Startled Awake
Ares
Iawake to a startled cry, and instantly my aura surges forward, and I’m off the bed, the duvet slipping to the ground, and in seconds power is swirling around my hands, my wolf surging to the forefront of my mind, ready to rip apart whatever the fuck has got into the room.
“What?” I snarl.
Charlotte is sitting upright in the other bed, one hand gripping the covers against her chest, her hair – fucking hell, it’s as big as someone from the sixties or some shit – and her grey eyes are fixed on me.
I scan the room; nothing is out of place, the door is shut, so is the window, and there’s no sign of any disturbance. No monster, no Indomitable idiot, no danger, just Charlotte Arden staring at me like I’ve committed some crime.
“What?” I repeat, frowning.
Her gaze drops to my chest, then snaps back up to my face, accusation sharp in her eyes.
“Where is your shirt?” she demands.
I blink, then look down at myself.
Oh. Right.
I shrug. “Somewhere here.” I look around the room, spotting it on the floor in the small gap between the two beds.
She opens her mouth, then closes it again, and a blush dusts her cheeks. It shouldn’t be as amusing as it is, but the sight of Charlotte, always so polished and composed, suddenly clutching the duvet as if my bare chest was a tad too much, does something stupid to my mood.
“Why did you take it off?” she asks.
“Was hot,” I reply as I stretch and roll my neck.
“That is hardly appropriate,” she says with indignation.
“You’ve seen plenty of shirtless men, Arden. I was in my own bed, not yours.”
“Our beds are practically touching.”
“Still a separate bed.”
Her eyes narrow, but they betray her again, flicking down to my chest before she forces them back to my face. I see it, and the annoying part is I feel it, too – the shift in the air, the small pull of awareness that has no place here.
“You’re too fucking loud,” I say, redirecting the conversation.
Her brows knit together. “Excuse me?”
“You screamed loud enough to wake the dead pack down the road,” I remark, adjusting my pants.
“I woke up to you half-naked, barely two feet away from me.”
I reach for my shirt from the floor, straightening just in time to catch her eyes darting away. “A bit too late to pretend you weren’t staring, Arden.”
“I was not staring,” she lies.
“Sure,” I drawl with a smirk.
She glares at me, her arms darting out, and she grabs the pillow beside her and throws it without warning.
I catch it before it hits my face, and for a moment we simply stare at one another across the narrow gap between the beds.
Her cheeks are still flushed, her hair is still loose, and without all that careful styling, without the perfect exterior she wears like armour, she looks somehow younger and softer.
Dangerous thought.
I toss the pillow back and pull my shirt over my head.
“There. Crisis over.”
She catches the pillow against her chest, lips pressed together like she’s trying not to say something she will regret. I almost want her to say it.
Almost.
I turn away and head to the bathroom. “Get ready, we’re grabbing breakfast and heading out.”
“Obviously, Westwood,” she replies dryly.
I cock a brow and then slam the door shut. “Annoying woman,” I mutter.
“I heard that.”
“Good, you were meant to,” I reply. “So block me out unless you want to hear me piss, too.”
“You are such an arse.”
I simply smirk. Anything to annoy you, woman.
By the time we head downstairs, Charlotte looks like Charlotte again.
Hair tied back neatly, a few strands framing her face, she’s wearing clean, fitted jeans and a black polo top with her Schattenblüte belt on.
Posture perfect and face composed. If I hadn’t seen her twenty minutes ago with flushed cheeks and hair tumbling down her back and in her face, I wouldn’t have put the two together as the same person.
But I had, and I can’t get that image out of my head.
There is no way I’m admiring Charlotte Arden. I just need to get fucking laid; it’s been a while.
The dining room is small, old-fashioned and smells of toast, coffee and damp coats.
Charlotte moves through the room with the same elegant ease she carries everywhere as she heads over to the buffet table.
She selects toast, fruit and tea, which is a light snack in my opinion, as if we’re about to attend a polite meeting rather than crawl back into bloodstained tunnels.
I put more food on my plate and, without thinking too hard about it, add another slice of toast to hers.
She looks at it, then at me. I wait for the comment, knowing it’s going to come.
But it doesn’t, not immediately anyway. She takes a seat at the small table we’re at and picks it up. For a second, I’m prepared for her to toss it back onto my plate, but instead she takes a bite of it.
“You really like to make sure people are fed. If your manners were more polite, I would say you’d make a good host.”
I lean back in the chair. “Na, I don’t have time for that shit. You didn’t eat enough yesterday.”
“I did eat.”
“You nibbled.”
Her mouth curves slightly behind the rim of her teacup. “How observant. Have you ever thought that’s just the amount of food my body needs?”
The words shouldn’t sound like anything more than teasing, but they do. Maybe because her eyes hold mine over the steam rising from her cup, and for a second, the noisy room seems to fade into the background.
My gaze dips to her stomach. She is a tiny thing, but she’s not short either. I look away first, annoyed at myself.
“Eat your toast, Princess.”
“I am,” she replies, amusement clear in her voice.
I focus on my food, tearing half the toast off in one bite and swallowing it pretty easily.
I sense her staring and cock a brow. “What?” I ask. She shakes her head.
“I have the right to remain silent.”
