Page 70 of The Strongest Wolf

I bring up the memory of Sierra in the cage, almost every bone broken. Bruised, cowering, and so terrified she broke more bones trying to get away from me. Those injuries would have killed a regular human. They were bad enough that they nearly killedher. I promised to make amends, but how does someone forgive a person for something like that?

“You didn’t see what they did to her, Dom. If you had...” I let my voice trail off before shaking my head. “I have to go. Call if anything happens.”

After hanging up, I sit for so long that I have to wave two more vehicles around me. But no matter how long I think, I can never be as confident as Dom that Sierra will forgive me.

Finally, I toss my phone on the passenger seat and start up the truck. Food won’t help, but the sooner I eat, the sooner I can get back on the road.

And the sooner I can return to Sierra.

17

SIERRA

Movie night with the Blackshaws was supposed to distract me from thinking about Galen.

It worked.

For about five minutes.

Maybe.

As the movie plays on the big screen in the den, the lights are off and the curtains closed for a true movie theater experience. Salty, buttery goodness wafts in my face. I wave away the offer of popcorn when Kier holds it down toward me. Although my stomach grumbles, I’m not interested in the popcorn or the M&Ms being passed around.

There’s only one thing I crave, and that thing is probably halfway to New York by now.

I shift restlessly on the floor, my back against the couch where Kier, Eden, Hallee, and Luka have squeezed themselves on.

It’s not that I’m uncomfortable, as I keep telling Eden when she says they’ve left plenty of space for me. But that’s not the reason I plunked myself on the floor instead of taking advantage of the three couches, armchairs, and bean bags in the spacious den.

What it comes down to is me wanting to hide my face. Being on the floor means no one can tell that I’m not paying the least bit of attention to the action movie because my gaze keeps sliding to the cell phone on the coffee table inches away.

After Eden followed me to the cabin, she refused to let me stay there a minute longer. While I wiped my tears with a handful of tissues, she grabbed the cell phone in one hand, my arm in the other, and insisted we were going to have an impromptu movie night with popcorn, wine, and candy.

She thought a movie featuring a hot action star with model good looks would be the perfect distraction, and ordinarily, it would have been… back at the Stone pack. And before I’d met Galen. But not now.

The two times I tried to grab the cell phone so I could see if Galen had called, Eden slapped my hand away. Hard. When she threatened to keep hold of it if I refused to let myself be distracted by the movie, I decided not to try again.

With it fast approaching ten, I’d have thought Galen would have called, or at the very least sent a text message so I’d have his new cell phone number.

Yet there’s been nothing.

No beep. No vibration. Nothing at all.

Has he forgotten about me already?

Someone waves the popcorn bowl in my face, and yet again I knock it away. While I’m working out how I can sneak the cell phone out with me on my way to the bathroom, it vibrates across the table.

I’m up like a shot, cell phone in hand as I sprint for the door. “I’ll be right back.”

Eden yells something after me, but I’m not paying any attention. All my focus is on the brightly lit screen, flashing an unknown number.

With my heart in my throat, I wait until I’m outside before I answer the call and hold it to my ear. “Hello.”

“You sound almost as good on the phone as you do in real life,” Galen says, something that sounds like relief softening his voice.

A wide grin nearly makes my face crack in two. But I squelch down the joy which spears through me as I cross over to the porch and sink onto the top step. “I sound exactly the same. So do you.” It’s a lie. He doesn’t sound the same. He sounds like the best thing I’ve heard all day.

When a spring squeaks, I can guess where he must be. A motel. “You stopped for the night. I thought you were driving straight through.”

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