Page 116 of The Alpha's Pen Pal

“What did he say before he shifted?” Nolan asked.

“He said ‘Don’t freak out.’”

“And…?”

“And that was it.”

“Mother fucker,” he groaned, then came to my side. “I’m not going to touch her!” Nolan grumbled, lifting his hand that wasn’t holding Rachel’s. “Haven, Wes is a lycan.”

I stared at the beast in front of me again, studying it, and noticing how it stood on two legs instead of four, how it still had human-ish features. How its eyes were the same dark brown as the man I knew and loved.

“Lycan?” I repeated, and Nolan nodded. “That’s… that’s sort of like a werewolf, right?” I asked, trying to remember the vague bits of knowledge I had about supernatural and mythological creatures.

Creatures that were, apparently, not mythological but very real.

“Yes and no,” Nolan explained. “They are stronger than us—than other werewolves. Selene, the moon goddess, created them to be our leaders or alphas.”

“So Wesley is your alpha?” I asked.

“His dad is, yeah. Wesley will be eventually.”

“And all of you are werewolves?” He nodded again. “Maya?” I asked, and he nodded. “Jack? Shirley?”

“No, they are not. And they don’t know what we are. We’re not supposed to tell humans except for… under special circumstances.”

“And I’m a special circumstance?”

Nolan chewed on his answer, looking at Wes and Rachel. “That’s complicated.”

I blew out a breath, trying to process everything he’d told me and everything I’d just seen, trying to reconcile the beast in front of me with the man who’d made me so blissfully happy, who’d held me in his arms all night both at the beach and in his bed.

The beast—lycan—in front of me took tentative steps forward, and I held firm even though every fiber of my being, every naturally ingrained survival instinct, told me to turn and run. He stopped a foot away from me, looking down at me, looking at me the same way Wesley always did.

But he wasn’t Wesley. He was a lycan. An animal. A beast. A monster.

“I—” I shook my head and took a step back, closing my eyes. “I can’t. I can’t do this,” I repeated.

My hands covered my face, hiding my trembling lips and teary eyes from the lycan, Nolan, and Rachel. It was too much. It was all too much to take in, to handle, to even comprehend. My shoulders shook, and I covered my mouth, trying to stem the sound of the raspy sob escaping me, but it was pointless.

“Haven…” Wesley’s voice murmured.

I peeked through my fingers to see him reaching out to me with one hand, back to his usual human self, but I stepped back again out of his reach. My body still shook, and I couldn’t tell if it was from nerves or fear or the chill in the air. I couldn’t tell if I feared him or just the monster he could turn into.

What if I made him mad? Would he use his lycan to hurt me? Would he try to control me, too?

“I need some space,” I blurted out, cutting my spiraling thoughts off before they could drag me down that all-too-familiar path. “I need… I need to think about all of this,” I told him, my voice heavy, tired, and shaky.

He dropped his hand and clenched his jaw, but he nodded. “I understand.”

“I’ll call you. When I’m ready,” I told him.

I turned and ran into his house before he could say anything else to me or try to convince me to change my mind and stay. I grabbed my purse off of the entry table and then left through the front door. My feet were bare, but I couldn’t even remember what I had done with my shoes the night before. And I didn’t have time to search for them.

I got into the car and started it, peeling away from the curb before I even had my seatbelt on. I had to get away, get out of there so I could think, so I could process all I had seen without Wesley right there, hampering my critical thinking.

I turned onto the main highway, then reached for my phone to call Maya.

Fuck. Maya. She was one of them, too. She had known all along what Wesley really was. And I lived with her.

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