Chapter 6 - Brooks #2
I might have fought the attraction in the past in the dumbest ways, but I’m much older, and I know that this attraction I feel toward her remains foolish.
Even long after I’d become the sub-alpha, I knew there was no good reason why I’d feel anything for her.
It’s a good thing I pushed her so far away.
My father’s proud smile on his deathbed is a picture that’s been etched into my memory, along with my mother’s, even if she died of a broken heart when her fated mate left her by dying before did.
As I slowly turn my face toward her, catching the way she softly hums in her sleep, I can’t help but feel regretful for the way I treated her in the past. It’s no wonder she’d tried to run away from her responsibilities and the vision Luna Yvonne had—she hates me, and she has every reason to feel that way.
But that only makes this whole thing harder for us to overcome. How am I meant to mate with her if she hates me so much?
Unless…
Maybe I don’t have to mate with her, after all, I think hopefully.
Sure, she’s an irresistible candidate for mating, but it doesn’t mean I want to give up my freedom or give in to my inner wolf’s unwarranted desires.
She is just an omega, and it doesn’t sit right with me.
Besides, she unlocked her powers tonight without needing to mate with me.
I’m pretty sure we can get away with not mating, while providing the pack and the Council with what they need from her.
All they really need is her witch powers to defeat the demon.
Though Rissa is reluctant now, it will only take some convincing for her to understand that her gifts are needed for the greater good of the pack.
She’s the pack’s healer, after all—there’s a kind of good in her that speaks to her compassion and care for the pack.
It’s that thought that leads me to look down at the T-shirt I’d borrowed from the hut’s closet, slowly lifting the hem to reveal the bandage she’d placed over my injuries that she’d carefully stitched. I frown as I recall the pain that now only lingers like a residual sting that isn’t overbearing.
I lift my weight onto one elbow, noticing that my knee no longer feels busted, and I’m able to rise to my feet without struggling.
My bones have seemed to repair themselves already, thanks to my quick healing abilities from being an alpha.
I peel back the layer of gauze on my ribs, surprised when I see that my flesh has woven together where there were stitches, and I’ve long since stopped bleeding.
It was only an hour ago when Rissa mended my wounds, and already I feel a thousand times better, as if the fight with the demon was only a fever dream. Chuckling softly under my breath, my lips curl into a satisfied smirk, my eyes lifting to Rissa sleeping on the bed, and I’m in awe of her.
I’d pointedly avoided being treated by her throughout the years, going to the other healers in the pack clinic if I needed any treatment during my training days.
But Rissa doesn’t seem to stop surprising me, and I can’t help but become fixated on her sleeping face, reminded of the extent of her beauty and how it beckons my inner wolf.
Staring at her for countless moments is probably why I notice her flinching in her sleep, the movement so slight that I wouldn’t have caught it otherwise.
That’s not the only movement she makes. I watch as she winds her arms tighter across her chest and see the way her bottom lip trembles as if she’s being tortured.
When her face contorts as if she’s in pain, and she whimpers as if it’s unbearable, I take an involuntary step forward, catching myself, checking up on her. I pause with a frown, wondering why I suddenly care about her condition at all.
Unless she was hurt by the demon.
A quick, calculated backtrack of the encounter with the demon dog reminds me that she’d been abruptly thrown off my back when I carried her in wolf form, and she’d tumbled to the ground when the demon attacked me.
Had she gotten hurt then?
“P-please…” Rissa murmurs in her sleep, her squeamish voice coupled with her squirming doing something to elicit an innate response in me.
In a flash, I’m at her side of the bed, a hand reaching out to touch her forehead that scorches my knuckles with the impenetrable heat radiating off her.
I draw my hand back with a sharp intake of breath that fills my lungs with the potent scent of sweet jasmine—a flower that doesn’t bloom in this part of the woods. My eyes widen with realization as I inhale again, my senses going into overdrive as if my inner wolf is clawing on my insides.
My chest pounds with my sudden, deep breaths, as if I’m drinking in that sweet scent like sustenance to my being, becoming ravenous while Rissa continues to murmur and writhe in torment.
My hands curl into fists as I fight my inner wolf’s desperate need to soothe Rissa from the torture she’s facing, brought on by the onset of her heat.
That’s exactly what this is, and why the air in the small confines of the hut has turned tooth-achingly sweet and enticing to my inner wolf, threatening to burst at the seams with the rush of hot blood flowing through my veins.
Highly aroused and aware of the she-wolf’s condition, I feel like I’m going to punch something if I can’t get to her.
If I thought I could escape mating with the omega, I was wrong.
Not only has the emergence of her mystical powers ignited her heat, but my inner wolf’s magnetization toward her in her time of desperation only means one thing.
The prophecy was right—Rissa and I are destined to be mated.
It’s the key to unlocking the full potential of her powers.
It’s the one thing that will calm her right now.
“Rissa,” I call out, my voice gruff and ragged as if the air in my lungs has been burned dry.
“P-please…” she pleads again, twisting on the bed and curling into herself on one side.
I always suspected that there was a hidden reason why I couldn’t resist the urge to lash out at her, wanting to constantly push her away because I couldn’t accept the undeniable truth.
It’s not my first time being around a she-wolf in heat, but it’s my first meeting with the voracious beast that exists inside me.
The torture of my hunger is a response to Rissa’s chemical signals swimming in the air, pulsing from her core, and calling to me to deal with it the way I primally should be taking care of her.
Omega Rissa Rudolph, the Snehvolk Pack’s healer and a descendant of the original Blackmaw Pack, is destined to be my mate, as if our beings were forged from the same cloth used by the Moon Goddess when we were created.
The recognition of Rissa’s wolf as it silently begs me to soothe her should be alarming, but it feels like the most natural thing to reach out for her and place a hand on her shoulder, even if I’m sure I’ll be met with resistance.
She hates me, after all. I can’t blame her. I only have myself to thank for it.