Page 67 of Wolf Hunter

I open my mouth to retort and quickly snap it shut.Ah, yeah. Letting her go.

I guess I haven’t thought that far ahead.

I knew the day would finally come when I was forced to loosen the chains binding her to me, no matter what I thought or how I felt. No matter how my wolf has already claimed her for his own and that my people mate for life.

I skim my hand along the bare skin of her arm and try to memorize the feeling of her. The unexpected sweetness she showed me tonight.

This phantom stormed into my life punching, kicking, and screaming, fighting the entire way. Why now? Why bring her to me at all if I have to let her go?

“How did you get to be so stubborn?” I ask as she leans into my touch as I brush the hair away from her shoulders and replace my fingers with my mouth, trailing kisses along the back of her neck.

“I was born this way,” she retorts.

Born forme.

Born to be my perfect match in every way, right down to her quick hands and that wicked tongue of hers.

Deep down, I know I’ll be forced to release her. Keeping her here with me spells ruin for both of us.

ChapterNineteen

Tasha

He actually wants me to go back to the coven? What does he stand to gain from such a maneuver? He has to know that once I leave, I’m not coming back until I’m ready to finish the job I started.

“The sex must have warped your fragile little mind,” I comment. I trail my fingers up and down one of the arms that encase me because I can’tnottouch him. I love the feeling of him, the hardness of his body on me, all of it. “I mean, it was good, but it wasn’tthatgood. You aren’t making sense right now.”

But I recognize the look in his eyes. The one that says he’s bitten into an idea and won’t let it go any time soon.

“I’m serious, Tash,” he replies. “I make the offer knowing full well what the consequences may be.”

I moan at the name because it doesn’t matter how many times I’ve said it, nothing stops him from calling me that. But when I take a moment to think about what he’s offering—reallythink about it—I realize that letting me go back to the coven isn’t just a strategy to prove he’s right. Hell, it’s not even a way for me to get more answers about his mother’s mysterious death and the witches’ involvement. It’s to show me he trusts me. Completely.

He thinks that if he lets me go, no strings attached, that I’ll come back.

What a fucking idiot.

I’m not sure what scares me more: the thought of being able to leave… or what it means about his feelings for me.

“Go and ask them,” Reid repeats. “You need to hear for yourself and not from me. Because no matter how I might wish it otherwise, you’re never going to trust me completely.”

“I trusted you enough to sleep with you,” I mutter.

He shakes his head. “It’s not enough.”

“When is it ever going to be enough for you?”

He wants too much from me. I see it on his face, even though he’s never voiced it to me. And who might have guessed? The bloodthirsty alpha not only has a soft side but a heart. One he wants to offer to me, and I’d have no choice but to return.

I gather the sheets to me and push away from the bed. Away from his warmth and all the things I want that I never realized before. Because it’s safer to be miserable.

I have to put some distance between us before I fall any further than I already have. The shivers have nothing to do with the temperature or the lack of body heat from being with Reid, and everything to do with me.

I fucked up. Somewhere along the line, I messed up in an irrevocable way, and now I’m struggling to deal with the consequences.

“When I get to the bottom of what’s going on. When I can make things right for us,” he muses mostly to himself, “then it will be enough.”

What delusional little fairytale life is he envisioning for us?

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