Page 4 of Broken Wolf Heart
2
GREY
Watching Santiago carry my bride away like she’s nothing more than the spoils of war is a bittersweet sort of agony that leaves me both relieved and strangely lost. I’d known it was a gamble, convincing them to let me come with her. I hadn’t counted on such a public ultimatum, though, and not being able to choose Lexi in that moment gutted me.
If it had been only my own fate hanging in the balance, I’d have let them see the truth in a heartbeat. My wolf, more powerful than ever, would have torn through anyone who challenged me, anyway. But admitting my new status as alpha would have exposed Dutch, Razor, Crow, and Mia. I couldn’t live with myself if something happened to my pack.
Lexi will understand.
That’s what I tell myself as I watch her disappear through the church doors, clutched in the hands of my enemies. Even if my wolf howls inside me, furious I didn’t choose her. But I did. I just chose all of them too.
The moment she’s gone, my father is in my face.
“What the fuck just happened?” he demands.
“Lexi just became the high alpha of Indigo Hills,” I tell him calmly, despite my heart hammering my rib cage. I want so badly to rip out his throat and be fucking done with him. But this church is still full of his pack. And I don’t have nearly the numbers yet to fight them all.
Soon enough, I promise myself,I will.
“She couldn’t possibly have killed that bastard,” my father says.
His face is flushed with rage, but beneath that anger, I see it. The kernel of doubt. He thinks maybe, just maybe, she could have. He also suspects I know more than I’m sharing.
“Couldn’t she?” I ask and allow myself to slip into character. A confused, erratic mate. A groom without a bride. The son he lives to torture by taking away the things I love most. “Her eyes were different. But they… The way she looked at me—” I stop and look at him dead in his face. “She felt like a wolf.”
My father blinks with zero surprise at my words. And I almost forget every logical reason not to kill him.
I knew it the moment I’d seen that animalistic flash in her eyes during our vows. Then again, the way she’d kissed me—with a hunger only a predator possesses. Not to mention the feverish temperature of her body as it had pressed against mine, like her skin was on fire from the inside out. But seeing him confirm it now… it’s almost too much.
He triggered her wolf. And he doesn’t look the least bit sorry—or worried—about what will happen to her next.
“What the fuck did you do to Lexi?” I demand, dropping the weak, scared act as I crowd into his face.
“Watch your fucking tone,” he warns.
Mia, Razor, and Dutch press in behind me. They want answers too. But my father clearly doesn’t give a shit what we want. He turns to my mother. “Serena, I need to deal with this.”
“Of course,” she says, glancing at me.
I recognize the look she wears. It’s a warning, a plea to let it go, to stop stirring his temper. I look away from her and back to the asshole who I’ve hated for so long that I can’t remember any other way.
He doesn’t offer anything else before turning and striding up the aisle.
I start to follow him, but Dutch grabs me, holding me back. “Let him go,” my best friend says quietly.
“He did something to Lexi’s wolf,” I snarl.
“And you’re an alpha with Franco’s power in your veins,” he reminds me in a low voice.
“Excuse me?” Mia hisses, eyes wide as she looks back and forth between us. “Did you just say?—?”
“Yes,” Dutch cuts her off.
“When the fuck were you going to tell me?” Mia demands.
“In about five more minutes when we’re in the damned car,” Dutch tells her. She huffs at that, but he ignores it and levels a pointed stare at me. “Unless you’re ready to play your hand, we should go.”
Fuck.
