Page 142 of The Alpha's Pen Pal

“Yep,” he replied, then he pulled Imogen to the side and started whispering in her ear, her eyes growing wider and her face growing paler with each second.

“Here,” Sarina said, “You can’t run from here, but you can run from our campsite.”

She glanced at her friend, then handed me a light purplish pink gemstone. It was warm to the touch and smelled of incense and smoke.

A transport stone. From a witch.

“How’d you get this?” I asked her.

“The less you know, the better,” she said. “It will take you to my campsite, and then you can run to your pack’s hospital from there,” she told me.

I reached into my pocket, grabbed my keys, and tossed them to her. “Take them all to the pack. I’ll let the guards know you’re coming.”

I turned back to Haven. “I’ll need to lift you up,” I murmured. “It might hurt, and I’m sorry, but it’s the only way we can get you to the pack in enough time.”

Her eyes rolled, and her face was pale, but she nodded. I grabbed her, holding her close to my chest as I stood, and she let out a strangled, hoarse whimper.

“I’m so sorry, Sparkles,” I muttered.

Nolan whined and nudged her hand with his nose, and I turned to Sarina. “How many can it take?”

“It will take all three of you,” she said, her eyes on Nolan as he continued to nuzzle against Haven. “Go!” she urged.

I nodded and swallowed, then tossed the stone in the air and caught it. The world swirled around us, blurring into a melting pot of colors. Then, slowly the colors blended back into place, and we stood off to the left of Sarina’s campsite.

Once the world stopped moving, I tucked Haven in closer to me and took off towards the pack hospital at a full sprint, leaving Nolan behind me as he worked to catch up.

Haven continued to tense and whimper in my arms. I hated that she was hurting, but I was also happy she was making noise at all, because that told me she was still conscious. Hopefully, that meant the wound from her attacker wasn’t as bad as we thought, but I wasn’t taking any chances, and I pushed my body to its limits.

I burst through the doors of the pack clinic with a clatter and a shout. The on-duty nurses froze for a moment when they saw me with Haven in my arms, but they quickly broke into action, moving faster than I had ever seen them move.

One of them waved me forward, leading me to a room.

“She’s human,” I breathed as we walked through the door. “Another lycan attacked her. He was biting her marking spot. I think his lycan was trying to mark her.”

Not that it would have worked. We could only mark a mate in our human forms. But something had set that lycan off and made him attack her, made him think he needed to stake his claim as a beast instead of a human.

I moved to the bed and laid her down as carefully as I could, but her arms clung to me, her eyes staring into mine. They were desperate and wide, but she had to let go so they could take care of her.

“It’s okay,” I reassured her, brushing her hair out of her face. “You’re safe.”

“Wes,” she mouthed to me, and I squeezed my eyes shut and nodded.

“He’ll be here,” I whispered, opening my eyes again to meet hers. “I promise.”

Her grip on me relaxed, and she let go. Her eyes still had that deer-in-the-headlights look, but she laid back on the bed and held still as the nurses did what they needed to do.

“She’s very important to the future alpha,” I told the nurses as I put my hand on the doorknob.

They all nodded, understanding the warning I wasn’t saying out loud—don’t fuck this up.

I stepped out of the room, and as I walked back to the waiting room, I opened a mindlink to my dad, my mom, Reid, and Wesley.

“You need to come help me. Now.”

There wasn’t even half a second between the end of my link and the beginning of Wes’s response.

“Why? What’s going on?” he rushed out.

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