Filed to story: The Alpha’s Pen Pal Book
Nolan.
He snarled at Lennox, and then they lunged at each other, rolling and grappling away from me.
My chest rose and fell as I took shallow breaths, trying to fill my lungs and breathe through the pain. I knew I was bleeding, but the pain in my neck and shoulder was too much for me to focus on anything else.
As the wolves fought in the alley, Sebastian crouched in front of me, naked from the waist up, his hands holding his shirt against my neck to staunch the blood flow. His hands shook as he pressed down on my wound.
His mouth moved but I couldn’t hear what he said. The alley spun around me as I grew more and more lightheaded from the blood loss. My eyes fluttered open and shut, and I caught the tail end of Sebastian’s words, holding onto them like a lifeline to prevent myself from blacking out.
“Hold on, Sparkles…”
SEBASTIAN
I twisted my glass back and forth on the tabletop of our VIP booth, leaning back into the darkness of the space, keeping myself hidden from view. I wasn’t drinking my Negroni. Not really, at least. There was too much on my mind to drink.
So much had happened since that day Dad had called Reid and me into his office. What was meant to be just the two of us checking into some rogues turned into a whole ridiculous, drawn-out charade.
My brother was the most miserable I’d ever seen him. Except, perhaps for those weeks leading up to his forced shift and then the months after that, as he adjusted to his lycan and his life without Haven. But I was having a hard time feeling even the slightest bit bad for him. He’d dug his own grave with his choice.
Sure, I understood why he did it. I could respect his reasoning and respect him making that choice to step out of our dad’s shadow and be his own alpha.
But then he stepped right back under the umbrella when Dad told him to ignore Haven and all that bullshit. Not that Dad used those exact words, but that’s basically what he told Wes.
Which was stupid. He could have talked to her. Could have explained what was going on.
I knew they had a “fight.” Which I also knew was code for “I showed her my lycan, and she freaked out.” He hadn’t told me he did, but I figured it out. And I also knew she’d be ready to talk to him quicker than he thought. And she was.
It was all stupid. We could have explained things to Haven over the phone. Or we could have sent Maya back to their apartment to protect her, which wouldn’t have looked weird since they were roommates.
But no. Wesley didn’t have the balls to disobey Dad on that order. More than anything, I wanted to tell him how much of a mistake he was making, but I kept my mouth shut. Because one, he needed to learn for himself, and two, he wouldn’t have listened to me, anyway.
Plus, Dad was still keeping up the guise of the pack being on lockdown because of the “rogues” since he didn’t want to explain what was going on with Pierce to the whole pack.
“Have you heard anything?” Nolan asked me.
I glanced at him. He sat across from me, toying with his own drink and not really drinking it.
The dark circles under his eyes told me enough about how he and his wolf felt about the whole situation. We’d all become protective of Haven when Wesley used to write to her, and even more so now that we’d gotten to meet her.
The way it all ended up playing out thrilled none of us. We just had to hope she would forgive Wesley and his dumbass decisions.
“Nope,” I told him, taking a small swig. “It should all be done by now, but who knows what kind of shit Pierce might try to pull on us.”
Nolan nodded and stared back at his drink, reverting to his own thoughts, the same as we both had been all night.
“Well, hello there, Pretty Boy and Pretty Boy’s friend.”
I lifted my head, and my gaze met two big brown eyes framed with long lashes.
Sarina.
And then, just as quickly as I’d met her eyes, I averted mine, looking over to Nolan to gauge his reception of her. He was the only one of us who hadn’t met her yet.
He didn’t even react to her, though, beyond a nod of his head. “Nolan,” he said to her, holding out his hand so she could shake it.
“Sarina,” she replied, her lips curling into a smile.
She slid into our booth, scooting close to me. I clenched my jaw but stayed in my spot, even though I wanted to scoot away from her.
I wasn’t sure why, but that little rogue drove me crazy. Every interaction we had made my irritation with her jump another level. Maybe because she took me out so easily. It had been a minute since someone had gotten the jump on me like that.
“How’d you get in here?” I asked her, raising a brow. “You’re not even twenty-one.”
“Fake ID,” she said, shrugging her exposed shoulders.
I frowned. We’d need to have a chat with our employees about how to spot a fake.
“Relax, Pretty. It’s not a big deal,” she said, reaching out and patting my cheek.
I shut my eyes and exhaled through my nose, my hand tightening on my glass. When I opened them, she still stared at me, a little smile playing on her full lips.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I grumbled, glaring at her.
“I paid the cover fee, just like everyone else,” she replied, batting those long eyelashes.
As if that would work on me. I wasn’t Reid.
Maybe that was the reason she annoyed me so much. She was literally a female version of Reid. Flirty and touchy and aware of how attractive almost everyone found her.
“I meant up here. VIP area. It’s private,” I grunted.
“We rented the other booth,” she replied.
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?