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I stop in the middle of the hallway and look at him.

“Now that isn’t altogether true now, is it?” I grind out. “Someone was creeping into her room.”

“Naturally, the men are curious about her.”

It’s a near thing keeping myself from wrapping my hands around his throat. I’m not usually this violent, but ever since I stepped foot in this house, the feeling has been growing. “And if I hadn’t come when I had, then what?”

He shrugs. “I’ll speak to the men.”

This place hasn’t felt like home since before the day I walked away from here. Still, it’s difficult to shrug off all the things I knew and all the things I wish I could forget.

I remember playing with my pack in the forests, spending time in our family’s room with my mom, and of barely seeing my dad because, like Douglas Boone, he always put the pack first, second, and last.

Months ago, Aerin healed the pain I’d suffered when I lost all the family I had. Her healing didn’t wash away the memory of those painful memories. They no longer hurt, but I still remember them.

And she apologized for it.

I will never stop being amazed that she is mine.

“She had blood on her face,” I speak quietly, but my wolf is snarling in my head, wanting to punish someone for it.

Franklin shrugs again. “It wasn’t hers. Be grateful it was me that caught up with her and not the others.”

He says it like I should thank him for mentally scarring Aerin by killing her former mate right in front of her.

“Grateful?”

He straightens. “Look, he would have caused us problems before long. Better he was dead than alive.”

I stare at him.

Our pack wasn’t just the fiercest in the country. It was home and it was family. We cared about each other.

This talk of using and disposing people isn’t something I recognize.

Franklin shakes his head as if it no longer matters. “You wanted to see she’s okay, and she is. Do we have an agreement?”

This is what it comes down to. The reason I walked myself down to the front door.

There was only one way to get Aerin out without putting her in the firing line.

Only one.

“I want today with her. No interruption. You and everyone else stay away.”

Smiling, he holds a hand out. “Then it sounds like we have ourselves a deal.”

My wolf would rather ravage that hand than shake it. He’s responsible for Aerin being here and the reason she had blood on her face. That she is afraid.

But I know why I’m here and that reason is not to put Aerin at more risk.

I shake his hand, hoping I’m not making a mistake too big to get myself out of, but knowing I have precious few choices right now.

17

AERIN

Icount down the seconds, then the minutes.

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