Kyros listened to his son gargling in the bathroom. He tried to stifle his laughter when he heard his son say, “I’m going to fall back and regroup.”

“Now that sounds like a plan to me, a workable plan. You might want to run it by me before you implement a new one.”

Pappy opened the door and stared at his father. His eyes narrowed. “Are you really ashamed of me?”

“Yes,” Kyros said. He turned on his heel and left the room.

Pappy sat down on the edge of the bed and groaned. He wondered if he was going to die. Probably not. A pity. He squinted to see through the shutters on his window. It looked gray outside, but it wasn’t snowing. He needed to teach himself a lesson. He dressed, albeit with some difficulty. When he bent over to lace up his boots he thought his head was going to split wide open. He almost called out to Alpha until he remembered the dog was with Sam, who seemed to love Alpha nearly as much as he did.

He’d found Alpha as a pup, half-starved because his mother and the rest of her litter had died. He’d been so weak he couldn’t stand. For five days and nights he and his father had sat up with him, feeding him first with an eyedropper, then with a baby bottle that Kyros had fashioned out of an empty syrup container and a latex glove. When Alpha grew stronger, Kyros cooked for him. Neither he nor his father was certain if their old shepherd had mated with the female wolf or not. In the end, it didn’t matter. He grew attached to the dog, and the dog seemed to have an uncanny instinct when it came to him.

Alpha had never been affectionate, maybe because his mother had died. He was, however, devoted. He’d liked Adrian, almost right up to the end, then he’d turned against her, as if he knew something everyone else was too stupid to figure out. And now Samantha Rainford had somehow reached Alpha’s inner core. It was easy to see that the dog loved her, and she loved the dog. Something tore at Pappy’s heart. He felt like he’d lost his best friend.