’re just doing this to get at my mate?” I asked.

He smiled and grabbed my chin between his fingers. “Among other reasons,” he said, before kissing my lips softly and moaning.

“You drive me crazy, Blanca,” he said, stepping back and closing his eyes. “And I have one more thing to give you.”

He then reached into a drawer and pulled out a small wooden box. I opened it to find a pair of dangling earrings that matched the necklace.

He held them up to my ears and turned me so that I was looking at myself in the mirror again.

“Andrea, I don’t have my ears pierced,” I said.

“What?” he replied, looking at my ears. “What twenty-four-year-old woman doesn’t have her ears pierced?”

“Me apparently.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll pierce them,” he said. “I want you to wear these tonight.”

“No, no, no—” I protested.

“Trust me,” he interjected. “Wait for me on the bed. I’ll be back in a minute.”

I sighed. This was probably going to cause a marginal amount of pain relative to other things he’d done to me, and I’d always sort of wanted my ears pierced, I guess.

A few minutes later, he returned with a needle, a pot of ice, a lighter, and a rag.

I felt myself pale, but I had little choice but to accept that this was going to happen.

“Okay,” he began as he pushed me down onto the bed and put a pillow under my head. “Stay still,” he added as he straddled me.

He then gave me a block of ice in each hand and told me to hold them on my ears as he sterilized the needle with the flame from the lighter. He knew how to prevent infection, at least.

When the needle was nice and clean, he took the ice and shoved the rag in my mouth.

“Bite down on that. This is gonna hurt like a bitch.”

The next thing I knew, there was a searing pain in my ear. The ice had done little to numb it, and I had to clench my jaw around the rag to deal with the discomfort.

Without hesitation, he moved onto the other and put the earrings straight in as I grimaced and winced.

He then pulled me to my feet and stood me in front of the mirror once again.

“That wasn’t too bad, was it?” he asked.

I shook my head, the pain disappearing quickly.

Slowly running his fingers over my shoulders, he brought his lips to my ear.

“Keep earning my respect like you did yesterday and I’m gonna make you not just my wife but my queen, Ella Loren,” he whispered. “I already think you’re too valuable to kill.”

Unsure of whether to take that as a positive or a negative, I just forced a smile and let him kiss me.

~Find me, Leo.~

~Please.~