Page 9 of Ruthless Alpha (Nightfire Islands Alphas #3)

The hand around my arm stayed firm as the Beta—Cole, his name was Cole—guided me through the maze of long, identical dormitory buildings.

He said nothing to me as we walked, and nothing when he deposited me back on Xander’s porch.

He didn’t need to tell me not to leave the house unaccompanied again.

The door closed with a soft thud behind me, but it sounded like a bullet in the silence. My hands were clenched around the untouched lunchbox as I stood, confused and devastated, in the hallway.

I had to do something. I had to stay on my feet and keep working.

If my body stayed active, then my mind couldn’t work itself into a frenzy of anxiety.

If I kept busy, I wouldn’t think about what it meant that females couldn’t go out alone on Ensign; I wouldn’t think about how coldly Xander had looked at me; I wouldn’t think about the blood decorating his face and his knuckles and his chest. I could only pray that his anger would fade by the time he returned, or he’d wear himself out in the ring, because if he wanted to hurt me—

I pushed the thought away. The lunchbox went into the refrigerator, and the now-cool cookies I’d left on the side went into an empty tin.

I had already cleaned the kitchen pretty thoroughly that morning, but it wouldn’t hurt to go over it again, especially after I’d baked in it.

The surfaces got another wipe-down, and the floors were swept again.

The dishes in the sink were cleaned, dried, and put away.

Then I moved on to the living room. Then the hallway and the stairs.

I was on my hands and knees scrubbing the bathroom floor when I heard the front door open, then close, and I startled like a rabbit who scents a fox.

There was no banging, no slamming. That was a good sign, wasn’t it?

My uncle would always slam doors and smash crockery when he was angry, but I hadn’t yet learned what to be afraid of in this house.

Should I go down and greet him, or should I stay here?

Would he be angry at the sight of me, or irritated that I ignored him upon his return?

I stayed there, paralyzed with indecision, until I heard the tread of feet climbing the stairs, and it was too late.

I put my head back down, resuming my frantic scrubbing.

He’d definitely be angry if he came upstairs to find me simply sitting on the bathroom floor.

A shadow fell over me.

“Hey.” His voice was low, not angry as far as I could tell. That was good. Probably. I kept scrubbing.

“I brought you some clothes from the laundry,” Xander said. Not what I had been expecting. “Hopefully they fit—the Ensign females aren’t as—well, you can try them, and if they don’t fit, I’ll take you back tomorrow.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. I risked a glance up and saw that, true to his word, he was carrying a cloth bag filled with various scraps of dark colored fabric.

I should thank him. I should apologize. I should have done something, but the whole situation was so alien and unexpected that all I could do was keep scrubbing.

Xander shifted in the doorway, uncomfortable, irritated, and I braced myself.

“I’m sorry about earlier, alright?” he said, which didn’t make sense. Was he not waiting for me to apologize to him? He’d been angry when he left, and my attempt to make peace had gone more horribly than even I could have imagined. What was I supposed to say to that?

“Will you—will you stop that?” Irritation was creeping into his voice now, and that made more sense. That was right. That was what I’d been expecting. He’d drop the act eventually.

“Rosie. Rosie, stop it.” His use of my name brought me up short; his voice was strangely soft as he rounded out the syllables of it. “Will you look at me?”

I had to do it sometime, I supposed. I couldn’t clean this bathroom floor for the rest of my life simply to avoid his scrutiny.

With enormous effort, I ceased the forward-back motion of my arms, dropping the brush back into the bucket of soapy water.

It must have taken a minute or so for me to work up the courage to raise my gaze to his, but Xander only stood in the doorway, waiting, utterly still.

Was he simply trying not to spook me, or was he a predator waiting for his prey to come to him?

I would only find out when I looked at him. Sitting back on my heels, I took one final deep breath and raised my gaze to his. My owner towered over me, his face bruised and his knuckles split and bloodied. His black eyes were inscrutable as they pinned me in place, inspecting every inch of me.

“Have you eaten today?” he asked. Another unexpected question. I hated it. Why was he even asking? Why did he care?

“Yes,” I told him, and he frowned.

“You’re lying.”

“I had a cookie to check it.” It was all I’d eaten that day, sure, but it was something. I hadn’t lied.

Xander sighed, stretching out a hand toward me. What would happen if I took it? What would happen if I didn’t? In the end, I didn’t have a choice, because he closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and said,

“Take my hand, let me help you up.”

I’d never been on the receiving end of Alpha authority before.

I’d seen hunters and rowdy young males cowed by Slade’s or Axton’s voice alone, heard the particular timbre of a reprimand that meant an order was undeniable, but I’d kept my head down too much to ever come up against it myself.

It was a strange feeling, like my body was being moved against my will.

Slowly, I reached up, letting a large, rough, bloodstained hand close around mine.

My skin tingled, ever so slightly, and I shivered.

He pulled me up, gentler than I was expecting, but the moment I was vertical again, my vision swam. His hand tightened around mine, and another came to my hip. My breath hitched, my heart hammering, but he only muttered,

“Yeah, you need to eat. Come on.”

