Page 76 of Alpha Wolf's Rejected Bride

She looks around herself, where she sits on the ground, with a little smile on her face. Suddenly, I notice the grass around us is extra green and thick, with little flowers blooming through it.

“Are you doing that?” I ask.

“Not intentionally,” she says. “Nature just responds to me. I’m trying not to use my powers. It still leaves me drained.”

In the days after the battle, Alisha worked on understanding and controlling her powers. She quickly found out she could do incredible things, but the bigger the magical working, the worse it affected her. Everyone decided it was better if she left off using her powers until after she had her baby.

I lean over and kiss her forehead, putting an arm around her shoulders. She snuggles into me, and we watch the kids playing on the field below, and the brightly colored tents where people from both Eccles and Rose Hollow happily share their homemade wares.

The others begin to talk around us, and Alisha and I seem to sink into our own private bubble of silence. I can hear their words, and I know they’re talking about the snake, things we should research, and ways to close the class divide, but none of it is urgent anymore. The unity and peace evident between the two packs today reassures me that we are on the right track to leading both packs to prosper. I truly believe the higher families in Eccles are only holding out from outdated tradition, and they’ll come around with a bit more persuasion.

Alisha gently rests her head on my chest, and when I put my arms around her, she sighs with contentment. Her scent rises around me, even sweeter and stronger now that she is pregnant.

My whole world has turned and become complete. When I first became alpha, I had the best intentions, but I still felt I would never really fit in anywhere, never really have a home.

But these people have embraced me. I’ve brought prosperity to the poor, and in return, they offered me—and my mate—a forever home.

When I look down at Alisha, she’s gazing up at me, and I fall straight into her violet eyes, like a haze of dusky twilight surrounding me. When she smiles, I feel it in my heart.

Her happiness is my happiness.

She tilts her lips up, and I bend down to kiss her, feeling the world completely melt away. I put my arms around her and hear her make a small sound of pleasure as I wrap her against me, bringing her into her favorite place in the whole world.

I know that Alisha feels my arms are her safest place, and I hope she knows that I feel the same. I am only whole and complete when I’m holding her—and our baby, too.

“I love you,” I whisper, and Alisha smiles, cuddling into my chest.

“I love you, too,” she breathes. “My heart and soul, yours for all time.”

I bend down to kiss her again, and a light breeze ripples in from the desert, teasing us with hints of the future.

My attention, though, is all on Alisha. The future can wait because all I want is what I have, right now.

*****

THE END