CHA 2

"Any number of times you'd like," she promised, reaching down to take the book from her lap. "But let's get the story done first, okay?"

Alexander was slightly undersized for his age but was two inches taller in the past six months, so she knew for sure that a growth spurt was on the horizon. He had been born with downy blond hair that had darkened as he aged, but not nearly so dark as her own, and his eyes were the deep, familiar blue of his father's. She did not see Luthor when she looked at Alexander, though, only her sweet little man. However, the traces of his father's features were there in his face, and she knew they would only become more defined as he aged.

Regardless of how large of an asshole Luthor was, she couldn't even begin to deny he was attractive. But if she had anything to say about it, good looks were all the Tenzclaw Alpha Alexander would inherit. All the toxic, misogynistic baggage of pack life weren't going to find their way into her house if she had anything to say about it.

As Alexander eventually drifted off to sleep, she brushed the hair out of his forehead and kissed his cheek gently, her heart bursting with love. She'd given up everything to ensure Alexander's safety, and she'd do it a million times over if she had to.

When she finally emerged from the room and shut the door behind her, leaving it ajar to allow the hall light to stream in, the pain in her stomach intensified. It was a dull ache accompanied by that unnerving feeling of being watched. Though she longed for a hot shower that didn't get interrupted and a cup of cocoa in front of the television, she hadn't lost quite all of her instincts since leaving the Tenzclaw pack, and they were screaming at her to go and investigate. She'd been able to let the worries drop when they were vague, but now that they were getting stronger by the minute, she knew she couldn't ignore them much longer.

She took one step, and then another, down the hall, before the feeling intensified again. It was so intense, so insistent, that it left her winded.

There, at the fringes of her senses, she could have sworn she sensed Luthor Michaels. No, there was no chance in hell it could be him. It had been over seven years since she'd fled, so he should have forgotten about her by now.

No sooner had the sensation swept over her than it had gone, but there was no chance of her being able to relax until she was sure she must have been imagining things. She glanced rearward at the empty house, small enough so that she could see the entirety of it with a single glance, and opened the front door warily. It was chilly but she was perspiring from adrenaline as she slowly looked around, trying to sense if someone was present.

It was a quiet night, the air cool and heavy with the moisture of the nearby ocean and the oncoming rain. Her senses absorbed the night sounds, the chirping of crickets, and the soft sound of the wind through the trees. She could neither smell nor hear anyone, yet it was not only her wolf senses that were unsettling her.

She turned on the porch light with a shaking hand and stepped out, shutting the door behind her. A quick look revealed nothing, but the feeling would not leave, a dull, aching pain in the pit of her belly. She reached out with the once-strange, now familiar magic that had stirred in her after her one night with Luthor, feeling the land around her cottage. Finding out she had been a witch wasn't shocking—it ran in the blood—but since she'd had the magic for seven years, it felt like an old friend when it came to her.

Some residual of magic at the edge of her property and nothing more. It was so faint she couldn't even tell if it was a witch or a shifter.

Probably just a stray passerby. A neighbor you didn't know wasn't human, that's all, she tried to tell herself…But she wasn't very convincing.

After a second lap around her home, she still couldn't make out anything, even if the pain in her belly hadn't let up. Sighing, she supposed the thing to do would be to lock all the doors and try to get some sleep.

"I must be going crazy," she murmured. "Or maybe it's just stress."

But as she headed back to the door, she suddenly sensed the magic again, this time even closer. It was so powerful that she had no doubt what the source was. It hit her over the head like a hammer, and it was all she could do not to fall to her knees and cower.

It was her Alpha.

No, no, no, no. He couldn't be here, could he?

Oh shit. He'd come for her, just as she'd feared. She'd become such a master of hiding, and they'd tried so hard to cover their tracks. How could it be that he'd found them now, after all these years? She'd known it was a risk that Luthor would come for her, but not yet. Not until her little Alexander was older, shielded from the nastiness of the pack politics and his father's cruelty.