Page 56 of Possessive Alpha

My wolf lets out a mournful growl that we’re not out running with them.

Later, I assure her. We can go for a run later.

Distracted by thoughts of exactly what I’m going to tell Clara about Ty, I wander a lot farther than I expected. Periodically, I peer into trees in case Clara is playing another game of lets set Ty and Martha up. Then I round a tree and a sight stops my heart.

Clara isn’t hiding up a tree.

A blond man in black has a hold of her. A familiar one. Cody, a pack enforcer from Minnesota and the reason we took such a long and winding route to get here. I’d hoped to never see him again. He has one hand clapped over her mouth as she struggles while he drags her deeper into the forest.

A man has my little sister.

I sprint toward them, yelling all the while, hoping someone at the house will hear and come investigate this fight. Cody struggles, and Clara comes close to breaking out of his grip as I reach them. I grab Clara by her right arm and yank her away at the same time I throw myself at Cody.

Cody and I go down as Clara stumbles back.

It isn’t a fair fight. I’m petite. Cody is nearly six feet tall and packed with muscle. Shifting isn’t an option—I’m too slow—and neither is a partial shift, since only dominant shifters can do them. But I’m desperate.

I go for his eyes with hooked fingers. I knee him between the legs.

It’s not a fair fight, but sometimes, desperation can count for a lot.

I scream at Clara to get back, and by pure luck, elbow one of Cody’s organs from the grunt of pain he lets out as he releases me.

Just in time.

Footsteps are pounding this way.

I scramble to my feet and twist to face the footsteps hurtling this way. This isn’t someone coming from the house to help me. I recognize the scent, and it’s not a friend.

A male shifter bursts between two trees. Again familiar.

Dark-haired to Cody’s fair.

Seth.

The other reason we were sleeping in our car and desperate to get out of Minnesota.

These two men are enforcers for an alpha who has his sights on Clara.

I saw them once through a window we’d left open. They’d been entering the apartment as Clara and I had returned from a grocery store. It was pure luck we hadn’t been inside at the time, they’d been that close to getting us.

Days later, we’d seen reports of a body found wedged in the apartment’s cleaning room. Our landlord. Maybe he’d walked in on Cody and Seth in our apartment and confronted them, wanting to know what they were doing.

It had cost him his life.

Reports of the body and of how a cop had been retching on the street made the national news. The killing was that brutal. It’s why we had started sleeping in our car.

And now they’ve found us.

They are here. Not for me. For Clara, and there’s no way both Clara and I are getting back to the house.

Not against two enforcers.

I back up, putting myself squarely in front of Clara as I track the two enforcers stalking toward us. “Go, Clara.”

She stutters, “What? No. I?—”

Seth lunges at me. I twist, shoving Clara away from me as I grunt and go down when a heavy weight tackles me to the ground, hitting so hard that I cough.

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