Page 55 of Alpha Rising (Secrets of the Northland Shifters)

My smile broadened. I always did love her perseverance, even when her argument was pointless.

I took a step forward, making her take a step back. She sucked in a breath when her ass hit the edge of my desk. She put her hands up. “I don’t want to be the reason you lose your focus. I don’t want to be the reason you lose everything.”

“If you left,” I said, closing the remaining gap between us. “Thatwould be the epitome of losing.”

She laid her palms flat against my chest. “So long as John needs me to testify, I need to do what he says. I need to go where he tells me to go.”

“You aren’t leaving me.” I set my own palm flat on the desk and leaned over her.

She arched her back, her breasts brushing my chest. “Reese. I don’t want to leave but...”

“I can keep you safe.”

It was a promise I’d made before, but I needed her to believe it. There too many alphas in her life for my liking: John Riordan wanted to count himself as one; Carmine DaBruzzi was another. Both men were a threat to me, and the latter was an intolerable threat to Sarah.

“I know you can,” she said, her voice little more than breath. “The question is—”

“There’s no question,” I said. “Now kiss me.”

When my lips touched hers, she opened for me on a gasp.

I hoped her submission meant that she trusted me to eliminate every threat. Because I was going to do just that.

17

TOBY FITZPATRICK

“Melanie,keep up,” I urged as I searched the canopy of trees for more hidden cameras. Ever since Angel and I had spotted the first two, Reese had assigned me to counter-surveillance. Today, my little sister was giving an assist.

I’d found one more camera on my first day of patrol, but nothing since. I’d also found nothing to connect the cameras to the other unsettling events that had occurred since Dad’s death—not to the sabotage of the ropes course, not to the marking of our trees, not even to Sarah’s abduction.

“Iamkeeping up,” Melanie groused, hopping from rock to rock as she crossed the small creek that cut through the woods before running down the hill on its way to the lake. “I’m right behind you.”

I smiled but didn’t look back. “You know, if you don’t want to get assigned to jobs like this, you’d be smart not to worry Reese so much.”

Melanie scoffed. “He’s not worried about me.”

“Seriously? He’s worried about everything.” I put my hand to a tree and narrowed my eyes as I searched its branches.

“Well, he’s not worried aboutme. He’s just mad at me. This assignment is his punishment.”

“Awww,” I said. “I like spending time with you too, Mel.”

“Shut up.”

I laughed. “Seriously though. Can you blame him for being mad? His mate was attacked and abducted, and when he called the family together, you weren’t there.”

The memory of that night was still fresh. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to erase the image of Sarah McAvoy sitting in the back room of that liquor store, trembling like a blade of grass in the wind.

“I like Sarah,” Melanie said darkly, “but she’s not Reese’s mate.”

It didn’t surprise me thatthatwas the part of my statement Melanie had focused on. Out of all of us, she’d always been the most resistant to change, and to have a new alpha with a potential new mate so soon after losing Dad…

Melanie came by her resistance naturally, of course. She’d been only two when our mother left, after which she’d positivelyclungto our father.

Dad had no preconceived ideas about how to raise a daughter so—to his credit—he’d let her run as wild as the rest of us. Melanie had adored him for it, even though her teenage antics had turned Dad prematurely gray.

For the first two weeks after he was killed, Melanie had locked herself in her room and refused to come out, or at least not when anyone else was awake. In the mornings, we’d always find evidence of her midnight kitchen raids.

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