Chapter Six
Striker
A private room for our conversation. One would think that would put me at ease, but it actually tensed me up more.
I’d managed to keep every contact with an alpha impersonal up until now, and most seemed perfectly fine with that.
My story, or some version of it, was no secret at the club.
Crowned was a big sponsor of the Skin to Fur Tournament, and as I’d been preparing for the events, people would come up to talk to me about it all the time.
Then I was gone for a good while after the accident, and when I returned nobody mentioned it.
They were kind and didn’t want me to feel bad, but it also had the effect of making me feel unseen.
For sure I contributed to that by keeping to myself, not hanging out to visit as I used to, but it still stung.
“Here we go. Ready to check this place out?” he asked.
“All right.” My wolf was excited. I was nervous.
Wulf opened the door, and we both peeked inside. He chuckled. “If you’d rather, we can still go back to the main floor and find a quiet corner, maybe in one of the aftercare areas.”
“This is a real dungeon.” I took a step in and then another, walking from one piece of furniture to another. Omegas could be suspended from a chandelier, mounted on the wall, laid out on a “bed of nails,” or shut in a cabinet. “Is that a rack?”
“Modified, but I think so. Someone was very creative.” He opened some drawers in a cabinet in one corner. “Yes, they were.”
“I can stay.” I swallowed hard. “If we can find a place to sit down that isn’t going to put a dildo up my ass.”
He followed my gaze to the chair in question. “It might relax you.”
“Or skewer me. And definitely make it hard to concentrate.”
“You’re right.” Wulf led me over to a wooden love seat along the back wall. “But it does seem a shame to waste all these toys.”
I sat own next to him and folded my hands in my lap.
Wulf reached over and unknotted my fingers. “What happened to you, omega? How were you so badly hurt?”
His voice held such compassion, my eyes filled with tears.
I had built walls to keep the tears from getting out, the pain from spilling from the box I kept it stuffed in.
The scenes helped with that. But my wolf pushed, and I wanted, Goddess help me, to tell him.
I’d regret it later, when compassion turned to pity, but I would speak.
Watching his fingers stroking mine, I began to share what I’d sworn I never would again.
“It was such a stupid way to be injured.” Closing my eyes I thought back to that day. “I was an athlete, hoping to compete in the Skin to Fur Tournament for the first time in track and field.”
“So, it’s a sports injury then? They can be brutal, but I doubt you did anything stupid.”
“If only it had been a sports injury. No, I had just gotten home from a workout and I was at my door when I realized I left my duffel of dirty clothes in the car, so I turned to go back down the steps, missed one, and tumbled all the way to the bottom.”
“How many steps?” No pity yet.
“Six, but I felt something tear. I’d been hurt in my sport before. Nothing ever felt like that. I climbed mountains, surfed big waves, a total adrenalin junkie and then…walking down the stairs ruined it all for me. Competition but also everything I loved to do in life. So stupid.”
“If you call yourself stupid again, I will put you over my lap and spank such talk out of you.”
“Go ahead. It’s the only way that the pain dims.”
“Physical or mental?” he asked.
“Both.”
“May I see your injury?”
“I’d rather you spank me.”
“So you won’t allow it?
I never let anyone see it, always insisting on being facedown for any impact play. But…why not? The sooner he knew what I was, the sooner he’d go away. Before his leaving could hurt me more. “No, go ahead.”
Wulf slipped from the seat to the floor, kneeling in front of me. “It’s your thigh, right? This one?” He rested a gentle hand on the spot.
“Yes. Just there.”
With my permission he eased my pants down over my hips and revealed the swelling that ran all the way down my thigh. Still red, although less angry than at first, I hated it.
He traced the swollen area and the lump that lay underneath. “You tore that muscle in two, or close.”
“Right. See? It will never get better. They’ve done everything they can.” I tugged on my pants. “Anyway, you can leave now that you’ve seen it.”
“Why would I want to do that?”
Later, as if we’d had a scene and were having aftercare, he sat on the bench and pulled me onto his lap, holding me with such tenderness, the tears came back. “Because I don’t want pity.”
“Oh, omega, pity is the last thing I feel for you. You’ve been a warrior to get this far after such an injury. To be walking at all. You’re a warrior.”
I poured myself into the ride share and mumbled my destination to the driver. It wasn’t until I got home and shut myself in my bedroom that I began to process the night.
Goddess, what a night.
Wulf was unlike any alpha I’d ever met. He’d seen me to the door of the club and waited until the car came before going back inside.
I stripped myself of the club clothes and started the shower, still in a stupor. My wolf liked, maybe loved, Wulf. He howled when we parted and had gone back to silence since leaving the club.
He was mad at me. Angry for leaving Wulf there.
I stepped into the spray and washed my body with a bit of sadness. I would no longer carry the scent of the alpha on my skin. What a shame.
After the shower, I got into bed, already building my walls back up. I didn’t know this alpha from anyone else in the club. We’d shared one of the most intimate moments in my life but other than his name, I knew nothing about him. Nothing.
At the same time, I knew so much. How he touched me with reverence. How the eye contact made me feel seen for the first time, or what felt like the first time. All of it told a story of an alpha who was controlled, careful, present.
I stared at the ceiling trying to go to sleep but scenes from the night replayed over and over again.
Plus, my wolf was wide awake now.
He pushed all kinds of thoughts into my head. Mate. Mine. Ours. Our Alpha. Go to him. Find him.
I scrubbed my hands down my face as I realized the real tragedy. I hadn’t gotten the alpha’s phone number.
Didn’t even think about it.
Fuck. I might’ve screwed myself this time and somehow it felt bigger than my pain and my leg and any accident.
Like I missed the opportunity of a lifetime.