Wolf's Call (Wolves Next Door #2) - Auryn Hadley Page 0,114

huffed, jumping down to wrap the towel around my body.

Ian just caught me by the waist, pulling me up against him. "That, my dear, is a good reason. You will never need to be one of us. If you turn because of that kind of thinking, you will regret it. If you honestly want this? If you're willing to give up being normal, accept the challenges that will come, and realize that you will never be able to live without a pack? Yeah, it's something you have to want, and want badly, but not until Gabby's safe."

I looked up at him. "Ian?"

"Mm?"

"I think I like it when you let me see the alpha. It makes me feel..." I had to pause to find the right word, but there wasn't just one. "Protected, beautiful, desirable. I don't know, but all of that."

"Loved," he told me. "Because I haven't stopped. I'm just waiting for you to get used to all of this, and I'm a very, very patient man."

He turned me toward the bedroom, and I let him. "I'm getting there," I promised. "Faster than I thought possible."

"Very patient," he whispered beside my ear. "And you're still mine."

"Yes, I am."

CHAPTER 33

With Karen gone, I was allowed to walk back to work without bodyguards. I liked it, but I also hated it a little. After all, who didn't want some sexy man to escort her everywhere? Still, the guys made a point of coming to the office just to visit. Trent bought me lunch on Monday, which led to Pax buying it on Tuesday. Now that I knew why those two were so similar, I was noticing that most things they did were subtle little "one ups" of each other. The friendly kind. The type of thing that made me smile at them a little too much.

Or maybe that was simply because of the other residents, who went out of their way to let me know how happy they were that I hadn't been scared off, proud that I'd handled Karen, or just relieved that Ian had a mate they enjoyed being around. It was subtle, yet still made me feel like I was taking some kind of victory lap. I also realized that I knew a lot more people in the community than I realized.

Because Wolf's Run wasn't a small pack. According to my wolf lessons, most places could only get twenty to fifty wolves together without drawing too much notice. In Wolf's Run, we had two hundred and seventeen members. Ok, so many of those were kids, and almost all of them were families, but that was still a lot of people - and the community wasn't full yet.

The shocker was when Sampson Delaney, the older man who'd yelled at me when I first started working with Ashley, came in on Wednesday morning. I saw him before he even made it inside and quickly pulled up his account. Everything was fine, though. His payment wasn't late, his card wasn't expired, so I braced for some unexpected problem.

But he just came straight up to where I was sitting. "I owe you an apology, Alpha," he said, dropping a foil-wrapped paper plate on my desk. "I never thought a human could understand us, but I heard about Karen. I've seen you with the pups. You're good for the pack, so I thought I'd bring you some of my venison."

"Thank you," I said, waiting for the catch.

The man just smiled and made his way back out as if that didn't leave me completely and totally confused. The door barely closed behind him before Ashley burst into the room. Her head whipped around, looking to see who was here, and I just pointed at the man's retreating back.

"Sampson just brought me..." And then I gestured to the plate. "Venison, evidently."

She sucked in a breath and pulled back the foil, grabbing a piece of what looked like jerky. "Oh, he must really like you," she groaned before taking a large bite.

"It's not poison?"

Ashley just laughed. "No. He hunts the deer himself, has his own seasonings, and he's been doing this for a long time. It's how he survived away from people for so long. Best venison jerky you'll ever have, and Gabby will probably devour all of it, so I'm stealing another piece." Which she did.

So I decided to try a little bite. Sure enough, it really was good! "What the hell?" I asked around my bite. "So, he doesn't hate me?"

"The pack loves you," Ashley