18. Dom
18
DOM
“ Y ou bit her.” Galen gets right to the point after marching me out of the house, down the porch and into the forest.
“I did.” I could apologize, but it’s not Galen who needs my apology or my forgiveness.
It’s Kira.
He stares at me. “Does she know?”
I shake my head. “I did tell her… eventually, but she was asleep and didn’t hear.”
He curses, swings away, curses again, and then glares at me. “Now what?”
“Now I tell her what the bite means, and that I’m not human,” I say calmly. “She will walk away and that will be that.”
Galen’s expression doesn’t change. “And your wolf? How does he feel about that?”
In the distance, a car engine heads toward our property.
I glance toward the house, but we’re too far away to see it. Galen must have anticipated doing a lot of growling for us to be this deep in the forest. Kira is human. If she heard all that growling, she might start to wonder about us.
I’m not alarmed by the engine. Firstly, because Bryce signed the divorce papers, and secondly, it’s a familiar engine we’ve heard countless times over the years.
Ivar, the postman will drop the letters at the house and leave.
A couple of minutes later, I hear him do just that.
Galen’s expression becomes increasingly more thunderous the longer I don’t speak. “Dom. This is not one of the times to take fucking forever to decide what you want to say. Is your wolf attached to her?”
I nod.
His stare extends. “And you still bit her!”
“I tried to stop myself,” I hiss. “But I’ve wanted her since the first time I saw her, and my wolf has needed her since I was twenty-one and I couldn’t?—”
He grips my arms and shakes me. “Okay, I get it. If she walks away?”
I shrug. “I’ll ensure she has everything she needs so she won’t?—”
“You,” he interrupts, “I meant you . I know you’ll look after her. But what does this mean for your wolf, who is attached to his mate and might lose her?”
Death most likely. Not that I would ever tell Kira that.
“We should go inside and finish breakfast.” I turn to leave.
Galen’s hand tightens on my shoulder. “So you’ll just let her walk away, knowing it will kill you and your wolf.”
Kira is in the house with Sierra. If Galen dragged me out here to talk, I have no doubt Sierra cleared that kitchen at the first opportunity to talk with Kira. I need to tell her what I am. I should have already, but it’s not easy knowing I will lose her.
“She escaped an abuser.” I stare toward the house, though I can’t see it. “Whatever Kira needs to be happy, whatever she needs to be free, is hers. If that place is not with me, then so be it. I’ll accept those consequences.”
“And me? The alpha who will be without his beta?”
I turn to look at him. “You’ll cope. I have on good authority your growling has reduced by thirty percent. That’s near normal levels,” I say dryly.
He doesn’t smile. “You’re my friend, Dom. Not just my beta. I don’t want to lose you.”
“You won’t.”
But I don’t believe that. From his probing stare, neither does he..
“We should go back to the house.”
I’m not interested in breakfast. I’ll sit beside my beautiful mate, hold her hand under the table, and enjoy what will be the last meal before I take her outside, and tell her I’m not human. Then I’ll watch her climb into her car and drive away from me.
“Nope.” Galen nearly wrenches my arm out of its socket, dragging me back. “We’re going for a run. You and me. Right now. Shift .”
I sense another bad idea is in the works. Maybe one even worse than wandering the streets for someone to take potshots at us. “And will this run as wolves take us away from the house or towards it?”
I get a suspiciously long pause and a far too innocent look. “Perhaps.”
“No.”
He growls. “You need to tell her, or?—”
“—you’ll force me to show her? Because her coming face to face with a wolf is really going to make her stay.”
“She might. Does she like animals? Ever had a dog?”
There are rare moments I don’t know what to say or do.
Being a Marine taught me a lot. Mostly resilience, facing down the things that scare you, and knowing that you always have someone fighting beside you who would die for you, and you would do the same for them.
I look at Galen and I’m struck dumb. “You think she won’t have a problem with me being a wolf because she once had a dog growing up?”
He growls again. “It suggests she likes animals.”
“And wolves are like dogs?” I arch a brow.
“We are not like dogs,” he snarls.
“I am not the one who suggested?—”
“As interesting and strange as this conversation is,” Sierra interrupts, joining us in the forest. “Have you seen Kira?”
I frown. “She was with you.”
Sierra shakes her head. “No. She went for a walk and no one has seen her since.”
“How long?”
She shrugs. “Maybe five, ten minutes. We talked in the kitchen not long after Galen did his caveman thing, and?—”
“I did not,” Galen snaps.
“Yes, you did,” Sierra says, not looking away from me. “Then she went for a walk, and now no one can find her.”
Panic spikes in my gut, sharp and overwhelming. What if she guessed what I was and left before I can explain? What if she decided she wanted Bryce after all?
“Her car?” Frowning, I lead the way back toward the house.
“Still there,” Sierra responds.
“Could she have wandered into the forest and gotten lost?” I step into the clearing outside the house and lift my chin to scent the air.
There are the usual scents. Gas from a car engine, nature smells, my packmates. Kira’s scent is recent. She definitely walked out of the house not long ago, and just like Sierra said, her car is where she left it.
“The outbuilding.” Galen is already heading that way, and we move at a faster pace.
But there’s no sign of her. Was she looking for something? Maybe me?
“What did you talk about?” I turn to ask Sierra as, by silent agreement, we leave the outbuilding and track Kira’s most recent scent back the way it came.
“Just about you being a war hero and her liking you a lot,” Sierra says.
Pleased, I slow, turning to face her. “She said she liked me?”
“You were a war hero?” Galen asks.
“It was in the past,” I say distracted. “What did she say about me?”
Sierra rolls her eyes and keeps walking. “Nope. I’m not playing the kiss and tell game. You’ll have to ask her that yourself. I told her you had a growly but protective side.”
I stop. “ What !”
Ringing starts up behind me, and Galen fishes his phone out of his pocket. “Yeah, Shawn, what’s up?”
I listen in. With shifter hearing, I can hear both sides of the call, so he doesn’t need to put it on loudspeaker.
“I just had a call from Ivar. He was working in the mailroom when someone clubbed him in the back of the head with a blunt object. When he woke up, someone had taken his truck. Since Kira was having trouble, I thought this might be related. If you?—”
“It was here,” I interrupt.
Galen frowns at me.
I angle my head toward the trampled side road that leads off our property. The same road Ivar—or whoever took his truck—would have traversed. “That truck was here. I’d recognize that engine anywhere. But if it wasn’t Ivar driving it. Then who was?”
Galen hangs up as Shawn is speaking.
It’s rare for him to howl in his human form.
This time, it’s necessary. Galen throws his head back and howls. The sound that rings out across Pack Hunt land is pure wolf, and the meaning is clear.
A packmate is in trouble, and everyone needs to gather.
Now .
My wolf sits up, alert, waiting for the order from his alpha. In the house, doors slam, yells ring out and footsteps pound this way.