Chapter 5 Grey
GREY
I lean against the door, watching Ashlyn sleep.
She has barely moved in the last twelve hours, not even while I rested beside her.
Well, that’s not entirely true.
At one point, she curled into my side, which caused a purr to ignite in my chest.
A purr I couldn’t quite quell.
After ninety minutes of trying, I finally forced myself to leave the bed and go take a long shower. But Ashlyn remained in that tiny ball the entire time I was gone, her head on the pillow I vacated.
I run my fingers through my damp hair, the droplets falling onto my bare shoulders. I’m not in the mood to wear a shirt, the fabric feeling a little too tight for some reason today.
So I settled on a pair of gray sweatpants instead.
If the shirtless thing bothers Ashlyn, I’ll find something else to wear. But I suspect she won’t care. She’s a shifter, after all. Nudity is pretty common for our kind.
Yet I can’t help but admire the sliver of skin peeking out from the part in her robe. The curve of one breast is visible, the skin appearing creamy and soft.
If she were truly mine, I would trace that exposed part of her with my tongue.
Alas, we’ve barely even touched.
Outside of sleep, anyway, I think.
My leg still burns from where her thigh rested over mine. It took considerable effort not to move toward her, to seek out the heat radiating from her core.
Clenching my jaw, I push away from the door and force myself to go grab a water from the fridge. The contents are half gone when I hear a soft whimper come from the bedroom.
Brow furrowing, I set the bottle down. Am I—
A sharp cry radiates through the lair, sending me racing toward Ashlyn. She’s no longer curled into a ball, but writhing in the sheets like she’s trying to fight someone off.
Her arms swing and she growls, thrashing violently against the pillows.
Then just as abruptly, she curls into herself and whispers, “No. No, please. Please don’t. I… I don’t want…” Another scream rips from her lungs, the sound piercing my chest like a fucking bullet.
“Ashlyn.” I start toward her, only for her screams to turn to sobs. “Fuck.”
“Grey…”
“I’m here,” I tell her, rushing to her side.
But she’s not awake, her eyes are still closed as tears stream down her face. “It’s worth it,” she says.
“What is?” I ask, utterly confused by this conversation and what’s happening right now.
“Fate… is worth… the pain.” She curls even more tightly into the fetal position, her head tucked against her knees as she begins to violently shake.
“Fuck this,” I breathe, my purr igniting as I slide into bed with her and pull her into my arms. “Wake up.” It’s obvious she’s having some sort of nightmare. A vision, maybe. But I don’t fucking care. She needs to… “Wake up.” A growl underscores those two words, my animal demanding she obey.
Our Omega comes alive on a gasp, her body going rigid, then falling into a fit of trembles once more. I hold her tight, my purr louder than it’s ever been.
“You’re safe,” I tell her. “I’m here.”
And Ashlyn practically melts into me. “A dream,” she mumbles against me. “A dream.”
“That didn’t seem like a dream, Ash,” I mutter, the nickname seeming to roll right off my tongue. “That seemed like a nightmare.”
She stills, then pulls back a little to look up at me. “Wait… I’m… I’m awake?” Her voice sounds a bit hoarse, probably from the screaming seconds ago.
“Yeah, little riddler. You’re awake. And you’re safe.” I keep purring for her, my hand automatically rubbing her back—a gesture that seems to cause her to curl into me even more.
I accept it.
In fact, I’m pretty such I love it.
But that’s… that’s a consideration for later.
Instead, I just hold her. Purr for her. Give her the strength she needs to fully rouse from whatever hellish vision made her cry like that.
Her face is still wet, dampening the skin of my chest as she buries herself against me.
It’s like she’s trying to escape into me somehow, or perhaps get to my purr. I’m not quite sure, but I keep the rumble going as her breathing begins to even out and her body relaxes. She’s not asleep, just… soothed.
“Thank you, Alpha,” she whispers.
“Grey.”
She giggles a little and the sound is almost drowsy. “Thank you, Grey.”
I smile because there was a hint of sass in that reply.
“Most Alphas prefer to be addressed by their titles,” she adds, her voice softening.
“With anyone else, I might prefer it, too. But I need you to call me Grey.”
She tilts her head back and her eyes look impossible bluer, maybe from her tears. “Why?”
“Because calling me Alpha awakens my beast,” I tell her honestly. “And you’re not ready to meet him yet.”
Ashlyn studies me for a long moment, the sadness seeming to slowly dissipate from her features. “I’m very familiar with beasts… from my nightmares.” Her words sound like a confession. Though, I’m not quite sure what she’s truly confessing.
“Are they visions?” I ask.
She nods, her white-blonde hair glinting from the low lighting in the room.
“Related to my sister?” It’s a hard question for me to voice, but I need to know.
When Ashlyn nods again, my heart stops.
“You can see her?”
She shakes her head then. “No. I… I can’t really see her, just feel her. Like I am her at times.”
My stomach clenches, thinking about what she’s saying.
The writhing on the bed.
The screaming.
Ashlyn saying she doesn’t see my sister, but she is my sister… at times.
“Like this dream you just had?” I press, my voice barely recognizable.
Her brow furrows. “Er, no, not quite. It… it was a combination of visions. Cause and effect.” Her lips twist. “It’s hard to explain, and I can’t voice too much without risking a change.”
“Given how much you were screaming, I think a change might not be a bad thing.”
She swallows, the movement slow and purposely. “In my experience, changes are never for the better.”
