Filed to story: The Alpha’s Pen Pal Book
I lunged forward into the room, crossing to her in long, purposeful strides, falling to my knees at the side of her bed, grabbing her hand with mine and pulling it to my chest. I wanted—needed—to pull her whole body to mine and hold her close and never let her go, to keep her safe at my side and in my arms.
But I couldn’t, because while I was trying to help my dad and my pack, I left her vulnerable, and I could have lost her.
“I’m here,” I murmured, kissing her hand, ignoring the feel of the mate bond on my skin. “I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere,” I told her.
She squeezed my hand and closed her eyes, taking deep breaths through her nose to calm herself. Her lip still trembled as she fought against her cries, and the urge to take her into my arms hit me again, strengthened by my lycan seeing her fighting to stay calm.
I rose higher on my knees and leaned forward to kiss her forehead and stroke her hair, but my eyes landed on the wound on her neck, and what I saw made my blood boil.
The growl I let out started all the way in my feet. It ripped through my body as I stood and stared at the open doorway, at Sebastian and Nolan in his wolf form.
My aura didn’t just leak out. No, it bubbled up and spilled over like a pot of boiling water, forcing every wolf in the room to bare their neck to me in submission. Even Sebastian lowered his eyes, though he didn’t have to.
“Why are there teeth marks from another lycan on MY MATE’S neck? On her MARKING SPOT?” I yelled.
“He had her in the alley,” Seb said quietly. “When we got to her, he was biting into her neck over and over. Like his lycan was trying to mark her.”
“How’d he get her in the alley? How’d you lose her?”
“Blackout,” he muttered. “It was chaos.”
I growled again, but not at him. Just in frustration with the situation. The weight of all that had happened settled on my heart, settled into my soul, and all I could think about was how I had once again failed her.
My mate.
I had failed her so many times. Failed her with my very first letter to her, failed her when I didn’t realize soon enough that something was wrong, failed her when she was adopted by those horrible people. And failed her when I agreed to be someone’s fake fiancé.
She could have died, and it would have been all my fault. Because I failed to protect her.
I wanted to tear through the room, wanted to throw the furniture and punch through the walls. I wanted to shift into my lycan and let him take over and find this asshole, find the male who dared touch what was ours.
But the small, soft, warm hand in mine kept me anchored in the present, reminding me that while that was what I wanted, what I needed was to be with my mate. My Sugar Plum.
The bond between us was already strong. She could already pull me out of a blind rage, and she didn’t even know she was doing that. My mind drifted to all the times over the weeks since she’d appeared in Crescent Lake that she’d calmed me with just her touch, and I rubbed my forehead with my fingertips.
Stupid. I was so stupid. It was her. It had always been her, and I was just too dense to realize it.
“Who was he?” I asked, and Sebastian shrugged.
“Lennox,” Haven said from behind me, her voice small and hoarse.
I whipped my head around to her, just as she swallowed and winced against the pain in her throat. I leaned over her, stroking her hair as I’d meant to before I saw her injury, keeping my hand away from where Dr. Russo and the nurses worked on cleaning and stitching up her wound.
“Who?” I asked her, my thumb rubbing her knuckles where I still held her hand.
She swallowed a few more times, her eyes closing with each one as she worked through the pain in her throat. I wouldn’t force her to talk anymore after this because she needed to rest and heal, but I knew she wanted to give me an answer.
“My ex,” she said, her voice almost inaudible.
Red flashed across my vision, and I growled again, low and deep, my hand gripping hers tightly. She squeezed it back. “Wes—“
“Don’t,” I whispered, shaking my head. “Don’t talk, Sugar Plum. You’ll just hurt your voice more. It’s okay. I’m okay,” I said.
Even though I was far from it. I was livid. Beyond livid. Not only was her ex a shifter, too, but he was a lycan. Which meant he had alpha blood.
“Find him,” I ordered Sebastian with a quick glance.
“Yes, Alpha,” he replied, nodding at me, using the title that wasn’t mine yet to show his respect.
But then he pressed his lips together as his eyes slid to Haven, pointing at her. “Sparkles, you have to get better so you can keep my brother in line.”
I looked at him again with a glare, but he just winked at me and scurried out of the room before I could growl at him again.
When I turned back to Haven, she had the glint of a laugh in her eyes. Her hand pulled away from mine, and she rubbed her thumb over the frown between my eyebrows. Then her hand moved down my face and my neck to my chest, her eyes tracking the movements, her own frown now marring her features.
She pulled her hand away, then put it back, right over my heart. “What is—“
A grimace of pain cut her words off as the doctor placed stitches on the gash closest to her neck. I snarled at him, my lycan pushing forward at our mate’s pain.
“I’m sorry, Alpha, but I have to stitch her up. We gave her a local anesthetic, but it might not have kicked in fully yet,” Dr. Russo said, apologizing as he continued stitching her wounds.
I looked back at my mate, at the determined set of her jaw. She was so brave, so brave and so strong, trying to hold in her pain and her tears.
“Here, Alpha,” a nurse said, pushing a chair close to the bed for me.
I sat in it and held Haven’s hand, pushing warmth and love to her through the bond. I wasn’t sure how much of it she could feel since she was human, but I did it anyway.
With a gentle squeeze of her hand, I apologized. “I’m so sorry, Sugar Plum. I should have been there with you. I should have protected you.”
I brought her hand back up to my mouth, pressing a kiss to it and holding it there. My eyes squeezed shut as tears tried to force their way out, but I wouldn’t let them fall. Not until the nurses were gone, at least.
Her eyes drooped, her breathing evened out, and soon she was asleep, and the nurses placed the last of the bandages on her now healing wound.
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?