Page 4 of Fated to the Alpha

This was fun. Exciting, even. Like digging up an old time capsule and pulling out pieces of the past he had almost forgotten.

“But no ice cream?” he questioned, lowering his arm. “I thought you loved ice cream. Remember that time when we were seven—wait, no, eight years old, and we ate through two—”

Kimberly pressed the heels of her palms to her temples and squeezed her eyes shut. “Shut up! I’m not getting coffee, tea, or anything with you! Are you insane?” She let out a growl of irritation and shook her head, tossing her hair around her shoulders. “I so don’t need this right now!”

Shane took a tentative step behind the bush but remembered his nakedness and thought better. As much as he wanted to go to comfort whatever was going on with her, like he used to when they were kids, they had never seen one another naked, and he didn’t want to startle her further.

“What’s wrong?”

She looked up, shock and rage radiating. “What’s wrong? Everything! You think I’d just go have ice cream with you after everything you did to me ten years ago?”

Shane straightened, eyebrows low. “What I did to you? I didn’t do it. My dad was the one who exiled your family, not me.”

Her hands balled into fists and punched the air by her hips. “You didn’t stand up for me! You didn’t fight your dad’s decision. You could have fought for me, but you didn’t do a damn thing!”

Now it was Shane’s turn to be shocked. He had never heard a curse word come out of Kimberly’s perfect, kissable mouth. She always used cute replacement words. Maybe the last ten years hadn’t been that nice to her.

“Your dad challenged mine for the role of alpha.” Shane dropped his tone and spoke slowly to make sure Kimberly understood him. “And your dad lost. You knew my dad. He wouldn’t have let your family stay in the pack after that.”

“You could have tried to talk sense into him.” Her words were pleading, as if they were teenagers again and facing a future without the other. “You could have reminded him that alphas are supposed to be merciful.”

Shane scoffed. “Merciful? My dad? You’re kidding, right?”

“If anything good came out of us being kicked out and leaving my family to find a new pack, it’s that I’ve learned a real alpha is merciful.” Kimberly crossed her arms. “That, and apparently I can’t trust the people who promised to always be there for me.”

That attack was meant for him, and he knew it. “You think I had a choice in anything that happened?”

Kimberly began to tick off her fingers. “You could have fought for me to your dad and convince him to let me stay. You could have tried to at least call or text after we left Warrington. You could have maybe waited a few months for things to calm down and reconnect. You could have tried to find me after you graduated high school. You had my number. You knew I had social media.”

Shane opened his arms. “And where was I supposed to find you? Phones work both ways, Kimberly! I didn’t hear from you either.”

“I called and texted you multiple times for days after we left!” she cried. “And then I got that infuriating message that the number was disconnected.”

The challenge in her eyes knocked him down a few pegs.

His nostrils flared as he took a long breath. “My dad confiscated my phone and changed my number. He said you never reached out.”

She barked a mocking laugh. “And you believed him?”

Shane rubbed the back of his neck, “Okay, you have a point there.”

Kimberly scoffed and rolled her eyes. “And what about after you got your phone back? You memorized my number, didn’t you? I didn’t change mine. Why didn’t you ever call me?”

“My dad was monitoring all my phone activity, even after he gave me back my phone. Every text, every call. He had some sort of history tracker on my computer to see if I’d even try to make a social media account to find you. If there was any evidence that I had tried to reach out to you, we would have all been in a shitload of trouble. If you think he was strict before you left, our house was like a prison after you were gone.”

Kimberly shook her head. “Nope. I had thought of that possibility. You had plenty of friends. You could have used one of their phones. Your dad couldn’t keep tabs on you at school.”

Undeterred, Shane answered, “You know all of my friends were in the pack. Dad didn’t like me making friends with humans. And all of their parents sided with my dad. No one was sympathetic to your dad or your family. If I used Jake’s phone or Bobby’s, their parents would have ratted me out to my dad.”

That took some of the starch out of Kimberly’s defense. “No one … No one thought my dad could have won the challenge?”

Shane slowly shook his head. “No one. Your dad was crazy to try and take over the pack. He couldn’t even match my dad’s beta’s dominance or strength. What was he thinking?”

Kimberly went stiff again. “He wasn’t crazy. He was just … ambitious.”

“There’s a fine line between ambitious and insane.”

Right about now, any shifter’s eyes might have flashed gold with indignation. Kimberly’s eyes did not, but he could feel the waves of rage pouring off of her.