Page 14 of Bound to Enemy (Wolf Billionaire #3)

CHAPTER 14

DAXTON

I woke up to fidgeting beside me. My eyes blinked open in confusion as to why something was moving in my bed. It was only when I turned that I came face to face with a full head of blonde hair that was sprawled out all across the pillow beside me.

The memories of last night and all that we had done filtered into my mind. The way our bodies fit perfectly, almost like we were made for each other. My cock stirred just thinking about being inside her again. She was warm and inviting, like home.

But my mind was quickly drawn out of my thoughts when I heard her soft whimpers escape her lips. Her face was turned away from me, but I could tell from the rigidness in her body she was in distress.

"No, please," she muttered under her breath desperately. Sweat beaded her forehead as she moved her head from side to side. "Take me instead."

Who was she talking to?

"Alessandra," I called her name to try and draw her out of her slumber, but she remained trapped in her dream. The poor girl looked like she was wading through a storm. "Alessandra."

I called her name again, but she didn't wake from her nightmare. I lifted onto my elbow and cupped the side of her face so I could look at her. Her features were contorted into an expression of pain.

I placed my hand on her shoulder and tried to wake her from her slumber, but she remained trapped. I grabbed both her shoulders and shook her, and that's when she started crying. Tears streamed down her face, her mouth quivered, and her body shook even more.

I was a man who had seen many things in my life. I had faced heinous rogues and had encountered death more times than I cared to admit. But seeing her like this terrified my wolf and me in ways that I could not put into words.

"Alessandra!" I screamed her name and her eyes snapped open. Her hands came to my shoulders, and she gasped for air like she had been underwater. "It's okay, you're okay."

I tried to soothe her, but her gasps turned into cries that seemed never-ending. I sat up in the bed and pulled her into my arms. I used the sheets to cover her naked body so she didn't feel overly exposed.

I was so used to seeing this woman be strong and unwavering. Her face was usually schooled, and she didn't show much emotion in the face of her enemies—me. The only time I had seen her look...human was that night when she was praying. She had wept with a brokenness that seemed foreign to her body. I never thought I would see her like that again. But here she was in my arms looking like a scared little girl who had been marred by the tragedies of the world.

I don't know how much time passed while she cried; it could have been a minute, or it could have been an hour. It all just melted into each other and the only thing I could think about was her. I wanted to end her pain and dissolve her sorrow.

The words of her father played in the back of my mind. She was a girl who had been robbed of her innocence and forced to wear the armor of a warrior before she was ready.

Her cries quietened and her tears slowed. Her breathing became more even and finally, she settled down from whatever had been haunting her in her sleep. I rubbed her back soothingly, unsure of what to say in this rather vulnerable moment.

We had crossed the boundaries of the physical last night, but we were far from friends, and we could barely be considered acquaintances. I had no idea where the line was for us. All I knew was that this felt extremely intimate and I didn't know if I was capable of being what she needed at that moment, but I knew that I wanted to try.

The silence that covered the room was so thick that I could hear the gentle beating of her heart in her chest.

To think that last night my wolf had gone from barely being able to be near her, to now purring at her closeness. It was almost laughable if I was being honest. The 180 switch which had seemingly occurred almost overnight. I wanted to attribute it to the mate bond, but I had been drawn to her even before that.

All it had taken was a cut, a kiss, and fucking her like she was mine—which she was.

Before I could even open my mouth to say anything, she cleared her throat and moved from my chest. She held the sheet to her body and wiped away the last few tears that had fallen from her eyes. She looked away from me, unable to meet my gaze. The sun barely peaked beyond the horizon, but the moon still provided some semblance of light. The blue hue kissed her features, contouring her soft features to make her beauty that much more striking.

It was in moments like this that I was always taken aback by how gorgeous she was. Up until she had walked down the aisle and up the stage, I had not realized the kind of beauty she possessed. She was still the descendant of my enemies and us sleeping together was simply a formality that needed to be upheld. Or at least that was what I had repeatedly told myself.

"Sorry about that," she moved off my lap and tightened her hold on the sheet. "I don't know what came over me."

Something hard lodged itself in my throat. I swallowed, trying to push down whatever emotion had lodged itself in my throat. "It's okay."

The awkwardness solidified in the air, and neither one of us knew what to do. She was my first real relationship, even though we had been forced to marry; she was my wife now and I was a husband. I knew that waking up we would be faced with the fact that we had fucked, but I never once anticipated that we would find ourselves in such an intimate position.

"Do...do you want to talk about it?" I shifted my gaze to meet her eyes. Against the blue hue of the moon, they dazzled like ocean water. It looked like stars were swimming in her irises. "You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to. I won't force you to speak unless you want to."

She shook her head and her unruly blonde hair moved over her face. I had this strong urge to reach out and tuck one of her stray strands from her face. But I held myself back.

"I get nightmares," she started, her voice taking on a soft tone, one which I had never heard come from her lips. "Well, I haven't had one for months now, but they used to be frequent."

