Alpha Knight (Wolf Ridge High 2)

That’s a pretty amazing take for a high school kid on a single day.

I wish I could leave it all for him. And I would, if I wasn’t also worried about my cousin. Instead, I leave him the seven hundred and take the eleven grand. I dig in my purse for a pen and write on the back of a receipt:

Bo,

Forgive me for ending things this way.

Please don’t come looking for me. I’ll pay you back when I can.

Thanks is definitely not enough, but it’s all I have.

And I know you owe me nothing, but I have one more favor to beg: please don’t wipe my memories of you. I need them.

—S

I want to write I love you, but it’s the wrong thing to do. It would open a door instead of close one. And I can’t have Bo in my life anymore.

I wipe my tears with my fingers and stuff the note and cash in the envelope to tuck in his saddlebag. Hopefully no one will steal it before he finds it, but I sort of doubt they will. After that small glimpse of the shifter community in Tucson, I have a feeling everyone in Wolf Ridge looks out for one another. They aren’t stealing money from each other.

Then I text the number I have for Vinny. I’m going to try to head off disaster by making a good faith payment of everything I have. I name a meeting place on a very public block in Scottsdale and call for a Lyft. I can stop at my aunt’s to get the rest of the cash I have from the first car sale. Thirty grand should buy me a little more time.

As I ride to Cave Hills and then Scottsdale, my stomach churns on emptiness. My body feels half-dead. No—make that all dead. Because I’m starting to wonder what the point of living is with all I’ve given up.

I thought I’d stopped living when my dad went to jail and I came to Arizona, but I was wrong. I never even knew living. I didn’t know it until Bo Fenton climbed in through my window and invaded my life. Declared himself my made-up boyfriend. Took me to Homecoming. Claimed my V-card and jumped in front of a firing gun for me.

And now that I know it, anything less than life with Bo is barely an existence.

But there’s no helping it. Even if my situation wasn’t seriously fucked—which it is—he can’t be with me anyway. I heard what the pack leader in Tucson ordered. He plans to have my mind wiped of what he is. That means he couldn’t be with me long term anyway.

Better now than after we have more time invested in each other. More of our hearts exposed and open for bludgeoning.

I make a quick stop at the townhouse, grateful my aunt and Rikki aren’t home to ask questions, then get back in the car. The Lyft driver pulls up at the designated corner, and I get out, clutching my bag with the cash. I look around, but don’t see the guys.

A whistle makes me look down the alleyway.

Fuck.

Of course they’re parked there, where no one will see this go down. I walk over and climb in the open door to the back seat. Tom climbs in beside me and shuts the door, and the car takes off down the street.

That was my first warning that something was wrong.

The second was the blow I take to the temple, which makes everything instantly go black.

Bo

Winslow and my mom sit at the kitchen table, my mom crying, Winslow covering her hand with his and promising everything will be all right.

I leave them to it and head down the hall to my room, where I flop face down on my bed.

All I feel is emptiness.

I should be happy. I accomplished the goal I set out to complete—find Winslow. Get him home to say goodbye to our mom. But there’s zero satisfaction.

For one thing, goodbye is pretty irrelevant when Winslow is living two and a half hours away in Tucson. He may be hiding from the law, but he’s not in a cave in Utah or out in New Mexico, off the grid, where some shifters go to disappear. He’s in the next city over. With a job and a pack to take care of him.

But none of this is about Winslow.

It’s about what went down with Sloane.

That girl fucking destroyed me.

I don’t even know how it happened. I was calling all the shots. I bum-rushed her life. But here I am, the one who’s fucking shredded.

And she walked away unscathed.

Or did she?

I’ve checked my phone fifty times, but there’s no message from her, and I’m still too pissed to send one myself. If I did, it would further destroy everything we were, and despite it all, I’m not sure I want that.