Page 145 of The Alpha King's Fate

“Brax and Ryker will join us when we go after them. I’m sure when words get around about what we did, more packs will want to join us. The Circle won’t have a say in this, or they’ll have to punish us all.”

“They won’t punish everyone. Just me,” he sighed. “They’re not going to let me get away with what I did at the trial.”

Especially Alpha Cole. The only reason that asshole hadn’t come yet was because of the Hunters. Cole liked to talk the talk,but he wasn’t the type to ever challenge a Hunter. Getting rid of compromised packs was probably that coward’s idea, too.

“We’ll deal with them when that happens. I’m so sick of all of them; I don’t even want to think about those fuckers. They’re worse than what we’re dealing with right now,” Chase said. “I don’t like how easily they got in last time and the stupid narrow-mindedness that allows them to believe there is only one way. I’m sure there are more wolves than Hunters, so why do we always have to tuck our tails between our legs and hide?”

He looked sideways at the Alpha who had been caught in the crossfire of his feud with the Circle. He didn’t want to think about what Alpha Cole was cooking up or Hugo’s interest in how Layla broke through Cole’s magic.

She wouldn’t be able to break through anything anymore.

He swore and looked back at the sky, letting the rain hit his face again. Every thought was taking him straight back to Layla.

A flash of lightning filled the sky, and moments later, the rumble of thunder. The wind started to pick up speed.

“Where’s Layla,” Chase asked softly.

That question again.

Even with all the noise, he heard it. Her name cut him up this time. Tore his heart to pieces.

“Is she okay?”

He could sense the concern. Everyone had walked on eggshells around him since they came back. He bit down on his jaw, making sure the words in his heart wouldn’t escape. It was pointless. He wasn’t fooling anyone, and he couldn’t tell them to fuck off and leave him alone. It was Cain’s fault, though, for proclaiming they were brothers now. Equals. The beast would never go back on his word.

“You should come out of the rain,” Chase said after a while. “They said the storm’s going to be a bad one.”

“You go ahead. Look through all the experiments on our people so we know how to help them,” he said. “We can’t bring Diedre back yet, so we have to ration the healing potions.”

He didn’t wait for an answer or look back as he walked down the steps and headed towards the training fields. He didn’t stop even when he walked past the guard house, and several of his warriors bowed from the porch. He didn’t stop when he was deep in the forest, in the darkness where the tree canopy was so thick most of the rain didn’t pass through it.

He walked until he couldn’t move anymore without breaking down. And only then did he fall to his knees and allow himself to feel the pain.

Surely love was not meant to be like that. Surely it wasn’t meant to bring a grown man to his knees in agony.

Did the past two years mean nothing to Layla? What about their child, who she claimed she would never abandon? Was this not abandonment? Did she think about what this would do to Hope? Layla was the reason Hope thrived despite being unresponsive when she was born prematurely. Their bond always seemed unbreakable.

How could she walk away?

Why couldn’t she just pretend?

He didn’t know how long he remained lost in his thoughts, but Dylan’s scent pulled him out. He wiped his face but didn’t look back when his Beta stepped into the small clearing.

“We can feel all that, you know,” Dylan said quietly.

Shielding his emotions had been the last thing on his mind when that dam broke. There was too much pain to hold in.

Dylan walked over to him, leaned against a tree trunk and shoved a bottle of his special whiskey in front of his face.

“Wanna try to get drunk?” Dylan asked.

He didn’t need a second invitation. The moment he sat beside Dylan, he grabbed the bottle and took a few healthy mouthfuls.The liquid burnt down his throat and made him grimace. But one bottle wouldn’t get him drunk, and Dylan knew that. And after what they had just been through a drunk Alpha King was the last thing anyone needed.

“Where did she go?” Dylan asked, straight to the point.

“She left me.”

Dylan’s shock almost made him laugh. It was funny. His soul mate bailed—broken her word, and he was out in the woods crying like a baby. Fate was a funny fucker. Why was Layla put in his path if everything was always going to end in pain?

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