“You nearly died,” she whispered.
He gave a faint huff that might have been a laugh. “Nearly is the key word there, no? I didn't die.”
When he finally slipped into unconsciousness under the witch’s spell, Ava stepped away, her composure fracturing once she reached the corridor.
Her wolf stirred within her, restless and wounded.
He didn't have to be out there to prove a point to anyone, it murmured.
“He had to be an alpha,” Ava replied silently, though doubt seeped into her thoughts. “But why now? Why when everything is already unstable?”
Her mind drifted unwillingly to Emily. Since the girl had been born, nothing had been the same, they had been attacked a lot of times, unrest within the pack had followed like a shadow. Enemies had grown bolder.
“If she had never been born,” Ava wh