I let him guide me back down the stairs and into the kitchen—the bathroom still only half clean, the floor wet and soapy—his hand light on the small of my back. It was only once we reached the kitchen that he moved away, allowing me to stand on my own.

“Sit down,” he said, his voice laced with the same authority he’d used in the bathroom.

As I took a seat at the kitchen table, he opened the fridge, rooting around for a few moments before bringing out potatoes and a couple of steaks.

He began chopping the potatoes, filling a pot with water, and setting it on the stove.

This blood-spattered Alpha was making us dinner as if it were the most normal thing in the world.

It felt wrong. What was he trying to do?

Was he trying to put me at ease, trying to make me relax so I was—what?

Easier to catch off guard? That didn’t make sense.

If he wanted to hurt me, it wouldn’t matter if I was standing ready for him with a knife in my hand: he was twice my size and a born fighter.

If he noticed that I flinched every time he picked up a knife, every time a pot or a pan clattered on the stove, he didn’t show it.

He kept his attention on his task until dinner was plated up, and he set the dish in front of me.

Steak and mashed potatoes. I knew, theoretically, that I should be hungry—I’d eaten a single cookie in the last thirty-six hours—but my stomach was churning with anxiety, and eating was too vulnerable a task.

Xander didn’t wait for me before starting on his own meal. He’d given us the same size portion, despite the fact that he probably needed twice the calories I did.

“I don’t want it.”

“You have to eat something,” he countered, as if this conversation were casual. As if he were someone I should expect to care about me.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m trying to make sure you don’t starve yourself,” he said, as if the answer was obvious. It was far from obvious. It didn’t make any sense, and I wasn’t going to let him trick me.

“No, no, you’re trying to—I know you’re angry with me,” I insisted.

I would never have dared to talk to my uncle like this, but I never needed to.

He, at least, made it obvious when he was angry, and I knew how to handle it.

I had no idea how to deal with this, and I couldn’t stand the uncertainty.

“I don’t know why you’re pretending you aren’t.

Just—just get it over with already. Or is this part of it? You want me to be scared?”

That made him stop. Setting down his fork, he said tightly,

“Of course, I don’t want you to be scared. And I’m not angry with you.”

It was so obviously a lie. His irritation was clear in every tense line of his body, in the purposefully even tone of his voice. I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t keep waiting for him to break. I couldn’t live in this constant state of expectation. If he wasn’t going to break, then I would make him.

“Stop it!” I cried, “Stop lying to me!”

The plate was in my hand, and then it was in pieces on the floor—the splat of the potatoes as they hit the ground masking the satisfying crack of the porcelain.

I stared at the mess on the floor, my breathing heavy, almost unable to believe I’d done it.

The silence that filled the kitchen was deafening.

“Are you angry now?” I asked, not quite brave enough to turn and look at him. His voice was still low, even when he said, “No.”

“You’re lying,” I insisted. Every limb was trembling; I was too hot but still shivering; my breath rushed in my ears, loud and harsh. I flinched when Xander rose to his feet, rounding the table to stand over me.

“I’m not lying, Rosie, I promise.”

“Don’t do that,” I snapped back. “Don’t talk to me like you give a shit. Just do what you want to do and get it over with.”

His eyebrows twitched together, recognition seeming to spark something deep in the depths of his void-dark eyes.

“Are you—are you waiting for me to hit you?”

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t have to. I flinched as Xander raised a hand to his dark hair, running his fingers through it, agitated.

“Fucking hell, Rosie.”

What right did he have to look so hurt, so offended? He still had blood on his knuckles from all the punches he’d thrown today. He was the Alpha of a Pack where females weren’t safe alone.

“I said don’t do that,” I snapped back at him. “You don’t—you can’t—I just want to go home.”

“You want to go home?” he echoed, incredulous.

“Yes.” I wanted to be surrounded by trees again. I wanted to look out of my window and see green.

“You want to be on Arbor, where your own family treated you like a slave and sold you like an animal?” Xander said, his expression flat and disbelieving. “You want to be with the Pack who taught you to flinch when a male raises his hand?”

“Yes.” I wanted to be on the island where I was born. I wanted to walk the familiar paths and be reminded of those brief childhood years when I was happy.

“You’d rather be with them than here with me?” If I didn’t know better, I’d think he sounded hurt. But that was ridiculous. It was impossible.

“At least I could get away from them when I needed to,” I told him. “At least I could go outside without needing an escort.”

“You’ll get used to it,” Xander insisted, and I laughed, dry and humorless.

“I don’t want to get used to it,” I said. “I want to go home.”

Something in Xander’s expression shuddered. His black eyes, which had previously tried to consume me, now seemed to look straight through me as if I weren’t even there. His mouth set into a hard line, and his voice was hoarse when he said,

“Well, we don’t always get what we want.”

Then he left me in his ruined kitchen to clean up the mess I’d made.