Filed to story: The Alpha’s Pen Pal Book
“What?” I asked.
“They placed her with a new family,” he said again with the patience of a saint.
“But why? Why would they do that? She was healthy and happy and home!”
Dad blew out a breath and tried to speak, but I kept going. “They’ll put her back, though, right? It’s just temporary until Jack gets better? Right? That’s why they called? To let us know that we won’t be able to reach her until Jack gets better and she can come home?”
“No, Wes.” My dad shook his head and ran his hand over his face. “She snuck out of Scott’s house and walked all the way to the hospital one night to see Jack. Scott didn’t even know she was gone until the cops called him and told him she was at the hospital. Social services felt it was no longer a safe place for her. So they found a new placement.”
My brain and my heart both went a mile a minute. I thought my heart would leap out of my chest with how fast it pounded. But my brain was already working overtime, already working to come up with a solution to this fresh problem in front of me.
“Okay, so what can we do?” I asked. “How can we help them? They’re going to try to get her back, right?”
“They were planning to adopt her before… all this happened,” Mom whispered. “They are still planning to try, but with this most recent incident, and with… other things going on, they likely won’t get approved.”
“But… but we have money and connections, right? We can help them?”
“It doesn’t work that way, Wesley. Money can’t fix everything. We can help them get a lawyer, but we can’t force the system to let them adopt her,” she said as she walked to me and placed her hands on my shoulders.
“Then what good is having all this money if we can’t use it to help her?! What’s the fucking point of our connections and our money?!”
“Wesley!” my mom scolded, but my dad held his hand out to stop her.
“There has to be something we can do!” I exclaimed, my eyes watering and my voice shaking as I tore myself from her grasp. “I won’t accept that there is nothing we can do.”
“We are doing everything we can. Everything we legally can,” my dad clarified. “And Felix and Fiona are also going to try to adopt her. They’ve always wanted another pup, but Fiona isn’t able to have more.”
“So she’ll be Nolan’s sister?” I asked.
My dad nodded. “If they are able to adopt her, then yes. She’d be Nolan’s sister.”
“But she’s a human?” I pointed out. “How will that work?”
“We’ll have to get approval from the king and the council. Fiona is already on the phone with them.”
“But she’ll know what we are?”
My dad nodded. “Yes. We’d be able to tell her.”
I inhaled and exhaled a few times, calming my heart and my mind. Nolan’s sister. A member of our pack. The knowledge she’d be safe and taken care of and loved soothed the boiling lava in my soul and erased the blackening pit in my heart.
“He better be nice to her, or I’ll have to kick his ass,” I muttered, crossing my arms over my chest.
My mom snorted and roughed up my hair, and my dad chuckled and scratched his beard, meeting my mom’s eyes over my head.
“Gamma Felix and Fiona will be here soon to begin the process with us,” Dad said. “I promise you, we will keep you updated on everything that is going on with Haven.”
“Can I talk to her?” I asked him as he stood and walked to his office door to show me out.
He sighed, and his hands rested on his hips.
“Unfortunately, no,” he answered. “We have to do this the right way, and they’re not giving us the information on where she’s staying or anything. And yes, we could hack into the systems or use a witch to find her,” he added before I could protest, “but we have to play this by the rules and be very careful because of what happened. They’re keeping a close eye on the Franklins, and we don’t want to raise any red flags against ourselves or the Shepards. Okay?”
I nodded. I wanted to push him, wanted to say more, but he was the alpha, and I had to listen to him and respect that this was his last word on the situation for now.
“Wesley!” he called out as I exited the room. “I promise you on my title and our pack that we will do everything we can to help her.”
My throat tightened, and my eyes itched, the watery feeling in them returning as I listened to him make a solemn oath to me. And the primal thing inside me settled back into its place, subdued and appeased for the moment.
WESLEY
“Have your parents said anything?” I asked Nolan as he walked up to me before training. “Have they heard anything?”
“I don’t know if they’ve heard anything, and no, they haven’t said anything to me.” Nolan sighed. “And I am sure my answer will be the same tomorrow,” he added as he bent down to stretch.
I huffed in exasperation. The same answer. The same fucking answer every day since my parents told me Felix and Fiona were trying to adopt Haven. And that was several weeks ago.
I tried to be patient, but patience had never been one of my strong suits. I was more of a “right now” kind of male.
That restlessness inside me stirred again, but I pushed it down, tempering it with my breathing and my stretching.
It had been happening more and more in the weeks since I learned of Haven’s situation with her family. This fierce, feral thing inside of me would rear its ugly head any time I would think about Haven or someone would mention her, and I would have to refocus and recenter myself to push it back into the recesses of my mind.
“Dude, I know you’re anxious and upset and impatient, but you don’t have to growl at me,” Nolan muttered.
“I wasn’t growling.”
“You were literally just growling at me,” he argued.
“I didn’t growl!”
“You totally growled,” Reid chimed in as he joined us, plopping onto the grass and leaning back on his palms. “Oh, look, his eyes are flashing too.”
New Book: Veiled Desires of the Alpha King Novel
Dayson was the alpha of the largest pack in North America. Powerful figures from other packs sought to offer gorgeous girls as potential mates for Dayson. He steadfastly rejected these advances, he was not a pawn to be manipulated. But eventually there came a mysterious girl he could hardly say No. Who was she?