Page 104 of Alpha Gray

My sister grabs my hand, leading me out of the room, pulling me through the hallway and down the stairs with her.

My emotions are on overdrive- I’m scared and nervous and excited and giddy and overwhelmed, all rolled into one.

“Dad!” Brooke calls as we reach the bottom of the stairs, and our parents peek around the corner at us expectantly.

“You two ready?” Dad asks.

Brooke holds out her hand. “Fallon needs to borrow your car.”

Dad squints his eyes, looking from Brooke to me. “What’s going on?”

Brooke shakes her head. “No time to explain. Keys?”

Mom and Dad exchange curious glances, but Dad reaches into his pocket, fishing out the keys to his sedan.

Brooke snatches the keys from him, whirling around and pressing them into my hand. “Good luck. Love you.”

I close my fingers around the car keys, looking into my sister’s eyes. “No matter what.”

My family stares after me as I dart to the front door, not even bothering to put shoes on. The urgency of getting to Gray is pressing in on me- I’ll be late, but hopefully nottoo late.

It’s pouring down rain outside, but a little bit of bad weather can’t stop me. I’m a woman on a mission- it’s time for me to go claim my mate. If he’ll still have me.

I slide into the drivers’ seat of my dad’s sedan, tucking my damp hair behind my ears and firing up the ignition. I throw the car in drive, hitting the gas and flooring it down the driveway. The tires squeal as I make a sharp turn at the end, tearing off down the street.

I drive fast, accompanied only by the steady thrum of the rain on the windshield, the squeak of the wipers, and the frantic beating of my own heart. My excitement only grows as I follow the meandering road through the six-pack territory, my anxious thoughts pinging around my brain a mile a minute.

The fifteen-minute drive is tortuous, feeling like it stretches on for an eternity. My heart’s racing by the time I reach the town of Goldenleaf, navigating the streets by memory to find the packhouse. My spirits soar when it comes into view and I speed toward the driveway, whipping in.

I slam the sedan in park, not even bothering to cut the engine as I throw the door open, leaping out into the pouring rain. It soaks through my clothes by the time I make it up the front walk to the big double doors of the packhouse, pulling one open only to find the large interior vacant.

“Gray?” I call, darting inside and looking around wildly. Tendrils of wet hair hang in front of my eyes, obscuring my vision, and I swipe them away with a forearm. “Gray?!”

I dart to the back door, push it open, and step back out into the heavy rainfall.

“Gray?!” My voice is raw, desperate.

My bare feet slap against the wet grass as I run across the yard in the direction of the treeline, pulling my soaked tank top off over my head and nearly tripping as I shove my shorts down to climb out of them. The cold rain pelts my bare skin as I call my wolf forward, shifting and landing on four paws in the muddy ground.

My wolf immediately lifts her nose, every hair standing on end. Something smells different- wild and unusual and fuckingdelicious. My mind races and I feel completely out of control, frenzied, delirious as I wheel around in circles, frantic to discern where it’s coming from.

Then I see him.

At the treeline, there’s a wolf. A big, beautiful wolf, as black as the night sky. I immediately recognize him, and suddenly, inexplicably, my human side pushes forward again, back to the surface, overpowering my wolf. My bones crack and rearrange, and suddenly she’s gone, shoved back in the recesses of my body and mind as I stand on two legs once more, shaking in the rain.

The air shimmers around the big black wolf with his shift, Gray’s human form crouching where he stood. He slowly rises to his feet, his drenched hair clinging to his forehead and droplets of rain cutting paths down the muscular planes of his chest.

Before my mind can even make sense of the intense feelings and emotions flooding my body, my lips move and a single word slips out: “Mate.”

Gray

It doesn’t feel how I expected it to. Mom and Dad tried to describe the fated mate bond to me, saying that it’d feel like an intense warmth, an overwhelming sensation of bliss. It doesn’t feel like that.

It’sbetter.

Every nerve ending fires at once, all of my senses are heightened and multiplied as the mate bond snaps into place. Fallon’s a goddess standing naked in the rain across the lawn, the water lapping at her suntanned skin. It’s like I can actually perceive all of my feelings for her intensifying, crushing me with their weight.

My mouth moves on its own accord, repeating the word back to the most beautiful female I’ve ever laid eyes on.

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