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You needed to know

The door to Lucas’s temporary room creaked as I opened it It took my eyes a moment to find him, because Maddy was asleep on the bed The covers were bunched up around her, and I knew that in her sleep, she’d burrowed into the Lucas’s bed into her den

The fact that he’d let her--and that he was sleeping on the floor so she could have the bed--did not go unnoticed That Maddy had fallen asleep in his presence was evenShe wasn’t the type to trust blindly, and whatever else Lucas was, he wasn’t Pack She shouldn’t have felt that co to sleep on the floor for her

I felt a stab of possession spike through me--Maddy was ours; she trusted us--but that didn’t stopher to put the shotgun down

With a glance at Maddy and a sharp intake of breath, Lake coun near the door, her eyes on Lucas’s as she crossed the roo for me, isn’t he?" Lucas ake His voice was dull, and on the bed, Maddy made a noise halfway between a whimper and a whine

"No" I wanted to kneel down next to Lucas, to put -limbed and lethal--to stay between us at all ti, at least not yet, but he said so, and I need to know if it’s true"

Lucas pushed hiht a flash of an i with a toddler’s chubby cheeks I didn’t knohen and I didn’t knoho, but the fractured h for me to feel, just for a second, the intensity hich Maddy looked at Lucas and saw the life she and the others had lived with the Rabid I glanced at Lake, and since I couldn’t kneel next to Lucas, she did

"We’re not looking to hurt you," she said "Not unless you’re looking to hurt us"

"I’ve never hurt anyone" Lucas’s words rang with the kind of truth that I didn’t need a olf’s sense of sets hurt"

His words twisted like a knife inthe e all the same

"Shay says he’s not the only one after you" I paused and measured Lucas’s reaction, but his eyes were as dull as his voice, and I couldn’t see anything in the?"

For several seconds, Lucas didn’t reply Then he looked up, right at le beat of my heart "I don’t know"

"You don’t know as in you’re not certain, or you don’t know as in you have no clue why Shay ?"

Lucas retreated even further into himself, and when he replied, his voice was barely audible to my huht be someone else after you, that’s not crazy talk, is it?" Lake kept her voice soft, and she didn’t le move toward him, but there was no way for him not to answer

Lake Mitchell wasn’t the kind of person you just shrugged off

"No It’s not crazy talk"

The air whooshed out of s as I processed our visitor’s answer Lucas didn’t know for sure if Shay was lying, but he knew that it was possible that his alpha was telling the truth

That someone else was after him

And he’d come here, to my land, and asked for

"Assu," I told him sharply "Who is it?"

Lucas didn’t answer I took a step forward, pitchingdirectly into his eyes with an intensity none of my wolves could have denied "Is it one of the other alphas?"

"No"