Page 64 of The Strongest Wolf

So I pull away, leaving the sister I believed was dead. But that isn’t what hurts more. It’s the feeling I’m leaving my heart behind.

Raising my gaze to the rearview mirror, my eyes connect with Sierra’s silver alpha stare.

The shifters who’ve fucked with the Hunts aren’t going to know what hit them for making me do this.

I’m smiling as I lose sight of Sierra. But the second I’ve pulled onto the main road that will take me away from Hardin—and Sierra—my smile slips away and my hands tighten around the steering wheel.

It’ll take me a couple of days to make the drive from Colorado to Upstate New York. I’ll be tearing into those fucks soon enough, and when they’re all dead…

My smile returns. It’s colder than the one I gave Sierra. This one is for the shifters who’ve fucked with the wrong alpha.

15

SIERRA

He’s gone.

Maybe forever.

Galen might intend to come back, but what if he realizes he wants a mate who can stand strong beside him instead of one who jumps when someone grabs her shoulder? Then there’s Chloe, the woman in his pack he’d planned on making Luna. He said there was nothing between them, but she’s an alpha. Perfect Luna material, he told Dom back in Dexter.

I’m just… not.

And you just sent him right back to her.

“Sierra?” Eden’s soft voice makes me jerk my gaze away from the truck disappearing into the distance.

“Yeah?” I smile.

She doesn’t smile back. None of the Blackshaws smile. They all, every one of them, are gazing at me with concern filling their eyes. As if they can hear my heart breaking.

“Do you want to come to the house for breakfast? You could stay with us instead of being in the cabin alone.” She takes a step toward me, her hand outstretched.

I back up. One hug. One arm squeezed in comfort and I will fall apart. I know it. “I’m not hungry, thanks.” It feels like the hardest thing in the world to widen my smile, but I do it. Just.

When I feel it wobble, and my vision turns hazy, I know I have to get the hell away from everyone before I lose it. “Thanks. I have to…” Something sticks in my throat, so I can’t finish.

Wheeling around, I head back to the cabin at a fast pace, head lowered, blinking rapidly and biting my lip, hoping I can hold it together long enough for me to get a door between me and the rest of the world

No one needs to see me lose it over something that was my own fault.

If Galen doesn’t come back, we’ll all know who was to blame. Me.

Somehow, I make it back to the cabin, though at a pace closer to a run than a walk.

After bursting through the door, I slam it shut behind me just as a sob escapes.

Just one.

I refuse to let any more than that out, so I hold my breath like I’m trying to silence a burp, angle my head up to the ceiling, and squeeze my eyes shut.

With my hand gripping the cell phone so tight that the plastic is making my palms sweat, I choke back my tears.

It wouldn’t be so bad if it was only tears I was fighting to contain, but it’s not. My wolf howls in my head as if I’ve taken something precious from her. And I have.

Galen.

The man she looks at—and treats—as a mate, even though he hasn’t bitten me.

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