Page 59 of Alpha's Forbidden Bond

I winced. “That’s copper for you. I don’t know if this will make you feel better or worse, but he wasn’t aiming at you. I tackled him, and the gun went off, and you just happened to be in the path of destruction. If I had known you were there, I never would’ve taken that kind of chance. I would have rushed you to safety first, I swear.”

“I know,” she said. “I was going out of my way to make sure you didn’t know I was there. I wanted to know what you were getting up to at that hour, and I knew if you saw me, you wouldn’t tell me the truth. As we got closer to the road, I thought maybe you were just going for a run…”

“If only I had been.”

She pulled her hand away slowly. “But you were meeting up with that woman, weren’t you? The human?”

I nodded. “Diana. Yeah.” I met her gaze. “But you can’t tell anyone on the compound about her being here. If your brother were to find out that she was somehow involved in what happened that night?—”

“He’d kill her.”

“I think so.”

“No, he definitely would,” she said steadily. “It’s better that nobody knows she was here. I don’t want her to be in any trouble, nor do I wish any harm to come to her.”

After a few seconds of fighting with myself, I went on to tell her the truth. The whole truth. As much as I wanted to protect Diana, Sarafina almost died because of our carelessness. She deserved to have all the information. “Would you feel differently if I told you that the only reason Stanley Kingsley found out about the compound and put the dots together regarding the Vilks and his son’s disappearance is because he followed Diana out here one night?”

She raised a brow but said nothing.

“He was stalking her,” I explained. “He used to have business dealings with her father and was screwed over when the company went under. I guess he thought that Diana might be able to put him in touch with Mr. Pearl. She came here one night, and he followed, thinking she was perhaps meeting up with her dad, and he saw me shift into a wolf and well… You can figure out the rest.”

“I see.”

“But please don’t take any of your anger out on Diana. She didn’t know. Up until that night, she wasn’t even sure I was a shifter. She had her suspicions, but nothing concrete. If she had known that he was following her that night or knew the truth about what was at stake, she never would’ve done what she did. I have no doubt in my mind.”

“It’s okay, Andreas. You don’t have to defend her. At the end of the day, I don’t blame anyone for what happened besides the man who actually pulled the trigger. Who cares about the circumstances that led up to that moment? Diana couldn’t have known what sort of trouble she was bringing to the compound. But that man didn’t have to make that choice. He could’ve stopped himself at any point, but instead, he came here and carried out his evil plan. As far as I’m concerned, he’s the only one who wanted to cause harm, so he’s the only one who deserves punishment for his crimes.”

“Right… About that.” I wrung my hands awkwardly. “The man isn’t dead. I attacked him, but once I realized you had been shot, I left him to bleed out or whatever and brought you here as quickly as I could. Mikeal and Diana brought his body back, but he wasn’t dead. I allowed the doctors to stabilize him. Maybe that was the wrong thing to do, but in the moment—” I paused. “I’m just not a killer.”

That was what Diana had said to me when I’d gone for Stanley’s throat that night. She told me I wasn’t a killer. Hearing her voice ringing in my ears made my jaw clench. I had to fight back against the thoughts of Diana. This wasn’t about her. Nothing in my life could be about her anymore.

“He’s still alive then?”

“Yeah, but he hasn’t woken up from his own coma just yet. He’s locked up at my house. Your brother and father think he’s dead, though. You can obviously tell them the truth if that’s what you think is right. In fact, I’m going to be following your lead on just about everything from here on out. However you want to handle this situation… and whatever you want to do in regards to the wedding and the merging of our two packs, I will happily go along with.”

She looked at me for a long while before responding. “Andreas—you can’t possibly be insinuating that you still think the two of us should get married? Please tell me that’s not what you think we should do?”

“I—”

“Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned from almost dying,” she cut me off. “It’s that life is fucking short, and I don’t want to spend any more of it away from the people I care most about. And you shouldn’t either.”

“That’s a lovely sentiment, Sarafina, but you know as well as I do that things are not as straightforward for us.”

“But they could be! Who cares if we were born into leader families? Are we really going to let that dictate our happiness?”

I didn’t know what I’d been expecting Sarafina to say, but it sure as hell wasn’t this. “I care about being part of a leader family, and you should too! Doesn’t it mean something to you? It’s an honor to be the head of a pack.”

“Sure it is,” she said. “And maybe if I had never ended up in this hospital bed, I might’ve been able to continue putting my own desires aside and do what was expected of me. But now—there’s just no way. What if I had died? I haven’t seen the love of my life in weeks, and I was planning on going much longer without seeing him if I stayed here and married you. The idea of slipping away into the great beyond without even having him by my side is the most devastating thing I could think of. If what my father has warned you about is true, that werewolves are in more danger than ever with all this new technology; then we have even more reason to do what we can to make ourselves happy while we’re still here.”

“At the expense of generations to come?” I argued. “Because that’s what’s going to happen. If this merger doesn’t go forward, my pack will fall apart. The younger members don’t have enough elders to look out for them, and if we were attacked by any more crazy guys with guns, we might not be able to keep fighting them off.”

“You could split up,” she suggested. “Go join other packs individually.”

“Don’t say that like it’s so easy. You know how devastating that would be.”

She took a beat, then nodded. “Yes, you’re right. Forget I said that. But maybe the merge can still happen even if we aren’t married. I’ll bring my love here, and we can rule together as a team, but not as a couple.”

“That’s—that’s crazy. It’s never been done.”

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