Page 5 of Exiled Mate

Terra’s always been so fucking pretty, she’s like the sun. It sometimes hurts to look at her, but she lights up anything and everything around her. She’s the center of everything to me, and I honestly can’t think of a more beautiful person.

On top of that, there isn’t a single night when I don’t fantasize about her.

She’s tall, with strong muscle that curves over her frame. It makes me growl to think about sliding my hands over her, and I know that if I keep going down that path in my head, I’m just going to end up frustrated as always, so I cut off the thought before it gets to her thick thighs and curved ass. Her hair is a beautiful cascade of browns and reds that I love to watch as they move in the wind, but today, she’s tucked every last curl into a pair of neat braids that arch down her head and over her shoulders.

I can’t see them from here, but her emerald-green eyes shine brighter than any jewel. Knowing that they’re clouded with tears? And, of course, that I can’t do anything about fixing them?

I fucking hate it.

In theory, I don’t know if she’s crying about me or not. I guess it’s kind of arrogant to assume so.

But I have seen the word “Rylan” on her lips a couple of times.

So. It’s pretty fucking reasonable to assume, I guess.

I accepted my exile like a fucking gentleman, and I’ve been living as a lone wolf ever since. But now that I know Chet is stealing pack funds again?

I need to come back.

What I don’t need to do, however, is insert myself back into Terra’s life again. She needs to find someone in the pack that she can settle down with. Someone she has a future with.

Someone who is not me.

I growl as I watch her leave her mom’s house. She stops at the back porch to undress, presumably to shift, and even though I want to look… I don’t.

It’s not right. Terra isn’t mine anymore.

And I would do fucking well to respect that.

However, when she takes off in the same direction that I last saw Chet and his idiots go toward, my heart ices over.

For two years, I’ve tried to keep Terra from harm. So, when she launches forward, a sleek auburn blur in the greenery, I follow her.

If Chet tries to fuck with her…

I growl.

It’ll be the last thing that he fucking does.

In a world where I don’t have the type of terrible luck that I do, Terra wouldn’t run after them. It’s a common enough trail, but there are multiple trails around that she could use instead.

However. This is the world I live in. Where my luck is shit.

And Terra… She’s going straight for the path that Chet and his two goons ran down an hour ago.

My panic mounts as I chase after her. If Chet finds her, he’s going to do something bad. A list of scenarios runs through my mind, each one worse than the one before.

He could hurt her. He could take her and use her in the fights that he fixes. He could…

My mind shuts off at the last one, and I sprint forward instead.

Terra’s so close to catching up with them. Their scent is getting much harder to ignore, and I wonder for a second if she’s tracking them on purpose.

I’m just rounding a bend, maybe five minutes from catching up with her, when I hear a growling noise.

Terra.

My feet fly over the ground. When I round the boulder that marks the edge of the trail, I freeze.

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