Page 57 of Possessive Alpha

This isn’t a fight I can win, but I try. If it buys Clara time to get away, I will never stop fighting.

Once I recover my breath, I yell again, “Go, Clara!”

“Get her,” Seth yells.

I have one brief sight of Clara hesitating, blue eyes filled with panic.

Cody races toward her.

She whirls around as a blow rocks my head to the side, turning my world black.

CHAPTER 17

"Shit." A brown paper bag splits in my hands, spilling canned soup across the sidewalk.

I drop to my knees, grabbing at them before they can roll under parked cars. This is important. We’re running low on cash. I can’t afford to waste any food.

“Need some help?” His scent hits me a second before his friendly call.

Abandoning the soup, I scramble to get up and run.

The man—the shifter—is standing feet away. Not close enough to grab me, but not so far away I can relax.

With my body half-turned to my car and my hand hovering near my back pocket where I stuffed my car keys, I hesitate.

I battle with the need to rescue my food or to run away.

In the end, the handsome dark-haired shifter decides the next course of action. Bending, he picks up one can before it can roll under a parked car. Then another. In seconds, he has all my food back in the ripped bag which he places on the side-walk and backs away from it—and me.

He looks at me then. “I won’t pick up the bag. It’ll probably split again, but I think I got everything.”

The need for food overcomes the need to run. For now. Clara and I arrived in Minnesota a couple of days ago and we needed supplies. If I hadn’t spent so much in the store, I’d turn away and never look back. But it’s not a small amount of food I’d be walking away from.

“You didn’t have to do that for me,” I say, not moving a step closer.

He gives me a crooked smile. “I’m a man who likes to help out when he can. Well, I’ll see you around. Oh, I’m Adrian, by the way.”

And then he leaves.

He knows—must smell—that I’m a female shifter, and I’m alone. He doesn’t ask what I’m doing here. Doesn’t try to grab me. He just leaves.

I watch him climb into a black jeep and drive away.

It isn’t until I’ve snatched up the ripped paper bag and gotten back into my car that I find the bundle of notes he must have tucked inside.

There must be nearly a hundred dollars here.

Why would he help me and not demand anything in return?

“It was a brave thing you did.” The male voice slips into my sluggish brain. Faint, but growing louder as I return to consciousness. “A stupid thing, but brave.”

A stone digs into my cheek, and as I slowly turn to move it, my head swims, and I moan as my belly roils.

Footsteps crunch toward me and stop inches from my head.

A familiar scent clues me in on who it is. Seth.

Sensing how vulnerable I am, I flutter my eyes open.

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