Filed to story: The Alpha’s Pen Pal Book
“Got it. You okay?”
“No,” I growled, and then I hung up.
I threw my phone onto the passenger seat and ripped my shirt over my head. Then I hopped out of the truck and ran into the trees before taking my pants off and leaving them on the ground as I shifted into my lycan. My claws dug into the dirt, and I had to hold back the howl threatening to break through my mouth.
It hurt that she thought I could hurt her. But even more than that, it hurt to see her hurting. And she was so sure. So firm in her belief that I would do something so horrible as abandon her when she needed me the most.
It gutted me. And I couldn’t even blame her. I’d be mad at me, too, if I was her.
And even though I knew all those years ago there was a chance she’d think I’d abandoned her, to see it come to fruition was something I could never have prepared for. We’d spent over a year trying to find her, to find out her name and where she’d moved to. My dad had hired private investigators and even tried using a witch, but it was all to no avail.
We should have tried harder. I’d always thought we hadn’t done enough, but now I knew for sure. I knew it hadn’t been enough.
Some friend I was.
No. I didn’t even deserve that title. I was just the boy who broke her.
I made it to our pack lands in record time and took a lap around the perimeter, staying under the cover of the trees. About halfway through, a light gray lycan and a rusty-furred wolf flanked me, running with me.
I acknowledged Sebastian and Nolan with a nod, then kept on my path. It was a normal loop for me, one I ran almost every morning before our mandatory training.
My friend and my brother ran with me in silence, not asking me questions or trying to talk to me. They both knew better. Seb might be an asshole, but he was more intuitive than he let on. And Nolan—well, he was just returning the favor.
I finished my first lap and then started in on a second. But unlike that awful day almost twelve years ago, I didn’t try to outrun my companions. I stayed in stride with them, letting their presence calm my rage.
Even though it wasn’t the same as the way a mate could calm me, the bond between the four of us was strong, forged not just because of our parents’ friendship but because of all we’d gone through at each other’s side.
I led us back to my house, glad I had moved out of the family suite in the packhouse a few years ago. I did not want to see my mom or my dad right now.
I slammed my front door open, not even caring how hard it hit the wall in the entry as I stalked through my house, still in my lycan form.
I heard the other two following me and then ducking into one of the spare rooms where they knew I kept extra clothes for them. Their muttering voices as they shifted and changed echoed in the otherwise quiet house, but I tuned them out as I pulled on a pair of gray sweatpants and a black T-shirt.
I exited my bedroom and stormed back out onto the porch. I threw myself onto the porch swing, where I crossed my arms and sat pouting like a toddler. Being outside was a must, though. I couldn’t stay cooped up in the small spaces in my little bungalow.
“So, how did coffee with Haven go?” Sebastian asked as he leaned against the railing.
I growled out in response. Nolan sat down next to me, leaning his forearms on his knees.
“That well, huh?” Nolan said.
“She didn’t show up,” I grumbled.
“Ouch.” Sebastian winced.
“She didn’t show up, and when I went to their apartment to find out why… She said she wrote to me. She said she gave me her new address, and when I never wrote back because I never got the letter…” I shook my head. “She thinks I abandoned her,” I said, my knee bouncing up and down.
“But you didn’t,” Sebastian said.
“Didn’t I though?” I asked. “I may as well have. I should have tried harder. I should have realized sooner something wasn’t right. Then maybe we’d have had enough time to get her before someone else did.”
“Wes, you didn’t give up on her. You went to our parents and told them something wasn’t right. You checked every day—no—every hour for an update on her.” I shrugged at Sebastian’s words. “Did you tell her that? Did you tell her Nolan’s parents tried to adopt her?”
“No,” I grunted. “It wouldn’t have mattered. She made her mind up. She thinks I’m a bastard, and she’s right.”
“Why do you care so much?”
“What?” I asked.
“Why do you care so much?” Seb repeated.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean—I mean you fucking SHIFTED when you found out someone else had adopted her and that you would not get to see her. That you wouldn’t be able to reach out to her unless she contacted you first. When you thought you’d failed her. Shifted. At twelve years old.”
“What’s your point?” I asked.
Seb threw his hands in the air, then gestured to Nolan as if to say, “You try.”
“What Seb is trying to say,” Nolan began, “is you’ve never cared this much about what a girl thought of you. No girl has ever affected you like this. Then Haven comes back into your life, and one comment, one negative opinion from her, has you tearing yourself apart. Why? What makes Haven so special?”
His question, combined with his words from the previous night, had my spiraling thoughts halting in their tracks. There it was. The answer was staring me right in the face, taking the form of a nine-year-old girl with blue eyes and messy red hair, morphing into the beautiful woman who took my breath away the night before.
All this time, I hadn’t even realized it. But the impossible, imaginary standard I subconsciously compared every other girl to wasn’t impossible or imaginary—it wasn’t even a standard at all. It was a person. Her. Haven. “I-I don’t know, but—“
“Do you think she’s your mate?” Nolan asked.
I considered his words. She was human. Human mates weren’t unheard of, but there would be no way to know for sure yet. The mate bond didn’t appear until both mates were twenty-one.
“It’s too early to know,” I said. “Her birthday is still a few weeks away.” And then the next words left my mouth before I even had a chance to think about them, as if they were the words that had been on the tip of my tongue, waiting to be said for eleven long years. “But even if the Goddess doesn’t give her to me, I’m going to make her mine.”
I declared my intent with a determination I hadn’t felt in a long time. I wanted her. Damn it, I wanted her. And not just because of her looks, although that was part of it, but because of who she was.
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?