“Good,” I reply, because we both know she was about to remark on my eating habits.
Once we’re done eating, we check out; it’s the same receptionist, and she looks between us with the same expression as last night, but says nothing. Charlotte thanks her with an easy smile, and I don’t bother adding anything, because apparently my manners ain’t great.
Outside, the air is cold, and we get into the car, setting out onto the road again.
When we reach the pack, daylight doesn’t improve the Desert Storm Pack at all. Charlotte gets out with her tablet already in hand.
Her hair lifts slightly in the wind, a few strands escaping around her face as she studies the land, and I hate that I notice that.
“I retraced yesterday’s route and marked it properly, so hopefully we aren’t repeating ground again. So let’s head down and go the opposite direction this time.”
I nod, not saying anything because, for once, I do not feel like arguing.
We make our way back to the manhole, the grass wet around our boots, the morning silence pressing heavier the deeper we move through the pack grounds. Charlotte walks beside me, close enough that her shoulder almost brushes mine more than once. She doesn’t move away, and neither do I.
It is nothing. Just uneven ground, just the narrow path. This is just a mission.
The manhole cover is still tossed aside in the weeds, and Charlotte gives it a look that says she disapproves of how I left it. I almost make a comment, but stop myself.
Less talking is probably safer.
I lower myself down first, avoiding the snapped rung, and clear the water beneath me with the slightest use of power, not wanting to attract anything but also not wanting to dirty my clothes from the get-go either.
The reminder of how wet and sodden I felt last night returns, and it dampens my fucking mood.
“Is your wound fully healed?” she asks as she lowers herself carefully.
“Yeah,” I reply, standing beneath her, although she’s managing perfectly fine. And she reaches the bottom without falling.
Still, when she jumps the last few feet down, my hand catches her waist before I even think.
She stills.
So do I.
It lasts only a second, maybe less, but I feel the warmth of her through the fabric of her shirt, the small intake of breath she tries to hide, the way her hand briefly closes around my arm to steady herself.
Then she steps away.
“I was managing,” she says firmly, but her voice is quieter than it should be.
“Habit.” I shrug before leading the way in the opposite direction from where we had gone yesterday.
She walks slower, more focused, her fingers moving over the screen with precise little motions as she corrects the old routes with her own; it’s ideal.
If we get lost again, we’ll have a map to follow.
I try to focus on the tunnels, but she keeps distracting me by stepping closer to examine the walls, brushing past me in tight spaces, her scent cutting through the damp, rotten smell. She smells clean and of something expensive, and that scent doesn’t belong down here. Neither does she.
Which only makes me more aware of her.
At one point, she stops so suddenly that I almost walk into her.
“What?” I ask.
She raises a hand without looking back, silencing me as she crouches beside the water.
Her aura glows faintly, green threading into the shallow current while the map balances against her thigh.
She’s bent low, and her ponytail slips over her shoulder, and before I can think better of it, I reach down and move it back before it can land in the dirty water.
She freezes when my fingers brush the edge of her jaw.
Barely; it was a fraction of a second, but she noticed. I move my hand slowly as her eyes turn upwards towards me.
“Did you want your hair in the sewer water?” I ask.
“How thoughtful of you to care,” she says, but I don’t miss the way her heart is racing.
For a moment, neither of us moves, and then she lowers her gaze first and returns to the tablet, and I hate that I can still feel her smooth skin against my fingertips.
I step back, jaw tight.
Fucking hell.
I take the tablet from her at one point and skip to her report of what happened yesterday. I’m glad she’s doing the paperwork without being asked, threatened or bullied into it. I fucking hate it, and she seems to enjoy it. I guess it’s good she’s come with me.
I look at the mention of the thing we saw in the tunnel and raise an eyebrow.
I glance over her shoulder. “Entity sighted?”
“Yes.”
“Bit polite, init.”
“What would you prefer?” she asks.
I shrug. “Ugly motherfucker in the tunnel.”
Her mouth twitches, and she shakes her head. “I am not writing that in a report.”
“Shame. Leo would get it.”
“It would be unprofessional,” she retorts.
“So is screaming like a girl because your mission partner was shirtless.”
Her cheeks flush as she looks at me defiantly. “I am a girl, remember?”
“How can I forget?” I reply sarcastically.
“Ares,” she warns.
I smirk.
Then the water at our feet shifts, and I feel an odd energy; both of us still.
The faint amusement disappears from her face as she looks down, her aura sharpening around her fingers. Mine answers immediately, pulling tight beneath my skin, but I keep it contained. We don’t want to draw anything towards ourselves.
The current is moving differently.
Not like yesterday.
Not aimless; it’s travelling down the way we’re heading, as if it’s going somewhere.
Charlotte stands slowly, eyes fixed on the unmarked passage ahead.
“I think we’re headed in the right direction,” she murmurs. I step ahead of her and nod.
“Yeah, I think so, too,” I say quietly. “Stay close and stay alert.”
This time, she does not argue. “Fine.”
I smirk. “Good girl.”
“You...” She trails off as another stronger current begins moving, and she steps closer to me, close enough that I can feel the brush of her aura against my back, and for some stupid reason, I’m noticing it way too much.
That’s the fucking problem.