Screw My Childhood Sweetheart His Alpha Brother Marked Me First novel Chapter 90

Mate.

The single word echoed in my head, followed by anger and pain. Another growl slipped from my lips.

“Shit. Is she going to attack him?” Anson said, an edge of panic slipping into his tone.

“Give her a minute,” River told him.

Vaughn didn’t move, he simply stared at me. “You needed the motivation to protect yourself. I’ll always make sure you’re safe. Even if it makes you hate me.”

I leaned back in the Adirondack chair and balanced my sketch pad against my legs. The early morning air was still, the only thing I could hear was the echo of Vaughn’s words in my head. “I’ll always make sure you’re safe. Even if it makes you hate

me.”

He hadn’t stuck around for me to shift back. He’d simply turned on his heel and headed for the woods. He hadn’t come back for lunch or dinner, and I had too much pride to try to reach out to him through the pack link I was now a part of.

My pencil brushed across the page, filling in the dark fur of the wolf with haunting ice–blue eyes. My paper and pencil were the only tools I had at my disposal for trying to figure out Vaughn. I created a little glimmer in those eyes. A little piece of hope amongst the dark shadows.

I was an idiot. It didn’t matter that Vaughn’s reasons for keeping his distance were noble. He still wanted nothing to do with

1. me.

Someone set a can of Diet Coke on the arm of my chair, and I jumped. My hand flew to my chest as Knox lowered himself into the chair next to me. “When am I going to get those handy wolfy skills that mean no one can sneak up on me?”

Knox chuckled. “You already have them. You just have to pay attention to your senses. I wasn’t exactly quiet, and the way the air is flowing, you should’ve scented me.”

My lips pressed into a thin line as I reached for my soda and popped the tab. “The learning curve around here is steep.”

Knox glanced at my notebook. “Or maybe you just have a lot on your mind. Give yourself some slack.”

I stared at the image on the paper. I wanted to pull the wolf from the page and throw my arms around him. “There’s a lot to think about.”

“Vaughn’s been through a lot. He’s always going to look for bogeynen, even when there aren’t any.”

I shifted in my seat, taking a sip of my soda. “You guys keep hinting at something that happened. Is someone actually going to fill me in?”

Knox traced a design on the arm of the chair. “Vaughn needs to be the one to tell you. It’s his story.”

“Then I guess I’ll never know because he only communicates with me in scowls and glares.”

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Screw My Childhood Sweetheart–His Alpha Brother Marked Me First!

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Chapter 90

Knox reached over, his hand slipping beneath my fall of hair and squeezing my neck. “He’ll-”

“Come around,” I finished for Knox. “Yeah, yeah. So you’ve all said.” I lifted my gaze to the trees, wondering where Vaughn was at that very moment. If he was all right? Warm? Hungry? At the last mental question, my stomach growled.

Knox grinned and stood, holding out a hand. “I might not be able to fix Vaughn, but I can get you breakfast. What do you say?”

I took his hand and tucked my sketch pad under my arm. “I say feed me.”

***

I fiddled with the strap on my backpack, wedged between Caspian and River in the back seat of Anson’s Range Rover. “What’s the story about why I was out again?”

Knox turned in his seat. “We were all out. Bad flu bug.”

“Stomach or regular?”

Anson grinned at me through the rearview mirror. “You a method actor or something?”

“I just want to make sure I have my story straight. I don’t want us getting into trouble because Caspian said he was barfing everywhere and I said I had a cough.”

Caspian arched a brow in my direction. “Why am I the one who has to be barfing?”

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