Page 66 of Alpha Wolf's Nanny
His hand curled into a fist on his knee. He’d thought putting distance between them would make it easier. Thoughtthat by stepping back, by holding himself apart, he could think clearly again, could be the alpha the pack needed. But the further he’d gone from her, the worse it got.
He could still hear her voice, edged with frustration. See the wounded flicker in her eyes. The way her jaw clenched when she was holding back something she didn’t want to say.
He’d hurt her.
Not with words. Not with actions. But with absence.
And that might’ve been worse.
She didn’t ask for any of this. Not the boys. Not the house. Not him. And yet she’d thrown herself into their lives, fearless and tender, creating space for herself in a world that had no map for her.
He hadn’t known someone could fit so neatly into a broken place.
And now she was alone. Vulnerable.
The thought made his stomach twist.
Red Teeth didn’t just kill. He toyed. He punished. He tore things apart not for strategy, but for pleasure. For chaos. If that bastard evensensedthat Cassie mattered to him…
Felix’s fingers dug into his thigh.
He needed to get back.
He just prayed to the old gods and the new that when he did, she’d still be there.
Dane cleared his throat beside him, eyes still locked on the road. “So…she’s staying at Nicolas’s place now?’
Felix blinked, pulled from the spiral of his thoughts. “Cassie? Yeah. Nicolas took the boys. She was going to follow after.”
“Was that her idea or yours?”
Felix hesitated. “Mine.”
Dane nodded slowly. “She seemed…good. With the boys, I mean. Natural.”
“She is.”
Dane shot him a glance. “You care about her.”
“Not up for debate,” Felix said, voice clipped.
“I wasn’t debating,” Dane replied. “Just…trying to understand how worried I should be.”
Felix didn’t answer.
Because the truth was, he didn’t know. He didn’t know if Cassie was okay. If she was even still conscious. The idea of her in that house, maybe alone, maybe not, with that monster anywhere in the area…
He shut the thought down. Smothered it.
“Drive faster,” he said.
And Dane did.
But even as the engine growled louder, as the trees blurred past in streaks of green and dusk, Felix’s gut refused to unclench.
He tried not to imagine what he’d walk into. Tried not to think of Cassie lying in a pool of blood, or the boys cowering in a closet. He tried not to remember what Red Teeth had done to that last family. The child with her throat torn out. The motherwith her hands broken at the wrist, like she’d tried to protect them until the last breath.
Cassie wasn’t a shifter. She didn’t have teeth or claws or the instincts of a born fighter. But she had something else. Tenacity. Guts. A raw, determined kind of courage that made him ache.
