Chapter 11
LEAH
I’m not going to lie, I feel a little happy.
Please don’t judge. I get it. I’m THAT girl.
The dumb one. The oh-you-got-your-heart-broke-again one.
The one who sits home waiting for him to call.
But what most people don’t know is that Aaron was the one to
sit up with me when I had nightmares. He was the one to insist
I learn to trade and to obtain my Series 7 license so I’d have a
career. Aaron is the one to stare me in the eyes everytime he
joins his body to mine.
And, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know it’s just sex.
But it’s not.
It’s more than that.
I know it. I believe it.
And deep down, I love him.
As rough and cold as he can be, I know there’s more to him
than he lets the world see.
2/5
I head into the kitchen and grab an apple from the giant bowl
in the middle of the prep table. It’s ripe and red and sweet.
“What the hell are you smiling about?”
It’s Jessica.
Her long, blond hair is down today and it glows beautifully,
flowing behind her like some goddamn shampoo commercial. Ugh. This wolf.
She’ll probably dance on my grave.
The thought saddens me.
“You don’t have to be mean, Jessica. I didn’t ask to be Aaron’s wife. But I am. And I have been for a long time now. You don’t have to keep making things so hard for us.”
She snorts and then snatches the apple from my hand. She
tosses it into the compost bin.
“You’re trash. You’ll always be trash. And if I had my way, we wouldn’t just bleed you once a month, it’d be every day.
Because there is no world in which your pack can absolve its
sins.”
I try once more to reason with her. “I was a child when those
sins were committed, Jessica.”
“BOTH of my parents are dead. And my eldest brother.”
“My mother is dead. I’ve lost cousins and kin too. War is awful
that way.”
She huffs.
“What do you know of it? You’re a human. For the life of me, I
don’t know why he even bothers to keep you around. You’re of
no use to this pack. No use to Aaron.”
That hurts.
She isn’t ashamed or apologetic for her actions, trying to steal
my husband. If I’m being fair, he was hers to begin with. But
there needs to be some sanctity for our relationship. Even if
we aren’t mated. We are married.
That has to count for something.
“What you’re doing, Jessica… it isn’t good for either of us.”
She shakes her head at me. “I don’t care about you, Leah. I
never have. No one here does. And if you think that Aaron cares, then you’re even dumber than you look.”
I’m finished with being nice to her. “You’re jealous.”
Her eyes flash and it’s the only warning I get.
Her claws scratch down my arms as she grabs me and hurls
me across the kitchen.
I slam into the pantry door and stay there on the ground, wheezing.
“Weak, pathetic human.”
Blood drips from her fingertips.
“He’ll never love you,” she screams. “He’ll never mate you.”
“You don’t know that.”
“He’ll always belong to me! Just do us all a favor and die already!”
I’ve thought about dying. It’s all I’ve thought about. But I won’t give her the satisfaction.
I push to my feet and square off with her. I’m done feeling
sorry for myself. I’m done cowering.
Bad Love: An Alpha’s Regret
I’ve been hit with several revelations this week, and they all
leave me reeling.
This last one…
It just might be the secret that breaks me.
A baby.
It’s everything I wanted.
A child.
Family.
Home.
My hands shake and I shove them in my pockets to stop the shivering. Unable to bear my own thoughts anymore, I slip out of the kitchen and onto the back patio. From here, it’s a
quarter mile to the edge of the woods and then there are
miles and miles of packlands to explore. The perimeter guards.
on patrol don’t normally hassle me.
I see three of them, two males and a female at the edge of the
