Page 38 of Wolf Forsaken

"No, he's not. He's still passed out. Look at him." She hit a sensitive spot behind my ear and my traitorous tail wagged again.

"His tail just wagged." Damn tail couldn't keep a secret to save its life, and the hand on my head stilled.

"Maybe he was having a wolf dream... like dogs do."

I shifted back, my head face down in her lap, which was covered by only a pillow. She shoved me away, and I sat up, sticking out my bottom lip. "Since you think I'm a dog, can I smell your crotch?"

"Ew." She scrunched her nose in the most adorable way and then a pillow hit me across the face, falling into my lap.

"Hey, what the fuck?"

"Cover yourself, you filthy animal." Cole's voice held a lightness that I hadn't heard from him since we were young.

I threw the pillow back at his head, and Ivy groaned. "Can we not have a pillow fight with me in the middle?" She folded her arms over her breasts. There probably weren't any clothes in the cabin to change into.

"He started it." I knew I sounded like a child, but that was how I felt when it came to Cole. He had been my best friend, my unofficial brother, and then suddenly he wasn't. I didn't think we could repair our relationship to what it once was, not after everything we'd been through, the words we'd exchanged, the fights we'd been in.

"Maybe you two should just start over. Don't continue to make your fathers' mistakes." She stood, turning to face us. "How are we going to work if you're always at each other's throats? I can't have my boyfriends wanting to kill each other."

"I'm your boyfriend?" I sat up a little straighter, and Cole dramatically huffed and rolled his eyes. "Why don't you say how you really feel, Coco?"

"Don't call me that. We're not kids anymore." He stood and wrapped an arm around Ivy's waist. "I worry about your ability to protect our mate."

I cringed. That was the worst thing he could have possibly said. "And what about you? She was thrown into a freezing river without any way to get herself free. What if a human would have found her like that?"

Cole's jaw ticked, and his fingers dug into her waist. "I can't control other people's actions, Si. He blindsided me."

"And that's something that should never happen as the alpha of a large pack." I stood and grabbed the photo album from the couch. "But maybe we were never meant to be alphas."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Cole snatched the album from me and threw it on the coffee table.

"Bunny is an alpha, and she's stronger than us." She gasped, and I grinned at her reaction. "I'm sure if you'd get your head out of your ass for once, you would have already realized it."

"I do not want to be the alpha of anything. Besides, Cole told me women are never strong enough." She moved away from both of us and started to pace. She was already such a natural at being a wolf, not even caring that she was naked as the day she was born. "This is all too much."

Cole ran his hand down his face and then crossed his arms over his chest. "I think he's right."

She stopped and stared at us both, her eyes smoldering and her red hair making her look like the queen she was. "So now what?"

I put my hand on Cole's shoulder and he looked at it with a cocked brow. "Now, we get Cole's pack back and become one."

Emotion overwhelmed me, and I turned away. I wouldn’t be alone anymore.

Chapter Thirteen

Eli

My sister was alive, and it had lifted a huge weight from my shoulders. If something would have happened to her, I didn't know what I would have done.

When we'd lost our mom and she'd been near death herself, I lost myself to my wolf. We had both been close to our mother, and her loss was something I didn't think I'd ever truly get over.

Sara had been the one to pull me out of my spiral into darkness. Our dad had carried her down the stairs and she'd stood on her one leg, supported by crutches, and told me to snap the hell out of it because she needed me.

And she did. She needed me more than she was willing to admit.

I headed downstairs after taking a shower, tired of being locked away up in the room. Cole had taken a long nap while I confirmed reinforcements were coming to help us and made sure our assets weren't compromised. I considered sending a mass email, but wanted to discuss it with Cole first, but he had disappeared when I was in the shower.

Surely out of the three hundred plus members of the pack, most would join with us to take back the pack. We were still human at our core, and what Dante had done was treason. Cole could beat him in a fight, but we now knew Dante didn't fight fair.

---