Page 20 of The Alpha's Hunger

“She was blindfolded.”

“She knows what we are.” He folded his arms across his chest.

“I’ll handle her.”

“How?”

The general code was to kill outsiders who found out. He bristled. “It’s my problem and I’ll take care of it.”

Stanley raised his brows, looking at Ashley dubiously. “She looks like trouble.”

4

Ashley had abandoned lowering her eyes to glower at the man named Stanley.

“My problem, not yours,” Ben said.

What had he meant when he said he’d handle her?

“Yeah? So why are we here, then?” the aggressive wolf asked.

Ben’s jaw hardened. “Someone’s trying to kill me. I just need a little backup while I figure out who’s behind it.”

Stanley looked at him. “You’re calling in a lot of favors for someone who’s not even a member of the pack.”

He shrugged. “If you’re not willing to help, I’ll deal with it on my own.”

Stanley scowled. “You’ve already involved us. You brought a human into our den, and now she’s seen our faces.”

A low, unearthly growl emitted from Ben’s throat, sending shivers up her spine.

Stanley beckoned with both hands. “You want to challenge me for alpha? Do it. We both know you’d win. But if you just want to waltz in and pull favors without giving back, no one is going to fall in step behind you.”

Nothing changed in Ben’s face, yet she could feel his frustration.

A car pulled up outside. No one moved, the two men—or wolves—eyeing each other, tension radiating between them.

The door swung open. “Hey, Ben,” a middle-aged man with a shaved skull and a tight white t-shirt said as he walked in. Like the other wolves, he was stacked with muscles. In fact, they all looked like they stepped out of a fireman’s calendar. Except maybe a little less wholesome than firemen. There was a grungy roughness to the men that made her nervous.

“Hey, Mark.”

Ben continued to eye the other wolves as he shook hands with Mark. “Thanks for your help earlier.”

“No problem,” Mark said, looking from Ben to the pack leader and back again, most likely sensing the tension. “Do you have the explosives?”

A chill slithered through her body at the wordexplosives. She might have killed Ben. She couldn’t really blame him for not trusting her, could she?

He shook his head. “Not yet. I ran into a little trouble on my way out. I was hoping you’d drive me over there.”

“No problem.”

“And you want us to watch the girl,” Stanley said flatly.

“Yeah.”

“Who is she?”

Ben folded his arms across his chest. “She’s my assistant. She left the bomb.”