Page 78 of The Weakest Wolf

I grab for my cell phone as I swing my legs off the bed. After pressing number one to speed-dial Dom, I get to my feet and cross over to the window. As the phone rings and rings, I rip the curtains open.

In the distance, the sun has barely started rising.

Fuck.

I hadn’t intended on sleeping, but I must’ve drifted off while trying to put together all the pieces that make up the most complicated woman I’ve ever known. And I’m not even sure I have yet.

The ringing stops and Dom answers with a jaw-cracking yawn. “Galen, youdoknow what time it is, right?”

“Why would a submissive shifter stay in a pack full of predators?”

Dom is silent for a beat. He’s just woken, and I swear I hear his brain whirling faster than someone who’d been up for hours. “They have nowhere else to go. Maybe they’re afraid.”

The memory of Sierra’s defiant gray eyes swims in my vision. I shake my head. “No. It isn’t that.”

“Maybe someone is forcing them to stay.”

The gas station clerk was adamant that Eden asked Sierra to go with her. So adamant that I believe him. “No, she stayed for another reason.”

“She? What are you talking about?” He pauses for a second and then clears his throat. “Don’t tell me that the woman you’ve been trying to break for the last few days is a submissive.”

Even half-asleep, Dom is quick on his feet. “I didn’t know she was before. When the gas station owner said she’d been arguing and dragging Eden… well, the last person I thought I’d come face to face with was a submissive.”

“I’m guessing you know where Eden is, then? She told you?”

I stare at the sun slowly creeping up across the sky and try to guess the time. Four? Maybe five? Who the fuck cares? “No. She didn’t.”

Dom is silent for so long this time that I start thinking he’s fallen back to sleep when he speaks. “So for four days you’ve been on her and she hasn’t told you where Eden is?”

“No.”

“And you’re sure she’s a submissive?”

I will never forget the terror in her eyes before the pack run. “She’s a submissive.”

“And you’re an alpha?”

“Of course I’m a fucking alpha,” I snarl. “What the fuck does that have to do with anything?”

Dom sighs, as unfazed as ever. “I ask because I don’t know why she wouldn’t tell you about Eden. If you’re sure she’s not just pretending…?”

“No. No, she’s a sub.”

“Then she has to be protecting someone or something. Maybe herself, if you scared her enough.” Dom’s tone turns dry. “You know, with your fondness for snarling.”

I shift my focus to my hand. The same hand that nearly squeezed the life out of her. “She’s not afraid of me,” I murmur. “I don’t think she’s afraid of anything. The only thing she seemed to care about was—” I stop talking.

“Uh, Galen? What is it?”

The necklace.

I was convinced Leo had given it to her, but after she went to fuck him in the forest, he disappeared. Why would she still care about the necklace when she didn’t care about him?

She was a virgin. That was no lie. But her touch… she hinted that she and Leo did other things, but she never told me that outright. Just said I should know what they’d been up to.

“Because I could tell when she was lying, and she knew that,” I murmur.

“Galen?”

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