“Try me.”
He closes his mouth and doesn’t let whatever he wants to say escape him. He knows full well he wouldn’t be breathing if he did.
Dominic chuckles. “We’d love it if you did.”
Zane doesn’t say anything, but an amused, almost testing hum comes from him. Hunter and Luke both snarl in their wolf forms, making the others flinch.
For a long moment of consideration, Hayes doesn’t say anything. Instead, he takes a step back, then another until he’s slowly retreating without making a statement out of it. Then, with a touch of resignation, he gestures with his chin, signalling for the others to pull back.
His dark eyes settle on me again, mouth twisted in a scowl. “This isn’t over.”
“No, it isn’t.”
That tension lingers for another moment, as does his defiant stare, then Hayes turns away and glides back into the trees with the others.
I wait until their scents slowly dissolve in the air, and only silence settles around us.
A subtle yet honest satisfaction moves through me at the thought of knowing I got them to back off. I managed to keep Lila and her daughter safe, and that’s what matters.
But I’m not naive. Wraith Peak keeps their word, and they don’t bluff. Out of all the packs on the island, they have the least amount of inhibitions.
Which means I need to get the two of them out of here before Hayes and his father’s pack change their minds, regroup, or decide to twist the encounter to justify an attack.
I can’t let her stay anywhere near their territory.
I turn toward Lila, and I immediately catch just how tightly she has her arms wrapped around her daughter, shielding her from me now, despite everything that just unfolded.
With the chance to fully look at them now, something burns in my chest in a way I don’t expect.
Seeing her again is one thing, but the little one with her is another. The evidence of her being with another in my absence.
It shouldn’t sting as it does, but it’s too sharp to ignore, as much as I want to.
The girl is small and trembling, yet still bright-eyed. She’s definitely young, and something about that has my stomach in knots.
Lila having a child with someone else isn’t a shock to me. She’s beautiful regardless of what the others might think about her strength. She was always gentle and sweet in ways she didn’t think anyone noticed. Someone else was bound to want her, and someone would want to claim her just as my inner wolf is screaming at me to do now.
Something ugly forms in my chest, but I refuse to let it blind me.
It doesn’t matter who the father is, or where he might be. It doesn’t matter that a small, instinctive part of me recoils at the thought of anyone having what I suddenly want so badly.
Not while they’re both still in danger.
Lila’s confusion and disbelief are palpable, and she has every right to them.
I rejected her once, as harshly and stupidly as I could, just to get her to forget about me, and out of fear of something I couldn’t understand. I made myself the last person she should ever trust, yet I made one of the biggest declarations I ever could in front of a rival pack. I blindsided her, and really, she should hate me.
But none of it seems to matter while that annoying, persistentthinginside me feels so alive with a mind of its own,screaming a simple truth to me again and again in the back of my mind.
She’s mine.
Even if she despises me, and even if I have to fight another man just to make her mine.
I know I don’t deserve to claim a damn thing after all that time, but I can’t ignore the agony I feel at the thought of her having someone else’s child. Of being seen and accepted in the way I should’ve made her feel years ago.
But I force the thought away again. I can’t focus on that now. Not here or now.
First, I need to make sure they’re safe, and maybe I’ll finally stop pretending that Lila isn’t already in my blood.
