Free Hunted Down by His Alpha by C.J. Colton Page A

Something bad had happened and he’d had to get me out of wherever we had been. That we couldn’t go back and it was best not to ask questions. I didn’t know where we were, but he didn’t leave my side while he waited for me to get better. When I’d healed enough, we moved and didn’t stop moving until one day Michael said that we were as safe as we could be. That they wouldn’t find us here.”
    I felt his hand curl against my chest, felt the small tremors run through his body and didn’t know what to think as his words played through my mind. Michael, the crotchety old wolf who’d loved and taken in the little halfling hadn’t died in the fire that had decimated the house and my life. He’d taken Tobias and run. But why? Who from? Why hadn’t he come to me? The questions wouldn’t stop.
    “Did Michael never tell you about your past? About the fire or us, or who he was running from?”
    I felt my mate shake his head and make a sound but it was muffled. “I don’t remember any fire. I—I tried asking about the past, but every time I brought it up, I felt uneasy, scared of his answers.” He pushed back and looked up at me with wide, wet eyes. “I should have, though. I should have made him tell me. Why would he run, Hayden? Why did he take me with him? He always seemed so scared, endlessly worried about keeping our heads down and not being noticed. Why didn’t he tell me he was a werewolf? That you would be out searching for me?”
    The pain and confusion in Tobias’s voice tore at me. I swallowed.
    “Did he think I wouldn’t believe him?” Tobias’s voice broke at the question and I pulled him back to me.
    “Something happened that night. Michael wouldn’t have taken you and run if he hadn’t thought it necessary, that it wasn’t necessary in saving your life.” I had to believe that. “I’ll get to the bottom of it, I promise. Nothing’s going to happen to you ever again.”
    I looked down at the little wolf in my arms, murmuring to him as he started shaking. It took a while, but finally he calmed and nestled deeper against me. He’d finally fallen asleep, but I couldn’t do the same even after a night without. The questions about that day five years ago swarmed in my head and I tried to piece back together the events of that night, but I was no closer to coming to an answer than I had been five years ago. Fuck. What the hell had happened?
     
     
    ****
     
     
    “So they can shift?” Tobias asked me as we walked over to Wyatt’s house nearly a week later. I’d have preferred to keep him in the house and in our bed for a bit longer, but I’d promised to take him over to meet Seth, Wyatt and their pups, and I didn’t want my mate to feel like I was keeping him prisoner.
    “They’re three weeks old so they’re still getting the hang of it,” I said as we walked up to the door of the modest looking two story and rang the doorbell.
    I wrapped my arm around Toby’s waist and splayed my hand over his still flat stomach. Because the gestation period for wolf shifters was so short, I knew he’d be showing soon. The visit to Seamus earlier had told us that everything was progressing smoothly and that we should be expecting our litter come late Spring but it’d be a couple more weeks before we knew how many pups to be expecting.
    I’d been worried that Tobias wasn’t too excited by the prospect, but had told myself I shouldn’t expect him to come round to the idea so easily when he’d been taking in a series of shocks one after another since I’d come back into his life. But he’d looked genuinely excited, if not a little shocked, when Seamus had told him to expect five or six pups. I knew his apprehension stemmed from the fact that he wouldn’t be giving birth to them in shifted form, and he’d told me as such in the truck on our way back home.
    “We’re going to figure it out,” I’d promised. “Seamus said that he’s heard of other half-shifters giving birth to shifter