Page 58 of A Beta Protects

I’m not interested in breakfast. I’ll sit beside my beautiful mate, hold her hand under the table, and enjoy what will be the last meal before I take her outside, and tell her I’m not human. Then I’ll watch her climb into her car and drive away from me.

“Nope.” Galen nearly wrenches my arm out of its socket, dragging me back. “We’re going for a run. You and me. Right now. Shift.”

I sense another bad idea is in the works. Maybe one even worse than wandering the streets for someone to take potshots at us. “And will this run as wolves take us away from the house or towards it?”

I get a suspiciously long pause and a far too innocent look. “Perhaps.”

“No.”

He growls. “You need to tell her, or?—”

“—you’ll force me to show her? Because her coming face to face with a wolf is really going to make her stay.”

“She might. Does she like animals? Ever had a dog?”

There are rare moments I don’t know what to say or do.

Being a Marine taught me a lot. Mostly resilience, facing down the things that scare you, and knowing that you always have someone fighting beside you who would die for you, and you would do the same for them.

I look at Galen and I’m struck dumb. “You think she won’t have a problem with me being a wolf because she once had a dog growing up?”

He growls again. “It suggests she likes animals.”

“And wolves are like dogs?” I arch a brow.

“We are not like dogs,” he snarls.

“I am not the one who suggested?—”

“As interesting and strange as this conversation is,” Sierra interrupts, joining us in the forest. “Have you seen Kira?”

I frown. “She was with you.”

Sierra shakes her head. “No. She went for a walk and no one has seen her since.”

“How long?”

She shrugs. “Maybe five, ten minutes. We talked in the kitchen not long after Galen did his caveman thing, and?—”

“I did not,” Galen snaps.

“Yes, you did,” Sierra says, not looking away from me. “Then she went for a walk, and now no one can find her.”

Panic spikes in my gut, sharp and overwhelming. What if she guessed what I was and left before I can explain? What if she decided she wanted Bryce after all?

“Her car?” Frowning, I lead the way back toward the house.

“Still there,” Sierra responds.

“Could she have wandered into the forest and gotten lost?” I step into the clearing outside the house and lift my chin to scent the air.

There are the usual scents. Gas from a car engine, nature smells, my packmates. Kira’s scent is recent. She definitely walked out of the house not long ago, and just like Sierra said, her car is where she left it.

“The outbuilding.” Galen is already heading that way, and we move at a faster pace.

But there’s no sign of her. Was she looking for something? Maybe me?

“What did you talk about?” I turn to ask Sierra as, by silent agreement, we leave the outbuilding and track Kira’s most recent scent back the way it came.

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