Page 59 of A Beta Protects

“Just about you being a war hero and her liking you a lot,” Sierra says.

Pleased, I slow, turning to face her. “She said she liked me?”

“You were a war hero?” Galen asks.

“It was in the past,” I say distracted. “What did she say about me?”

Sierra rolls her eyes and keeps walking. “Nope. I’m not playing the kiss and tell game. You’ll have to ask her that yourself. I told her you had a growly but protective side.”

I stop. “What!”

Ringing starts up behind me, and Galen fishes his phone out of his pocket. “Yeah, Shawn, what’s up?”

I listen in. With shifter hearing, I can hear both sides of the call, so he doesn’t need to put it on loudspeaker.

“I just had a call from Ivar. He was working in the mailroom when someone clubbed him in the back of the head with a blunt object. When he woke up, someone had taken his truck. Since Kira was having trouble, I thought this might be related. If you?—”

“It was here,” I interrupt.

Galen frowns at me.

I angle my head toward the trampled side road that leads off our property. The same road Ivar—or whoever took his truck—would have traversed. “That truck was here. I’d recognize that engine anywhere. But if it wasn’t Ivar driving it. Then who was?”

Galen hangs up as Shawn is speaking.

It’s rare for him to howl in his human form.

This time, it’s necessary. Galen throws his head back and howls. The sound that rings out across Pack Hunt land is pure wolf, and the meaning is clear.

A packmate is in trouble, and everyone needs to gather.

Now.

My wolf sits up, alert, waiting for the order from his alpha. In the house, doors slam, yells ring out and footsteps pound this way.

19

KIRA

Astinging slap across my face returns me to my senses.

My gaze connects with Bryce’s green stare.

I’m still in the back of the postman’s truck. From the trees and greenery behind Bryce’s shoulder, we’re still in Wylder. I think. Maybe just outside of the town? I don’t know. There are no landmarks. Nothing familiar.

He’s still wearing the postman’s pale blue uniform, and has his gun tucked in the gun belt he’s looped around his hips. I seriously hope he didn’t kill anyone to get it. No one deserves to suffer or die because I left Bryce.

As I shuffle deeper into the truck, wanting to get away from whatever punishment he’s dragged me out here for, his hand snaps out, yanking me back toward him.

“Just like my mom, you don’t know how to keep a vow, and you never will.”

My eyes dart to the gun in his belt.

I didn’t believe he would use the gun on me. It was always a threat.

Until now.

Now I think he’s gearing up to use the gun on me.

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