Page 152 of The Beta's Blind Date

“You know what I mean.”

He gives a halfhearted laugh. “I do. More than anything, I do.”

Our foreheads rest together, and we stand there, two stalwart statues among the debris of my past. I hold on to him like my life depends on it, like if I let him go, he’ll scatter to the winds like the ashes of the burnt buildings around us.

Part of me wishes we could return to our bubble of love, intimacy, and bonding, but I know that’s impossible. The world won’t stand still because we ask it to. Life will continue whether or not we’re ready for it.

At least we’ll have each other to lean on through it all.

“We should join the others,” he says, and I nod.

His hand slips into mine, and we make our way over to where they stand near the remains of the shed that hid the entrance to the safe house bunker.

“They attacked here first, you said?” King Malachi asks Aunt Gigi as we reach them.

“Yes. It’s probably why we ended up with no deaths, actually. There wasn’t anyone inside when the bomb went off, and we all knew to evacuate to the other two packs.”

“How’d they get inside the bunker, though?” Dawson says, crouching down and moving some burnt framing aside. His fiddling reveals a hole in the floor where the hidden door used to be. “Dominic and I are the only ones who have the code or access to activate it.”

All eyes turn to him as he rises from the ground, wiping his hands on his jeans. He meets each of our eyes in turn, then points at himself. “You think I did it?”

“Well, we don’t want to think that,” Reid says, a growl underneath his words.

“I swear, I didn’t. I wouldn’t.”

“Then that leaves Dominic,” I say, sighing and shaking my head. “But he was angry and yelling at me and driving,” I add. “He didn’t have the chance to activate the code.”

“Unless he did it before we left the pack for the wedding,” Blake points out. “Or before you left Crescent Lake.”

“Which means he had to know about the attack beforehand,” Wesley says, frowning and rubbing his chin.

“But why?” I ask. “Why would he leave the bunker open? Why would he organize a rogue attack on his own pack? And don’t forget, they attacked him too. They didn’t hesitate to go after him when they confronted our vehicle.”

“They’re rogues. They’ll say whatever they need to say to get whatever it is they’re promised from those who hire them,” King Malachi says.

I shake my head again. “Dominic isn’t like that. Or he wasn’t. He—“

“I thought I knew him too,” Dawson says, crossing his arms. “But either he changed, or he had us all fooled for a very long time.”

I swallow and bite back my response. It doesn’t matter what I think or what he was to me. How he may have treated me when we first started seeing each other doesn’t outweigh the things he did the night of the wedding or erase the overwhelming evidence giving every indication this was no random rogue attack.

Wesley’s phone rings, and he grabs it out of his pocket, answers it and puts it on speaker so everyone can hear. “Sebastian. What did you find?”

“The rogues… gone… blood…”

“Sebastian, I can barely hear you. You’re breaking up,” Wesley says, moving away from the bunker and back towards the center of the pack town.

“The trail… headed your way…”

“What trail? Who’s headed our way?”

The hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stand on end, and my blood pounds in my ears. Turning, I spot a lone, tall, muscular figure standing at the edge of the pack grounds, almost hidden within the line of redwoods, his shoulders heaving and his eyes fixed on us.

Dominic.

Chapter 53

REID

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