Chapter 6 #2
She brushed the doorframe with her fingertips and the wards fell.
My breath rushed out of me. Finally.
I held her with one arm and on one raised knee, got the door unlocked, and took her inside. I nudged the door shut with my foot and inhaled deeply, drinking in the scents of Alice’s home.
I started for the stairs, then hesitated. She needed to be safe and feel safe.
“Can you put the wards back up?” I asked.
“Yes.” Her fingers brushed against the wood and then stroked it gently.
I expected the wards to flare as quickly as they’d dropped, but they didn’t.
And when her body went tense and then rigid, I realized I might have made a mistake asking her to do this.
Seconds ticked by as she trembled and strained, fighting to raise the wards as if to do so she had to drag boulders uphill through loose sand.
I wouldn’t have asked her to do this if I’d known raising them took so much more effort than dropping them. I didn’t know enough about Alice’s kind of magic. I needed to learn, and soon.
I was also starting to learn that when it came to Alice, maybe the question shouldn’t be Can you do this? but instead Should you? Because she’d say yes every time whether she really should do it or not.
Maybe some of that was her pride talking, and I couldn’t claim I wasn’t guilty of doing the same sometimes as both a man and an alpha.
But I also suspected she’d internalized past abuse to the point she feared failure, or even the possibility someone might see her as having failed and punish her. She felt she had to do what was asked of her, even if it ground her to dust.
And when I found out who’d used and abused her in that way—
I dragged my thoughts away from visions of bloody revenge and back to Alice.
The wards flared to life once again, sizzling against my skin in a way that was both painful and reassuring.
At the same moment, Alice made a tiny sound of pain that made my gut wrench. She went limp, her head falling back and her arm dangling.
“No,” I ground out, readjusting her in my arms so her head rested against my chest. Son of a bitch—she was starting to shiver again. “Come on, Alice. Stay with me now. Shit, I shouldn’t have even asked about the damn wards.”
I carried her upstairs, taking the steps two at a time, and straight to her room. By the time we got to the bed, she was shivering almost violently and her skin was cool and damp.
She was going into shock again. Raising those damn wards had taken everything she had and then some.
This time, I didn’t hesitate to strip off my boots, pants, and socks and climb into the bed next to her in my boxers. I drew her against my chest and tucked her head under my chin, offering my body heat and alpha comfort. Her teeth were chattering.
“C-cold,” she whimpered.
“I know, baby,” I murmured, my lips on her hair. “Hold on to me.”
“Don’t c-call me b-baby,” she scolded, her voice barely audible.
Something thumped weakly against my chest: Alice’s fist, hitting me with all the ferocity of a butterfly landing on a leaf.
I couldn’t help it; I snorted. But not at her—at myself. I deserved that butterfly punch and worse for using a nickname like that.
I was about to apologize when she buried her face against the side of my neck and inhaled deeply.
My body—and my wolf—went completely still. Wonder and contentment washed through me.
She wanted my scent. Like a shifter, she’d nuzzled me where my natural aroma was strongest. She still shivered so badly that she shook us both, but some of the tension left her body.
It didn’t mean anything.
Maybe it did.
Mate, my wolf said, quietly this time.
Alice’s hand slid to my waist and drew me closer. And she inhaled again, her lips against my bristly throat. I hadn’t taken time to shave between leaving her house and my meeting with Gerald Hines. I wished now I had.
For nearly an hour, she shivered and just breathed me in while I tried to warm her and keep her from slipping away into unconsciousness again.
Damn it all, I was terrified of losing her. And I would be until she had enough strength to use the powerful healing spell she needed to recover.
I hadn’t been terrified in a very long time. Not since the night I became a werewolf.
No, that wasn’t quite true. I was terrified the next day too, when I woke from endless nightmares and looked up into the golden eyes of Henry Cartwright, the man who’d be my first and only alpha.
That day, I’d been scared shitless of what I’d become, and of what my life would be like as a shifter.
Henry, who was the alpha of the Tomb Mountain Pack at the time, found me naked, bloody, and alone in the woods, the only survivor of a group of three friends who’d gone camping and been attacked by a pair of violent mated werewolves.
Even then, he knew I would be an alpha someday, and a better choice to succeed him than his beta.
He’d also given me the courage to face my future, as well as teaching me my most important lesson about what it meant to be an alpha: it was not only my duty but my very great privilege to protect those in my care.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t long—just a few years—before I was called upon to take my place as his successor and do just that.
Everything I did as an alpha, I did in Henry’s honor. Especially in moments like this.
As Alice shivered and breathed in my scent with her face buried against my neck, I talked so she could hear my voice and know I was here and she was safe.
I talked to her about my favorite albums, especially what I owned on vinyl and what I wished I owned.
I speculated what she might have in her own collection, which I’d glimpsed downstairs but hadn’t had a chance to look through.
I even defended the song by Starship she’d scoffed at while we were in Hawthorne’s last night, hoping to elicit a chuckle or a response of any kind.
Maybe she was beyond listening, but I knew she could hear me. Whenever I paused, her fingers tightened on my waist or curled against my chest as if to make sure I was still here.
Then, just as I started telling her about my pack, she began to cry. My gut wrenched.
She wept silently, tears rolling down her cheeks in twin trickles that swiftly became a flood and dripped onto my bare chest.
I nuzzled her hair and wrapped her in more comforting warmth and alpha magic.
“Tell me what you need,” I said into her hair. I hated that it still smelled of burned skin and what I now knew was uncontrolled fire magic. “Please, Alice. Tell me what to do.”
Tell me what to do was not a phrase an alpha uttered very often.
She could have said anything and I would have done my damnedest to make it happen. But she didn’t reply. She just cried until eventually she cried herself to sleep.
At least it was sleep and not unconsciousness, and she wasn’t shivering so badly anymore.
I kept talking, though. I wanted her to hear my voice and know I hadn’t left her alone. I went ahead and told her about my pack, my company, and my family.
I told her I’d like to know what movies she liked and what she did for fun when she wasn’t working. I asked what kind of ice cream she liked and threw out some guesses. My money was on mint chocolate chip.
I promised she and her secrets would always be safe with me. I might have promised that a couple of times.
Eventually, my own eyes started drifting closed.
After forcing my way through Natalie’s house wards and allowing Malcolm to drain so much energy and magic from me, and after so little sleep in the past two days, I was so tired that my body felt leaden.
But I didn’t want to sleep in case Alice woke up without a clear memory of what had happened or why I was with her.
My wolf rested his head on his paws, his gaze softly golden. Will keep watch, he said. Mate will be safe.
I moved Alice just enough that my head was propped comfortably on a pillow and her neck wasn’t at an odd angle where it rested against my chest. She turned and snuggled closer so her nose pressed to my skin and sighed in her sleep.
I’m here. I willed her to feel my promise as I held her in a way that felt far more comfortable and natural than it had any right to be given what a short time we’d known each other.
I’m here, Alice Worth, and I will be until you’re healed and well again. And then I’d like to be around after that too.
I closed my eyes and gave in to the soft darkness of sleep.