Page 14 of Protector (Alpha Ties)
FOURTEEN
ADDIE
I haven’t slept in my old room in months. Usually when I visit my parents, I make a point to drive home to my own apartment, despite my mom’s frequent pleading with me to stay over.
There is something about this house that makes me feel like a child again—too many memories of my mother’s fussing and my father’s stern expectations of obedience. Yet as I climb the stairs to my old bedroom, the familiar sensation of the wooden rail under my palm and the powdery scent of my mother’s favorite laundry detergent warms my frayed nerves just a little.
In any case, it’s better than returning to my apartment. My safe place will never feel safe again, and I can live with that. But right now, I need just one night to curl up in a cocoon. Tomorrow, I’ll be strong again.
I will.
The stairs creak behind me, groaning under my shadow’s weight. 411 pounds.
His stats flash through my brain, followed by the memory of his body on top of mine—the heavy press of it.
A shudder runs up my spine, and I miss my step and stub my toes against the wood. But before I can fall, a large hand flattens against the small of my back, steadying me. It’s only for a second—the moment I’ve regained my balance, he pulls back.
I have never cared what thoughts or feelings my AX class may or may not have had about their new existence. They are barely more than machines, after all, and my intervention is the only reason they are even alive.
The physical sensation of AX2’s seething resentment, however, is harder to ignore.
I flex my hand not gripping the wooden banister, forcing myself not to rub at my chest where I feel his smoldering anger. He hates that urge to reach for me, to ensure I’m safe at all times. Unharmed. The intensity of the burn behind my ribs suggests he would have gladly stood aside and watched me break my neck on these stairs, if he’d had a choice.
Hopefully he feels my bitterness as keenly as I do his.
I’m alive. That’s all that matters.
I grit my teeth against the roil in my gut when my thoughts threaten to delve farther down that path—to the dark memories of what happened in that bunker before he came for me. They don’t matter.
I survived.
I continue up the stairs, heading left at the top.
411 pounds.
That number keeps poking at my brain as I open the door to my old room, cross the floor to grab a too-frilly nightgown from the closet, and head to the ensuite.
He was always a big man, even when he first came to my lab, but my enhancements and the rigorous exercise regime the AX class undertake has packed his frame with heavy muscle beyond his natural physique. I had to readjust his macronutrient requirements several times before I found the perfect balance. His daily caloric intake is ludicrous.
I frown at myself in the mirror, toothbrush pausing halfway to my mouth. I don’t remember seeing him eat at the hospital. Probably because I did my best to ignore his presence.
But the thought won’t leave me alone. He needs sustenance—and a lot of it. Did they feed him? Sufficiently? I’m not prepared for the bolt of anxiety at the thought that he might not have eaten for days.
Ridiculous. Even if that were the case, he’s more than capable of going without for extended periods. There’s no need for concern. None whatsoever.
I finish up in the bathroom and return to my bedroom.
He’s standing by my closet, spine arrow-straight, hands clasped behind his back. If I didn’t have the burn of his awareness festering in my chest, I could have believed his mind was as empty as his expression.
Perhaps then it would have been easier to ignore the nagging memory of how I learned what it feels like to starve during my first few days in the bunker.
“When did you last eat?” The words leave my mouth before I can stop them, my voice clipped with irritation.
“This morning.”
At least he hasn’t been starved for days. But it’s still a long time to go without for a man his size. “What did you have?”
“Yogurt.” He pauses, then catches sight of my raised eyebrows. He knows what details I expect. “Plain. Around 200ml.”
Not enough. Not by a long shot.
I press a hand to the knot of anxiety clenching in my stomach. Despite my father kicking me off the AX project, despite what’s happened between us, AX2 is still my invention. My responsibility.
“Come on. To the kitchen.” I snap my fingers and turn on my heel—but not fast enough to miss his narrowed eyes.
“No.”
I blink, momentarily stunned that he dares defy me—and about something so ridiculous.
“I beg your pardon?” I swivel back around, eyebrows nearly at my hairline. “Am I really going to have to command you to eat, AX2?”
“You need to rest.” His expression is no longer impassive—his dark eyebrows bunch in a frown, soft lips flattening. “And I need to be by your side.”
I force a slow breath through my frozen chest. It’s the closest either of us have come to voice the new reality we share. It takes me too long to regain my composure enough to say, “What you need is to eat, soldier. And what I need is none of your concern. Now, follow me. This is a command.”
He growls in response. Actually growls. It sends goosebumps up my spine and down my arms, and only my iron will keeps me from clamping my hand to the gauze on my neck as my entire body responds to my alpha’s displeasure.
I force down the instinctive urge to submit, ignore the way my core warms in preparation to surrender to his dominance, and glare at him. Without another word, I turn back around and head for the door.
I expect the seething sting of his resentment clawing at our bond as he silently follows me back down the stairs. At least it makes it easier to ignore the residual pain throbbing through my pelvis with every step, and the exhaustion in my muscles.
The kitchen smells faintly like fresh bread. My mother’s a stress-baker.
I make AX2 sit on a stool at the kitchen island before I rummage through the cabinets to find a couple of long baguettes. They’re not the nutrient-dense shakes I’ve developed for the AX class, but they’ll have to do.
