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“What are you going to do?” I demanded, but we both knew the option that lay before us.
Shaw could challenge Stone for alpha.
Never, never, never.My heart screamed at the thought. I didn’t want to see the King brothers tear each other apart. Not for my sake. Not even to keep my son here.
I caught his arm before he could say anything, desperate to keep him from speaking those words, from even thinking about them. “Help me escape!”
His eyes widened. “Amelia, I can’t do that. It’s dangerous out there.”
“There’s no sign Nathan is still alive.” I couldn’t quite believe he was really gone. I’d like to stab his corpse a few times just to be really sure before I could truly accept that he was gone.
“No,” he said carefully. “But there’s a rogue wolf that keeps entering our territory. We can never catch him, but the timing is just too much to be coincidence. What if he’s hunting you?”
I stared up at him, thinking of the wolf I’d glimpsed in the woods. I’d felt safe having it watch over me, and I’d convinced myself almost without thinking that it was one of Stone’s men, or Stone himself.
But maybe every moment of safety I’d felt in King territory was a damn lie.
“So you’re telling me you and Stone and Cole couldn’t track down one rogue wolf, but I need to stay here so you can protect me? While Stone—” I broke off. I couldn’t bear to repeat what Stone had done to me.
“The rogue’s like a ghost, Amelia! We can protect you, I promise.”
I shook my head, turning away. “There’s no other way for this to end, Shaw. I want so badly to stay here.”
The whispered words left my throat feeling raw. They were honest and jagged. I did want to stay. I wanted to be safe and happy here, and I wanted to keep Dylan with his kin. These men loved him.
“Then stay,” he pleaded, as if he knew I’d find another way without him. “I’ll make Stone see reason. And if I can’t…” He trailed off.
He couldn’t promise to betray his brother. He shouldn’t. And I shouldn’t ask him to.
But I had other ways of escaping Stone.
The thought of leaving Shaw behind broke my heart. I wouldn’t get to say goodbye because if I did, he’d see through me. I’d put him in the situation of betraying his brother, his alpha, in yet another way.
But I didn’t want to leave him quite yet.
“It’s okay, Shaw,” I said quietly, touching his face. He was incredibly handsome, but over the past month, I’d come to see him as more than handsome. He took care of me whenever I was in pain, whether that was emotional or physical. And for the first time, I wondered if it hurt him that he couldn’t take care of me when it came to Stone. I inhaled his scent, which was smokier and darker than any of the others. “Let’s not make any promises.”
A cloud passed over his face, and he cupped my hand, holding it to his cheek. “I’m not going to be that man anymore, Amelia. The one who never makes promises.”
“You’re a good man, Shaw,” I told him, and his face softened as if he had needed to hear those words.
Studying his face, I wanted so badly to kiss him. His lips were plush above that big, hard jaw. Need ached between my thighs, and the citrusy tang of that need seemed to rise with the breeze around us.
We couldn’t have promises. We couldn’t have goodbyes.
But we could have this moment.
I rose onto my toes, and he moved toward me seamlessly as if he had the same instincts, his hands wrapping around my hips and hauling me toward him. His lips descended on mine and his hands wrenched me toward him as if he wanted my body against his as completely as possible, as if he were trying to obliterate the space between his soul and mine. His tongue stroked into my mouth with a powerful sense of need that curled through my body like smoke gliding through the air. My needy core clenched at his touch.
“I will protect you,” he promised. “If he forces me to…I’ll challenge Stone.”
“I don’t want you to do that.” Brennan’s face flashed through my mind, the animated affection and exasperation that flickered across his expressions when he talked about his brothers. “I don’t want you to challenge him. Promise me you won’t.”
He looked down at me, refusing to promise. His chest heaved with emotion.
I didn’t want to hear whatever he was going to say next. I had to protect these men from themselves.
I grabbed his lapel and crushed my lips to his.
