Filed to story: The Alpha’s Pen Pal Book
Why was Kimberly at the mating ball? Why would she want to hurt our alpha and luna? And why would she plant a bomb in their room and then come to their pack demanding to speak with them?
None of it adds up.
Unless…
Unless she wasn’t after Wesley and Haven. My steps slow and my breath catches.
What if she was after someone else entirely? Cassandra got ready in Haven and Wesley’s room. She went straight there when we arrived at the hotel for the ball and never went into our room until after I marked her in the stairwell. Her scent would have been all over that room.
If Kimberly was at the ball, she would have seen me all over Cassandra. She would have known we were together. If she came to California for me, to try to win me back…
I exhale and sprint forward, chasing after Cassandra, who is almost to the packhouse, her one track mind not realizing I paused behind her.
I’m almost to her—only a few steps away—when a rabid, ear-piercing growl sounds nearby, and Kimberly charges towards Cassandra, launching herself at her with her claws out, her hands wrapping around Cassandra’s neck as she tackles her to the ground.
CASSANDRA
Clawed hands wrap around my throat, and a female body tackles me to the ground. I hit it with a thud, the air punching from my lungs on impact. But years of practice have my body and my mind prepared for attacks like this, and I catch my breath with ease.
As soon as I do, I flip us, wincing against the pain in my not-quite-healed legs as I wrap them around her to counter our positions. The blonde she-wolf beneath me yelps, but I hold firm, grappling with her hands as she fights back.
She caught me by surprise at first, but it’s clear she has minimal training. Her attempts to escape my grasp on her grow more pathetic by the second. She glares at me, her teeth bared and her dark brown eyes filled with rage as she growls and snarls, thrashing underneath me.
Nolan rushes towards us, but Mason grabs his arms, stopping him from getting closer. “What is she doing outside?” Nolan asks with a snarl.
“I was taking her to the council representative’s car!”
Kimberly’s crazed noises cover any further conversation between them. Her hands continue their frantic flailing, the only part of her I can’t maintain control of. I toss and whip my body around to stay out of her reach, but she eventually grabs my loose hair, yanking it with all her strength and ripping strands from my head in the process. I wince and hiss through the pain, but I grit my teeth, because her attack and focus on my hair gives me the opening I need.
I grab her arms and twist her wrists together, pinning them above her head with one hand, my other at her neck with claws extended, aimed directly at her artery.
“Bitch,” she spits at me. “He should be mine. He is mine.”
All I can do is laugh at her. “You’re delusional.”
My hand at her throat creeps closer, my extended claws scraping her skin. She stretches her neck and whimpers. Her eyes widen as I break the skin, a bead of blood forming and dripping down to the ground beneath her. I laugh again, leaning over her more, drawing my claw down her neck in a straight line, extending that superficial cut. “Even before you rejected him, he was never yours.”
She jerks herself away from my claw as I pierce deeper into her flesh, but I lift my knee higher, slam it down, and slide it next to her head, pushing hard against her skull so she can’t lean away to avoid the impending injury. She squeezes her eyes shut, and with a trembling body and a piercing pitch, she shrieks, “Yield! I yield!”
My lycan curls her lip, unsatisfied with her surrender, but as soon as the words leave her mouth, Nolan lifts me off her and takes me several steps away from where we fought. His hands cup my cheeks, and he scans my body frantically, his brows furrowed and his eyes filled with worry.
“Are you all right?” he asks, keeping me close to him, hovering over me and shielding me from the world, and I nod in response. “Did she hurt you?”
“No,” I say.
He exhales in relief and drops his forehead to mine, eyes closing. His fingers weave into the hair at my nape, and his other hand trails down my neck, fingertips circling my mark, as if he’s reassuring himself that it’s still there. I arch my neck higher, submitting to him and confirming his claim on me, and he swallows, aligning his hips with mine as he continues to trace my mark.
The sensual, possessive touch sends unfathomable shivers of delight skittering across my skin, shivers that extend to my very soul. Growling, I rise onto my toes and kiss him, curling my hands into his shirt.
This male is mine, and I want anyone who is watching to know it.
The kiss is passionate, but brief, Nolan tearing his lips from mine after only a few seconds. Tension builds under his skin, his muscles rippling, and he takes my hand in his.
“I need to get you away from her,” he murmurs, the concern from his eyes working its way into the timbre of his voice.
“You’re not safe around her,” he adds, leading me towards the packhouse.
His long strides are difficult to keep pace with, and I have to jog to keep up with him. But we only make it five paces towards the house when he roars and whirls around, his hand flying out and catching a charging Kimberly by the throat. His momentum keeps him spinning, and he throws her to the ground, landing with his knee in her gut and both hands around her neck. Behind us, Mason crouches on the ground, hunched over and covering his groin with one hand and wiping dirt from his eyes with his other hand.
Kimberly claws at Nolan’s arms, eyes bulging, but he slams her against the ground again. “How dare you try to attack my mate after you’d already surrendered!”
Her lip trembles, and she pushes it out into a fake pout. “But I’m your mate!”
Nolan growls and tightens his grip on her neck. “You are nothing to me,” he says to her in a low voice. “And I will not hesitate to end your life like you tried to end hers.”
My lycan and I both warm at his possessive and protective claim on us, a pulse of desire running through me. But I can’t help but laugh a little as well. “She has minimal training, Nolan. There’s no way she would have done enough damage to kill me either time, even by catching me off guard.”
Instead of being reassured, he doubles down on his relentless hold on Kimberly. “I’m not talking about now. I’m talking about the bomb. The one she set in our alpha and luna’s hotel room.” Kimberly freezes, her frantic squirming beneath Nolan coming to a complete halt, her eyes widening. “That’s right. We know you set the bomb. But you made a mistake, Kimberly. That room wasn’t Cassandra’s.”
Kimberly shakes her head and starts fighting his grip again. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she insists, her voice squeaking and trembling and her heart thundering with her lie.
Nolan smirks at her. “Sure you do.”
She lifts her chin in defiance. “Enlighten me.”
Nolan licks his lips and shakes his head, his knee pressing harder into her stomach and his claws extending. Each one scrapes over her flesh, leaving behind ten slices identical to the one I gave her only minutes before.
“I’m still filling in the gaps, but I think I’ve got most of it figured out,” he says. “You came to California after your alpha figured out you’ve been lying to him for seven years. You hoped to find me, expecting I’d still be hung up on Rachel and willing to take you back. But instead, you saw me with Cassandra, in love and happier than I’ve ever been in my life. You tracked her scent to a hotel room and placed a bomb inside, then waited to show up here and make it all seem like a coincidence.”
My jaw drops open and my heart races in my chest as Nolan relays his theories to her, my hands shaking as I curl them into fists at my side. “How’d she know we were at the ball, though?” I ask. “And how’d she get the bomb and get into Haven and Wesley’s room?”
Nolan’s brow furrows, but his attention doesn’t leave Kimberly, ensuring she stays where he has her, even though there is no way out of his hold on her. “Those are the missing pieces I can’t fill in either.”
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?