Really hoping that’s only one way. Don’t need a whole bunch of wolves feeling my freak-outs.
Connor dips his free hand in a bowl of water—cleaning the juices from his fingers—flicks his hand to semi-dry, then wraps that arm around me, squeezing me gently to his chest.
“Tell me?” he murmurs against my hair.
I turn in his arms, pulling back enough to look at his face, and for a long moment, I simply stare. He sits patiently, his breaths slow and even, waiting for anything I have to say in that unhurried way of his.
My mind softens his strong features to what they were when he couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen, my heart sore from the memory. Toward the end of the ceremony, I noticed that no one younger than possibly twelve pledged their loyalty. The younger pups were left to play in the open yards. I wondered how the Alpha kept Connor as part of the pack when he refused to yield to his father’s wishes about the guys. From what I’ve gleaned about Connor’s past, I couldn’t see him pledging himself to the Alpha.
The answer came in a flash of images that consumed me. First, a young Connor on his knees in a nearly empty room constructed of wood, while a man twice his size restrained him, with a look of rage and defiance carved across his features. Then it was the Alpha, a man that painfully looks so much like his son, gripping Connor’s jaw to force it open. He held his bleeding palm over Connor’s mouth, covering Connor’s nose with his fingers. With wild panic in his eyes, Connor resisted, choking and coughing as air was robbed from his lungs, but he couldn’t fight the blood that dripped down his throat.
“You are my son. I am your Alpha. Kneel,” the Alpha commanded, his voice more of a guttural growl.
The last image was Connor dropping to his hands and knees, his muscles straining against the Alpha’s will, but unable to move.
No longer held captive by the visions—a muted prisoner of moments I cannot change—I’m filled with a dark horror. Horror over what was done to Connor, and a corrupting horror within myself, wishing I could kill the son of a bitch all over again. Only this time slower, so that I can watch the terror and excruciating pain bleed from his eyes. Make him suffer every physical mark, and every damaging moment, that he inflicted on his son. Alone. Helpless. At my mercy where there would be none.
I flinch away from the ruthless darkness that lives inside me and look deeply into Connor’s eyes. Mine burning with the tears I fight to hold back.
Wrapping my arms around his neck, I promise, “I will never let anyone hurt you again.”
“I’m meant to protect you,” Connor answers, his voice low. He holds me close, running one hand soothingly up and down my spine.
I shake my head against his neck. “Don’t care.”
He releases a sigh that’s somewhere between humored and exasperated.
His hand moves into my hair, his fingers massaging the back of my skull, and a wave of uncertainty lined with a desperate need flows from him into me. I always knew there was so much more to him flowing underneath his surface calm, but to truly experience it is in some ways overwhelming. It also makes me feel like I’m violating his trust somehow by seeing into the depths of him without his permission.
Finally, like his request is born from a deep secret inside him, he requests, “Stay tonight?”
“Okay,” I reply automatically, hoping Mildred won’t lose her tea-loving mind that I’m asking to stay the night at yet another one of the boys’ homes. This one without parental supervision.
My gaze lifts over Connor’s shoulder, taking in the wooden house set up in the trees. It looms over the celebration like a seething villain—distant, warped by evil intent, and full of shadows. I know the room I saw is in that house.
Connor, oh so helpfully, retrieves my cell phone from my back pocket—how he could stand it digging into his thigh all night, I have no idea—and hands it to me.
Preparing to think of ways to explain why it’s so important I’m here tonight—the shifters are still finding their footing with Connor as their Alpha, he needs me here because he doesn’t want to be alone, Connor asking for help is a big step for him—I text my aunt asking if it would be okay for me to stay.
Shortly after my text is sent, her response pops up on the screen and leaves me floored.
Aunt Mildred:Yes, that’s fine. Let me know if you’ll need me to pick you up. Sleep well, my darling.
“She said yes,” I mutter, locking my phone and wiggling it back into my pocket. “Just like that.”
Relief wrapped in more uncertainty emanates from Connor. Without warning, he maneuvers me so he has one arm under my knees and the other around my back, then he stands up with me bridal style in his arms, and heads toward what looks like an endless staircase leading up to the front door of the Alpha house.
Apparently, it’s time for bed.
I swallow heavily as butterflies dance in my stomach. We’ve shared a bed before at least half a dozen times, his wolf always taking up more than his fair share, but this doesn’t feel the same. There’s a yearning within Connor that has my heart racing.
Or it could be the stairs making me nervous. There are a lot of them. Yeah, let’s go with the stairs. Very scary stairs.
Unfortunately, my brain and mouth aren’t quite on the same page, because as the pack parts to let us pass, I tease awkwardly, “You know I can walk all by myself.”
Those are the wrong words for stair terror, idiot!
Unaware of my internal freak-out, Connor nods and bends down to gently put me on my feet. His face is its usual blank expression that doesn’t communicate anything—his features swathed with secrets hidden by the night sky. Except he can’t hide from me anymore. Like an aura that coats his skin, I can see my simple teasing has hit a nerve within him, causing a disappointment that spirals outward. I don’t understand why he feels this way. I only know I need to fix it.
