Page 72 of Possessive Alpha

I sit down on the floor beside the door, stretch my legs out, and motion to my lap. “You can rest your head here if you want, Ty.”

Ty crosses over to me, sniffs my hair, and licks my cheek before sinking beside me, his head on my thighs. He’s heavy, but I don’t care.

Once he’s gotten settled, I start stroking my hand through his fur. “I’m sorry I made you come into the cave after me.”

He snorts.

I think he’s telling me not to be so stupid.

“We’ll leave you alone now, okay?” Jackson calls through the door.

“Okay,” I say as I stroke Ty’s soft fur.

I listen to Jackson tell everyone to go to bed, and I wait until it sounds like the hallway is empty. I keep expecting Ty to shift back to his human form. From the soft rumbling he’s making, I decide to test out a theory about why he’s still a wolf.

I stop stroking his fur.

He growls.

Smiling, I resume stroking, and he returns to his soft, contented rumbles. “You’re high-maintenance.”

He nips my thigh, and I yelp.

“Everything okay?” Jackson yells, making me jump.

“Stop hanging on the stairs,” Regan says before I can assure him I’m okay. “They are fine. You’re like a mother hen. Come up to bed.”

I stifle a laugh as Jackson grumbles, his footsteps making the floorboards creak.

I’m so relaxed, I could sleep with my head resting on the wall at my back and a big, heavy, and warm wolf half lying in my lap.

But I don’t sleep.

Can’t with all the guilt churning in my gut.

I take in the broken front of Ty’s white dresser, a few torn clothes pulled from it on the floor beside it, and I spot a couple of holes in the wall.

Ty doesn’t have much. Now he has even less because of me.

My eyes fill with tears, and I hate this new crying habit. But I’ve never met anyone like Ty before, someone who keeps making me feel so much. I think I was living in a daze, not letting myself feel anything.

I just did what I needed to do, made sure Clara and I had food, somewhere safe to stay, and that was it. That was all I let myself think about.

“I think about Clara too much,” I say, still stroking Ty’s head. “You didn’t tell me when we watched the sunrise, but I think you were hinting it, and you were right. I made her my sole focus in life, and I stopped thinking about what I wanted or needed.”

Ty lifts his head and stares at me.

“You shouldn’t have followed me into that cave,” I tell him, blinking more tears away. “I have to tell you something and I don’t want to, but it’s easier when you’re a wolf. Is that okay?”

He licks the end of my nose, and I smile.

When he returns his head to my lap, I focus on the half-open drapes and the sun creeping into the sky.

“Clara and I left our old pack years ago,” I say, burrowing my fingers in his fur, no longer stroking it but holding on. This story is not a happy one, but as Ty has slowly been opening up to me, all I’ve done from the start is keep him out.

I let myself think of Ohio. Back before everything went wrong.

“Our pack lived close to another. It was a problem. A growing one.” I consider how to explain everything that happened next in as few words as possible. “Eventually, our packs grew enough that we were too close. The town wasn’t big enough for us to visit and not run into each other. It caused fights, which got worse when one of their alphas saw a girl they liked in our pack and wanted her.”

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