Page 24 of Cruel Alpha (Nightfire Islands Alphas #1)

“Alyssa! Alyssa!”

Caleb’s voice pulled me out of the darkness. Blinking awake on the cold ground, I reached out for him, desperate to see his face, to know I had succeeded, that he was really alive, really there.

“Breathe, Baby,” he was saying, “you’re okay, you’re okay.”

That wasn’t the point. Was he okay? As my vision cleared, his face came into focus, and I might have passed out again if I hadn’t realized that most of the blood decorating his face and neck wasn’t his. There was a bruise blooming above his eyebrow, and his chest was decorated with shallow cuts, but he was whole and here, and his heart was beating strong beneath my palm.

“You’re alive,” I said, my voice cracking with a sob. I’d been so determined to save him, and now that I had, the terror and the grief that I’d had no time for came rushing out of me. “I saw—I saw you die, and I couldn’t—I had to—”

The rest of the sentence was lost to more sobs, clutching him to me and gulping in uneven breaths as he stroked my hair, pulling me into his lap so I could feel his warmth. His chest rose and fell; he smelled of blood and sweat and wolf—beneath it all, that familiar charcoal and pine—and he was alive. We were both, against all odds, alive.

I was vaguely aware, as I sat in Caleb’s lap trying to regulate my breathing, that people were coming up to us, talking to him, asking and answering questions about the living and the dead, about the next steps. I wiped my face messily against his chest, sitting up properly.

“Sorry,” I said. “You’ve probably got more important things to deal with right now.”

Caleb’s face darkened, cupping my jaw in his dirty hand.

“ Nothing is more important than you,” he said, low and fierce. “I’ll get Liam and the guys to sort things for now. We need to get you home.”

I could only nod, too selfish to insist that he leave me and do what he needed to. I slipped out of his lap, letting him jog over to where Leo, Xander, Noah, Jace, and Liam were all standing. Without the warmth of Caleb’s body, I was suddenly freezing. Wrapping my arms around myself, I watched him talk urgently to them.

“Hey.”

A soft voice from behind me made me jump, but it was only one of the females who had ventured out of the hall. I recognized her from school—she’d been friends with Melanie Simons—and I was pretty sure her name was Lydia.

“I thought you might want this,” she said, holding out a thick blue blanket. I took it gratefully, wrapping it around my shoulders. After everything that had happened that day, I didn’t care if the entire Pack saw me naked, but I was freezing.

“Thanks,” I said, attempting a smile. I don’t know if I succeeded, but Lydia smiled back.

“That was pretty cool, what you did out there,” she told me. “We saw from the windows upstairs.”

I hardly knew what to make of that. No one had ever complimented my magic before. I needed to say something , though. I was going to be Alpha female of this Pack; I couldn’t just blink stupidly back at her.

I was saved by Caleb's return.

“Thank you, Lydia,” he said. Lydia nodded, recognizing her dismissal.

“Of course, she’s my Alpha female,” she replied. “Get her home now, Alpha.”

Caleb didn’t waste time.

“Alright, Baby,” he said, sweeping me up off the ground as if I weighed nothing, “let’s get you out of here.”

I’d expected to be taken back to Julia’s, but instead, Caleb carried me around the hall and down the long path that led to his house. I’d only been in the Alpha’s residence once before: the night the twins were conceived. For so long, I’d thought the Caleb who kissed me that night had been an act, a cruel front he put up to get me into bed, but that had never been true. It was the cruel, dismissive Caleb who had been the front all along. I nosed at his neck, hardly caring about the blood drying on his skin, and a low growl began to rumble through his chest.

He had to put me down to get the front door open, and I gripped the doorframe to stay upright, my legs still shaking like Bambi on ice. Something in the house was beeping, and I frowned as Caleb rushed inside and over to the large radio in the hallway. Picking up the headset, he held the receiver up to his ear as he twisted two dials.

“Lapine Alpha receiving. Over.”

The reply only sounded like low buzzing from where I was still attached to the doorframe, but Caleb let out a long, relieved sigh.

“Yeah, I’m alive,” he said. “Alyssa’s fine, just a little shaken. Will they be okay with you and Julia overnight? Over.”

