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I didn’t need to.
I am Dale, the man inside had said. The prisoner. I am Dale. I am Dale.
Wednesday night I had dinner with Ezra.
He said, “I’m sorry. I never meant to cause you any frustration. I only want what’s best for you. I only want to keep you safe. These dreams… I could see they were pulling at you. They were hurting you. I thought… I thought I could help. I thought I could stop them. But I went too far. I never should have done so without your permission. Would you hear me, dear? Would you believe an old fool and forgive his mistakes?”
I said, “Yes. Of course. Of course I forgive you.”
And what was absolutely fucking wild was that I could forgive him. I did. Here, in this house, just the two of us, I thought it was the easiest thing in the world.
I slept a little better that night.
I looked down at the note hidden away in the box in the back of my closet.
I HOWL FOR YOU!!!
FOR WHEN YOU’RE READY.
On Thursday she said, “The Bennetts.”
I looked up at my Alpha as she stood above me. I was showing her how to work around an accounting program she was having trouble with, and she hadn’t said a word in close to ten minutes, just listening and watching as I rambled.
Until she said those two words. Apropos of nothing.
Nothing could be done about the way my heart sped up. She heard it. We both knew she did. “What about them?”
“Do you know them? Have you ever met one in all those years before you came to me?”
You. Are. Bennett.
I shook my head. “No. Look, here. There’s a tutorial that’ll show you better than I could how to—”
“They want something that doesn’t belong to them.”
I lifted my hand from the computer mouse so I didn’t break it. “Why?”
She placed a hand on my shoulder. I didn’t look at her. “They’re stuck in the old ways. And it has twisted them into something unrecognizable. They would do me harm, Robbie, if only they could get to me. To any of us. Do you believe that?”
I said, “Yes,” and it wasn’t a lie.
She squeezed my shoulder. “I should have told you this a long time ago.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because I needed you to heal. You came to Caswell a shell of a man. I needed to give you time for the bonds to form between us. So that you could trust me, and so that I could trust you.”
“Do you? Trust me?”
“Yes.” Her heart didn’t skip a single beat. But I also knew Alphas were much more in control than any Beta wolf.
“You trust me to protect you?”
“Yes.”
“To keep you safe?”
I nodded, still staring straight ahead at the computer screen. “I won’t let them get to you.”
