Page 10 of Wild Alpha (Cold-Blooded Alpha #12)

I desperately wish I knew what he was thinking. I also desperately wish he weren’t sitting so close to me.

He says nothing for twenty seconds. I know because I count each second as if it might be my last. He just watches me.

“You shifted in front of Fisher,” he finally says, uncrossing his arms and sitting up.

My heart leaps, and my eyes flick to Talis holding Patrick in her arms.

He won’t kill me in front of his kid, will he?

Swallowing hard, I brace myself for death. He can only kill me once, so if it hurts when he tears my head off, it’ll only hurt for a little while. “Yes.”

“Why?”

I blink at him like a goldfish. “What ?”

“I asked why.”

“It doesn’t matter why.” I don’t know why I need to tell him this. What I did was a killing offense. “I exposed myself and your pack. The punishment is death.”

Or possibly exile. But I don’t think Dayne is the exile kind of guy.

“I don’t like to repeat myself,” he says with a growl.

“He’s not a very patient person,” Talis adds, rolling her eyes as she rubs Patrick's back. “I once caught him giving the microwave a death stare, growling at the popcorn to pop faster.”

I’m not sure I believe her until I catch Nathan and Clara nodding out of the corner of my eye.

“I was trying to protect Fisher,” I explain.

Dayne cocks his head. “Why?”

Shrugging, I look away, uncomfortable admitting to feelings I’m not sure I understand myself. “I found him, and he was hurt. I didn’t want him to die.”

The silence stretches out for so long that I peek up at him through my lashes.

His expression is thoughtful. “Tell me how you found him.”

It’s nothing less than an order.

Nathan narrated everything to him with the authority of an enforcer, the way my brother would have reported to our dad. I fumble over my words, not used to talking for so long or being around so many shifters after years of solitude.

I tell him about how I was driven to explore a part of the forest I hadn’t been in before, and how I found Fisher, looking after him as best I could.

He listens to me without expression, and I’m reminded of the way my dad would do the same. Being around shifters like this isn’t just awkward; it’s painful, because every moment reminds me of everything I lost.

Halfway through my story, Patrick, the little boy in Talis’s arms, squirms. She sets him down on the floor beside her, and instead of toddling off, he sits by her leg, rests his head against it, and continues to study me with his thumb in his mouth.

Eventually, I reach the end of my story that links back to the beginning of Nathan and Clara’s.

Dayne stares at me for another long moment, then he turns to Nathan. “What happened with Fisher?”

“He grabbed his stuff and went back into town,” Nathan says.

Right this second, he could be spreading news of werewolves far and wide.

Dayne’s eyes return to me. My heart races, and I know my death is looming.

“The sheets,” he declares.

I lean away from him. “What?”

Is that how he intends to kill me? Suffocating me with a sheet ? That seems unnecessarily cruel, but maybe that’s what I deserve for endangering his pack?

Dayne says to Nathan, “Change the sheets when you’re stocking up the refrigerator and checking the generator. I swear, half the time anyone wants to stay in the cabin is to have loud se?—”

Talis clears her throat and gives Patrick a knowing look.

“—loud, friendly times with each other,” Dayne continues. He kisses her on the cheek, then gets up and walks out of the kitchen.

Seconds later, I hear a girl giggling.

Patrick drags himself up from the floor using Talis’s leg and toddles out of the kitchen. The sound of his laughter soon drifts into the kitchen.

I look at Talis, who sighs. “He’s rude as well as impatient. Likes to leave rooms and enter them without saying hello and goodbye. In his mind, the conversation is over. It drives me nuts.”

I’m less concerned about his rudeness and more surprised I’m not bleeding out from his having ripped my throat out.

“Isn’t he going to…” My voice trails off.

Both of the things I want to say terrify me in different ways.

I want to ask why he hasn’t killed me for exposing their secret to a local, but it might remind him to kill me in case he forgot. And I want to ask about Fisher, but the thought of them going to silence him—probably forever—terrifies me even more than the idea of Dayne ripping out my throat.

“Things will resolve themselves,” Talis says with a reassuring smile.

“I always used to imagine the worst. I had an uncle who… well, the less I say about him, the better. But over the years, I’ve learned that things resolve themselves, usually in ways you couldn’t have predicted. Have hope, Averie. I do.”

“But he could tell everyone in town about what you are,” I whisper, my mind on the giggling toddlers in the next room who could pay the price for my inability to think before I act.

“Fisher is a friend. Probably the first real friend I had, and right when I needed him the most,” she says quietly. “That he knows this is not what we wanted, but I can’t kill him. Maybe a couple of years ago, Dayne might have been able to, but I don’t think he could do it either.”

“He wanted to kill Fisher?” I ask, curious.

Smiling, she gets to her feet. “That’s in the past. I’ll grab a couple of the guys to help get the cabin ready for you.” Talis walks out.

“I was wrong when I said Dayne hadn’t mellowed out,” Nathan says. “He has. More than any of us thought he could have.”

“What was in the past?” I want to ask Nathan about Dayne’s killer reputation, but I'm not brave enough to do it with him in the next room.

Nathan winks and stands up. “Dayne’s possessiveness. When he first brought Talis home, Fisher liked her. You can probably guess how he—an alpha used to always getting what he wants and feeling threatened by a human—reacted to that. Give me a second. I’ll be back with fresh sheets.”

He walks out smiling, and my wolf growls in my head, surprising me.

It’s only when I’ve gotten up to follow Clara out the back door to investigate this private cabin, my new temporary home, that I realize why she would growl like that.

Jealous .

My wolf hates the idea of Fisher liking Talis.

So do I.