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Chapter 156
Chapter 156
Chapter 156
Chapter 156 PRESENT DAY LEAH I run until the sunsets and the lands come alive with the sounds and scents of night. My wolf is intrigued, and wants to keep running with the moonlight reflecting off the snow, but I promise her we’ll come back out here another night. Right now, we are both hungry and tired. Although, my exhaustion is the deep emotional type, from all I’ve had to endure these last weeks- Except then I remember it’s been months, and a new kind of sadness overtakes me. My wolf howls mournfully, the sound echoing lonely into the night. Eventually she takes us home, her sense of direction unerring. When we arrive, it’s to find a flurry of activity, with James and Adam standing at the center of it all. James is all healed, but his clothes are still torn and blo ody, and as soon as I see him, I feel terrible for what I did. I don’t realize my wolf is handing the reins back to me until it’s too late, until I am shifting, and then climbing to my feet, na ked in front of half a dozen packmates. Nake d in front of both Adam and James.
Neither of them bother to hide how their gazes move over my body. I feel heat rushing up my neck to my cheeks as I blush. I want to cower and try to cover myself. But I am a wolf now, this is part of my reality. I’ve seen other packmates moving back and forth between the shift. That nake dness is a natural state of being most of them don’t even notice any longer. Nudity has certainly never bothered Aaron before. Not in front of me. And not in front of any other number of people. Not in front of Jessica, certainly.
Thinking of the woman who claimed my husband, my mate, before me, and who still had designs on him makes my wolf bristle, and I feel a growl rumbling up within me that I have to fight hard to keep down. Wow. My wolf is fierce and possessive. “What’s going on?” I ask, striving to keep my voice calm. Both Adam and James jer k their gazes back to my face. “You went missing, that’s what!” Adam says, looking pis sed off, while James quickly moves to the couch in a nearby room to grab a blanket for me. I reach out to take it from him, but instead he drops it around my shoulders for me. I murmur a thank you, trying not to wonder if the way his fingers brushed my skin was on purpose or not. I owe him an apology for mauling him earlier, but I can’t bring myself to voice the words. These wolves around me have assumed too much. Taken too much. I am a Luna. I was an Alpha. I don’t like that they think they can control me or tell me what to do. And my wolf, she isn’t having any part of it. “I went for a run. I have a wolf now. I can do that,” I tell Adam, remaining calm in the face of his anger, even though out of everyone here, I have the most right to be pis sed off at the moment. “You went for a run?” Adam demands. “Leah, until you woke up today, we didn’t know if you were ever going to wake up again. We don’t know what the long term implications are of what Aaron did-” “And what exactly did Aaron do?” I cut in, my voice icy and sharp. “Who the hell let him mate me, turn me, when the one thing I wanted was the life of my child to be saved?” “Leah, there was no stopping him,” James replies in a quiet voice. “Believe me, I tried. I tried to do what you said, to keep you alive long enough to save the baby, but Aaron-” “None of that matters now, it was months ago,” Adam says dismissively. And wow, that hurts.
Because for me it wasn’t months ago that I lost my baby. It feels like yesterday. “Right now, what matters is your health,” Adam continues, but it’s like I can’t hear him any longer, and my wolf is pushing back up again, trying to protect me from the feelings that seem like they’re deep enough and strong enough to drown me. I’m really going to have to get a handle on living with this second presence, on learning some control so she’s not ready to burst out and take over at any given second. Aaron made it look so easy, and I know his wolf is stronger than most. I feel the shift coming on again, and Adam abruptly stops talking. “No, Leah, you can’t shift and run off again!” I want to answer, but honestly, my wolf is already too close to the surface. However, Adam suddenly springs forward, and then I feel a sting in my neck. I feel woozy as he steps back again, and James is suddenly there, easily lifting my weight into his arms. For a second, I wish it was Aaron. “I’m sorry, Leah,” Adam is saying. “But this is for your own good.” It’s the last thing I hear before everything goes black.
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