Chapter 8 - Nicholas
I lift my eyes to Donna as she stares at me dubiously, clearly unaware of what just happened.
Or, maybe she is aware, and she’s just ignoring how she felt.
But I’m not oblivious to it, and I know something different happened this time. It’s why I’m prompted to undo the buttons on my shirt, pulling the left side off my shoulder and gasping in shock when clean flesh is exposed.
Up until this evening, the wound inflicted by Tobias was clearly still visible, unhealed, raw, as if his bite remained fresh even after two days. I didn’t have any stitches, relying solely on my werewolf’s healing abilities, even if they were slower than I would have liked.
“Did you…Did you just heal me?” The words feel strange as they leave my lips, absurd even, but it's not the first time I’ve seen magic being wielded.
But Donna is Dominic’s sister; she doesn't have magic. What a ridiculous thought to have.
Unless she does…
Donna, clearly stunned, shakes her head slowly to dismiss the idea.
But I’m already suspicious, touching the spot on my shoulder that was miraculously healed by Donna’s touch.
The fated mate bond couldn’t have done this—it’s not something recorded in our history.
Sure, sped-up healing is possible for an alpha, but not whatever happened when Donna touched me.
My breath hitches in my throat when I catch Donna staring at my exposed shoulder, doing her best to keep her eyes in one spot, but I see them twitch as if she’s fighting the urge to move them to my chest. The air becomes thick with unspoken words, and I’m also fighting a battle of my own—an internal one, hailing from my inner wolf who wants to reach out and grab her and capture her lips because they should be mine.
Why else would she be so tempting, so enticing to my inner wolf, except that she’s supposed to be mine?
But I only have myself to blame for the mountains of distance between us, and this rising tension between us isn’t going to end well if I let it simmer like this.
With a deep breath, I straighten up, my eyes squaring at Donna.
“It wasn’t healed until a few moments ago,” I reveal, and Donna frowns at my face. “It wasn’t healed until you touched me.”
There’s a glint of realization in Donna’s eyes, but she quickly douses her own suspicions with a click of her tongue.
“I don’t believe you,” she dismisses, pushing past me to busy herself at the stove. She grabs a few kitchen towels from the holder, then proceeds to crouch where the egg cracked and spilled out.
I try to stop her, crouching beside her and attempting to take the kitchen towels from her when I’m jostled by the surge of electricity that comes whenever we make physical contact.
It keeps me paralyzed momentarily—long enough to recognize that the mate bond’s gravitational pull isn’t the same as what occurred when Donna touched my shoulder.
Her eyes flicker to mine, warm and brown, soft and free of wrath. Even if it’s only for a moment, it at least gives me hope.
Or, perhaps, that’s what I always found in her warm, brown eyes—a sense of hope that I needed to escape because I knew better. I knew that it would have done her no good to be with me, but now she’s here, as my mate, as my wife, and I can’t even touch her without her scowling at me accusingly.
“Donna….”
The sound of my voice is what snaps her out of her daze, and she’s scowling at me again.
“Here.” She tosses the towels at me and stands up. “You clean it.”
I nod and keep my lips pursed, cleaning up the egg on the floor before slowly getting back up. Donna is once again acting oblivious to the charged air between us, busying herself with another task as she grabs a knife from the stand to cut the bell peppers with.
One deliberate slice is all it takes to warn me that I need to tread carefully unless I want my nose cut off. I have to hide my amusement watching her continue to prepare ‘breakfast at midnight.’ She must really be hungry.
Her stomach growls in response to my thought, and I turn my face away to hide my smile.
“Are you just gonna stand there, or are you gonna help me?” she snaps, and I hold my hands up in a show of surrender.
“You didn’t ask for my help.”
“Well, I’m not,” she says bluntly, eyes focused on the chopping board. “I didn’t ask you to do anything for me. You can go now.”
Filling my lungs with a deep breath, I wish I could be as cold and unfeeling as she is. But then I remind myself that it’s because of me that she has these walls up, and I was the one who gave her the first taste of coldness.
But my inner wolf won’t accept this, and neither can I accept that she wants me to disappear like this isn’t my house, and she isn’t my mate.
I might be grasping at straws, but it’s worth a shot, especially if my suspicions are right, and it’s an excuse for me to stick around a little longer.
Taking the hex bag from my pocket, I place it on the granite counter beside the stove, then pull out the note from inside and show it to Donna. “Does this mean anything to you?”
Donna turns her face slowly from the pan, then reaches out for the note, frowning, her fingers trembling as she takes it curiously.
Mentally putting the pieces together, I can’t help but suspect that not only is Donna a potential witch, but that she's being targeted—just like Arianna and Delilah were targeted before. Maybe that’s how Tobias was involved.
Maybe he’s working for the dark forces, and he’s after Donna because of it.
