33. Sneak Peek of Book 4 Fated to the Reluctant Alpha #2
She stood for a moment with her hand on the open door and looked back up the trail toward where the ridge climbed out of sight.
Then she said something. Not to anyone. Just into the air, in a voice quiet enough that he wouldn't have caught it from inside human ears.
“I'll be back tomorrow, beautiful.”
A person would say that to a wild animal she'd just photographed in a form she hadn't expected. Already planning. Already coming back.
His wolf went very still. He wanted to go with her. Wanted her to stay. Wanted just to keep seeing her, and he couldn't decide which of those wantings was loudest.
She got into the cab, started the engine, and drove out of the pullout. The road wound down off the ridge toward the long valley where the small ranches were and the lights of town came on in the evenings. He watched the truck disappear into the curve.
He stayed in the trees until the engine thinned to nothing and the wind took the last of her and he couldn't pretend, anymore, that she was within reach.
Then he turned and ran back along the inside line of the patrol road. Hard pace, because the animal wouldn't slow. Cold ground. Dark trees. The kind of run that should have burned the body out and didn't.
He shifted at the line of trees nearest his cabin clearing. His knees went down on the cold dirt. He pressed his hands against the ground to hold himself there. Counted heartbeats with his forehead on his fists, waiting for his body to stop shaking.
It didn't.
He walked the last hundred yards to the cabin in human skin.
The cabin was where he'd left it that morning. Truck in the drive. Light on the porch. Radio on the kitchen counter. Clean shirt on the bench by the door.
He stood in the doorway and looked at the radio.
He hadn't wanted this.
He'd been very clear with himself about it for years. Falling like that was a thing other Holbrooks ran into, like Jace had run into Maren on a doorway in town. It was a thing he was going to thank the universe for keeping clear of him.
He had Blackridge. He had patrol. He had the eastern boundary. He had a body that worked and a job that mattered and the small clean satisfactions of a man who didn't need anyone to need him for the day to mean something.
He'd been a man who didn't have a mate. He didn't know how to be the man who did.
Inside him the animal paced. Tonight it was pacing a tight, tight circle, wanting to go to her, wanting to be near her, anxious that they weren't with her now.
Jace was waiting for an update. Last night's promise had been I'll see where the trail goes. Tonight's call should be the answer.
Found her. Female. Human. Around thirty. Camera. Field notes. Following her tomorrow.
That was the protocol. That was what an Eastern Boundary Patrol Lead reported to his alpha at the end of a hunt.
I found my mate.
That was what a younger brother would tell his older brother, if a younger brother in Cade's position were ever going to be able to make himself say it out loud.
He picked up the radio.
His wolf made a sound he had only ever heard come out of an animal in real refusal.
He set the radio down.
He picked it up again.
The sound came again, lower. A refusal Cade could feel in his teeth.
He set it down.
He sat on the bench by the door, the clean shirt under his hand, and let the cabin's quiet settle around him.
He understood, then, that he wasn't going to make the call.
His father's voice came in the way it had since Cade was seven. On a winter morning, his father had set down his coffee cup and told Cade's mother how the rest of her day was going to go. Where she was going. How long she was staying. What she was bringing back.
I don't want to argue, his father had said.
Cade's mother had said all right in a voice that wasn't agreement. She had put on her coat and gone.
And the worst part of the memory, the part that lived in Cade in a place words couldn't reach, was that it hadn't been a bad day or a fight day. It had been a Tuesday. It had just been how things were done. His mother's day, decided for her at the kitchen counter, every week of his childhood.
That was the voice. That was the cold. That was the man Cade had vowed at sixteen never to let speak through his own mouth at a woman who was his.
If he called Jace tonight, the pack would be on her by midnight. They'd identify her. They'd watch her. They'd close around her and she'd never see Cade in form again, and his wolf would never get to see her again either, and that was the one thing he wasn't going to survive.
Cade didn't call Jace.
He didn't answer his father's voice either.
The road curved down off the ridge and out toward town. Wherever she was sleeping tonight, it was somewhere down that road. He couldn't see it from here. His wolf could feel it.
Now, his wolf said.
Tomorrow, Cade said back. We don't hurt her. We wait.
The wolf pulled hard.
Tomorrow, Cade promised.
It took a long time for his wolf to settle. When he did, it was the first stillness Cade had felt in his body since the wind had turned at the juniper stand.
He lay down on the bench, the clean shirt under his hand, and listened to his own breath and his wolf's, twined together, waiting for a morning they had not yet earned the right to.
By dawn he would be at her trailhead. He hadn't chosen it. His wolf had chosen it, and Cade was going to follow because the alternative was breaking apart in this cabin, and breaking apart was the same as making the call to Jace, and he wasn't going to make the call to Jace.
He felt the wolf settle deeper into the place between his ribs where wolves lived inside men. Tomorrow, the wolf said again, closer to a vow now than a question. Cade said Tomorrow back, and he knew it wasn't a refusal.
Continue Cade and Willa's Story inFated to the Reluctant Alpha