Page 29 of Outside the Pack

I knew that Troy would send his men to get Bryn back. They would likely try to intercept us before we reached Warg territory. We needed to pick up the pace, but there wasn’t much we could do about Bryn. She was much slower, and carrying her was out of the question given the way she fought—just as she was fighting Dom as he dragged her back to camp.

“Damn you!” she seethed, turning her glare from Dom to me. “Why can’t you just let me go, you asshole?”

I rolled my eyes. I wished I could duct tape her mouth shut. “You already know why.”

Dom set her down, glancing at me over her head. I didn’t need to telepathy to know what he was thinking. It was a look that said, “Don’t be too hard on her.” I almost rolled my eyes a second time. As Dom walked away to oversee Jasper as he prepared the rabbit, Bryn marched up to me—her arms wrapped tightly around herself. There were small sticks and pine needles attached to her sleeves. She was panting as she stormed toward me, but her eyes blazed at me, almost gray in the shaded light of the forest. She was so upset that I doubted she even realized how disheveled and exhausted she looked.

“Why don’t you go and warm yourself by the fire instead of trying to get yourself killed?” I asked. “There’s a rabbit roasting there with your name on it.”

She scoffed at me. “You think food will get me in your good graces? Hell no. I have zero interest in participating in your game with Troy,” she raged. “I don’t want to be used for your or his benefit. You don’t own me. No one does.”

I scoffed at her. “And what do you think will happen when you go home? Do you think you’ll be able to return to whatever shitty life you had with the Kings?”

“I—”

I didn’t let her speak. “Troy will tie you up again. He’ll drag you back to his bedroom, and then he’ll own you, whether you want him to or not. That’s what you’re trying to get back to?”

I expected more of a fight. I expected her to continue to rage. But instead, her lower lip wobbled. To my horror, her eyes again filled with tears, spilling over onto cheeks reddened with emotion. It seemed her fear was finally catching up to her.

I took her wrist and pulled her against my chest without thinking, eager to calm her down, to stop her from crying. Immediately, I sensed my annoyance lessening the longer I held her to me. Her tears were wet against my chest, and I slightly tightened my hold as if I could force some comfort into her traumatized body. I felt her heart beating quickly and felt an answering quickness in my own chest. I could have held her forever.

But as soon as her small sobs subsided and her body calmed, she pushed at my chest. I let her go immediately, startled by her desire to get away. She teetered for a moment on her feet, her head lowered toward the ground, her hair covering her face. She turned away from me quickly, but not before I caught a glimpse of her face in the firelight. Her cheeks were bright red.

I watched her walk over to the fire and sit down next to it, hugging her knees to her chest. She reached for the rabbit, fully cooked by then, and took a few nibbles. I let out a long breath and turned away from her. I put a hand on my chest, where my heart still beat almost as quickly as it had when I’d gone on my run earlier. I was grateful for the distance from her; I needed to get a handle on my emotions and impulses concerning this woman. But there was a tiny, sweet thrill in my chest accompanying my thunderous heartbeat. I refused to read into it, forcing myself to focus on the path ahead. Deep down, I understood that I was far too pleased to see her calm, eating, and warming herself by the fire—I was happy that she was safe.

13

NIGHT

Finally, after two additional days of walking through the forest, the end of our journey was near. We had set up camp in a little clearing with a canopy of trees that almost covered the sky. As I helped take down the camp, I drew in a deep breath. Over the scent of pine and moist earth, I could smell the familiar warmth of my pack lands on the air. We were on track to reach home before midnight on our final day of travel. Without Bryn, we would have been home in only a day’s travel, but after shifting to cross the river, we all remained in our human forms to keep her safe.

I couldn’t fucking wait to be home. My emotions, my thoughts, my wolf—everything had been in flux since I decided to take Bryn with me. I tried not to dwell much on why I had become so possessive of her, but I felt as if I’d known her for years despite our having met only three days ago. Those eyes, the blue of robin eggs, stayed in my mind every night long after I closed my eyes and went to sleep.

I couldn’t shake my emotions. Maddeningly, I wanted to get as far away from her as possible, yet I became restless when she wasn’t within arm’s length of me. I found my attention drifting toward her even when in conversation with one of my hunters. My wolf yearned for her. To be near her. Knowing where she was at all times wasn’t enough for him—he needed to be close enough to hear her heartbeat and to feel her body heat. I wanted that too.

It was like I was being pulled in two different directions—on one end was my responsibility to my pack and to make sure that I took over the Kings’ pack, and on the other was Bryn.

As the days passed, her pull became even stronger.

Every time I thought back to finding her in Troy’s bedroom, my wolf still bristled. When Troy had returned and said those awful things to her as he crept up the staircase, I could have killed him in cold blood right then. Now, I’d completely abandoned my original plan and dragged some human girl along with me.

I had to believe that in kidnapping her, I had delivered a blow to Troy. That having Bryn in my possession meant that Troy couldn’t have her, which would put him off his game. Without Bryn, he would get restless, and then I would have another chance to end the bastard. That was what I told my team, what I told Dom, and what I planned to tell the rest of the pack once we returned. But the truth was that I had no idea why I had taken her.

And more than that, having her around made me feel off. That was clear just from the fact that I’d almost ripped Dom’s head off when he first offered clothes to her. He must have seen that she needed shoes to protect her feet from the rough ground. He was probably trying to make sure she didn’t suffer, but that hadn’t mattered to me or to my wolf.

I looked back on that moment with enough embarrassment to make me squirm. My head was a confused mess of thoughts and emotions; I hadn’t felt this strange in my life. Even my first shift made more sense than this. That interaction with Dom wasn’t one of my prouder moments. In fact, there was a lot that had happened over the past couple of days that I wasn’t proud of—namely, abandoning my original plan and kidnapping Bryn. And yet, I couldn’t bring myself to truly regret the decision, even as I could admit that it was a bizarre move, to put it lightly.

With all of that on my mind, I felt a twinge of annoyance right at the base of my skull as I listened to Bryn and Dom chat behind me. We were finishing up the last leg of our journey. I should have been focusing on how I was going to make sure that kidnapping Bryn was worth it, but my attention was on her voice and her laugh.

Dom had managed to cultivate a friendly relationship with Bryn, which made my skin itch. The two were chatting about Bryn’s favorite books—a lot of fairy tales and romances from the sound of it—and her passion for gardening. There was so much I didn’t know about my captive that Dom had easily gotten Bryn to share, and that irked me more than I wanted to admit. Still, I hung on to her every word as she answered Dom’s questions.

“You seem to care a lot about cultivating plants,” Dom said. “How did you get interested in that?”

“My mom takes care of the pack gardens,” she replied. “She taught me everything I know, but I still have a lot to learn.”

“I don’t know, Bryn,” Dom’s voice took on a teasing tone. The way you talk about gardening, you sound like you could be an expert.”

She snorted in response.

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