Page 9 of Gabe's Lone Wolf

“No,” I assured him. “We never mated. He watched me. There were several times I woke to find him in my bedroom, but he didn’t touch me sexually.”

A lie within a truth.

“When I feared that would change, I left. I’ve been running from him ever since.”

“How old were you when you first ran?” Bastion asked.

“Seventeen.”

There were muttered curses around the room. They were angry on my behalf. Being here, seeing them, speaking with them, I understood why I’d been sent to them for help.

“Where were your parents? Your family?” Another man questioned, pulling my attention to him and the woman sitting with him.

“Cyan,” she admonished.

“It’s a relevant question, Ivy,” he fired back at her. She was obviously his mate. Their connection was easy to read. “A young woman. Fourteen fucking years old. There wasn’t a single person in that pack of yours who was willing to stand up for you?”

“My mom was killed during a run. My dad coped by diving headfirst into a bottle and never coming up. The alpha took charge of me. I was pretty out of it myself. By the time I realized what was happening, I’d already been moved in with Cam. I’m a fast learner. I knew there was something wrong with the attention he was giving me. When I realized his endgame, I ran. I’ve never stopped running.”

“I’d have run, too,” the woman beside Taylor snarled.

“Easy, Rebbie. You can see she’s fine,” Taylor soothed his mate.

“Why you?” Ivy asked. “There had to be women in the pack who’d have gladly mated the alpha. Not that you aren’t gorgeous, but why?”

A stranger’s words came back to me and spilled from my lips.

“Who knows what makes people do the thing they do? For some reason, Cam Lockhart took one look at me and decided I belonged to him.”

Gabe’s palm heated the small of my back, and I felt it like a surge of fire through my veins. I pulled his strength into me and made sure to meet every gaze in the room before I continued.

“I’m not a possession to be claimed. I won’t be owned by anyone. I decide who my mate will be, and that person will never be Cam Lockhart. I came here to ask for help in standing against him. I’m tired of running, of always looking over my shoulder and never knowing where he’ll turn up next. I know I can’t get him to listen to me. He won’t let me go until I make him, and I’m smart enough to know I can’t do that on my own.”

“Why come here?” Raina asked, rising to her feet. “Why choose us?”

I thought for a moment about the man who’d rescued me from Cam’s clutches outside that bar.

“A kindness from a stranger,” I admitted. “He told me to come here, to ask you to stand with me. He assured me I had nothing to fear from this pack. That I could make a stand here and stop running.”

My gaze went to Gabe, and yes, I wondered if the other man had somehow known my mate would be here waiting for me. He couldn’t have, though. Hell, I was still unsure, not ready to believe my own thoughts and emotions when they were so clouded from lack of sleep and the tightrope of fear and anxiety I’d been riding on for the last several years.

“We—”

Raina started to say something else but was interrupted.

“The time of running is over. Here. Now. The stand begins. Blood spills and death lingers in the darkness, waiting for the next soul to claim.”

My gaze flew to the woman with Hannibal. His mate. I remembered him calling her Bee. She was a smaller, feminine version of Bastion James, and I knew they were siblings. She was speaking but seemed to be outside of herself. As if something or someone else spoke through her.

“He watches and waits for the sign that the time has come. Vengeance will bring blood and an alpha will fall.”

She shook her head, blinked, then locked her gaze on me.

“Everything changes with you.”

I shook my head. “What does that mean? Changes with me. It’s not vengeance that Cam wants. What blood? What alpha? Because if it’s Cam’s, I’m onboard with that.”

“I don’t know. There are shadows I can’t see through. I know you have a choice to make. One that will change your life for the better. Don’t be afraid.”

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