Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
Raven
My body didn’t feel like it was mine.
It hadn’t felt like mine since Alpha Damien abandoned me at the party, high and dry, or in my case, wet. It hadn’t felt like mine in the days that followed, when I’d tried to avoid any and all contact with Alpha Damien. But I’d failed, and here we were again.
I burned, set ablaze with a passion that threatened to unmake me and blurred my reasoning until I was functioning on autopilot.
As though having an out-of-body experience, I watched my hand settle over Alpha Damien’s, guiding him lower to where I ached and ached.
As he found me slick and desperate, a dry chuckle followed dark, sensual words.
“Are you always such a terrible liar, Raven?”
My hips mindlessly pursued his evasive fingers, and I struggled to process his words.
“What?” I rasped.
Alpha Damien grunted, his hand slipping between my legs and his fingers—oh, Goddess.
“If you find my touch so repulsive why are your panties soaked?”
A small whimper left my lips at his words and his touch. Once I’d been certain of what I wanted. I’d been certain that whatever it was, it wasn’t Alpha Damien. But now…I wasn’t sure of anything.
Those dreams I’d had of him had been merely a symptom of a much larger problem. The problem? I wanted Alpha Damien with a ferocity that undid me. I wanted to climb him. I wanted him to take me hard. To choke me. Bite me. To mark every inch of me until I was indisputably his in every way—
My sanity returned in a cold dose of unexpected clarity. I wanted Alpha Damien to mark me? Where the hell did that thought come from?
Spooked, I broke away from Alpha Damien’s grip, my legs weak and shaky as I grabbed my gym bag off the floor and ran the fuck away.
We didn’t talk about it, which was perfectly fine by me. I wasn’t very interested in rehashing one of the singularly most embarrassing moments of my life. So things remained decidedly tense between Alpha Damien and me when the day for our first ultrasound finally came.
This was the twelve-week mark, and the first time I was going to see my baby. Discomfited, I shifted on my seat, still waiting to be called in for the procedure. I shifted again, a shiver racing through my body and anxiety tugging at the edges of my mind.
“Hey,” Alpha Damien seemed closer than he’d been mere seconds ago, a concerned expression on his face. “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine,” I responded curtly, letting my gaze dip, subtly angling myself away from him, hoping he’d get the hint and go right back to ignoring me.
Another shiver snuck up on me, and as I rubbed my palms together, I heard a rustle.
Then Alpha Damien was draping his thick suit jacket over my shoulders.
Head tipped back, I watched him carefully tuck my hands into the sleeve of the jacket, my mind blank as his scent of citrus and cedar enveloped me.
“I was wrong,” he admitted, his movement smooth. “In the training room.”
I inhaled sharply, a strange pain lancing through me at his words. I hated how I lost control of myself so completely around Alpha Damien, but every time he referred to our lapses in judgment, however indirectly, as a mistake, it hurt.
A lot. It was a stupid, dumb, and illogical feeling, but that was how I felt.
“Just then?” I asked stiffly, attempting a lighthearted tease, but Alpha Damien’s expression only grew more solemn.
“At our engagement party too,” he continued after a beat. “You were right. I had no right to be possessive about you and dictate who you talked to. My wolf was…”
Alpha Damien seemed at a loss for words, a silent plea for understanding in his golden gaze.
“I should have exercised proper control over him. Over myself. Can you forgive me?”
How could I when there was nothing to forgive?
I’d wanted Alpha Damien to do everything he’d done to me.
In fact, I’d wanted more. But I nodded in response, simply wanting the conversation to be done.
However, Alpha Damien took that as permission to settle in right next to me, even closer than he had been earlier, his gaze still locked on me.
“Now will you tell me why you are so jittery?”
I went still, surprised he’d noticed, and for a moment, I contemplated denying his accusation, but in the end, the truth left my lips unbidden.
“I’m… scared,” I admitted reluctantly.
Alpha Damien’s look of concern deepened.
“The procedure is safe,” he leaned in, quick to reassure me. “I read the brochure and looked it up online. I also confirmed with all the doctors—”
“It’s not a rational fear,” I interjected. “My parents—”
The rest of my words were lodged by the lump in my throat. I didn’t talk about my parents. Ever. Not even when Misha had tried to get me to open up about it so that I could “heal from it.” Not even with the pack therapist who had seen me after their deaths.
