Page 52 of Alpha's Forbidden Bond

I looked at her with raised brows. “You are?”

“Yes,” she confirmed. “I don’t want you to worry about me at all. You just focus on the pack, focus on helping Sarafina heal, and then maybe in a couple weeks… a couple months maybe…” She shrugged. “Maybe we can figure out what we’re going to do then. But for now, I want you to take all the time you need. You don’t need me being a distraction.”

I thought about reaching for her hand but then realized that if I curled my fingers around hers, I would never be able to let go. I put my hands in my pockets instead.

“Diana,” I said with a heavy exhale.

“I told you to call me Di, remember?”

But I couldn’t. It would be too hard.

“If—if the last forty-eight hours have taught us anything,” I went on, avoiding calling her anything. “It’s that we are always finding trouble. Every time we’ve been together, we’ve found a way to do something reckless or crazy. We were lucky at first, with our chance encounters not resulting in anything catastrophic, but now… I think it’s time we take an even bigger step back.”

She stopped and looked up at me with an expression that cracked my heart clean in half. “What are you saying?”

“I can’t do this,” I said, forcing the words out even though my body fought against me. “This—this was a really bad idea from the start, and I now understand that I’ll never be able to be a good leader if I have you in my life.”

“What are you talking about? That doesn’t make any sense!”

“But it does.” I turned to her but resisted looking into her eyes or pulling her into a hug. “Diana, I love you too much. As long as you’re in my life, as long as you’re mine, I will never put anything before you. You will always come first, and that’s wrong. If I hadn’t been born to be a pack leader, I would be able to do whatever I want, I could be with a human and not worry about you becoming my whole world, but that’s not the reality we live in. There’s too much at stake.”

She started to cry, and I looked away.

“If Sarafina makes it through this, then I’m going to marry her as planned,” I forced my voice to remain neutral, “and then I will focus on strengthening my pack at all costs. I can’t—I can’t have any distractions. Which means I need to forget about you, about everything that’s happened between us.”

“Do you really think you can do that?” she said through her tears. “Do you really think you’ll be able to just forget about me? Because I won’t be able to throw away those memories so easily. But maybe I’m just not as callous as you.”

“Diana, I’m so?—”

“Don’t even say it,” she hissed. “I don’t want your pity.”

“It’s not pity. I really am sorry. I don’t want to do this at all.”

“Then don’t!”

“I have to!”

She stared at me for a few seconds, her bottom lip trembling. I so badly wanted to pull her into my arms and take back everything I had just said, but I held strong. Thinking about my pack—about my family and my mother’s expectations for me—I was able to keep the distance between us and stay stoic.

“Okay then,” she said after a while, stepping back from me. “I can see that you’ve made up your mind, and nothing I say or do will convince you that this isn’t our only option. I’m willing to fight for you—to find a way for us to be together, but if you’re not willing to put in the effort, then that tells me everything I need to know.”

She was goading me. Perhaps she was trying to get me to say more and buy herself some time to refute my points, but I didn’t let her get to me. As much as I cared about her, the most important reason I was sending her away had nothing to do with me or the pack at all. It had to do with her. If there was a wolf in our midst that had no problem killing humans who they felt knew too much, that put Diana at risk. Really, as a human lover of a werewolf pack leader, she was always going to be at risk. I could never live with myself if she got hurt, and this was the only way I was going to guarantee that I didn’t bring any danger into her life. It had to be this way, no matter how much it killed both of us to walk away.

“You can’t be here when Sarafina’s family wakes up,” I said softly, biting back against the tears now making my voice husky. “Take Georgie and go home. I’ll have Mikeal bring your car into town tomorrow morning. He’ll leave it parked outside the bookstore.”

She narrowed her eyes with hatred—an emotion I knew could only be felt by someone who had once felt love as well. I wondered if it were possible that she had ever loved me as much as I loved her.

As much as I was going to continue loving her.

Diana squared her shoulders and stood up straight. “I hope Sarafina pulls through,” she said. “And I hope you find the murderer. I hope that everything works out and the pack is safe and strong. I hope you have a good life, Andreas. But most of all, I hope that I never, ever set eyes on you again.”

With that, she broke our shared gaze, spun on her heel, and walked away.

Chapter 26

Diana

The shock didn’t wear off for a long time.

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