Page 7 of Fated to the Warrior Wolf

I resisted the urge to grab those shoulders and spin her to face me. She clearly wanted nothing to do with my touch, and I was never going to trample her boundaries like that, even if she drove me fucking insane.

Not that my wolf understood; he was howling and demanding we grab her, drag her away somewhere private, andmark her, claim her. She carried our pup. She was ours. But I couldn’t do that. She wouldn’t let me do that.

Because the she-wolf my wolf was laying claim to? Demanding that we take and mate and mark her? She didn’t have bond marks, no sign whatsoever that she was my fated mate.

And without mate signs, I couldn’t bond her.

My throat tightened at the realization. Goddess, this was fucked-up on a lot of levels that even she didn’t realize, but now was not the time.

There were some things you needed to say face-to-face, not to a cold shoulder.

Plus, what I had to tell her would only make things worse, and right now, she might actually strangle me.

Better to wait.

Coward,my wolf snarled, still clawing for control, desperate to whisk her away. He saw things so black-and-white, but they just weren’t in this situation. There were about ninety-nine shades of gray between Leigh and me.

Brielle gasped, sitting straight up as if she’d bolted awake from a deep sleep.

“Bri!” Leigh shoved her way into the huddle surrounding her, taking one of her hands in the unmarked one.

“What happened?” Kane’s voice was half growl, revealing he was at the very edge of his control.

“Are you all right?” Shay asked at the same time that Olivia reached for Bri’s forehead, asking, “Are you hurt?”

“I’m okay. I think I’m okay,” Brielle said, swatting all the hands away from her. The milky color drained slowly from her eyes, their usual brown returning as we all stared in half shock, half horror.

“What was that?” I muttered under my breath to Reed, who stood staunchly at my side.

I was still a little pissed he’d found out Leigh was pregnantbefore I had, but the rational part of me knew I couldn’t exactly hold it against him when she didn’t even want to share the same air as me. He told me that he’d heard her puking and checked on her. Nothing but a concerned pack mate.

“No fucking clue, but those marks look familiar,” he whispered back, smoothing down the front of his button-up shirt in that way he did when he was fixating on something or thinking too hard. Even Reed’s nervous energy was channeled into the appearance of perfection.

That was his MO with everything. Overthink, overthink, overthink.

I was a man of action and instinct. I saw a problem, I fixed it. If I waited around, people could die, and there were no second chances as head enforcer for our pack.

How the hell was I supposed to fix things with Leigh, though? If we were going to be raising a baby together, we couldn’t be enemies. What action was supposed to fix this cosmic joke?

Kane helped Brielle to her feet, and everyone stood back.

“I think we need to have a conversation in the air,” she said ominously, looking intently at Kane as if they were having a mental conversation.

He jerked his chin down once in acquiescence, but she didn’t let him lead her away.

“Olivia, do you trust me?” she asked gently, as if the other woman was a spooked fawn, not a wolf shifter.

She nodded hesitantly, cupping her glowing palm against her chest.

“I need you to come with us. I’ll explain what I can on the plane.”

“But I don’t have any luggage or clothes or?—”

“Pack Blackwater will provide everything you need when we land,” Kane said, surprising the hell out of me.

What had Brielle told him in their little silent powwow?

“O…Okay, I guess.”

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