The twins had made it to Ferris. Everyone I loved was safe. I could have collapsed again from the sheer relief of it, but I stayed resolutely upright, hardly listening as Caleb exchanged a few more words with Ethan before turning off the radio. I could hardly believe it: we were all alive, Lapine had won.

“They’re safe?” I asked, just to be certain.

“They’re safe,” he confirmed, wrapping his arms gently around my waist. “Though I’m going to kill Ethan for letting you come back here.”

“No, you’re not.”

“No, I’m not,” he admitted with a smile. “What I am doing is putting you in a nice hot shower.” I whimpered at the thought of it, and I felt his cock twitch against my belly.

“Yeah, please,” I breathed, just to be a tease. Then I was being swept up into his arms again, carried through the house and deposited in the bathtub. Caleb reached in to turn on the water, and I yelped as it hit me cold.

“Sorry,” he grinned, helping me to move out from under the spray until the water grew warm. Caleb stepped in after me, grabbing the soap from the dish and holding it under the spray, lathering it between his hands. Then those hands were on me, washing away the blood and dirt that clung to my skin, his every action so gentle that I thought I might cry; every groove of my palm and every joint of every finger was soaped and massaged until they were pink and clean again.

“Your turn,” I whispered. Something about the quiet of the moment, broken only by the steady thrum of the falling water on porcelain, felt sacred, and Caleb said nothing as I pressed in close, manoeuvring us so that he was the one standing directly below the shower head. Taking the soap from him—the white bar stained pink—I ran lathered hands lightly over his neck and chest, letting bloodstained suds run down his body and away down the drain.

I never wanted to leave this little bubble we had made for ourselves, warm and clean and sliding skin against skin. Neither of us were touching with intent, but I could feel myself growing wet anyway, and he was half hard, every brush of his cock against my belly sending shivers through me. Caleb was clean again, but I couldn’t stop touching him, tracing the hard lines of his torso and running hungry hands up and down the curved muscles of his arms.

In turn, he was caressing every inch of me he could reach, cupping the side of my neck in one large hand while the other stroked the side of my hip and my belly and thumbed against the sensitive underside of my breast. I sighed in pleasure, leaning into the touch, and the hand at my neck tightened, holding me in place so he could lean down and kiss me.

The wet-hot slide of our lips beneath the spray was perfect, and I wanted more. Caleb clearly agreed because the water shut off a moment later, and I was off my feet again, his hands under my thighs, encouraging me to wrap them around his hips. I happily complied, pulling him down for another kiss.

“Baby,” he teased, “I can’t kiss you while I’m trying to walk.”

“That sounds like a you problem,” I grumbled, but I moved my kisses to his neck and chest, leaving a dark love bite high on his neck beneath his jawline. I wanted everyone to know he was mine. He groaned as he stumbled into his bedroom, practically tossing me onto the bed before he followed, crawling up my body until we were face to face. I was ready—so ready—for him to take me, to fuck me hard and fast until all the adrenaline was gone from our systems, but he only leaned in to kiss me again, long and slow and sweet.

“You were incredible today,” he whispered against my lips. “I’ll banish anyone who says otherwise.”

I’d known he thought that; it was implied with every reverent touch and heated look since we’d shifted back to our human forms, but to hear him say the words lit something up in me that was warm and tingling and wonderful. I preened beneath his praise.

“So beautiful,” he continued, trailing kisses down my neck, “you’re going to be an amazing Alpha.” A giggle bubbled up to my lips at that, and he gleaned up to quirk a questioning eyebrow at me.

“Are those things connected?” I asked, and he shook his head ruefully.

“No,” he said, dropping another kiss to my collarbone. “It probably helps, though.”

“You would know,” I said, running my fingers through his jet-black hair. Caleb hid his slight blush by moving down to take one of my nipples into his mouth, and suddenly I was done with smart comments. He continued to kiss his way down my stomach until his mouth was once again between my legs. As much as I wanted it—as much as I’d dreamed of his wicked mouth in the days since we’d last done this—I tugged on his hair to bring him back up. Caleb looked thwarted for a moment before I said,

“You can do that later. I want you inside me now.”

