Page 31 of Fated to the Alpha

She heard Shane rise from the couch and cross the floor to stand behind her. “You’re shaking. I’m … I’m sorry if I—”

Kimberly spun and buried her face against his shoulder, arms curled against his chest in a muted plea to be held again. Anything to reawaken her wolf. Anything to fight away the fear. Shane had to fix this. He always fixed it before.

“No, no. It wasn’t you.”

He embraced her, held her close, and rested his cheek atop her head. Tears she didn’t want to show but couldn’t hold back anymore came streaming down her cheeks in a release that felt oddly cathartic. She sobbed into his shirt like a child, and he let her. He didn’t ask questions, didn’t ask to leave, didn’t insist that she suck it up and get a grip. He was never that cruel. She was glad that had never changed. So, she didn’t hold back, didn’t try to pull herself together. She let it all tumble out in hard, pathetic sobs until the taste of pizza was smothered by salty tears on her lips. In his arms, her wolf stopped cowering, but it wouldn’t rise. Simply rested.

An immeasurable amount of time passed before Kimberly sniffled back the last of her outburst and glanced at the television. The opening for episode two was well underway, but neither of them was interested anymore.

Shane pulled back and cradled her damp face between his strong hands. She forced herself to meet his blue eyes and felt her chest cave in under the shame of how she behaved. Crying was weakness. Crying was an admittance that she didn’t have it together. It was a sign for help she didn’t deserve or need. Crying wasn’t something to do in front of anyone but behind closed doors and muffled in a pillow. She only ever cried in front of Shane after her father’s words cut her too deeply to do anything else. Back then, she hadn’t tried so hard to hide her weakness because Shane never made her feel like it was a problem.

There was no way they could come back from this. He would realize she was too fragile. She needed protection from the harsh, cruel world. No one needed that pressure and toxic codependency. Not even her wolf came forward to protect her when her body went into full flight mode in response to some imagined danger. Even inexperienced pups lost control over their animal side in these situations, and her eyes didn’t so much as flicker gold.

Useless. Defective. Pathetic.

“I know this isn’t what you want to hear right now, but you are so beautiful when you cry.”

The caress of his voice, the authenticity of his words, was enough to make her start crying again. She let her head bow so low her chin nearly touched her chest.

With one finger, he brought her head back up, forcing her to face him again.

She knew what he saw. Green eyes rimmed in red, the tip of her nose the same shade, cheeks glossy with tears, and lips trembling with residual fear for what he thought of her.

“Beautiful.”

Shane kissed her again, transferring some of her salty tears from her lips onto his. It wasn’t long and it wasn’t deep, but it was a heartfelt kiss, enough that she almost forgot why she had been so upset. Almost.

Chapter Seven

When Shane woke up the next morning, his nose told him he was in the middle of the forest. As he squinted against the bright morning sun that filtered through the sliding glass doors, his eyes told him he was still in Kimberly’s apartment.

The rest of the night, after her inexplicable meltdown, they stayed on the couch, wrapped up in each other and a plaid blanket, and watched that Korean drama with the subtitles on until Kimberly fell asleep in his arms. Then, he carried her to her bedroom and tucked her under the fluffy, silky duvet before sticking the last of the pizza in her fridge. As odd as it seemed, Shane didn’t feel awkward about doing it at all. It was like a scene they should have lived out a thousand times before but never had the chance. Shane seized the opportunity to take care of her, the way he should have been all along. And it felt like the most natural thing in the world.

They didn’t talk about what happened. She never confessed what he did wrong or what trigger got pulled during that mind-blowing kiss. The scent of her hot arousal and the way she returned that kiss told him that, for at least a little while, she liked it. He desperately wanted to understand what happened but knew how to make it up to her. He stayed the night on her couch, held her until she didn’t need him to, and didn’t push.

Muscles stiff, he sat up and stretched. The apartment was quiet at the crack of dawn, and by the lack of noise in the neighboring apartments, all was still that Saturday morning.

