Page 23 of Ruthless Alpha (Nightfire Islands Alphas #3)

Ferris wasn’t home, but it felt familiar. The cottages were made of stone rather than wood, but they were arranged in similar little clusters and surrounded by lush foliage, just like the cottages on Arbor. Walking through its winding paths, I felt like I could breathe for the first time in months.

In contrast, Xander seemed to grow more tense with every step.

I’d spent the entire, silent trip running over what I could possibly say to him.

How would I say goodbye to the man who had saved me and condemned me all at once?

To my mate, whom I loved and was abandoning?

We’d run for hours as our wolves before shifting back to our human forms for the approach to Ferris Town, but still, I couldn’t think of a way to express my feelings in words that wouldn’t hurt him even more than I already had.

Xander, too, seemed to struggle with the silence. Every few steps, I could feel his eyes flick over to me, hear him inhale as if to speak, only to think better of it.

The first voice to break the silence didn’t belong to either of us, but to a small boy. He couldn’t have been older than three or four, but he was barreling down the path as fast as his little legs would carry him, arms outstretched.

“Xander!” he cried, and Xander immediately ducked down to pick him up and swing him around in a wide arc.

“Hey buddy! How you doing?”

“I’m good. I foun’ a big bug inna yard!” said the boy as Xander settled him on his hip. His little face was so serious, as if the finding of the bug was an important scientific breakthrough.

“A big bug?” Xander exclaimed, and I really believed this was the most exciting news he’d heard in weeks. “You’ll have to show me.”

“Ok. Who’s that?”

“This is Rosie,” said Xander.” She’s—she’s a friend of mine, and she’s going to be staying on Ferris for a bit. Rosie, this is Adam.”

“Hi, Adam,” I said, giving him a little wave.

“Hi,” he replied. “You’re pretty.”

“Thank you. You’re pretty too.”

“I know,” he said. Then, apparently done with both of us, he tapped Xander’s shoulder impatiently. “You put me down.”

Xander obediently set him down, and Adam bolted off toward the large house at the end of the path, where a dark-haired woman was standing on the porch.

“Mom! Mom!” he cried as he ran. “Xander’s here!”

“I can see that,” said Julia indulgently, carding a hand through her son’s dark hair as he wrapped his little arms around her leg.

I hadn’t realized how tall she was when she’d been tied to a chair in a spare cabin on Arbor, but as we approached, I realized she had almost a foot on me, her body long and willowy—or at least, it would have been, if not for the bump that protruded from her abdomen.

She stroked her belly absent-mindedly as she smiled at the pair of us.

Xander bounded up the porch steps to greet her.

“I keep telling you not to swallow watermelons whole like that,” he joked, and Julia gave him a playful shove that made my wolf stand to attention, her hackles up. I had no right to be jealous of the easy way she touched him, especially considering the context, but my wolf neither knew nor cared.

“Good to see you too, idiot,” she said, before turning to me. Her smile didn’t falter for a moment; she seemed genuinely pleased to see me. “Hey, Rosie. Do you remember me?”

“You’re kind of hard to forget,” I replied, realizing as I spoke that she could absolutely take that the wrong way. I rushed to correct myself: “Not—not in a bad way! I just meant—”

“I know what you meant,” Julia assured me. “You probably weren’t giving a captured witch an awkward sponge bath every day, huh?”

“Only on weekends,” I replied, relieved.

Julia let out a full-throated laugh, her black hair reflecting the late afternoon sun as she threw her head back. She was truly hard to forget, with her mismatched eyes and her unrelenting sense of humor.

“I like you,” she said, clapping her hands together briskly. “Okay, let’s get you set up in your new home. Of course, you can eat with us tonight—you too, Xander, if you don’t want to go back to Ensign right away.”

Julia kept up a steady stream of pleasant small talk as she guided us through the town, either completely unaware of the tension that had respawned when she mentioned my “new home” or choosing to ignore it.

Adam scurried along after us, stopping to examine various rocks and flowers along the way, until he grew tired and demanded to be carried again.

Watching the ease with which Xander scooped him up and the patience with which he listened to the mostly incoherent child babble made my heart ache. He would be a wonderful father, but would we ever have such a happy, carefree child on Ensign?

