Page 13 of The Alpha Wolf’s Secret Baby Boy

What the hell is happening to me?

A surge of anger and pure, red-hot jealousy consumes me, my inner wolf clawing at the insides of my skull, roaring to be let out.

To go forward and intercept anyone who dares to touch my—

My mate?

The realization is what prompts my heart to beat again, as if fate itself is responding to that question.

What’s worse is the suspicion, coupled with the mere fact that she hasn’t been in my arms for ten years.

Unable to watch her speaking to someone else, unable to bear the sound of her joyful laughter when someone else causes it, I turn my face away, dumbfounded. The wound she left me with when she abandoned the pack opens up and swallows me into its dark abyss, until the only thing I can do is disappear back into the shadows from where I came when I was drawn to her. My wolf takes over when my heart can’t bear it anymore, but this larger form doesn’t stop the pain from slipping into every fiber of my being.

That’s when I run. Craving fresh air. Craving distance. Craving anything that could stop this pain from choking me.

It can’t be.

It’s not possible that fate could be so cruel.

My fated mate?

There is no way.

She wouldn’t have left me all those years ago. I would have stopped at nothing to find her. I wouldn’t have given up my search after one month. That wasn’t long enough to pursue something written in my destiny.

How could I have been so blind? So stupid?

And how could she have left me?

I growl when I’m close to the edge of Nightclaw territory, somehow finding myself in the wilted part of the forest that had only been discovered this morning. I only stop myself from howling at the top of my wolf lungs because I don’t want to draw attention. I don’t want to cause a scene.

What am I going to do with this revelation, anyway? Confront my brother and ask him what my fated mate is doing in his pack? The pack he left his birthright in Valley Walker for?

How am I going to explain that because he walked out and left me to carry the weight of being the alpha there, I lost the most precious thing in my life? The woman I loved?

The woman who walked away because she didn’t even recognize me as her fated mate.

But neither did I.

I’d been so caught up in my responsibilities that I allowed her to slip through my fingers.

Ten fucking years.

I race ahead, cutting through the shriveled vegetation, wanting to go home, wanting to go back to the one place where I’m not reminded of the past. Where I’m able to be as numb as I have been for the last decade.

But as I run ahead, as I put more distance between myself and Fort Smit, the harder it becomes to keep going. An invisible force stops me, and actual, physical pain gnaws on my heart, my chest pulling tight until I can barely breathe anymore.

My paws halt in the dirt, and my wolf drops to the ground until I’m curled up in a fetal position that probably looks more pathetic from the outside.

I feel pathetic, an alpha wolf who cannot control his emotions. Can’t even make sense of them, or control the one emotion that overwhelms me.

Anger.

An anger so deep that it insists I go back where I saw her.

I have to see her again, and it’s that very thought that pulls me back to my cushioned paws, trudging into Fort Smit again.

Her cottage is shrouded in darkness and quiet as if she’s already asleep, but I can feel her. In wolf form, I sense her heartbeat behind the walls, and like a predator circling its prey, I walk around the small wooden building and stop at the bottom of the porch. Lowering my head, I inhale deeply through my sharp, pointed nose, letting her scent fill my airways like an answer to a prayer.