Blade (The Alpha Elite #11)

Chapter Sixty-Eight

Juniper

“C ome downstairs.”

The calm, deep voice startled me awake, and panic set in a moment before I remembered where I was and who was talking. Then the constant hum of anxiety that’d only abated because I’d fallen asleep rippled across my nerves and reseated itself as I glanced across the loft.

Delta’s back disappeared as he silently retreated down the stairs.

Forcing myself to unkink my legs and ignore a headache that’d started hours ago, I stretched out in the queen-sized bed I’d found tucked into a cozy nook up here and inhaled deep.

Clean filled my lungs.

Clean bedding, clean air, clean house.

And then I smelled food.

Like charred meat and roasted something, and all of a sudden, my stomach let out a growl so loud, I was afraid it echoed down to the first floor. Shoving the covers back on the escape I’d run to after seeing the food Blade had bought me, I had a moment.

Yes, I’d gone up the stairs to the loft instead of one of the two big bedrooms downstairs. Yes, I’d run up the stairs crying. Yes, I’d come here because it felt as far as I could get away in this giant log cabin. But I hadn’t expected to find a cozy bed that was ridiculously soft with a thick, fluffy down comforter and even softer pillows.

I never imagined a man as hard as Blade, as rough as he was, would ever have a place like this. Let alone think to put a bed in a corner under a sloped ceiling that felt like you were sleeping on a cloud as you stared up at a starry night through a picture-perfect skylight.

Oh, shit .

Maybe he hadn’t.

Maybe he had a wife or a fiancée or a girlfriend who had thought of it.

Maybe this entire cabin had been her doing. Maybe the soft pillows under my head that smelled like fresh laundry were here because she’d picked them out and washed them.

Nausea reared up.

Delta spoke from downstairs in a voice that carried. “Come eat.”

“Just a minute.” Pulling on my Uggs and getting up without thinking about the order I was following, I made it as far as the threshold of the bathroom up here when I realized what I was doing.

I couldn’t go downstairs and eat.

Glancing in the mirror at my hair, which looked like the same hot mess of a bun I’d had last time I looked, I quickly pivoted and called over the railing. “On second thought, I’ll pass. But thanks.”

Delta stepped out of the kitchen area below me and looked up. “Come downstairs, Georgia.”

My heart stopped, the cabin tilted, and I gripped the top of the railing.

“What did you call me?” I rasped, my throat constricting.

“Georgia,” he stated succinctly. “Georgia Lynn Lyons. Your name. Come downstairs.”

My entire world collapsed.

Everything, absolutely everything I’d been doing for four long years just to stay alive, just to breathe—it all imploded.

Now I was as good as dead.

And so was he.

“ Blade ,” I barely whispered.