Chapter 14 - Dominic
Sunbathing is one of the few luxuries I had while out on black ops missions.
During the last year, while we were camping in Byron to hunt down a coven of bloodsuckers that'd crawled out of the woodwork after a few decades in hiding, we'd cliff jump off the tallest peak in Coos Canyon and dive into the river below.
Doing something similar now feels different with Cecelia. I remember my sister's letters she wrote me while I was away, describing her adventures with her best friend at the beach. Today, I had the chance to see Cecelia in action, and there's something about it that warms my heart.
Almost as warm as the sun is as it kisses my cheek while I lie on the towel spread out on the warm blanket of summer grass. As I remove my arm from my face, I see two figures in the distance near the forest, and sit upright at attention.
“Hey, who's that?” I ask Santo, who's lying on his own towel beside me.
He squints his eyes as he opens them, then frowns in the direction of my pointed finger.
“We weren't expecting anyone.”
Since Cecelia and Lily started talking after our first dive into the lake, they seem to have grown closer, and I'm glad that she's made a friend.
But now the question of the two figures emerging from out of the woods has me worried, and I get to my feet just as one of the faces becomes familiar when it's lit up by the sunlight.
“Oh, shit!” I swat Santo's shoulder. “It's Tyler. Come on,” I tell him with a nod. “Let's go meet him.”
Since Santo has already heard about my friends from black ops, he's immediately on his feet and following me toward them. I've told him all about my adventures in the black ops squad, and he's been dying to meet them.
Jogging forward, Tyler waves at me, a broad grin spreading across his face and beaming brightly in his blue eyes.
“Yo, Ty, what are you doing here, man? This is a surprise!”
Tyler comes forward to hug me with a firm pat on my back. “I knew you'd be surprised, so I told your alpha not to say anything,” he chuckles, stepping back and pointing at the man beside him, who's equally as muscled-up as either of us. “This is Brutus, my beta from Moonshine.”
My lips curl into a knowing smirk as I shake Brutus's hand. “Does that mean…?”
“Yeah, I was inaugurated as alpha a week ago. My father couldn't wait when I got back from black ops, so things happened pretty quickly.” Tyler nods at Santo, sticking his hand out. “You must be the best friend.”
“That I am,” Santo beams. “Santo Ramirez.”
“He's my beta if I win this thing,” I chuckle bemusedly as I sling an arm across Santo's shoulders.
“Yeah, I don't mind,” Santo shrugs. “But it'll only happen if I can pass Simon on the scoreboard.”
“How is it going, by the way?” Tyler asks. I've already told him how things work in Lunaris and how it differs from the Moonshine Pack.
“They're starting the barbecue,” I say as I glance at the spot where the others are gathered.
Only Cecelia and Lily keep to themselves, plucking sunflowers from the water's edge.
A wave of relief washes over me, as if my inner wolf is calm to see her comfortable and nowhere near any danger.
She's safe, and somehow, that matters to me the most.
“Are you and Brutus in a hurry to leave?”
Tyler shakes his head. “I only came out today to see you when Alpha Sirius told us about the trials during a video call meeting with my father yesterday. He said you had the day off.”
“Let's go introduce you to the others, Alpha Tyler,” I chuckle as I ram a playful fist at his firm shoulder. “I'll tell you all about the trials after.”
Tyler and Brutus meet everyone in the group, and they're welcomed warmly, except for Simon, who remains uptight as usual since he's not a close friend of an alpha from a neighboring pack.
I don't let his indifference faze me, and take Tyler to meet Cecelia.
The usual introductions are made before she goes back to collecting her sunflowers.
Soon, everyone is mingling around the fire as it cooks the meat from the animals we hunted on our first day in Mount Desert. Cecelia and Lily continue to keep to themselves, but even as Tyler and I stand off to the side, I can't help but glance at her every now and then.
She seems to be enjoying herself despite being reluctant to come out here today. A smile plays on my lips, but I'm sprung out of my daze appreciating Cecelia's innocent smile when Tyler slaps the back of his hand against my chest.
“So…how have the trials been?” he asks.
I take a sip of my beer and turn my attention to him, standing in a way that I can still keep an eye on Cecelia through my peripheral vision. “It's going well. I messed up the second test, but we made up for it in the third one. I'm leading.”
“Naturally,” Tyler grins. “And by ‘we’, you mean you and your partner, right? Cecelia, was it?”
“Yeah…” My lips naturally curl into a smile as my cheeks warm, and I turn to look at her as she has the sunflowers she gathered tucked in one arm, her voluminous dark curls wild and free as she gracefully strolls over to the barbecue.
With the sun beginning its descent on the horizon, it adds a tinge of a golden glow behind her, her hazel eyes bright and radiant.
It's hard not to become mesmerized, and I feel my jaw lowering as my lips part on a sigh, hypnotized by her very existence as if it brings me life. Her curves flow out like a goddess with every step she takes, and I'm hooked.
Beside me, Tyler chuckles and snaps me out of my daze.
“What?” I ask dumbfoundedly, to which Tyler shakes his head as he continues to grin.
“You have a thing for your partner, don't you?”
My heart skips a beat and drops into my belly with an explosion of fluttering butterflies, and I douse the flames of being caught out with another chug of my beer. “I don't know what you're talking about,” I mumble indifferently, but Tyler doesn't stop staring at me with a keenly introspective eye.
“Nah, I know when you're lying to me, bud,” he chuckles. “You clearly have a thing for her, and you're not hiding it very well.”
