Page 197 of The Alpha's Pen Pal

“Believe it or don’t believe it. It doesn’t matter. You’ve already decided my fate and my guilt,” Lennox choked. “But I was told marking her would make me stronger and able to lead, and I didn’t question it. Now I realize it was because of what she is.”

“Who she is,” Nolan snarled, correcting him. “She’s a person, not an object.”

Lennox snorted and rolled his eyes. Nolan’s body twitched forward, but Sebastian held his hand out to stop him. They exchanged a look, and most likely some words through the mindlink, before Nolan stepped back and crossed his arms.

“It seems you and your dad forgot a tiny detail about Asteria’s story, though,” Sebastian pointed out, circling around Lennox’s chair.

“And what’s that?” Lennox asked in defeat.

“That Selene made sure the only wolf who could mark Asteria was her mate. Conan. Surely she did the same for Haven and Wesley,” Sebastian said, glancing at us.

Neither of us said anything. Lennox’s eyes glowered over at us, at her in my arms, letting me hold her in a way she probably never let him. She stared back at him, her normally sparkling blue eyes icy and sharp.

While Lennox was focused on us, Sebastian lifted the blade and brought it down two more times on his neck, finishing out the ten cuts he’d promised him.

“We’re done here,” Haven said, turning in my arms to look at me. “He can’t tell us anything more than he already has.”

“You’re right,” I nodded, leaning forward to kiss her. “Let’s go, Sugar Plum.”

Sebastian’s knife dropped to the floor with the other, and he walked to the door with us. Nolan stayed in his spot, still staring at Lennox as he seethed in his chair, his chin to his chest, his breaths labored and shallow.

“It may not be the mark of a mate,” Lennox whispered, his chin lifting in slow motion. “But I still got to sink my teeth into her neck first. And the reminder of that will never fade,” he taunted.

I lunged towards him, the loudest roar ever spilling out of me. My skin bubbled and itched, my claws lengthening and my canines descending as my lycan pushed forward to attack this awful bastard and defend our mate.

But before I could reach him, Nolan had Lennox’s head in his hands, and in half a second, he’d ripped Lennox’s jaw from his face.

“Sorry. I’ve been wanting to do that since I saw him trying to mark Haven,” he said as he dumped the detached body part onto the floor with the discarded knives.

But I barely heard him because my focus was on Haven. She stood as still as a statue, her eyes glued to Lennox’s body. I couldn’t feel anything from her through the bond or figure out what she felt based on her expression. Her face was blank, her eyes unblinking.

I was torn. Torn between joining Nolan and digging my claws into Lennox’s flesh and ripping his heart out while it still beat, and taking my mate out of that room and pulling her into my arms to keep her safe and to make sure she was all right. And using that contact to calm the beast raging beneath the surface.

Then I realized—ripping his heart out would be a swift and easy death. And he didn’t deserve that.

“Leave him like that,” I ordered the others, walking towards Haven, my eyes never leaving hers. “Let him die the way my mate would have died—bleeding out on the ground.”

I heard the chair get kicked over, heard the strangled noise from Lennox as he hit the ground, but my focus was on my mate. While there had been blank indifference in her eyes before, after my orders, I found a blazing fire burning there.

The possessiveness radiating through the bond from her nearly knocked me to the ground myself, and the whiff of her arousal had me growling and rushing to her to grab her. I lifted her body off the ground and against mine, her legs wrapping around my waist as she kissed me with a fierce passion.

CHAPTER 67

HAVEN

I was exhausted. More than exhausted. I was so fatigued I couldn’t even think of a word to describe how tired I was.

I wasn’t even sure of the time, although I knew it was still Sunday. Or perhaps the wee hours of Monday.

But my mind kept drifting back to the enormous, incredibly comfortable bed in our room at our house. I kept thinking about sinking into its plushness. About wrapping the fluffy duvet around me as I placed my head on the feathery pillows and about snuggling up close to my Wesley as I drifted off to sleep with his arms around me.

My Wesley. My mate.

He must have sensed my exhaustion because he’d seated us on the couch in his dad’s office instead of in the chairs across from his desk. Even Harrison sat on the arm on the far edge of the couch, a glass bottle of beer in his hand that he sipped at while we talked.

Wesley explained everything to his dad, including all Lennox had told them the first time they’d spoken with him. Tortured him.

I shifted in my seat, my cheeks heating as I remembered my reaction to Wesley’s brutality towards Lennox at the end. I didn’t know what came over me, but my reaction to that side of him was visceral. Primal.

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