Page 30 of The Alpha King's Curse: Part Two

‘Get Miss Townsend’s contact information. I don’t want any loose ends.”

‘And the others?’

‘They’ll check out the hideout after they clean up. I’ll watch the girls this weekend; just get it all done before I leave.’

‘Yes, Alpha,’ he answered with a bow before he walked to the elevator.

He stood outside the door for a moment before he forced himself to open it and walk in. Layla seemed to have been waiting right by the door as he had expected. He felt her relief when she walked towards him, and her anxiety almost knocked him over. She didn’t show any of it on her face, though. She looked cool and calm; he guessed she was doing that for her sister’s sake.

“Dylan gave me your number,” Layla said. “I called you a million times, but you didn’t pick up.”

“Dylan gave it to you, did he?” he grunted as he walked past her to the bedroom.

Britney sat silently on one of the sofas, and a movie played in the background. When he left, he sensed her uneasiness; now, she looked tense with fear. With the lengths Layla had gone to protect her sister, he didn’t think she would have spilt their secrets, but something was going on in the girl’s head.

He paused to look back at her, but the girl kept her head down. Had he scared her too much when he visited her on his own? Or something else had happened?

He wasn’t surprised to see Layla follow him down to his bedroom. He turned around in the doorway to block her from walking in.

“We need to talk, Jackson,” Layla hissed.

A far cry from the woman who’d been a bag of nerves at the packhouse.

“I don’t see what we could possibly have to talk about,” he drawled.

“Stop being childish,” Layla whispered before she looked back towards the living space.

She pushed past him without an invitation, and the places she touched sent the usual jolts through his body. No, they were worse this time. The longer he spent avoiding her, the more he wanted to bite down on her pretty neck while he took his fill of her. This was what probably caused his father’s madness. It was unbearable to want something he couldn’t have.

No. Something he didn't want to have.

“What happened?” Layla asked as she turned around to face him.

“Nothing,” he answered as he closed the door and walked over to the bed where he had left his bag.

“So why did you shower and change?”

He looked down at the jeans and t-shirt he wore instead of the suit. The suit would have to be incinerated along with everything else.

“I’m in a city full of women who don’t mind sharing my bed. Why do you think I showered and changed?”

He met her gaze and watched the emeralds brighten as her anger replaced her anxiety, and it lifted his heart a little. Maybe he was being a dick, but he wanted her to know what he was going through, even if she wouldn’t feel it as much.

“Don’t ask me questions you don’t really want the answers to.”

“You’re lying,” she said, coming forward. “You claimed I'll be safe after I leave, but how will I do that if you don’t tell me what I’m going up against? I’ll be alone out here, Jackson.”

The little joy he had squeezed out of his petty lie disappeared as if it hadn’t been there. It always did when he thought of her being on her own.

“You don’t need to know every detail, Layla. That’s what will get you killed. You’ll be fine if you keep your head down and try to live the same way you did before you met me,” he said.

He picked the bag up and walked towards the dressing room. Layla followed. Her frustration with him was evident as her anger increased.

“You can’t just walk away. You can’t ignore me when something is happening that directly affects me.”

Her voice was raised. She had shown him her feisty side a few times before knowing what he was. That was what had drawn him to her the most. No one ever challenged him like that.

“You saw that wolf in the woods, and then you’ve avoided me ever since,” Layla continued. “Do you know what that did to me? How much I worried that I’d lost my mind and I wouldn’t be able to take care of Brit? All you had to do was tell me it was real.”

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