Chapter 44

Joseph hissed, “I can feel her. She’s hurt!” at the same time Alpha Rhye growled “Where?”

He told them everything, told them what he’d done, as he peeled out of the garage. There was a moment of silence on the other end.

Alpha Rhye broke it first, voice cold and wrathful. “You motherfucker. If anything happens to her, I’m going to kill you.”

“I asked you to trust me… ” Joseph breathed as Alpha Rhye hung up. “I fucking begged you to trust me.”

And then, he, too, was gone and Leon was alone, feeling his world crumble beneath him.

********

Livia drove recklessly fast down dark roads, blinded by the tears that wouldn’t stop pouring. She felt painfully exposed, violated, like Leon had cut her open, took a good long look at her insides, then put her back together poorly.

She’d lived those memories with him in sharp, crystalline clarity, all the haze she’d worked for years to cloud them with gone as he pulled them from the depths of her mind.

He’d