"About what?" My wolf stirred, and this overwhelming need to hold her took over me.

Her eyes held mine. "The night I lost my brothers and my mother. I watch them get gutted in front of me, blood spilling from their puncture wounds and their lifeless eyes staring at me. Their bodies were void of souls, reduced to nothing but flesh and fur.

I was only eight when they died. I was the last born, I was my father's princess. I was his gentle sunflower who had never seen the hardships of life. Up until that day, of course."

The brokenness in her voice was palpable.

Her eyes glazed over, her brain took her somewhere. "I lost my entire family that day."

"You have your father, Ale." I had never called her that before, but it felt right to do so. She, on the other hand, didn't think so because she whipped her neck in my direction so fast I thought she might get whiplash.

She stared at me with a mixture of shock and an emotion that I couldn't quite read.

"I need to take a bath, I have an early morning." She turned back and reached for my shirt that had been thrown onto the floor last night. She put the shirt over her body and scurried to my bathroom without another word.

I was expecting to hear the sound of water come on, but it never came.

She simply wanted to get away from me and this whole awkward situation. I don't know how long I sat in the bed replaying what had just happened repeatedly.

Sex with her had been amazing; it had far exceeded my expectations. It had been raw, passionate, and borderline dirty. It ignited every fiber in my body and lit up the cells of my muscles, scorching me from the inside out.

But what had just happened between us felt far more intimate than being skin-to-skin with her. Sex could simply be physical, but emotions tapped into your vulnerability and stripped you bare.

I shook my head, pulled the sheets off my naked body, picked up a pair of boxers, and walked out of my room to give her the space she needed.

She was embarrassed, that much was clear. Alessandra was not the kind of woman who wanted to be seen as vulnerable or scared. She wanted to be viewed as strong, independent, and emotionless.

'She had to kill certain parts of herself...' her father's words rang loudly in my head. I was viewing her in a whole new light. All the things I had learned of her pack and her people had barred me from seeing her for what she was first and foremost—a human. We were wolves, but to our core, beyond the shapeshifting and packs, we were humans.

We bled red, we had one heart, one mind, and one soul. To our core, we were all the same.

As I walked down the stairs, I saw Jason enter the foyer. He dripped with sweat from his run, the baby hairs clung to his forehead as he tried to calm his breathing. The last I had seen of him last night, he had been downing liquor like it was water.

He looked up at me and scowled. It was no secret that we didn't like each other. After that day in the sand pits, he had made up his mind about me. There was no love lost between us; I didn't like him, and he didn't like me. We didn't need to be friends to co-exist. We had one common denominator, and that was my wife. Which was why, even in my loathing of him, he was the only person who could give me some clarity when it came to her.

"Jason, a word," I said when I got to the bottom of the stairs.

His scowl deepened. "I'm busy."

He made a move to get past me, but I blocked his path. We did this dance a few more times before he stopped and huffed in annoyance. "It's about Alessandra."

Instant concern riddled his features. "Where is she?"

"Calm down, she's fine. Well, I'm not exactly sure I would say she is fine."

"You have five seconds to explain." He crossed his arms over his drenched chest. "You better not have hurt her."

"I didn't."

"I'm listening."

And so I started telling him everything that had happened. Not an ounce of surprise made its way onto his features as I explained the situation to him.

Jason had a pained expression on his face. "She carries a lot on her shoulders. She never asked to be alpha. She never wanted the title nor did she want the responsibility of the well-being of hundreds of wolves."

I understood that feeling all too well. But unlike my wife, I knew that the title would be mine from the moment I took my first breath, but that didn't mean that I wanted it.

However, if I was asked what I would have rather done if I had the choice, I wouldn't know. This was the only life that I knew and the one thing I knew I was good at.

"She blames herself for the death of her brothers and her mother."

I had figured as much from what she had explained only a few minutes ago.

"Why?"

"They died protecting her. For some reason, the rogue king was looking for her, and we weren't sure why. Her brothers took him on but were unable to take him down. Then it left her mother, who tried to run away but got cornered. So, she did the only thing she could and fought like hell; however, the cost for her daughter's safety was her life. We later found Ale in the forest covered in blood from head to toe. We don't know how she survived the rogue king because we were almost certain there was no one else there to protect her. She was only 8 when the attack happened and unable to shift. She doesn't even remember what happened. She only remembers her family dying in front of her eyes, and then it's all blank up until the point she woke up in the healer's room."

My chest tightened as I listened to him speak. She had endured much, and she stood tall and strong in the face of great grief. My father had been murdered in front of my eyes when I was 17, and that experience had nearly broken me. I could not imagine having to watch my siblings and mother be killed in front of me and then having to take on the alpha responsibility because the true heirs had died.

Their deaths were not her fault, but I also understood taking on the responsibility of losing someone you love.

The more I learned of my mate, the more I realized how similar we were.