I pile on the mayo, sliced tomatoes, and cucumber, and place a bed of spinach at the bottom, then layer it with as many slices of deli meat as I can fit in between the pieces of bread and finish off with a couple pickles.
“Eat.” I place both sandwiches in front of AX2 and lean on the counter. I’m exhausted and I want to sit down, but doing so would mean admitting that he was right to defy me—that I need to rest.
His green eyes scan over the baguettes, then flick to me, and I see caution in his gaze. For a split-second I think he’s concerned I’m trying to poison him, but no. I feel it in that infuriating link that ties us together—my own pleasure at feeding my alpha echoes back to me, through his primitive awareness that his female is tending to him.
“You need sustenance to function optimally, and I don’t have access to your usual supplements. I’m not about to lose months of progress because no one seems to remember how many resources we’ve poured into you,” I snap, face heating because I know there’s little nutritional value in a pickle.
Thankfully he doesn’t respond, and his focus returns to the food without acknowledging my slip into primitive biology. Good. I don’t have the strength to pretend that everything is okay. That things will ever return to normal.
I stare at him as he bites into the first sandwich. His eyelids flutter, and a soft hum escapes him around his mouthful of food. I have no defense against the responding clenching in my chest.
He looks… entirely human as he eats—elbows on the counter, occasional sighs of pleasure resonating from his wide chest as he wolfs down the first baguette in five bites, then turn to the second. I did my very best to hide the inhuman parts of his anatomy when I made him, but in the confines of my lab, his stiffly formal demeanor never let me get fooled by my own creation. He was simply a machine.
He still is. I clench my fist against the countertop and force my awareness away from the stubble on his chin and the way he sits far too casually in his seat. The human parts of him are just that—parts. And the link to his consciousness burrowed deep between my ribs is simply… biology. My AX soldiers are built on the blueprint of alphas for their strength and ferociousness. With that blueprint comes all the other aspects of alpha nature—such as the ability to form a mate bond.
It’s biology. Nothing more.
I’m not aware I’m rubbing at my chest before I catch AX2 frowning at the movement.
“Are you done?” I bite, forcing my hand from my ribs to indicate his now empty plate.
“I am sated,” he says, gaze still resting on my chest. “Thank you.”
He’s never thanked me before—not for nourishment, not for anything. Not that I expected him to; outside of basic military etiquette, I haven’t trained my AX soldiers with manners in mind.
“Great. Let’s go.” I spin away from the kitchen island, keen to get out of this room with its soft smell of baked bread and memories of my father’s hums of pleasure when eating my mother’s cooking. Only before I manage to stalk out of the kitchen, something sharp twangs behind my ribs, my knees wobble, and I lose my footing.
“Shit!” My squeak ends on a huff as AX2 materializes behind me and yanks me back upright before I can faceplant on the tiles.
“I told you you needed to rest,” he growls, his tone as insolent as if he’d not spent three years learning to obey.
But I’m too distracted to punish him. That sharp stabbing behind my ribs jabs at me again, making me gasp and reach for my chest. Oh God, not this. Not this.
“What’s happening?” AX2’s voice is still a deep growl, but when he spins me around to look me over, there’s worry clear as day in his green eyes.
He shouldn’t be able to feel worried. The thought is fleeting and drowns in another wave of pain. No, no, no.
“Adelaide?” My name rolls off his tongue, stilted and unfamiliar. He grabs my wrist and yanks my hand away from my ribs before I can claw at the bandages under my top.
“It’s him,” I wheeze as the dark fog settles on my mind like a crown of lead. I’m back in the bunker, back in the freezing nightmare. Oh, God, no. I escaped. I can’t… Not again.
But my chest burns with him—with that first claim forced onto me while I sobbed and pleaded. He’s dead. He’s dead!
“You’re okay.” And suddenly, there’s warmth. All around me, encompassing my body, my mind. “You’re okay. I’ve got you. Just breathe.”
I blink as the fog melts away and I’m back in my parents’ kitchen, where I spent so many mornings eating breakfast while my mom fussed around me and my father, back when everything was still warm and light.
AX2 has both arms wound tightly around my back, ensuring there’s not even a fraction of an inch’s air between us. He smells faintly like the bread I made him eat, and strongly of musk and male, and I don’t pause to think before I bury my nose in his chest and inhale.
“That’s it. Breathe,” he rumbles, the deep bass of his voice vibrating from his chest and into my bones.
I suck in lungful after lungful of his scent, until the pain from my ribs is nothing but a faint memory, my frozen muscles melt, and my brain slowly returns to the present.
I made it out. He is dead. And I survived.
“Release me.”
A growl rumbles out of AX2’s chest, but his chip ensures he obeys the command.
I take a step back, stumble, and have to reach for a chair to catch myself.
“I am your alpha. You made it so.” His voice is low, angry. “Protecting you is as hardwired into me as every other impulse you’ve forced into my DNA.”
He’s right. I look up at him—at his clenched jaw and the simmering hatred in his eyes drowning out any worry I might have thought I saw before. He is my alpha, and even as I have to steel myself against the deep-rooted terror at that thought, I know what the alternative was. I would have died in that bunker without him.
But he is also right that I made it so. It was my choice. And he is under my control, not… not the other way around.
I force down the memory of the first man who called himself my alpha. This bond—the one I chose? I will be the one to control it.