Adam’s cheerfulness seemed to be mirrored by everyone on Ferris. Many waved to Julia from their front porches or through windows, a few calling greetings and enquiries after her pregnancy. A few even waved at me or Xander, easy and friendly with the strangers in their midst.

My new home was tucked away behind some larger cottages.

Inside, it was small and cozy, with a single open room making up the downstairs.

It was filled with mismatched furniture and hand-knitted blankets, a fire built but not lit in the grate.

It was the sort of home I’d dreamed of: a space of my own where I didn’t have to look over my shoulder or manage anyone else’s moods.

“The bed is all made up for you upstairs,” Julia was saying.

“There should be a bit of food in the cupboards, but we can take you down to the commissary to pick up more supplies tomorrow. Xander mentioned that you didn’t have much in the way of clothes, but you’re about Alys’s size, so you can have a few of the things I normally keep for her. ”

It was all so generous, so welcoming. It was the kind of life and the kind of Pack I’d always dreamed of, but every new joy was tinged with pain. It wasn’t a life I could share with my mate, no matter how much I wanted to.

“I’ll let you get settled,” Julia finished, absently plumping one of the pillows on the easy chair by the fire. “Come up to the big house when you’re done—Ethan should be home soon, and we can all have dinner.”

“Not me,” said Xander. “I’m just gonna make sure Rosie’s comfortable and then head off. Need to be back tonight.”

He didn’t look at either of us directly, and tension soured the air until Julia dispelled it.

“Alright, but Ethan’s gonna be sad he missed you,” she grumbled. “He’ll pretend he’s cool with it, but he’s gonna get those little frown lines right here.” She drew little lines between her own eyebrows to demonstrate, and Xander gave her a half-hearted laugh.

“I’ll make it up to him, I promise.”

“You’d better,” Julia said. She shepherded her son out of the door and bid the pair of us goodbye with a cheery wave.

All the warmth in the cottage seemed to leave with her. I’d thought so wistfully about what life would be like on another island, despite the hole I knew Xander would leave in my life, but I’d never considered the moment of separation. It would be a sharp, slicing pain—like severing a limb.

“You got everything you need?” Xander asked. It was a stupid question, but it broke the thick silence that had settled in Julia’s absence.

“I didn’t have much to begin with,” I reminded him.

“I’m sure Julia and Ethan will make sure you’re comfortable. If you need anything, don’t be afraid to ask, okay? I know you don’t like to—”

“I promise I’ll ask.”

“Okay.”

It was a conclusion, a segue into goodbye, yet neither of us wanted to take that final step.

Xander had his hands shoved in his pockets, his shoulders rounded, so unlike the confident Alpha I knew that I almost caved completely, almost told him I had changed my mind, that I could make it work on Ensign, as long as he was with me.

“Will you come visit?” I asked instead.

“Do you want me to?”

“Of course I want you to.”

“Of course,” Xander echoed, his voice wry and hollow.

“I don’t—I’m not doing this because I don’t want to be with you, Xander.”

“Then why are you doing it?” he snapped back at me. His expression was guarded and hurt, but I didn’t have any new answers for him. I didn’t have any balm for the wound I’d inflicted.

“You know why.”

He nodded, and then the silence came again.

I hated that silence, hated the way it filled up all the spaces between Xander and me.

I didn’t want any space between us, not really, but we’d been a tragedy from the beginning, and now our options were distance or destruction. I had to make him see that.

“The way I—the way I see it, if I stay on Ensign, I’ll eventually start resenting you, because you’ll be the reason I’m staying in a place I hate,” I said.

The words weren’t perfect, but they were better than nothing, better than letting him think I didn’t care.

“I don’t ever want to do that, Xander. I want to love you forever, and if that means I have to miss you a lot of the time, I still think it’s better. I’d rather miss you than resent you.”

I could feel my heart pounding against my ribs as I waited for his response. He had to see that I was doing this for both of us—that this was the only way to save us.

When he finally spoke, there was a tiny smile lifting at the corner of Xander’s mouth.

“Does that mean I’m allowed to kiss you goodbye?”

“Please.”