It was too raw. Too painful. Alpha Damien’s large hand covered mine, his thumb stroking gently over my painfully clenched fist, and in that moment, I found I could breathe again, so I pushed right into the story before I lost my nerve.
“I was there when they died. I don’t remember much of it, just the blood, but I was there, and it broke me, and I lost my wolf.”
Next to me, Alpha Damien went still. Then his arms were around me, cradling me in his embrace like I was fragile glass, his whisper holding an apology.
“I didn’t know.”
“I know.”
In our initial training sessions, I’d thought he’d been making a mockery of me with all that talk about my wolf’s dominance, but eventually, I realized that Alpha Damien might have been the only high-ranking wolf in our society who hadn’t heard the rumours about the wolfless heir of the Ivory Moon Pack.
Admittedly, it had been several years since my peculiar situation was a hot topic for gossip. It explained why he’d made that deal with me. He’d truly believed he could save me by training me. Pity.
“I…” I tasted Alpha Damien’s potent scent on my tongue as I grappled for words. “I… I lost myself that day, and sometimes it feels like I stopped existing when they died.” My voice broke. “And now, I’m scared I’ll do it to the baby, too. I’m going to make them live through losing a parent.”
It was one thing to know in theory that I would die in the duel, and my arrangement with Alpha Damien would make sure my child didn’t die with me.
It was another thing entirely to see the child I would be abandoning through an ultrasound, to listen to their heartbeat, to see that they were real, and know that I’d never know them or see them grow.
My tears broke free of me before I could rein in my emotions.
Uncontrollable sobs of pain wracked my entire body, and Alpha Damien held me through it all.
He didn’t seem to care that I was staining his shirt with my tears as he pulled me onto his lap, his hand moving over my back in comforting strokes.
“You aren’t going to die in that duel,” he said tightly.
I shook my head, another sob in my throat.
“But I’m not strong enough—”
Alpha Damien’s index finger went under my chin, forcing me to silence as I met his steady, resolute gaze.
“You are the strongest woman I know,” he declared passionately, and my heartbeat faltered for all the wrong reasons. “I won’t let you die. We will raise our child together. Both of us.”
Sparks fluttered to life across my skin as his thumb stroked over my cheek, brushing away my tears, and I couldn’t read the expression on his face when he spoke. “I promise, Raven.”
The world fell away at his words, leaving just the two of us, and I struggled to stay firm.
“You can’t promise that,” I whispered, a silent question weaving through my words.
Alpha Damien’s gaze heated up, and I felt a chill despite the presence of his jacket draped over my shoulder. His voice dropped to a thick rumble, my name a sensual caress on his lips.
“I’ve found there’s little I want that I don’t get, Raven.”
My mind blanked, and I couldn’t think, not when Alpha Damien’s gaze dipped as he said those words, making me register how close we’d drifted.
I was literally on his lap, our lips a breath apart, his body hard and warm against mine.
Alpha Damien’s eyes were liquid gold as his lips parted, and I found myself leaning—
“Mr. and Mrs. Blackwell, we are ready for you.”
I nearly fell out of the chair, Alpha Damien and I springing apart like we were teenagers who had been caught in the act. However, it wasn’t until we were walking into the room that the way the nurse had addressed us fully registered. She’d addressed me as Mrs. Blackwell.
“You registered us as a married couple?” I whisper-yelled at Alpha Damien, but he just shrugged.
“Raven Blackwell has a nice ring to it, right?” he commented airily, and my traitorous heart skipped a beat once more.
Beyond annoyed, I smacked his arm.
“So much for being sorry. You are incorrigible.”
The sides of Alpha Damien’s lips twitched with amusement, and my anxiety about the scan was fully replaced by an immense desire to throttle him. In the end, Alpha Damien was right. The scan was safe. Far quicker than I’d expected, too.
As the doctor moved the probe over the cool gel on my belly, briefly describing the image displayed on the monitor, Alpha Damien’s eyes stayed on me, not the baby on the screen.
He offered me an encouraging smile, my hand still in his grasp.
And when we finally looked at the screen, it was together.
And there the fetus was. Throbbing with life. My heart expanded with love, joy, and so much emotion that tears sprang to my eyes. It wasn’t fully formed, yet somehow, it was perfect. It was mine. Ours.
My gaze flicked to Alpha Damien, and the sheer expression of joy I saw on his face sent a dangerous jolt through my chest because when Alpha Damien wasn’t being an asshole, I no longer knew what to do or how to feel.