Page 95 of Ruthless Alpha Beast

Tara tilts her head back, and when she sees what I bought her here for, her lips part.

“Oh, wow,” she murmurs.

The whole sky is clear, the stars alive and glittering as though we’re hurtling through outer space.

“It’s pretty, huh?”

“It’s breathtaking,” she says.

I wanted to bring her here because it’s the place I go to when I’m stressed. I want to, at least for an evening, take her mind off of everything. She deserves peace.

“You come out here by yourself?” She asks me.

“I haven’t in a while, but I used to. Coming here at night feels like a reset.”

“I get that,” she agrees. “Don’t you feel like you can reset in your pack grounds though?”

“Don’t get me wrong, I love the pack, I love resetting with them in different ways, but sometimes open space and dead silence is what you need.”

Somewhere in the distance, we hear a wolf howling, loud and prolonged, and we look at each other with a smile.

“Almost dead silence,” I say.

She nods. “I used to think that I didn’t want silence. Like back in my old town, I’d do anything I could to avoid being alone. As I read my books, I’d speak them out loud just to fill the void.”

There’s sadness in her eyes, and that inevitably makes my chest weaken.

“Why is that?”

She takes a deep breath.

“If you don’t mind me asking, of course.”

“No, no, not at all,” she swallows. “It’s just that I grew up without parents or siblings. It was just my grandma and me, so I was forced to spend a lot of time alone. Then, when she died, the silence became endless.”

She looks like she’s about to cry. “Gosh, sorry I didn’t mean to spring that on you.”

“Don’t apologize,” I say. “I completely understand. I take it for granted sometimes, being in a pack, surrounded by people all the time.”

I want to hold her so badly that I almost reach out and pull her toward me. But I stop myself. I don’t want her to take it the wrong way.

“Yeah,” she says. “It’s nice—really nice. I feel that when I met Lacey and was introduced to this magical world, I finally found a place where I could belong. A story book coming to life.”

I think about how horrible I was to her that morning after we first made love. I’d take it all back if I could.

“There’s good and bad here,” I say. “But once you’re accepted, it truly becomes your home.”

She nods, silently.

I want to tell her I’m sorry, that I’ve changed, and hopefully she’s seen that. But it feels like it’s not enough. That nothing will be.

“You know, my parents, when they were alive, were so set in their beliefs about the way the world worked. They wholeheartedly believed that shifters were superior to all other creatures, and they told me that so much that I didn’t even question it. The pack didn’t question it.”

“I understand,” Tara says. “It’s hard to break away from what you’ve been continuously told.”

I’m gazing into her eyes now, the stars paling in comparison.

“But I hope you know that I don’t believe in it anymore.”