Xander approached me with more caution than he ever had before. His hands were light when they came to rest on my hips, his mouth soft and chaste and tender on mine. It was so sweet that I could do nothing but melt into it, winding my arms around his neck to keep him close.

The bond flared, and maybe I could have ignored it, could have pulled back and told him to go, but I didn’t want to. Instead, I whined against his lips, raking my fingers through his hair.

“Rosie,” he sighed against my lips. His hands were tightening on my hips, and I pushed my body closer to his, giving him permission.

Ignoring the many surfaces the room offered and the promised bed upstairs, Xander crowded me against the door, filling up my vision and stealing the breath from my lungs.

From that position, it was easy for him to slip a knee between my thighs as his hands travelled up my body, following my curves until he was cupping my face in his large, calloused hands, drinking kisses from my mouth like a parched man in the desert.

I was no less desperate for him. It had been too long since our mating, too long since he’d last touched me, and I didn’t know when I’d get to have him next. I tugged at the waistband of his pants, but he grabbed my wrists and pulled my hands away.

“Not yet, angel.”

When he dropped to his knees, I thought he was going to fuck me with his fingers again, but this time, when he dragged my pants and underwear down my legs, he lifted me by the thighs so I was sitting on his shoulders, his nose nuzzling against my core.

A thrill of heat ran through me, and I shivered as his tongue parted my folds to lap at the wetness he found between them.

We moaned in unison, my hands burying themselves in his hair to anchor myself.

Every firm lick brought on another wave of pleasure, and soon I was gasping and whimpering uncontrollably, helpless beneath the onslaught of pleasure.

When he fixed his lips around my clit and sucked, I lost control of myself utterly, my thighs trembling around his ears as I let out a long, high whine, bucking my hips ineffectually against his mouth.

I could feel myself growing wetter and wetter beneath his mouth, climbing higher and higher toward my peak, but just when I thought I would tumble over the edge, he stopped.

I barely had time to complain because he only unhooked my legs from his shoulder long enough to free his cock before he pushed me higher, my knees spread wide and bent over his arms. I could hear myself dripping onto the stone floor beneath us, and my breath came in desperate pants as I met Xander’s endless dark eyes.

There was a fierce determination in his expression, as if he could fuck me into compliance, and part of me wished he could.

“Do it,” I breathed. “I want to feel you after you’re gone.”

I couldn’t tell if the growl he let out was anger or desire, but I felt the blunt pressure of his cock at my entrance, and then he was pushing in, stretching me so wide I could hardly stand it.

I clawed and scratched at his back, feral with the overwhelm and the need for more, deeper, harder.

Xander caught my mouth with his own, and I moaned as I tasted myself, sharp and musky on his tongue.

I was bereft when he pulled out, even if it was just for a moment before he plunged back into me, demanding that my body give in to his.

I did so gladly, hardly feeling the uncomfortable stretch in my legs from the way they were held, or the rough wood against my back.

I only knew where Xander’s body and mine were connected; his hot, greedy kisses were a balm to the addictive burn of his cock dragging in and out of me, his rhythm hard and fast and relentless.

He was hitting something deep inside me, sending shockwaves through my body with every thrust. Again and again, he hit that hidden, secret place until my body could take no more.

I shattered around him, pleasure cresting and bursting and rolling through every inch of my body.

Xander was still driving into me like a man possessed, and as my pussy spasmed around him, he came with a guttural roar, his fingers digging into the meat of my ass hard enough to bruise. I hoped it would bruise.

I winced as he pulled out, already sore and devastated at our separation.

“Sorry,” Xander muttered as he pulled his pants back up, his cock still glistening with my arousal. He tucked an errant curl behind my ear, leaning down to press a lingering kiss to my forehead.

“I have to go,” he whispered, and my heart clenched.

“You could stay—”

“If I stay any longer, I’ll never leave.”

I wanted that more than anything. I wanted him to stay here with me in this little cottage forever, but asking him to abandon his Pack would be as cruel as asking me to stay with them.

“You’ll come back soon?” I asked, my voice thick with tears I refused to let fall.

“Soon,” he promised.

With one final kiss, so fleeting I hardly felt it, he was gone.