Page 14 of The Alpha Wolf’s Secret Baby Boy

I shift into human form, clenching my fists at my sides and opening my eyes with determination fueling every step I take toward her front door. I lift one hand to knock, but then decide against it when my inner wolf reminds me that I don’t have to ask for permission.

Not when Poppy Barnes is my fated mate.

She is mine.

That’s why I turn the handle and step inside the darkened room, the sweet scent of her appealing to my wolf, to its rightful claim that she is my fated mate.

A growl rumbles deep in my chest, filled with anger, with a territorial claim unlike anything I’ve felt before. Not even taking the position of alpha in the Valley Walker Pack made me feel like this, like it belonged to me.

A birthright I can’t escape from. I don’t want to escape from this. I know what I need to do.

I need to have her.

Marching through her cabin, every step I take fills my airways more intensely with her scent—a scent I’d known before, a scent I could pick out from a mile away, the scent of the woman I loved back then—and now, each trickle of that distinct fragrance dripping like honey through my veins only means one thing.

Mine.

It’s a primal declaration that surges through my being, setting fiery determination into my steps and in my resolve as I anticipate a confrontation with Poppy Barnes. I don’t care what she has to say, and I’m ready to make it known.

If she thought running away to my brother’s pack would keep me away,, she has another thing coming!

I push at her door, only to find a heap on the bed covered with a thick blanket. Advancing into the room, I round the bed, and I’m about to grab the blanket and yank it off her when I stop, my chest tightening.

She’s sound asleep, her golden blonde hair rippling across the satin pillow behind her. Her face, one side cast in a soft, silvery glow from the moonlight filtering through the lace curtains, appears elegant. Almost regal, as if her flesh is carved from ivory. Darker, sharper brows tug as if she’s dreaming, or maybe she’s having a nightmare, because her nostrils flare.

How can such beauty cause so much destruction to one man?

How could she have caused me so much pain just by abandoning the pack? Abandoning me?

Because she’s your fated mate, my inner wolf replies, and there’s not much room for denial when the evidence is right in front of me and in the way I feel.

Even though she’s asleep, there’s an undeniable pull in my chest, my senses running in overdrive, hands clenched with the staggering need to touch her. Hold her. Claim her as mine.

The restraint is almost sickening. My inner wolf is on the verge of losing its mind with need, and no matter how much my mind tries to resist, my wolf wins in the end.

How can she not feel my presence?

How could she have been here this whole time without me knowing?

Unless…

Was she hiding from me?

The question plagues my mind, awakening a new sense of anger, a new purpose.

This is not about confrontation.

This is about taking what’s mine before it disappears again.

I won’t bear it a second time. And that’s why I have to do what needs to be done. I have to claim her as mine before she slips away again.

I’m walking out of her cabin with renewed purpose, prompted by my inner wolf’s insatiable, reckless need to claim Poppy as my mate. There’s only one thing left to do, and I find what I need to implement my plan in the Nightclaw Pack clinic.

There’s a part of me that knows this is foolish, but the animalistic part calls the shots now, driven by anger, by need. I grab a syringe and a vial of sedative that belongs to the pack healer, and return to Poppy’s cottage, where she’s still asleep.

Ten years of not having her by my side.

Ten years of pain diluted into numbness and passed off as duty.