Chapter 5

Penelope’s pov

Staring at Lucas, I noticed that anything I say might put Dax in danger. But that would also trickle down to me. Because if Dax found out that I was here, and Dax found out that I belonged to Alpha Lucas, I would be in so much trouble.

I shook my head. “I can’t,” I said.

He tilted his head to the left. “Excuse me?”

The way he said those words hit me deeply. As I cleared my throat to speak louder, “I can’t tell you.”

He scoffed, looking at the ceiling. Then he looked back at me.

“But you have to. I need to know what happened to you and who did this to you. The doctor told me that you were pregnant. Now you’re no longer pregnant. That must mean that you went through something. From the bruises on your face and the bruises that were on your stomach, I am going to assume that you were beaten up, except you might have gotten into some sort of accident.

“So tell me, who did this? I swear to you, I will take care of them. They won’t even see me coming. That is my promise to you.”

His words were reassuring, but they were not strong enough to make me waver. Because the moment I tell him about Dax, I will be destroyed.

I shook my head. “I don’t know how it happened,” I lied. “I can remember being in the woods, and I was attacked.”

He laughed a bit. Before leaning back in the chair he was sitting on, “you’re lying to me. I can feel it.”

I shook my head and chuckled nervously. “I’m not lying.”

“You are,” he countered. “You’re forgetting that we have a bond now. That means that when I tell the truth you’d know, and if I lie you will still know. It goes both ways.

“But I’m not going to pry. You might have a very important reason for why you don’t want to tell me, and for that I will let this go. I won’t fight you over this. But just know that all I want to do is protect you, to make sure this doesn’t happen again. So if it’s going to be something that will reoccur later in the future, you have to let me know, so I can stop it now before it becomes a problem later.”

He wasn’t wrong. If he took care of Dax now, I would not have to look over my shoulders out of fear. All the tortures that I had gone through in that pack, I would not have to go through it again.

I thought of Mina. Now that I was out of Dax’s control, did that mean that I would have to get her out of there? Or did she belong to Dax?

I took in a deep breath and gave a small nod. “Thank you,” I said, “for rescuing me. Without you, I don’t know where I would be.”

He smiled. “I know where you’d be.”

He got up and walked towards me. “I would have eventually found you and taken care of you, taking you out of whatever hellhole you were stuck in.”

I chuckled. “What if I wasn’t in a hellhole?”

He gave me a small smile. “When two mates are apart from each other, that’s enough to be classified as a hellhole. If I didn’t find you and you didn’t find me, what’s the point in us living when love is something that we both don’t have?

“Because we never truly met each other. We’d be with different people out there, but not with the one truly meant for us.”

His words were philosophical. No wonder he was the Alpha King.

He got closer to the bed as I shuddered a bit. He extended his hand towards me.

“Can I touch you?” he asked.

I looked down to see his open palm, then looked up to his face. As much as I wanted to touch him, I couldn’t. Something in me feared touching this wolf. My wolf wanted to be with him, but the trauma I had gone through in my relationship with Dax haunted me.

A Luna in a wonderful pack, but none of them loved me. They treated me like trash and treated Laura like she was the main luna. Laura had all the respect, all the best things in the pack, and I was treated like the lowest of the lows. I was just a luna by name, but by respect and actions, I was worse than the dirt.

“Hey,” he said as I looked up. “Don’t be scared. I’m not going to hurt you.”

I slowly slid my hand into his palm as I felt an electric buzz humming between us. I suddenly felt whole in his arms. I suddenly felt like all my problems were over.

He completed me. We were both mates. Our wolves knew it. We knew it. And it just made our work all the more seamless.

“Once you’ve gotten better here, I’ll take you back home. I hope that’s okay with you.”

I gave a small nod. Now, don’t get me wrong… I didn’t trust him, but anywhere was better than here. And I didn’t even know where here was. What hospital we were in. What pack we were in. All I knew was that it would be better for me to go with this Alpha than to go and be with Dax.

I suddenly had a flash of how he was kicking me down, stomping on my belly. That had me shuddering in place as he held me so I would be steady.

“Don’t worry, no one is going to hurt you,” he said in a slow voice.

I stared up at him with widened eyes. I could feel my entire body system raging. Suddenly, his eyes glowed gold as I felt a glow in my eyes as well before we were distracted by a knock on the door.