Page 22 of Ruthless Alpha (Nightfire Islands Alphas #3)

I was frantic by the time I saw Cole and Rosie padding up to the front door.

The house had been cold and empty when I returned from training, and I was riddled with guilt for leaving Rosie without so much as a goodbye that morning.

I’d imagined we might talk, I might sit her down and gently guide her through confessing an issue that was easily solved.

I pictured taking her in my arms again and cherishing the softness of her body where it pressed against my own.

I’d been stupid to even imagine it. I knew she was gone the moment I stepped inside: she’d left the back door open, and a chill wind was blowing through the house.

Her clothes were left in a pile on the back porch, and her scent was all over the bushes that encircled the yard.

She’d clearly left of her own free will, but even if she never wanted to see me again, I had to know she was safe.

My wolf was snarling and snapping inside me, demanding the return of his mate, and I couldn’t have agreed more.

I hurtled back through the house and out the front; I wouldn’t be able to track her exact path, but surely I could pick up her scent if I went around to the other side of the thicket that surrounded my yard. If I could find her exit point, that would be something.

So intent was I on my pursuit that I almost didn’t notice their approach.

It was only the flash of Rosie’s white fur out of the corner of my eye that made me stop, a waft of her wildflower scent from the opposite direction she’d set off in.

She was cowering in Cole’s wake, sticking close to him, and I could hardly form a coherent thought through the cocktail of emotions that hit me at the sight.

Relief and anger warred for dominance, but I swallowed them both down, doing my best to remain impassive as they both shifted back to human form.

“What happened?” I demanded. Now that Rosie was human again, I could see angry finger-shaped bruises beginning to bloom on her biceps.

I wanted to take her in my arms, to kiss her bruises and ask her who had done that to her, but she was clearly too distressed to speak, and it was Cole who answered me.

“I was keeping an eye on Harris—he was skulking around the widows’ dorms again—and he saw her high-tailing it north. Guess he decided she was more interesting than Nessa today.”

I was going to kill him. The next time I saw Harris, he was going to find out what his own intestines looked like.

I was going to string his body up over the doors to the training hall.

I was so angry that I barely heard the rest of Cole’s report: “I got there just in time, but you need to keep an eye on him and keep her inside.”

I didn’t appreciate him telling me what to do, but I was grateful enough to let it slide. He’d been picking up a lot of slack since Rosie arrived, and no one liked being on guard duty, especially when I knew he didn’t agree with my decision regarding Harris in the first place.

“Thank you,” I said, and Cole nodded.

“Just doing my job.”

I wasted no time rushing Rosie inside. Shivering from the cold, she didn’t protest as I scooped her up and carried her to my bedroom, bundling her into my warmest hoodie and tucking her against my chest, pulling my blankets over us.

We sat like that for what felt like forever, waiting for her shivers to subside.

I had so many questions I wanted to ask her, needing to know why she’d left, if she was planning on coming back, and if she even wanted to be with me at all.

She wasn’t ready for any of those questions, though.

Cole might have arrived in time to stop anything too serious from happening, but Rosie was bruised and rattled enough that whatever had happened was more than she could handle.

I could hold my questions until she was ready for them.

It was Rosie who finally broke the silence, her voice barely more than a whisper.

“I wasn’t trying to run,” she said. “I wasn’t trying to leave you.”

“I didn’t say you were,” I replied, trying to keep the relief from my voice. She didn’t need to know how deep my fear had run.

“I just wanted—I needed to get out of this house and—”

“You could have asked me,” I reminded her. “I would have gone with you.”

I didn’t mean it as a reprimand, but it made her pull away from me, scooting down the bed and pulling her knees up to her chest.

“I can’t think around you!” she said. “I needed to be on my own.” Her eyes were full of tears, and I wanted to reach out to comfort her, but she clearly wanted nothing less. I felt utterly helpless, ignorant of what was wrong or how to fix it.

“Rosie, please tell me what’s going on,” I begged. “You’re killing me.”

Her lip trembled, her arms tightening around her knees. She looked like a pot set to simmering, her limbs beginning to tremble again, and I was on the verge of leaning forward, saying something, when she finally boiled over.

“I hate it here!” she blurted. “I hate that I can’t go outside by myself. I hate that I have to be afraid of every male who isn’t you or Jace. I hate that Cole only stepped in to save me today because I’m the Alpha’s property .”

The silence that followed was agonizing. I’d known all those things—I’d known them, and I’d thought that our mating would be enough to outweigh them. Clearly, I’d been wrong.

“No one will lay a finger on you once we announce that you’re my mate,” I promised. “You’ll be the Alpha Female, and you can go wherever you want.”

I thought it would comfort her, but her expression only hardened.

