Page 57 of The Alpha's Silent Mate

He takes a hand from my arm and scrubs it over his face. “I know that. It just—”

“You say it slips out, but I don’t think it does. You don’t think I can look after myself. You never have.”

“Lexa—”

I pull myself free and stand. “Fine, go.”

Shay rises to his feet, but his eyes never leave mine. “You’re not thinking about following me, are you?”

For the first time, I hate how easily he reads me.

I turn away so he can’t see into my eyes, and through it, my heart.

A second later, his hands grip my shoulders and he turns me back to face him. “Lexa. Answer me?”

When I don’t respond, he shakes me. “Lexa?”

“You want me to do nothing while you walk into danger,” I say with my eyes on his chest. “What if you don’t come back?”

He jerks me hard against him. “I’m not walking into danger. Just investigating a sound. And Iwillcome back.”

I push back against his chest until he releases me. “You don’t know that.”

“Nothing will happen.”

He chooses the wrong words to say. I feel all color drain from my face as a memory hits with the force of a punch to the gut. “That’s what he said,” I whisper.

“Who?” Shay asks.

“My dad. And do you know what happened?”

He shakes his head, but I can read in his eyes that he does.

“Everyone died. Everyone but me.”

Shay takes a step toward me, but I spin around, and before he can stop me, I reach for my wolf. The moment I’m a small brown wolf, I dart under the bed.

“Lexa?”

Ignoring him, I burrow as far away as I can get from him.

“You never have to hide from me.”

Closing my ears to the hurt in his voice, I squeeze my eyes shut.

After a long moment, he lets out a heavy breath and I hear him rise. “We’ll talk when I get back.”

Although his steps are silent, I know the moment he’s slipped out of the front door.

I lower my head between my paws and try to silence the growing fear that he won’t come back. That I will lose him the way I’ve lost everyone else in my life.

As the minutes tick by and Shay doesn’t return, my anxiety grows and grows.

If Shay was only going to investigate something—a sound, he said—then surely, he would’ve returned by now. Wouldn’t he?

Maybe something is wrong. Maybe he needs me.

Or maybe he’s dead already?

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