Page 20 of Ruthless Alpha (Nightfire Islands Alphas #3)

When I woke, I was alone, and for a moment I wondered whether the previous evening had all been a dream.

In my half-asleep state, it took a while to catalog the evidence: her wildflower scent on my sheets, the faint burn on my back from where she had dug her nails into my skin, and the contented ache in my muscles that spoke of a night well spent.

I remembered carrying her upstairs to the bathroom afterward, sitting her on the edge of the bath and cleaning her up with a cool, damp cloth before I bundled her into my bed.

I hadn’t knotted her, but Rosie was wrung out and sore, already half-asleep by the time I got the pair of us settled.

It was so easy to fall asleep with her in my arms, inhaling the scent of her hair with every breath.

It was harder to wake up without her. As I drifted off to sleep, I looked forward to having her in my arms when dawn broke and spending a lazy morning in bed together.

I wanted to explore every inch of her skin while it was still warm from sleep, to find every spot that made her shiver, to know what her smile tasted like.

We had years for that, I supposed. That’s what mating was, after all: the promise of forever.

It was easy to take for granted when you mated young, like so many of our kind did, but I was going to cherish every second of the time I got with her.

After so many weeks of feeling like my love for her was misguided, it was freeing to know that fate had brought us together all along.

I was going to be so smug when I radioed Ethan and told him I was right about delayed mating with witches.

Usually, the mating bond formed the first time a male and a female touched after they’d both reached shifting age, and that was that.

Once the claiming bite was in place, they could share emotions, and they’d be tied together for life.

For witch-shifters, this seemed not to be the case: neither Julia nor Rosie had triggered the mating bond until their magic had fully manifested.

Maybe Rosie and I could take a trip over to Ferris someday soon.

She’d like the opportunity to get out of the house, and I knew Julia would win her over within a few minutes.

It would be good for her to have someone to talk about her magic with, someone who was still fairly new to it, just like she was.

Eve was a good woman—at least, in most ways—but I could imagine she was pretty intimidating to someone as young and inexperienced as Rosie.

Julia would be a better teacher, even if she knew less.

There was a spring in my step as I entered the kitchen, the smell of cooking sausages hanging in the air.

Rosie was washing up an empty plate and mug—Jace must have come and gone already this morning, I’d been late to rise—apparently unaware of my presence.

I watched her for a little while, admiring the way the morning sun illuminated her golden hair, making it look like a halo. She really was an angel.

“Damn,” I said, “I was going to make you breakfast this morning.”

She jumped at the sound of my voice, blushing as she realized it was only me.

“I didn’t want to wake you,” she said, rushing over to the pan with the sausages, suddenly very focused on her task. Was she shy after yesterday? It had been unexpected for both of us—perhaps she didn’t know how to act around me this morning.

“I was having very pleasant dreams,” I said, coming to stand behind her at the stove and placing my hands lightly on her hips, “but I think reality is much better this morning.”

Reaching around her, I turned off the heat and moved the pan back.

I drew her against me, leaning down to press a light kiss to her lips, and for a lovely, languid moment, she melted into it.

Until the claiming bite was in place, we’d be almost unable to resist each other, and I could already feel my need for her growing hot and urgent.

Would she like it if I lifted her onto the counter and fucked her there?

Or would her hygienic sensibilities forbid it? There was only one way to find out.

As my hands moved down to cup her ass, Rosie pulled away.

“When do you have to leave for training?” she asked. I blinked, confused.

“I’ll tell Damien to take the lead today,” I told her. “I’ve got much more important things to do at home.”

I leaned down to kiss her again, but this time she took a full step back. Her pupils were dilated, her breath coming heavy, and her skin flushed—I knew she was as affected by the bond as I was, so why was she pushing me away?

“Don’t be silly,” she said. “You should go.” It was a tone I hadn’t heard in weeks: that fake lightness that told me I was being managed.

“It’s just training, they won’t miss me,” I assured her.

“I still think you should go,” Rosie insisted, and a thought hit me, sudden and sickening:

“Did I do something wrong? Yesterday, I didn’t—I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

“No,” she said quickly. “No, I promise. I just think that after that fight the other day, there’s gonna be some males who aren’t best pleased with you. Better to show them who’s boss.”

I wanted to argue with her, to insist on staying home, but she was right: Harris had been chomping at the bit for a fight, and I needed to put him down before he got any smart ideas.

“I guess,” I conceded. “I’ll skip Jace this afternoon, though.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I want to, Rosie. We’re newly mated, and I—honestly, I kind of thought I’d never find my mate.

You know how many people are mated after thirty?

It’s not a whole lot.” Admitting it was too vulnerable, too desperate, and sad, but I couldn’t help feeling like she was already slipping through my fingers. This wasn’t supposed to happen.

“Well. Here I am,” she said, awkwardly.

“Here you are,” I echoed. Despite the gnawing worry, I couldn’t help smiling softly as I looked at her. She was so beautiful, so soft and sweet and perfect. My hands itched to touch her again, but she was purposefully keeping her distance, avoiding my eyes.

“I’ll see you when you get home this evening,” she said.

“This afternoon,” I corrected, but she shook her head.

“Jace is your friend, and he’s doing you a favor.” Rosie turned back to the stove, starting to remove the sausages from the pan. “He’s already spending every morning alone while you lead training, working on a project that you’ll get credit for.”

