Page 14 of The Alpha King's Fate

‘Don’t say anything else. We might be bugged,’ he warned Layla.

Layla sucked in a breath and whipped her head around to look at him. The hammering in her chest started again.

‘There’s a burner phone in the glove compartment,’ he said in their mindlink as he put his eyes back on the road. ‘There’s only one number on it; call it, please. Dylan will know what to do until I call him again.’

Layla did as he asked and put the phone on before she dialled the number. His Beta answered in the first few rings.

“Take precautions.”

There was silence on the other side before Dylan said, “Yes, sir,” and hung up.

His Beta knew his job. There was only one reason he’d call him using a private number on a burner phone. Dylan would be in charge, and Diedre would strengthen their protection wards. His witches’ strength grew in bounds since Layla healed her; she would help the other packs, too. This time, they had a better chance because of Diedre and all the extra security measures they put in place. He had to remember that.

Until then, he and his mate were laying low.

He drove silently and took a long way around to park in a public car park. Once the engine stopped running, he called on his beast to sense any threats in the area. He also kept his earsopen for anything in or on the car. Bugs constantly emitted waves as they sent a signal to the owner.

When he sensed nothing in the car, he breathed and sat back.

Maybe he was being too cautious. He hadn’t even looked around the lobby because he would have given himself away if they were watching him.

“Let’s go for a walk,” he said, taking the phone from her hand.

‘Switch your phone off and leave it in the glove compartment.’

They might have already been tracking their phones if they had been looking into them since their run-in in the forest. Maybe it was too late, and they’d figured things out already.

He needed to move quickly to find out what the hell was happening.

He put the hotel’s number as the second number on the burner phone and then pulled his main phone from his pocket to switch it off.

‘There’s another car in a parking lot a block over.’

He didn’t waste any more time as he took Layla’s hand and joined the early afternoon shoppers walking through the mall. By the time they got to the other car, Layla was stiff with the tension in her body.

‘You didn’t teach me how to fight them,’ she said in his head.

He stopped in the middle of putting his seatbelt on to look at her.

‘You’ve been training every day,’ he pointed out. ‘And your fighting has improved—’

‘It’s not enough, you know that,’ Layla interjected.

And a flash of anger accompanied her words. He got that she was anxious, but it sounded like she was blaming him for their predicament.

‘We’ll talk about this when we get to a safe place,’ he said as he pulled out his phone.

‘Yes, of course. Whatever you decide to do is what we’ll do.’

“Seriously?” he asked out loud, noting her rising anger.

‘Our daughter is back there. My sister is there. If I’d left the first time, the Hunters wouldn’t have returned.’

‘They wouldn’t have returned to where they saw you? Come on, Layla, use your head.’

Layla sighed and folded her arms across her chest.

‘Let’s just go. I need to think.’

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