Page 27 of Wolf Unleashed
“I need you, Maddox,” she said in a softer voice that made every part of him stand up and pay attention. “Tiernan’s right. The longer I’m away from you, the more intense the nightmares have become.” Her eyes grew wide. “Damn, that sounded like I only want you to relieve a condition. I need you, want you, because of what I feel in here.” She pounded her fist against her chest.
He knew how she felt, but he couldn’t give into want. Not this time.
“I get it. You’re stressed because this whole situation is fucked up. You’re one of the good ones, angel. You shouldn’t be on the run from your people, let alone a bunch of blood-thirsty shifters, but this is your reality now. Cry, curse, punch someone if it helps. Ask Rafe about that. He’s got a nasty right hook.” Maddox rubbed his jaw, hoping his wolf took pity on him and would heal him quickly. “Do whatever it takes to survive, angel.”
“The DSA isn’t our biggest worry. We suspect her father is looking for her,” Tiernan added. “Either way, it’s not the running that’s stressing her.”
“Stop talking about me like I’m some weak, pathetic, helpless person. Yes, I’m stressed. I’m scared my father will find me. But I’m not curling up in a corner somewhere. I’m more worried about us. The four of us. Together.”
“Maybe he won’t come looking for you,” Rafe offered.
She winced as if in pain. “What’s wrong?” Maddox asked, concerned he’d missed something when he’d taken in her scent. Other than tired, she’d seemed healthy.
“It’s this thing inside me, whatever it is. Every time I think of my father, it gets mad. Maybe it’s because… because he killed my mother.”
“Always trust your wolf,” Maddox said.
Rafe glared at him. “She doesn’t have a wolf. Stop making her think otherwise.”
“I think she does have a wolf,” Maddox replied.
“You do?” Alyssa asked, her eyes wide with surprise.
Maddox quickly considered not telling her, but he wasn’t like Drake. He didn’t parse out information to keep others in line. “Your mother, angel, was Adeline Monroe.”
“That’s right. But I never told you her name.”
“My pack gathers intel. It’s how we survive.”
“Continue,” Rafe ordered.
“Adeline Monroe. Maiden name Dunbar. She had no documentation, no background information before her marriage license with Woodrow Jackson Monroe. We believe her real name was Adeline Bordelon, a wolf shifter who disappeared from the Bordelon pack in Kisatchie National Forest in Louisiana a year before Adeline Dunbar appeared in Cleveland, Ohio.”
Anxiety rose over the bond. Maddox could not ignore Alyssa’s distress. He cupped her face as he peered into her beautiful hazel eyes with flecks of gold that always danced for him.
Without a word, she stepped into him and placed both hands on his bare chest. “Are you sure that’s her? That I am really half-shifter?” she whispered, even as a mixture of excitement and trepidation flooded the bond.
“My pack has a network of spies, angel. When my alpha found out what happened at the DSA training program, he investigated you. The moment he learned you were Woodrow Monroe’s daughter, he dug into every aspect of your life.”
“Why?” she asked in a strangled voice.
“Information is power. It’s what keeps our pack alive. It has for a long time.”
“What else did you find?” Rafe asked.
“Not me. My alpha.”
“Do you trust anything that asshole says?” Tiernan says.
“Drake is a lot of things, especially a manipulator when it comes to using information to achieve what he wants, but he is a master of getting information. Good, solid, accurate information. So, yes. I believe what he found.”
“And how do you know my mother is the missing shifter from Louisiana?”
“I saw a picture of her with her parents and siblings.” Maddox caressed her cheek with his thumb. “You have her eyes, angel. The same shape and color. There is no mistake that Adeline Bordelon, a shifter from the Bordelon pack, was your mother. And that voice you’ve been hearing inside you, it’s your wolf. It has to be.”
“She’d smell like a shifter if she were,” Rafe countered. “Wolves emerge in puberty.”
“For full shifters,” Maddox said. “Maybe it doesn’t work the same for half shifters. The half-shifters in hiding don’t exactly share information, Rafe. And there are so few born in packs because very few humans are accepted into packs. There’s a shifter in Damien’s pack who’s half-human. I heard she didn’t shift until after she blood-bonded.”