I felt like I was being scolded for bad behavior. Jace was my friend; he’d understand if I wanted to spend the day with my mate. He’d be happy for me.

“You’re sure there’s nothing wrong?” I prompted. “Nothing I did to upset you?”

“I’ll be here when you get back,” she replied, which wasn’t an answer. She still wasn’t looking at me, just buttering bread as if this were any other morning.

“We’ll do something just the two of us,” I tried, verging on desperation. “I know that connecting with your magic got a little overshadowed by— us, but maybe we can have another look at that?”

“Maybe.” It was the sort of “maybe” that sounded like “no”. I took a step toward her, reaching out to touch her face, her hair, anything to be close to her, but she grabbed my hand out of the air, giving it a quick squeeze before shoving a paper-wrapped sandwich at me and saying,

“Go on, now. You’re going to be late.”

I let myself be chivvied out of the house, left staring at the closed door of my own home with a rapidly cooling breakfast sandwich in my hand.

What had just happened? My mind raced as I made the short walk over to the training center, my wolf protesting with every step.

We had a beautiful mate at home; we shouldn’t be abandoning her.

I didn’t know how to tell him that she clearly wanted to be abandoned.

What had I done to make her act this way? Had she not wanted me yesterday? No—that couldn’t be it. She’d been as lost in my touch as I was in hers. I knew she wanted it, wanted me.

Should I have said more afterward? Should I have told her I loved her?

Promised that she would be safe with me?

Did she feel rejected because I hadn’t marked her?

Hadn’t knotted her? I’d been trying not to overwhelm her, but maybe that had been the wrong move.

Maybe she thought I wasn’t really committed.

By the time I arrived at the training center, I had worked myself up enough to instill fear in the hearts of every fighter assembled.

The medical building was going to be busy that afternoon, as I tore through every fight like my life depended on it.

If there was an upside to my disaster of a morning, anyone who’d been rankled by my decision not to let Harris take Nessa would likely keep their mouth shut about it—at least until I did something else to piss them off.

As a result, I turned up in the development lab still covered in blood. Jace barely looked up from the pile of leather and metal before him, and when he did, all he said was,

“Rough morning?”

“You have no idea,” I said.

“Pack problems or Rosie problems?” Jace asked, gesturing for me to pass him a pair of pliers. I did so absently, hardly caring what he needed them for.

“Rosie problems.”

“She still angling to go home?”

God, I hoped not.

“We’re mates.”

That got Jace to put down his tools. I could see his big, stupid brain working, turning those two words over and over until he landed on the most pertinent follow-up question:

“How is that a problem?” he asked. “You still hung up on the age thing?”

“No,” I replied. I really wasn’t—fate was fate, and if anything, it made me feel better about being drawn to her initially.

“I didn’t think there was a problem, but then I came downstairs this morning and she was acting like—like it was just a normal morning.

” Even that was an understatement. Rosie was more tense and more strung out than I’d seen her in weeks.

“I was going to blow everything off today so we could spend the day together, but she didn’t want that. She practically threw me out the door.”

Jace put his thinking face on. If this had been about anything else, I would have been confident he could find a solution—Jace was the smartest person I knew—but relationships weren’t as easy to fix as cars or heaters or plumbing systems.

“Did you—and I know this might sound like a stupid question—but did you ask her what was wrong?” he said eventually.

“Yeah. I asked her if I’d done anything, and she said no.”

Jace shook his head.

“That’s not the same as asking if something’s wrong, especially with females,” he said.

“Maybe she just needs time to digest everything. Her whole life got upended like a month ago, and she’s learning to tap into magic she’s been repressing forever, and now she’s got a mate, too?

Give her some space, man. It’s probably all she needs. ”

He shrugged, like this was nothing, like it was a small problem with an obvious solution that I was stupid not to have seen.

“Because you’re an expert now?” I snapped back. Despite the morning’s hard training, I was suddenly angling for a fight again, and Jace clearly knew it. He didn’t rise to me, because apparently he had more control over himself at twenty-five than I ever had.

“Hey, you brought it up,” he retorted. “Sounded like you might want some help.”

“Not from you.”

Jace didn’t reply to that one, turning his attention back to the project. He’d dismissed me like I was no one, like I didn’t outrank him, and for a moment, I wanted to drag him up by his collar and make him pay for that insolence.

I remembered just in time that I wasn’t that kind of asshole.

“I’m sorry,” I sighed, slumping down onto the bench next to him. “I just—I never thought I’d have this. The whole mate thing. And now I feel like it’s slipping through my fingers.”

Jace, who might be a saint, shook his head.

“Give her the day,” he said. “She’ll clean the house like every speck of dust personally offends her, and she’ll be all sorted out by the time we get home.”

“You think so?”

Jace nodded sagely.

“I am an expert in the female mind,” he said, earning a punch in the arm.

“Alright,” I allowed. It didn’t quite silence the anxious thoughts jostling for attention, but it did quieten them enough for me to concentrate on what I’d come here for. “What are we tinkering with now? I thought we were good on the release mechanism?”

We spent the rest of the afternoon fine-tuning the clasps—or at least, Jace did. I spent the afternoon passing him tools, giving single-syllable answers to his questions, and fretting about Rosie.

Give her the day. I could do that. Give her the day, and my mate would be back in my arms.

If only it were so simple.