Page 12 of Tamed By the Alpha Wolf

But the...connectionbetween us was dangerous. Rafe could order Nico killed for intruding on our territory. Nico could hurt someone and meet a bloody end. A damn semi could slam into a dark wolf running down the road on a dark night.

Any end, and he’d take me with him. I’d marked him as my mate. Our fates were now tied together.

I touched my lips, still tingling from his kiss.

What the fuck was I doing?

Rafe caught up to me a few minutes later, his expression carefully neutral. “Tara asked to be released from the pack.”

I stumbled, nearly face-planting into a tree. “What?”

“She and Corbin...” Rafe trailed off, but I could fill in the blanks.

The looks. The smiles. Our healer found a reason to make herself available anytime the Crescent Hollow second dropped by with orders phrased like updates.

Another one gone. Another piece of the pack, crumbling away.

My father’s legacy. My failure.

“I wanted to tell you in person.” Rafe scrubbed a hand over the back of his head. “She says she’ll keep acting as our healer until we find another.”

Fat lot of good that would do. We couldn’t keep wolves, much less recruit them. A dying pack in a dying town?Come for the space and low property values, stay because all your dreams burned to a crisp.

We walked the rest of the way in silence. Guilt and shame twisted in my gut with every step. Not just about lying, but about Tara. About Kai, Orion, and Maddy. About how few packmatesremained, and how little hope there was for anything beyond their continued defection.

Declan was already at the clearing when we arrived, leaning against a massive tree like he didn’t have a care in the world. The Crescent Hollow alpha flicked eyes to me, then Rafe, a smirk playing at the corners of his mouth.

“Poacher,” I greeted him, injecting as much venom into the word as I could manage.

Declan’s eyebrows shot up. He looked to Rafe. “She knows?”

Rafe nodded, and Declan shrugged. “Ah, well. Can’t blame a guy for trying to expand his territory, can you?”

I opened my mouth to tell him exactly where he could shove his territory, but movement in the undergrowth caught my attention. A massive grizzly bear lumbered into the clearing, and I tensed, ready for a fight.

But then the bear’s form blurred, shrinking and twisting until a naked man stood before us.

“Wyatt,” Declan said, nodding to the newcomer. “Thanks for coming.”

I watched the bear warily from the corner of my eye as he reached for a knapsack hidden in the bushes and pulled out clothes. Declan might have been willing to carve out a chunk of his land for a clan of bears, but I still had my doubts.

I glanced between the three men, suspicion prickling along my spine. “Yeah, hi, nice to see all of your ugly mugs. Someone want to tell me what we’re doing here?”

“Well, hello to you too, sweetheart.” Wyatt puckered his lips in a loud smooch. “If you’d prefer, I can keep my information to myself.”

“Wyatt,” Rafe warned, his voice low.

The bear shifter rolled his eyes and pulled two manila folders from his bag. He tossed them unceremoniously into the dirt at Rafe and Declan’s feet.

Not mine.

My wolf snarled at the blatant snub. I wasn’t the alpha, but I wasn’t some random pup either. I was pack. And this... this was bullshit.

Rafe bent to retrieve the folders, his brow furrowed as he handed the extra to Declan and flipped through the contents. “What am I looking at here?”

“A string of shifter crimes going back a year, as far as my contacts can tell,” Wyatt said, his voice grim. “Recognizable by the animal nature of the attacks, and the proximity to large tracts of land. If the pattern holds, they’re headed toward Denver next.”

My blood ran cold. Shifter crimes. Animal attacks.

---