Page 65 of Alpha Wolf's Nanny
Silence again. The sky ahead was steel-gray, a storm threatening on the horizon.
“How did you know where to look?” Felix asked, turning his gaze on Dane now. “How did you come across the bodies in the first place?”
Dane hesitated.
“You said you were patrolling the boundary,” Felix continued, his tone casual, but his eyes sharp, “but the site was more than twenty miles past the edge of our territory. Practically in no-man’s land.”
Dane’s grip tightened on the wheel. “I was…following a lead.”
Felix raised an eyebrow. “A lead.”
“A contact. Someone I trust.”
Felix let the silence do the work.
Eventually, Dane sighed, rubbed a hand over his face, and muttered, “Okay. I was seeing someone.”
Felix blinked. “Seeing someone?”
Dane winced. “It’s not official. Just…casual. You know me. We meet sometimes. She’s from the Ashford pack.”
Felix stared at him.
Dane glanced over, defensive. “It’s not what you think. She’s discreet. And smart. We talk. Sometimes she hears things. Nothing sensitive, but enough to be useful.”
“So you were hooking up and got lucky with intel?”
“Pretty much,” Dane muttered.
Felix exhaled through his nose, trying to keep his frustration in check. “You crossed pack lines without clearance. You were exposed, vulnerable, andalone.”
“Not alone,” Dane muttered, “she’s a fighter.”
“That’s not the point,” Felix snapped, “this isn’t just aboutyou, Dane. If they’d caught you out there, Red Teeth or anyone else, they wouldn’t have just killed you. They would’veusedyou. As bait. Or a message.”
Dane didn’t respond, but his jaw clenched tightly.
Felix raked a hand through his hair. “And if your Ashford contact is compromised—”
“She’s not.”
“How do you know that?”
Dane opened his mouth, then closed it again.
Felix shook his head. “I’m not going to discipline you. Not yet. Not while this thing is out there. But understand me, Dane: if I find out that your little rendezvous gave Red Teeth even a whiff of our position, Iwillhold you accountable. No second chances.”
Dane nodded stiffly, his face flushed with shame.
Felix leaned back in his seat, eyes closing for a moment. He could feel the pulse of the pack through the bond. tense, anxious, distant. And somewhere in that thread, a faint pull.
Cassie.
He hadn’t meant to leave without saying goodbye.
He told himself it was safer. Cleaner. But as the miles blurred by, the silence between him and Dane stretching longer and colder, he couldn’t stop thinking about her face. Her voice. The way she’d looked at him that morning. Equal parts fury and hurt.
And now Red Teeth was back. The pack was threatened.
