Bad Love: An Alpha's Regret (Leah and Aaron) novel Chapter 170

Chapter 170
I wake up in the huge king-sized bed of the Rathborn apartment in the Roberts Corp building, and I’m immediately assaulted with the scent of my mate’s arousal all over the sheets.
Sonofabitch
I’m instantly hard, despite how s hit ty I feel.
I roll out of bed, frustrated from both getting jumped and almost killed last night, and infuriated at the lust surging hard through my system from the simple fading scent of my aroused mate in the blankets.
I stagger into the bathroom and get the shower running from multiple jets, even more annoyed at myself as I remember how I modeled this bathroom and the shower in particular after the one at the hotel, where Leah had put on an erotic, decadent display for me, and I’d nearly lost it. Almost smashed my way into that shower and claimed her as my mate right then and there.
I wonder now, if I had given into those base, animal instincts that night, would things have turned out the way they had?
In the shower, I jer k myself off, mostly in anger and frustration, but it doesn’t do anything to make me feel any better.
I’d never considered coming to California dangerous before last night.
Who the he ll had thought they could kil l me and steal my Alpha abilities like that?
Had it just been some random rogue wolf?
Or was it the same person-or people-who’d been trying to k ill me for months now, starting way back when Leah had still been in the hospital and I’d narrowly escaped that first attack.
It’s part of the reason I can’t be around Leah-my mate-besides all the hurt and anger between us.
The idea that my mate could get caught in the crosshairs-or worse, used against me-makes both me and my wolf feel the sort of unhinged that is a slippery slope into completely losing control.
It’s bad enough trying to keep myself and my wolf in check because we’re staying away from our mate.
My temper has been hair-trigger. I’m more volatile and restless without my mate nearby.
I vowed I would never let this happen to me in my life.
Not after seeing what it did to my father when my mother was killed.
It was why I was never going to mate anyone.
But Leah…
I don’t even know when exactly she got under my skin.
But now I don’t know how to live without her, even if we have to live apart.
I’m better off living in the remote cabin now.
Hard for anyone to sneak up on me out there, where I can hear or scent them coming for miles. What I don’t sense, the surveillance does. It’s state of the art.
I need to get to the bottom of who is out to get me, before they manage to get lucky and actually take me out.
I have a strong suspicion it’s someone on the Council, either an official plot to get rid of me, or someone unsanctioned and acting
alone, I’m not sure.
I know the Elders on the Council are uneasy about me possessing three packs, even though I’ve reassured them I have no designs on any Council seats,
That’s not what I want right now in my life.
All that petty in-fighting and shifting power struggles and overseeing peace between packs and solving issues wolves are either too du mb or too stubborn to fix themselves?
Yeah, no thanks.
All I want to do is get my revenge on those Old Country Wolves who dared help that bas tard Liam, but getting to the bottom of who is trying to kil l me is going to have to take priority.
Oh, and that dam n ed mess with the missing Roberts Corp Al weapons systems that was meant to go to the military for billions of
dollars.
I feel like cra p, but I don’t have time to be si c k today, even if those da m n silver-wolfsbane bullets nearly ki lled me last night.
And here’s the kicker on that… I can’t allow myself to di e.
If I di e… Leah does too.
Maybe I can’t be with Leah, and maybe she h ates me right now, but the truth is, everything I’m doing and everything I’ll do for the rest of my life will always come back to her.
I only hope one day she’ll understand.
And forgive me for my sins.