The Alpha’s Secret Obsession Now novel Chapter 41

Morgan’s POV

The worst dreams are the ones you cannot differentiate from reality, the ones that sink their teeth into your consciousness and refuse to release you until the damage is already done.

I know this now, in the aftermath, standing barefoot in a forest I don’t recognize with pine needles pressing into my palms and cold air raising goosebumps across skin that shouldn’t be exposed to the elements.

But moments ago, I knew nothing except that he had found me.

The memory replays behind my eyes with cruel clarity—every detail preserved in the amber of my terror and my want.

I was sleeping in the safehouse bedroom, buried beneath the wool blankets Ricky’s contact had stocked in the cedar chest.

The unfamiliar mattress had finally stopped feeling foreign after hours of tossing, and exhaustion had dragged me under with merciful swiftness.

Then a hand touched my hip beneath the sheets.

My eyes flew open, and Paul was there—stretched beside me on the mattress like he had every right to occupy this space, his dark gaze fixed on my face with an intensity that made my heart slam against my ribs.

“How did you find me?” The question tore from my throat before I could stop it, panic flooding my system with adrenaline that screamed at me to run, to fight, to do anything except lie frozen beneath his searching eyes.

“Did you think I wouldn’t?” His voice came out rough, scraped raw with something that sounded almost like pain.

“Did you think there was anywhere in this world you could go where I wouldn’t follow?”

I should have screamed for Ricky. I should have thrown myself from the bed and grabbed the lamp on the nightstand as a weapon.

I should have done any of the hundred things a woman in danger does when a predator appears in her bedroom in the middle of the night.

Yet, I lay paralyzed as his fingers traced along my hip bone, following the curve of my waist with a reverence that made no sense given the circumstances.

“I’ve been searching for you every moment since you disappeared.” Paul shifted closer, and the heat of his body radiated through the thin fabric of my nightshirt.

“My wolf is in pieces, Morgan. I am in pieces. Do you have any idea what your absence has done to me?”

“You shouldn’t be here.” My voice emerged weaker than I intended, undermined by the way my pulse had begun racing for reasons that had nothing to do with fear.

“This place was supposed to be safe. No one knows about it.”

“I know about it now.” His palm flattened against my stomach, warm and solid and devastating. “And I’m not leaving without you.”

The declaration should have terrified me.

The Alpha of Blood Ridge had tracked me to my hiding place, had infiltrated the one sanctuary I thought existed beyond his reach, and now lay beside me in the darkness with possession written across every line of his face.

But his hand was sliding lower, and my body arched into the contact before my brain could override the response.

“You’re already wet for me,” Paul murmured against my throat, and wonder threaded through the observation rather than triumph. “Your body still knows.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.” The protest sounded hollow even to my own ears. “Physical responses aren’t consent.”

“Then tell me you don’t want this, Morgan.” He pulled back far enough to meet my eyes, his expression raw with a vulnerability I had never seen from him before.

“Tell me, and I will walk out of this room and leave you alone. I’ll call off the search. I’ll let you disappear. Just say the words.”

The silence stretched between us, thick with everything I couldn’t bring myself to say.

I should have told him to leave. I should have reminded myself of Sarah’s cruelty and his complicity, of the secrets and the distance and the thousand small humiliations of loving someone who refused to claim me publicly.

I leaned down to capture his mouth again, my hair falling around us like a curtain, and the world narrowed to just this—just him beneath me, just the heat building between our bodies.

My hips rolled against his, and the friction drew a sound from my throat that echoed through the dark bedroom.

I closed my eyes.

When I opened them, Paul was gone.

The bedroom was gone.

I am standing on all fours in the middle of a forest, pine needles pressing into my palms, cold night air raising goosebumps across skin that is bare beneath the tattered remnants of my nightshirt.

My breath comes in ragged gasps as I scramble upright, spinning in place to catalogue my surroundings with mounting horror.

Trees stretch in every direction, their branches blocking out the stars. The ground beneath my feet is damp with dew.

I have no idea where I am, no memory of leaving the safehouse.

‘I tried to wake you.’ My wolf’s voice carries genuine fear. ‘The pregnancy is destabilizing your control faster than I anticipated.’

The implication crashes through me with clarity.

If I had shifted in my sleep while lying twenty feet from Ricky, I could have killed her before either of us understood what was happening.

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