“And what about the other women?” she retorted. “Can they go wherever they want?”

Why was she asking me that? She already knew the answer.

“They can, but—”

“But what, Xander? But they might get beaten, they might get raped and killed, and no one gets punished for it because power is the only thing that matters here?”

Hearing those words come out of her mouth made my stomach twist. The disdain in her voice, the disgust that twisted her face, was more than I could bear, because she was right.

“I don’t like it any more than you do,” I insisted, but she wasn’t convinced.

“You’re the Alpha. If you want it to change, then change it,” She said, as if it were simple.

“Every male on the island would be against it,” I tried to explain, but Rosie only fixed me with her accusing blue stare.

“You don’t know that.”

I had no response to give her. Sure, I wasn’t inside the heads of every male on the island, but I knew that plenty of them liked the status quo.

They liked that they could rely on their strength to get them whatever they wanted, and they wouldn’t like being told they had to play by new rules if I tried to enforce any.

What I didn’t know was how many males were just like me, who didn’t like the way things were, but who played along because it was the only life they’d ever known.

Maybe there were changes to be made, but this wasn’t a conversation about Pack politics. I was trying to fix whatever had gone wrong between us.

“That’s not—this isn’t what we’re talking about right now,” I insisted. “Is this really why you’ve been running away from me since we mated?”

Her anger faded instantly, like the wind had gone out of her sails. Suddenly, she could no longer meet my eyes, her fingers picking nervously at the skin around her nails.

“I just—I went outside today because I was trying to find something beautiful on this island that wasn’t you,” she confessed, and my heart sank.

“Did you?” I choked, already knowing the answer. She’d gone out looking for something beautiful, and she’d found Harris.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Rosie. “It doesn’t matter if your woods are lovely or your mountains are grand.

I can’t be happy here, Xander. Even if I could go out to the forest whenever I wanted, I’d always come back here and be reminded that not every female on this island is as lucky as I, that everyone else lives in fear.

I’ve lived in fear my whole life, and I can’t—I can’t—” Her voice wavered and broke, and then the tears came.

Sobs wracked her body, and she took great heaving breaths, covering her face with her hands in an attempt to staunch the flow.

My self-control snapped, and I rushed forward to gather her back into my arms. She didn’t push me away, but nor did she reach for me in return, merely allowing me to embrace her as she fractured into pieces.

It felt like I held her for hours before the tears finally subsided. Rosie sniffled and hiccupped in my arms, and I was powerless to do anything but press a long kiss to her hair.

“Tell me what to do, angel,” I whispered. “Please.”

“Let me go.”

I released her from my grip, but she didn’t move. Still seated in my lap, she looked up at me, her pretty eyes red from crying and her little mouth downturned.

“I don’t want to be here, Xander,” she said, and her true meaning dawned.

“You don’t mean that.”

“I do.”

This wasn’t happening. She wasn’t asking me this. Sure, she’d asked it a hundred times before, but things had changed. We were mates. We belonged together. She couldn’t be asking to leave me now.

“Sleep on it,” I said. “You’ve had a hard day.”

“I won’t change my mind.”

I didn’t doubt that. Rosie might have had a rough day, but it was just the cherry on top of all the ways she’d always hated Ensign.

I’d been so fucking naive to think that helping her with her magic and showing her a little love would be enough to counter all the ways that my island was hostile toward someone like her.

She hadn’t grown up here; it wasn’t normal for her: it was horrifying.

“I won’t let you go back to Arbor,” I told her, but she only nodded in agreement.

“You have friends on other islands, don’t you?” she asked. “Ones who would look after your mate?”

I had plenty. Leo would take her in a heartbeat, and Julia would bully Ethan into letting her stay on Ferris.

Hell, even Cal would probably take her now that she wasn’t touting her Arbor bullshit anymore.

There were so many places I could send her, so many places where she’d be safe enough, probably safer than she’d ever been here.

I’d only been deluding myself that she was safer with me, selfishly justifying keeping her close.

“Don’t do this to me, Rosie,” I breathed. It was a low, last-ditch attempt to get her to stay, and I hated myself with every word. She was everything I’d ever wanted, and I didn’t know if I would survive watching her walk away.

Rosie’s hand was soft on my face, her thumb stroking the rough texture of my stubble. She looked as wrecked as I felt, but her voice didn’t waver when she said,

“If you care about me, Xander, you’ll let me go.”

It was a punch to the gut, a knife to the heart, because it was the truth. Rosie might make me happier than I’d ever been, but I couldn’t give her the same in return. I couldn’t give her the safety and the security she deserved, even as my mate.

I nodded, hardly trusting myself to speak.

“I’ll make some calls.”