Page 40 of The Alpha's Pen Pal

He just shook his head and ushered the other two away towards the forest.

“Don’t let me keep you or ruin your night,” Haven said, and I turned to find her eyes following my gaze towards the trees where the guys just disappeared.

“You’re not ruining anything,” I reassured her, shaking my head with a smile. “Trust me, I’m right where I want to be.”

She sucked in a breath, and her blue eyes met mine, and I got lost in their depths. I drowned in the sea of her pinning gaze, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to remember how to swim and resurface for air.

But she broke our connection, and I blew out a disappointed sigh as she looked over her shoulder at the party.

“I should get back to Maya,” she said with reluctance, her words saying one thing, but the tone of her voice and her hesitant movements saying another. “I’ll… see you later?”

“Yeah,” I said.

She nodded and turned, tucking her hair behind her ear again and dropping her arms to her sides. Before I could consider what I was doing, I reached out and grabbed her hand.

“Wait!” I said, and she turned and looked down at our joined hands and then up at me.

My eyes stayed locked on where we connected, at where I touched her for the first time ever, and all thoughts and plans went out the window. Her skin was soft, smooth, and cool against my rough callouses, and her hand fit perfectly within mine.

My lycan purred—fucking purred, like a content kitten curled up on a warm bed after drinking a bowl of milk—and it was my turn to shake my head and clear my thoughts, just as I’d seen her do earlier in our conversation.

“Have coffee with me?” I managed to say. “Tomorrow? In the morning?”

I hoped she would agree to meet me in the morning. I could show her around town and talk with her. I wanted to know what she’d been up to over the years, wanted to make sure she’d been happy, safe, and cared for, since I’d never heard from her after everything that happened.

“I have class…” she said, but she chewed on her lip and looked at me for a long moment. “But it’s optional so… Yeah, okay.”

I internally fist-pumped the air, then pulled out my phone and handed it to her. “Just give me your number and I’ll text you the details.”

She nodded, her lips pulling into her mouth as she put her digits into my phone. Then she handed it back, and I, maybe on purpose, brushed my fingers over hers as I took the device back from her.

I shoved it back into my pocket, and we stood there, looking at each other. I couldn’t believe she was here. She was fucking here. In California. On my pack lands.

I could feel a ridiculous smile threatening to form on my lips, so I finally said, “See you tomorrow!”

“Bye, Wesley,” she said softly before turning and heading up the bank to the party.

I watched her as she walked away, my eyes lingering on her long, pale legs extending from her dark wash denim shorts and noticing how the sleek, toned muscles stretched with her every step. But I quickly tore my eyes away from her, not wanting her to catch me ogling her body. Although I wouldn’t deny how attractive I found her, how beautiful she was.

After she was gone, I didn’t even bother finding the guys to go on a moonlit run with them. I had too much running through my mind, too much to plan for my “date” in the morning.

Mykneebouncedunderthe small cafe table as I checked the time on my phone again. I tried to keep my frustration in check, because I didn’t want to break yet another mug at the coffee shop our pack owned, Brewed Awakenings. We’d done enough of that throughout puberty when we were still learning how to control our hormones and our beasts.

But it was getting more difficult by the second to keep a hold on my temper, and my lycan’s huffing and puffing in my mind wasn’t helping the matter. At all.

I opened my messages again and scanned through them, making sure they’d actually been delivered to her phone. She never replied other than a thumbs-up to the time and address I’d sent her. But I’d messaged her several times since then, most of them after it had been fifteen minutes past when she was supposed to meet me.

An hour had passed since then, and I realized she wasn’t just running late. No, for the first time in my life, I had been stood up.

I swallowed my pride and cleared my mug away, handing it to the teenaged she-wolf behind the counter. She smiled and thanked me, and then I made my way out the door.

I paused when I reached the street, fiddling with my keys as I thought about what I should do next. I didn’t imagine her obvious happiness at seeing me. Or did I? Had I inserted my own excitement at seeing her into the entire encounter, projecting my emotions onto her and just seeing what I wanted to see?

Fuck. That must have been it. My optimism had colored the entire interaction, my happiness creating rose-colored glasses.

No. No way. She had smiled. We had laughed. There had been a connection.

I clenched my jaw and stormed down the road to my truck. The few wolves in town who walked by me bowed their heads or moved to the other side of the road to get away from me and my aura.

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