But Donna glances at me, and there's a pause when our eyes meet again, and my suspicions are extinguished only because there’s an innocence in Donna’s eyes that I can’t ignore.
“You're crazy, Nicholas,” Donna scoffs, shaking her head. “I think you've lost your mind. I didn't heal you, and this doesn't mean anything to me.” She spins on her heel, tosses the note on the table, lifts her chin defiantly, and marches out of the kitchen.
Something inside me snaps, but at least I’m conscious enough to turn off the gas on the stove before doing anything else.
But a switch goes off in my head, and I decide to go after Donna.
It's like my inner wolf becomes furious, and I march after her until I find her in the hallway, halfway to her bedroom.
“Donna,” I call out, a flicker of awareness igniting in my chest, and jolting me forward when she doesn’t stop. I grab her in the hallway and abruptly push her up against the wall.
“This is madness, Donna,” I breathe in exasperation, her scent swarming my senses and turning me feral.
“Madness?!” she chuckles dryly. “I'll tell you what's madness, Nicholas! Marrying me because you wanna act like the hero now!”
Grunting, I grip her arms tighter where they’re pinned against the wall. “I’m no hero, but I did it to save you, Donna. Your life is in danger.”
“The only danger is you!” Donna accuses, her eyes glossed over with tears that make them appear almost hazel, the light in the hallway slanting in the perfect angle across her face. “You’re the one who said you’d never settle down!”
“That changed the moment you came flaunting your boytoy in my face.” The laugh that rips out of my throat is sinister and cruel. “Turns out he's the one you should be afraid of. Not me.”
“I'm not afraid of you,” Donna bites back, her expression hard.
Arching a brow, I lean in, noticing that she doesn’t pull away or even blink. “Then why were you running from me just now?”
“Because it’s safer that way.”
“Yeah?” I chuckle lowly, tilting my face and gauging her reaction, watching the way her chest rises and falls with every sultry, slow breath. “Do you feel threatened right now?”
“I told you I’m not afraid of you, Nicholas.”
My brows furrow lightly. “Then what are you afraid of, Donna?”
Donna gulps, her eyes burning with something fierce, something I only saw a year ago.
“I’m afraid of myself,” she whispers tersely, her bottom lip trembling with so much fear, so much doubt, that it flips something inside me again. Possessiveness. Protector. Hero.
Maybe I want to be her hero. Maybe I want her to know that she doesn’t need to be afraid of herself; she doesn’t need to hold back anymore.
That’s when I crush my lips to hers, the kiss frenzied, fiery, my tongue desperate as it slips between her lips. She doesn’t fight me, and instead, her hands are at the back of my head, ravenously carding through my hair as she sighs the moment her walls come crashing down.
A wave of relief washes over me, but it quickly turns to burning desire as blood rushes to my core, and I push myself up against her, delighting in the way her soft frame molds perfectly to my hard body.
My hands are all over her—her hips, her waist, dragging the hem of the T-shirt toward her chest—and my lips never leave hers, continuing the mating dance with our tongues until the tips of my fingers touch the lower mounds of her breasts under the wires of her bra.
The bite comes out of nowhere, her teeth clamping down on my bottom lip with enough force to draw blood. I squeal, breaking the kiss in shock, when she pushes at my shoulders with as much force as she can muster, glaring at me with livid, dark eyes.
She swipes the back of her hand across her lips, her nose scrunched in disgust as she points a finger between my brows.
“Don’t you ever fucking touch me again!” she thunders before huffing and spinning on her heel, marching in the direction of her bedroom.
Too stunned to react, I stare after her until she disappears behind the door, exasperated, my blood pumping with adrenaline.
What the fuck was that? I chuckle disbelievingly as I press a palm to my raging hard-on in an attempt to murder the heat in my core. But it’s hardly achievable with the taste of her still on my tongue.
How is it possible that one moment she was hot for me, kissing me back, and the next, she warned me to never touch her again?
As irritation rises, I blow out a breath to let off some steam, deciding to head straight to bed instead of standing here and risking following her to her bedroom. Tonight has already been enough of a wild night, and if I’ve learned anything, it’s that Donna doesn’t want me anywhere near her.
Can I blame her?
No.
But it’s about time I respected the space she demanded tonight.
With her taste still on my tongue, my hand instinctively goes to the shoulder she magically healed, and a tingle of awareness seems to linger there, as if confirming my suspicions.
I’m not even sure if it’s true, but what I do know is that we found a foreign hex bag on our border, and that’s something that needs to be dealt with.
My closest friends—those of us who’d been on the same black ops squad—will be here tomorrow to help me with something that needs to be a priority in my life.
I’m this pack’s alpha, and I’m supposed to protect my people from threats, like the threat of a hex bag that shouldn’t have been there.