“She's the omega. She's a half-breed.”
“She's part human?” Tyler asks with surprise. “Does that make any difference?”
“You don't know how Lunaris feels about humans. I told you about the uprising a few years back, when the kids wanted to attend college in the open. It was a big deal, and they all had to sign contracts to ensure they wouldn't get mixed up with the humans.”
“So, if it wasn't for how the pack felt about humans and the omega, how do you feel about her?”
Tyler leaves me with some food for thought as he walks off toward the barbecue just when Santo calls out that the meat is ready. Left alone, I stare at Cecelia as she grabs a paper plate and waits at the back for everyone to grab their meals.
If it wasn't for the way the pack felt about humans, and especially about Cecelia, would I have entertained the idea of having a mate then?
It's highly unlikely, since I've always been self-reliant and never felt the need to take a mate. Even in my quest to become alpha, I see no point in having a counterpart that will only turn to a weakness once I achieve my goals.
Somehow, being around Cecelia has threatened my long-standing beliefs, and the fear of my own world being rattled and shaken to the core if I let my walls down and accept something my inner wolf has been whispering sends a cold shiver down my spine.
I can't let her distract me from the ultimate goal, not when I'm so close and about to write history the way it was always meant to read.
As I watch Cecelia standing timidly near the barbecue's crackling fire, I find myself fixated on her ethereal presence, wondering if I'm the only one who still sees the golden glow around her.
She's not doing anything special except waiting for her turn to fill her plate, but then Simon's partner, Amber, bumps into her, knocking the paper plate out of Cecelia's hand.
Cecelia frantically apologizes, but Amber narrows her vile, contemptible eyes on my partner just as Simon joins in.
I immediately spring into action, jogging toward them as my ears buzz with an alarming ring that warns me that trouble is about to ensue.
“You need to watch where you're standing!” Amber exclaims. “You take up more space than the rest of us!”
I approach just as Cecelia crouches near the plate. I join her and lift the plate, dusting it off before passing it to her, then offering a hand to help her to her feet.
Amber and Simon are laughing at some joke they must have shared, when Amber says, “Yeah, you should probably lay off the meat skewers, you pudgy—”
“Woah,” I interject as I step between Cecelia and Amber, my blood boiling with the strong impulse to snap her neck like a twig. But one glance at Simon's cold, sadistic expression tells me they're doing this on purpose to aggravate me and jeopardize my good standing amongst the council.
If he thinks he's going to faze me, he's wrong. I take a deep breath to calm my inner wolf, who's raging inside to claw through them for breathing in Cecelia's direction.
“We're all adults here, guys,” I continue to speak measuredly, but Amber isn’t having any of it.
“She was in my way on purpose!” Amber yelps with a pointed finger in my face.
Sighing as I hold back my anger, I turn to Simon. “Please control your partner, Simon. Like I said, we're all adults here, and Cecelia has done nothing wrong.”
Simon steps forward with a raised brow. “She's done nothing wrong? You sure about that?”
I lift my chin, narrowing my eyes with a challenge. “I watched the whole thing unfold, Simon. I know Cecelia did nothing wrong. And I will not stand for any childish ridicule against a grown woman. Is that clear?”
I can hear a growl rumbling in Simon's chest, but he has no leg to stand on when we both know how childish this is. He backs off, turning to Amber and whispering something in her ear that has her storming off toward the deck.
Turning to Cecelia, I lean down and meet her bashful eyes.
“Are you okay?” I whisper, to which she lifts her head and smiles at me, holding her plate up.
“Wanna eat?” she asks as if nothing fazed her about what just happened. As I straighten up, I realize we'd garnered the attention of everyone else, but as soon as I take the plate from her hands, everyone goes back to what they were doing.
“Yeah, let's eat. I'm famished,” I grin at Cecelia and turn to the barbecue, asking Santo to fill up the plate for both of us.
“Thank you,” Cecelia whispers in my ear. I glance over my shoulder to see her smiling warmly at me, and a sense of fulfillment washes over me.
From beyond the smoke curling from out of the barbecue stand, I notice Tyler staring at me intently, slowly nodding with a sharp glint of recognition in his eyes that sends a shiver of awareness down my spine.
I might not share a mind link with my friend from black ops, but I know exactly what he's thinking based on our conversation earlier tonight.
Perhaps it's something that I haven't fully accepted, because the pack rejects all humans. Since Cecelia is half human, she's barely accepted as a member of the Lunaris Pack.
But that doesn't prevent me from feeling drawn to her, and no matter what I do to deny it, there's one fact that always remains.
I could never keep myself away from Cecelia, no matter how much I forced myself to hang on to the restraints to keep me away.
Since that fateful night, I'd become addicted to her mere scent.
The only thing that saved me from diving headfirst into a mate bond with her was my going away to join the black ops squad.
If I hadn't been so self-reliant all my life, I would have been open to fulfilling a mate bond with the omega—the only she-wolf who has me feeling things I've never felt before.
As I tear my eyes from Tyler and glance at Cecelia, who remains quiet and timid around the others, I know that even though we've formed somewhat of a friendship, she'll never be able to trust me with her heart.
The only reason she's here is because I forced it upon her, and she agreed to help me in exchange for clearing her father's name. The magnetic pull I feel toward her must be a one-sided attraction, especially since she made it abundantly clear that she hated me.
I just need to get through the trials in one piece before I lose my mind, so I can let her go.