He took the initiative while she slept and went to the kitchen to begin preparing breakfast for the both of them. Predictably, she had all the ingredients for strawberry pancakes. Her favorite, even as a kid.

As he mixed the batter, he replayed the kiss and everything before and after. He had never seen her so scared, so distressed, like she was dropped in the middle of a warzone with no gun or helmet. What did he do? What did he say? Was it all that joking about sex? Was she afraid he would pressure her? She should have known him better, but then again, he thought he knew her pretty damn well. Right now, he felt utterly lost and confused about what to do. They barely spoke a word to one another after it happened. Just the occasional, One more episode? or Anything to drink? or Is your arm going numb yet? She probably didn’t expect him to still be in the apartment when she woke up.

Maybe it had something to do with the kiss. Did he hurt her? He thought women liked little nips and something a little rougher, but respectful. It had been a long time since they made out, but he recalled Kimberly liked her hair being pulled. Not hard, but just enough to feel the tension. It was possible she didn’t like it anymore, but did that warrant such a reaction?

Either way, he was just thankful she let him touch her after all that. The feel of her in his arms again was unbelievable. Like two halves became a whole. That realization made the meltdown even more significant and almost devastating. Maybe not to her, but certainly for him.

When she told him to stop and he watched the way she was so desperate to put space between them, his alpha instincts kicked into high gear. It was a good thing she didn’t look at him right away or she would have seen the golden eyes of the wolf watching her every twitch and quiver. For a few milliseconds, the wolf’s thoughts were his own. All he wanted to do was find what had scared her and kill it. He wanted to sink his teeth into it, make it scream for mercy, and tear out its insides for her to feast on. He had a good enough hold over himself by the time she was done crying, but that tight ball of vicious anxiety kept him hypervigilant, even after she went to sleep.

It made him think back to a conversation with his father shortly after Kimberly and her family left Warrington. They were fighting about the same old tired topic of Shane’s preparedness to be an alpha and Isaac brought up the fact that Kimberly would not make a good mate. Her lack of dominance would mean Shane would have to put her safety in closer priority, potentially equal to or more than the pack. Alpha females could hold their own without a mate’s protection. Kimberly could not. It wasn’t an ideal match for an alpha who, in a moment of choice, had to pick his pack over his mate. It might also mean that Shane would have to forever be on guard against any threat to Kimberly. That hypervigilance would be a lifestyle, not just in a time of crisis.

But none of that mattered to him. Kimberly was worth every sleepless night, every clenched muscle, every internal war he might wage with his wolf. How could he possibly convince her that he was more than willing to take her on, lack of dominance and all, because stuff like that wasn’t important to him when choosing a mate. Their fathers were wrong. He knew that. His wolf knew that. But did she?

He resolved that he had to go gently from here on. She called the shots. She made the moves. Easy and careful. He didn’t want to scare her away, not after they had been apart for so long and they had just one chance to make things right. And he wanted more of those kisses in his near future. If he pushed too hard before she was ready, he wouldn’t get another one.

Over the low hiss of batter frying in the skillet, he heard the rustle of bed linens and Kimberly’s deep, sleepy sigh as she awoke. He held perfectly still but was unsure why. She’d smell both him and the pancakes. She’d hear his movements and the sizzle of breakfast. It wasn’t like she wouldn’t know he was there.

When he looked inward, he realized it was his wolf that made him do it. Like tensing before an attack, alert and ready to strike. But attack what? Nothing was here. He shook it off and forced himself to tuck the spatula beneath the edge of the cooking pancakes.

Several moments and a couple of pancakes later, Kimberly finally emerged from her bedroom. She looked cute in yesterday’s wrinkled outfit, slept-in hair, and squinty eyes watching him like he was a monkey doing sideshow tricks instead of her high school sweetheart making pancakes in her kitchen.