Page 134 of Unwilling Wolf

She belonged in Boston.

“Fuck!” he roared toward the woods, gripping his hair.

She was right to go back.

She would be safer there.

She was right, but it hurt so fuckin’ bad.

The snapping of his bones was a small comfort in this moment. The only thing that could ease the hurt was to lose his mind to the animal.

Tomorrow she would leave.

Tomorrow would be the end of the life he’d never even known he wanted.

Tomorrow, everything would change.

Tomorrow he would go back to the life he had so badly wanted to preserve the day Roy had charged him with marrying Eliza.

Tomorrow he would have to go back to feeling empty.

Chapter Forty-Five

“Where is that pretty wife of yours?” Clint Jennings asked.

The mention of Eliza sent a stabbing sensation to Garret’s gut, but he’d expected this. Clint was good at pushing buttons.

Garret kept his face carefully aloof. “She’s somewhere out of your reach.”

Clint narrowed his eyes. “And your people? Will they stay there?”

Garret angled his face toward Lenny, Burke, Wells, and Cookie, who sat on Roy’s porch. “I thought this was supposed to be wolf against wolf. Why would I need my people? Listen to the truth in my voice. They are here to witness, as law requires, nothing more. The winner is the winner.”

He didn’t miss the way Clint scanned the woods when he moved to shrug out of his shirt.

“I can smell them, you know,” Garret said low as he unbuttoned his shirt.

“Smell who?”

“I think the bloodlust, it heightens the senses. Have you ever been in bloodlust, Clint?” Garret asked, pulling his shirt off. “It happens when you kill so many of another Pack, that you become tuned to them.” Garret lifted his chin higher and narrowed his eyes at Clint. “I can feel if they’re close.”

“Perhaps you feel your own Pack,” Clint growled.

“I’ve ordered my Pack to hang back. It’s the law for our people. If a Challenge is thrown, it’s wolf on wolf, and whatever happens happens. You know that though, right, Clint? You’ve been an Alpha for a long time.”

Garret circled the man slowly, his wolf scratching at his skin.

The cocking of a rifle had him freezing in place, and across from him, Clint did the same.

Garret slid his gaze to the trees, where a man stumbled out of the woods.

It was one of Clint’s Pack, and he was holding a rifle in the air. “Call him off!”

Garret’s eyebrows lifted higher as he spied the reason for that wolf’s fear in his eyes.

Roy Davis was walking behind him with a rifle pointed at the back of his head.

Oh.

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