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CHAPTER TEN

GRACE

T he next morning, I wake up under a pile of sleeping alphas cocooned in a fortress of heat.

I’m too sleepy to complain about it, a warm, bare chest pressed to my back, and in front of me is a wall of solid black.

Nakoa and Raphael, I guess. Which confuses me because I fell asleep being forcibly cuddled by Leo.

I can’t see much over the mountain of muscled chest and back boxing me in, but what I can see makes me curious.

Instead of a normal cave, what I see is something more akin to a hideout.

There’s shelves cut into the wall stacked high with supplies seeing as I’m only looking at the top shelves, and they’re lined with tin cans of every vegetable and fruit under the sun, including powdered milk.

So this is a shelter of sorts, I think, yawning but unable to stretch out.

I attempt to catalog what I can of the cave, but soon give up on it.

What does it matter if I steal their supplies if I have no way off the island?

I don’t trust myself to make it back to the lifeboat.

And once again, I have to come to terms with the fact that I pissed myself at the sight of a shark fin.

What will I do on the open water? Spotting a sea turtle might make me flip the raft because of my phobia, and that’s be extremely optimistic about my chances of navigating the tide.

If I see a whale I’d have a heart attack.

Yeah, too many unknowns given my lack of specialized skillsets. So my best bet remains using whatever leverage I can gain from the resource throbbing between my legs.

“Good morning,” Leo says, shocking the shit out of me.

How can a big guy like him move so silently? I think, as he beams down at me, leaning over to spoonfeed me some liquid before I can clamp my mouth shut.

It’s clear and bitter, and I want to spit it out. But suddenly the sleeping giants begin to stir, and I’m so shocked by the earthquake their rolling bodies make, I accidently swallow.

Great! My jaw still aches from last night. My throat’s raw like sandpaper. And now it tastes like dry cum and what I imagine melted plastic with lemon zest tastes like. What a wonderful start to my day!

I grumble and groan, as Leo grins, twirling the silver spoon he snuck into my mouth in the air with a triumphant grin.

As I shift to pull away from my number one enemy, who must’ve been so exhausted from his rut he mistakenly snuggled up with me,to my surprise, the black-clad alpha to my right is Nakoa!

His steely gray eyes melt into a warm platinum hue.

He rests his chiseled cheek and chin on his forearm as I look up at him, whispering, “Morning, mate.”

Wait, I think, whipping around, fighting the furs, to looking into the stunned face of, “Raphael?”

It is him, and he is shirtless, and he pulls away from me like I’ve burned him.

He stumbles back, and knocks his head against the stone pantry, grumbling something between fuck and ouch as he bites his tongue.

I want to laugh, but I’m still too shocked that the nudist holding me so tenderly was him and not my bonded mate.

Slowly, I roll back to Nakoa and remember my manners, my game plan, and our deal, whispers sweetly, “Good morning… mate. ”

The last word taste like I’ve been chewing on rocks, wetting my dry lips, throat lined in dusty.

Oh wait, no I just inhaled the cave stink as Leo stirs the ashes of the dead campfire near us.

Still, my body did physically reject calling Nakoa my mate which is…

odd, to say the least. All my etiquette books taught me that after the mate bond, life became much easier with the stranger I would be forced to marry.

Nature would do the work for me to make me the perfect omega wife.

So why don’t I feel that instrict submission from what should be a constant pheromone exchange? Why, instead of that automatic response to flip on the warm fuzzies in my brain, do I feel my heart flutter from his gentle smile?

Maybe I’m experiencing world-record breaking Stockhold Syndrome, and my brain is recieging too many mixed singles. That seems to make sense as we sit up together, Raphael helping Leo rearrange things in travel packs I assume are meant to be carried to a new location.

Yeah, that sounds about right, I reason, pressing my back and the back of my head to the stone wall to cool off, chucking off the furs as the

“Oh?” I say, noticing my dress is back on. What’s left of it, anyway.

“Thought you’d want it on,” Leo says, crouching near a pack filled to the bursting.

“Thanks… I guess,” I say, trying to sound thankful. But all I can think about is him getting up in the middle of the night to redress me, palms moving over my bare skin.

We lapse into silence, and I avoid looking at swinging cocks as they get dressed in military sytle fatigues, even Nakoa who I’d assumed was a nudist. When they’re finished, my bonded mate turns to me while tugging on fingerless black gloves.

His eyes are unreadble, but steady, then they suddenly shift, burning with question.

