Page 58 of The Alpha King's Fate

He popped the trunk open and pulled up a go bag. Considering all the dangers they faced when they left their territory, having one or two bags full of clothes and emergency supplies in the car was necessary. He pulled a pair of sweats and a t-shirt out before picking something out for Layla.

It was a shame about her outfit. They had to burn their bloody clothes and all the evidence so they could travel home, and that outfit had become a favourite.

“Jax. Is the Circle going to come for us?”

“Probably,” he answered with a sigh.

He wouldn’t get away with killing the Circle assassins and dominating Cole on top of everything he had been summoned for in the first place.

“Does everyone know the evacuation procedures?” he asked Dylan.

“Yes. We’ve drilled it in for months. I’ll make sure everyone knows to be ready,” Dylan said.

“Thanks. I’ll call a meeting when I get home. I’ll be in touch soon.”

He cut the phone and picked up his supplies, including bottles of water and towels. And then he took a calming breath before walking to the front of the car. Layla was leaning against the hood, her face pale and expression vacant as she stared at the field they had stopped in. Her anxiety and fear had weighed him down as he’d driven away from the hotel, but other than that, she was fine. There was no lingering magic within her, like what he could feel in his body. None at all.

He’d taken a chance going through Cole’s magic and had known he would have to fight it off. But Layla had walked through it as if it was nothing. Even driving through the wardswhen they had left hadn’t done anything to her, and those should have kept them trapped within the grounds of the hotel. It only confirmed what he’d already guessed when she’d fallen asleep in his arms and left herself unguarded. There was some sort of magic in her blood. It was probably the source of her healing capabilities.

“Should I have let you kill him?” she whispered.

He sighed as he placed her clothes next to her.

“That would have made our problems worse. The Circle is much bigger than that asshole; they would have all banded together to take me down.”

They would still do that. He’d bruised Cole’s ego, and there was nothing worse than an egomaniac with too much power. And that egomaniac clearly had a problem with accepting Layla as his mate. But he didn’t want to worry Layla about that when they had the Hunters to deal with, too.

“Why did they let us walk out so easily?”

Easy? After he’d ripped apart their most prized pets and Layla had broken Cole’s reinforced wards as if they were nothing? There had been nothing easy about what they had done. But the Circle probably needed to regroup and deal with their obvious internal issues before they came after them again. Now that they knew it wouldn’t be so easy, he was sure their next move would be more creative. More deadly.

“They knew what I would do after they separated us. I’m almost certain I fell into their trap, but I don’t know what they hoped to achieve in the first place. Declaring war with Cain is never a good thing.”

Cain was still pissed off that he’d left them alive, but his duty to Layla and his pack were the only reason they hadn’t driven back.

“Or are we the ones who declared war on them?” Layla asked, finally looking at him.

He wanted nothing more than to pull her into his arms to offer the reassurance she needed. All the shit that had happened before they had gone to the hotel didn’t matter to him anymore. He just wanted her back in his arms, but he was sure now that his feelings ran deeper than Layla’s. How was such a thing even allowed to happen? Fate had given him a mate who could walk away whenever she wanted. That broke him up.

The only thing that had stopped him from ending Cole had been her horror. Her disgust when she’d seen what he had done. That from a woman who’d claimed she knew who and what he was and loved him anyway.

He looked away from her probing gaze and opened one of the water bottles to wet a face towel.

“We’re not going to wait around for them to attack us. You know there’s a plan in place. We’ll be okay,” he said. He stepped up to her and gently wiped the blood on her cheek. “But let’s not worry about that right now. We have to get home.”

He met her emerald gaze again and saw fear in them, but he looked away before his urges to comfort her got the better of him. Sex and war went hand in hand for Cain, but he had to deny the beast. He’d already taken Layla in anger when he’d been sure that, had it not been for their bond, she would have said no. It was something he wasn’t proud of and would never do again.

“You’re getting stronger,” he stated, moving onto her hands and gently running the towel over them. They looked bruised. Had she had to fight anyone to get to him? There were thin, red lines on her knuckles that were already almost healed.

“I felt my wolf again,” she said. “When Dylan told me the news, it got me angry and got me out of that room.”

“She.”

“What?”

“She. She got angry,” he answered. “I don’t think she’d like being referred to as ‘it’.”

Layla looked away from him and back at the fields.

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