His ice-blue eyes flashed, his already wide pupils blowing out as he rushed to grab my thighs, pushing them apart so I was on display for him, and I shivered under his attention.

“You sure?” he rasped, and I nodded.

“I’m ready,” I said, and he reached out to run a thumb down the seam of me, growling in pleasure as he felt how wet I was. Apparently unable to help himself, Caleb sank two long, thick fingers inside me, and I whined with pleasure. It was so good, but it wasn’t enough, not what I wanted.

“Fuck me,” I panted, “please. I need you.”

The Alpha of Lapine was not immune to begging, it seemed, because, in a moment, he was lining himself up, pushing slowly inside. I gasped as he slid in, inch by inch, relishing the slight burn. This was what I needed: to feel him filling me up, stretching me to accommodate him. When he was fully seated inside me, Caleb dropped his forehead against mine, and we breathed in concert, still and tender.

“I love you, Alyssa,” he promised, dropping the lightest of kisses to the corner of my mouth.

“I love you, too,” I whispered back. The ease with which the words slipped from my lips shocked me, and I realized all at once that this was it: this was what I’d wanted since I was a pup. I had a mate who loved me for everything I was, who would lay his life down for me, and who I trusted entirely.

My eyes filled with tears as he began to move inside me, joy and relief and pure pleasure forming an overwhelming cocktail within me. I gripped Caleb’s shoulders through every long, deep stroke, my head thrown back as he buried himself inside me over and over again. I was so lost in the unrelenting rhythm that I hardly heard Caleb growl,

“Let me mark you.”

Everything in me wanted it, and my wolf howled within me as I bared my neck to him. The sharp, perfect pain of his teeth sinking into the place where my shoulder met my neck sent me shuddering up to my climax, my back arching off the bed as pleasure fizzed through my every nerve. Alongside it came the joy: a fierce, possessive joy that did not belong to me. I could feel Caleb’s pride in having marked me, his adoration and his euphoria as he stared down at the fresh mark on my shoulder.

When I came down—not all the way, I couldn’t, not with Caleb still fucking me like we didn’t have the rest of our lives to do this—I felt something wide and hot pressing against my opening with every stroke. Caleb’s knot. I whined and whimpered, lifting myself to try to press myself onto it, wanting all of him inside me.

He must have sensed my desperation through the bond because he didn’t hesitate to hook his arms under my knees, pushing my thighs back against my chest to open me up for him. I was incoherent as he ground against my pussy, every tiny shift of his hips pushing in a little more, and a little more, stretching me so wide that for a moment, I doubted he would fit. Then, all of a sudden, the knot slipped all the way inside.

Caleb and I moaned in synch at the all-encompassing feel of it, our pleasure mirrored and amplified a hundred-fold by the feedback of the bond, and it only took a few more grinding thrusts before the hot rush of his completion was filling me up, and I tumbled over the edge of another orgasm, my body clenching every muscle trying to pull him deeper and deeper inside me, wanting to prolong the ecstasy until I was wrung out and exhausted from it.

Gently releasing my legs, Caleb eased us over so he was lying on his back with me splayed out across his chest. It would take a little while for the knot to go down, and until then we were, quite literally, stuck together. I didn’t mind it in the slightest.

“I didn’t think you’d want this,” Caleb confessed, his quiet voice muffled against my skin. “I mean—after last time.”

I frowned, not understanding.

“The knot,” he clarified, and I huffed a little giggle, pressing a kiss to his chest.

“I started drinking witch tea after last time,” I told him, resting my chin on his chest so I could look at him properly. His eyes were wide with shock, but there was a little smile curling at the edge of his mouth.

“Planning on a repeat performance?” he asked, and I shrugged.

“I knew you’d come through for us in the end,” I said. “You’re my mate.” That was what I’d told myself when I’d asked Julia if she knew where I could get ahold of some, anyway. I was so indescribably, incandescently glad that I’d been right.

“But twin toddlers are enough for now?” he asked, and I smiled. I knew he’d understand.

“For now,” I agreed.

It was all too easy, then, to drift off to sleep. I was warm and safe, held in my mate’s arms.