“What does your sister look like, Grace?” Nakoa asks, Leo crouching beside me as Raphael stands off to the side, pretending not to listen

“Um…” I cock my head to the side, trying to catch up. I’d been so absorbed in watching them, I hadn’t considered what they were preparing to do.

“We’re heading out for an exhibition. Not tonight. But soon. So it would help to know what our target looks like. A scent trail? Does she look like you?”

“Um… Well… It would be better if you had a pencil and a piece of paper.”

“You can draw?” Leo chirps, and even Raphael looks up from his task, lifting a dark, busy eyebrow.

I shurg, “Decently. And it’s better than trying to commit my words to memory. She’s a beta, so it’s better to use an image to track her down,” I say.

Nakoa nods and sends Raphael after my treasure hunt of resources. Apparently they have a supply stash not far off, but he doesn’t seem happy in the least to be the errand boy, so I take pleasure in pissing him off just a bit. He acts like he’s a prince being ordered around and not some punk.

While we wait for them, Leo starts peppering me with more questions.

“She’s a princess too?” he asks and I shake my head.

“Neither of us are princesses, Leo. Our noble titles were stripped a decade ago,” I say, lifting my leg up to rub my sour feet.

But then, he plucks it out my hands and takes out. And I don’t fight him because it feels so fucking great. He moves to my calf, and then a little too high on my thigh. But I don’t mind him getting frisky if he keeps putting that divine pressure on my swollen legs.

“We’re half-sisters, technically. Our mother, Izhora, was born between the union of House Nikonav and House Bankole. She originally married the alpha of the Noble Tribe Jalloh. But, as far as I know, Faith and I share the the same father, Peter jackass Wilder, former King of…”

Leo’s eyes glaze over, now dull green, and I know I’ve lost him. I snap in his face to bring him back to reality.

Faith would know what to do to lighten the mood. What I wouldn’t do, what I would’ve give, to hear one of her awful puns right now.

“What happened to Izhora’s first mate?”

My pen pauses over the scrape of paper, hovering their, too long to not go unnoticed.

“He died shortly after their joint coronation. Mother never recovered, I think, from the loss of part of her bond.”

“Anything else about her we should know about. Birthmarks? Scars?” Nakoa asks and I frown.

“She has… diabetes. Recent diagnosis. She’s new to it. It’s a disease where–”

“We know what diabetes is, omega,” Raphael counters and I roll my eyes.

“Sorry, caveman. I didn’t want to assume. Anyway, she wear a patch that helps read her blood sugar levels. Doubt it’ll still be on her. But it would be easy to spot.”

Nakoa and Leo nod at this, byt Raphael’s disinterested expression turns grim, and I know what he’s thinking.

“She’s not weak because she has diabetes you freak of nature. I survived in heat. And she has her bodygaurd with her,” I say, like those are all absolute facts and not my specyuations.

“Didn’t say that,” he murmurs.

“You’re thinking it,” I counter.

“So you can read minds now, Grace?

He’s the only one who calls me by my name. And I still don’t know if that should make me grateful or afraid

“Enough arguing. But I’m curious about one more thing. Explain why you were even near Providence in the first place. Most of them come by boat.”

“What do you mean most of them?”

“Most newcomers to the island are boat wreck survivors. A plane crash? You’re the first since the war,” Raphael states and I frown.

“I-I guess we were knocked off course. I was in a private jet and we… crashed? Can’t say why. We just did.”

Nakoa doesn’t seem satisfied with that answer.

“Anything else you can think of? Anything strange?”

“Don’t tell me we are in the Bermuda Triangle,” I whimper.

“The what?” Leo and Raphael say at once and it’s my turn to snort, gloating in my worldliness.

Nakoa press me, “Anything strange, omega.”

“I was flipped over for… hours. It had to be hours. And one of the flight attendants was dead but… she was all wrong. Bloated, gray, stiff. Half-eaten too. And I had a head wound. I thought I should be dead just from the blood loss. That’s the only strange thing if you don’t count surviving a plane crash a strange,” I say and this seems to be what Nakoa is after.

“Warm water can accelerate rigor mortis…” he begins, and I perk up at this only to deflate at his very next sentence.

“But it wouldn’t explain the sun setting or you not dying from blood loss. Did you take anything before the crash? Any medicination?”

What type of question is that? I don’t know how to respond for a long time, mulling over my words as I chew my tongue. A bad habit I thought I broke years ago. And then, I just let them out.