My chest aches with the thought. “I don’t know what you’re seeing, but if that’s happening to my sister—”
“It’s not,” she interjects. “That… It’s related, yes, but not her.” She closes her eyes and takes a breath. “Give me a moment, please. I’m still trying to process and I’m struggling to explain.”
The pain in her voice has my purr reigniting in an instant. I didn’t even realize I stopped. But the moment I begin again, her shoulders seems to fall and she leans into me, like she needs more of my rumble.
So I give it to her, my hand resuming the caress against her back as my mind tries to puzzle through everything she’s saying.
I thought she meant those beasts—the ones she was clearly fighting in her nightmare—were hurting my sister. Whether it be now or in the future.
But she just said that’s not happening to my sister.
So who is it happening to?
Her words while she slept come rolling through my mind. “Fate… is worth… the pain.”
That doesn’t sound like it’s related to my sister at all, but to Ashlyn.
“Are the beasts attacking you in the vision?” I ask, aware that she just asked me for time to process, but needing to know if I’m understanding her fear.
The way she stiffens again confirms what I need to know.
“Visions are complicated,” she replies, not at all answering my question.
“Ashlyn—”
“I can’t, Grey,” she whispers, sounding exhausted despite having slept over twelve hours. “It’s delicate. I… I don’t want to make anything worse by revealing too much.”
“Then give me something to work off of,” I demand. Because I can’t let that happen to her. I can’t let that happen to Nikiski. I just can’t let any of it happen.
She sighs and drops her head back once more, her eyes are less frightened than before as she meets my gaze.
“Whenever I dream of her, there are endless candles. I’ve always wondered why, but…” She looks around at the walls. “I suppose you would need a lot of candles if you lived inside a cave, right? Because there would never be any sunlight.”
Her words are a riddle, yet not.
“You think she’s in a cave.”
Ashlyn shrugs. “I don’t know for sure. But I think it’s possible, yes.”
“That’s not very helpful,” I admit, sighing a little.
“Perhaps not,” she agrees, sounding sad again. “However, I would think a massive cave system might stand out on a map. Especially one with that many candles.”
I frown. “How many candles?” That seems to be an important note.
“Thousands,” she whispers. “Thousands upon thousands.”
“I see.”
Her lips curl, but it’s not a happy smile. “Pretty sure you don’t, Alpha Grey. But that’s why I’m here, right? To be your eyes?”
“Grey,” I growl at her.
She shivers in response. “Grey,” she echos, her palm coming up to caress my cheek. “You should know that it’s not your beast I fear in my nightmares, Alpha. I’m not afraid to meet him.”
Fuck. My inner wolf snarls in anticipation, ready to give her exactly what she desires. Which I am not doing. Particularly, after whatever hell she just witnessed in her sleep.
“You need to eat,” I grind out, needing some manner of sanity to latch onto. “I’ll make you some salmon.”
Her eyes widen. “Salmon?”
“Didn’t see that coming, hmm?” I muse, my palm still caressing her back. “My beast likes to play in the water.”
“So you went ice fishing?”
“Sad I didn’t show you how to properly fish?” I counter, recalling the Glacier Sector incident again. That was what she and Alpha Henrik were doing when she fell in. “I thought that was Henrik’s responsibility.”
Amusement chases away the residual sadness in Ashlyn’s features. “He wasn’t a very good teacher.”
“Shocking,” I deadpan.
She giggles, the sound one she’s made twice now in my presence. And I find I’m rather fond of it.
“Next time, I’ll take you with me.”
Her gaze brightens. “Really?”
“If you want to learn, sure.” I shrug. “I don’t mind teaching you anything you want to know.”
She seems to sit up a little straight. “Anything?”
Okay, now I’m intrigued. “Is there something you want me to teach you?” I ask, curious as to what has her looking at me with such eagerness in her pretty eyes.
“Runes,” she says, shocking the hell out of me. “I know you make them for protection. I would love to learn how to do that, too.”
“I…” I frown. “I’m not sure that can be taught.” Runes are layered with magic and she’s a Z-Clan Omega. She has foreseeing abilities that are clearly quite impressive, but what I do requires V-Clan genetics.
“Can you show me anyway?” she asks, hope a bright emotion in her alluring features.
“If that’s what you want, yes,” I tell her. “I’ll show you whatever you want, Ash.”
Her cheeks pinken a little, probably from the nickname I’ve just used for the second time. But she doesn’t remark on it. “Thank you.”
“You can stop thanking me,” I murmur. “Actually, no. If you want to properly thank me, you’ll eat something.”
She releases a laugh this time. “Okay.”
“Good.” I hold onto her for another beat, then force myself to set her to the side. “I’ll be in the kitchen. Join me when you’re ready. You’ll eat… and I’ll teach.”
Her responding smile is so fucking beautiful that my heart aches. “You have no idea what this means to me.”
I don’t. But I can see it means a great deal by the way she’s looking at me. “I’m not a normal Z-Clan Alpha, Ashlyn. I believe in respecting Omegas. I hope you believe that and understand that.”
“I do,” she says, her expression sobering a little. “More than you know, Grey.”
There’s a hint of something in her tone that I can’t quite identify, no doubt linked to some vision or another.
So I don’t overthink it or analyze. Instead, I give her nod. Then head toward the kitchen and prepare to feed her.
Protective runes, I think, frowning a little. I haven’t mentioned them to her, but she clearly knows I have a talent for them. From a vision, perhaps?
But the real question is: Why does she want to learn how to make them…?