Page 51 of The Strongest Wolf

“Me pinning you against doorframes?” His voice is husky with contentment. It’s not the ‘I want to peel the clothes from your body’ husky voice, but more the way he sounds when we’re holding each other in bed and he’s close to falling asleep.

I nod.

“Seems to be the only way I can stop you from running.”

New tension fills me. “Hiding, you mean?”

“No.” He lifts his head to peer down at me. “Running.”

“You’re a wolf.” I lean my head against the doorframe so he’s not having to bend so much to meet my eyes. “Wolves are good at chasing things.”

His lips twitch. “So that’s what you want? For me to chase you?”

Despite the simmering arousal triggered by the thought of him doing just that, I put my hands on his chest and push. “No. You can back up now. I’m not about to fall apart.”

A line forms between his brow. “I never said you were.”

“But you think it.”

He steps into me, leaving not an inch of space between us. “No.Youthink it.”

Silence falls as I scrabble for a way to fill it. And I just… can’t.

“Sierra. Let me in.”

“I have.” It’s a lie. Or not the complete truth, and we both know it.

Galen lifts a hand and taps his fingers against my heart. “You have. Here.” He lifts his hand to cradle the back of my head. “But not here. Here you shut me out, because you don’t want me to see the things I already know.”

With no space between us, no way to push him away so I can breathe, I turn away. “There’s nothing to see.”

He turns me right back to face him. “I’d strongly disagree. What happened last night?”

“What happened was Nathan stuck his face through a bush, and I had a breakdown.” I put my hands on his chest and shove. More insistently now. “You should know, since you were there for the tail end of it.”

“That wasn’t a breakdown, Sierra.” He even sounds like he means it when I know it’s not true. It can’t be.

“Then what would you call it?” As I speak, I keep my eyes trained on his throat.

“I’d call it your self-survival instincts kicking in.”

“I’d disagree,” I say a split-second later.

“You’re wrong.”

I blink. “Excuse me?”

He gazes down at me. “I said you’re wrong.” His voice is unflinching and full of such utter confidence that, for some strange reason, pisses me off.

My eyes narrow. “Because you’re an alpha, and alphas are never wrong?”

“No. Because I only got a glimpse of what the Stone pack was like, and I saw a glimmer of what you would have had to do to survive. So when I tell you that you’re wrong, I mean it. You reacted the same way anyone with a brain would respond to a threat.”

“Nathan wasn’t a threat,” I remind him. “Soyou’rewrong.”

He gazes down at me, unblinking. “The moment it happened, did you know it was Nathan? Did you see anything other than a wolf you didn’t know lunging at you?”

Even though I have no reason to be afraid, my mind drags me back to last night. Fear floods my body. Swallowing hard, I will it away. But I’m not ready to concede Galen is right. “I hid.”

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