Page 16 of Vitreous Girl (Lensverse #1)

I could not take my eyes off that damn beta girl.

I’m a simple man. I like things to make sense. And yes, she was quite lovely, with her brown curls threaded with copper that was gleaming now that we’re in the sunshine, and her soft curves that hint at a life of perfect ease, muscles lax as a noblewoman’s body. Something that doesn’t make sense if she’s really a peasant girl, as we’ve all been assuming.

Just like her piss poor attempt at meekness, like the snark and fire that lies beneath it. None of it makes sense.

However, that’s not my problem. I let Davos know the discrepancy and left it with him. He’s the pack lead. He’s the older brother. I am perfectly content being his second and not having to make pieces of information fit together. That’s Sinclair’s job. It’s the kind of greasy work he’s suited to and the only reason I tolerate him.

The beta is obviously not a physical threat to the pack, and neither is her brother, so she’s outside my domain.

So why can’t I stop looking at her?

We were finally on the road, candles past the dawn start I would have preferred. It takes time to wrangle our pack, not to mention all the extra people we’ve got with us right now, but still the delay made my skin crawl. My wound itched fiercely as well, but I refused to scratch it. After a while, as I knew it would, the aggravating itch became a kind of comfort. Proof that I was in control.

The beta sat stiffly on her horse as if terrified it would bolt from her. One more piece of the puzzle. If she was anything except a peasant girl, she would know how to ride a horse. So was this also a pretense? If so, she was doing a much better job of acting this time. When I trotted past to get to the back of the line, I could see the pulse fluttering in her throat. She was truly terrified.

Which was completely unwarranted, but I supposed an inexperienced rider wouldn’t know that. She was practically sandwiched between Cantor and Bastian and had been put on the inn’s oldest, most mellow horse. Yet another expense our pack had wasted on this beta and her brother.

I frowned at myself. Why did I phrase it like that? She wasn’t the important one here. It should have been ‘this omega and his sister’. Or better yet, just ‘this omega’. The only reason we even still had the sister with us was because Davos wanted to prove he was nothing like our father and he’d go to foolish lengths to achieve that goal.

Why were my packmates being so attentive to her anyway? I didn’t like seeing Bastian fawn over her. She was a damn beta. For that matter why the hell was it that I couldn't keep my own eyes from returning to her over and over?

She had somehow saved my life. I was still not completely certain what happened. Sinclair had added his own version of the story which didn’t seem especially different from the confusing, mismatched scenes I remembered. One thing seemed irrefutable to me, however, no matter what the slimy snake insisted. Deep in my gut I knew, somehow, she had saved my life.

So maybe I was watching her like I would a savior. I was waiting for her two attendants to give her five wicks alone so that I could express vague gratitude, to match my vague memories. After that, the spell would be broken.

I ignored the fact that needing to thank her didn’t explain why my eyes kept traveling down the lush curve of her hip, to linger on the way her ass fanned out on the saddle, pouting like a ripe fruit pressed into a hand.

I was imagining what it might look like with far fewer skirts in the way when my brother slipped back alongside me and cleared his throat. I flicked my eyes to him and just barely stopped myself from returning my gaze to her ass.

God’s knot, what was wrong with me?

I set my eyes firmly on my packlead and tried my hardest to ignore the itch demanding that I look at the beta. This itch would also pass and I would feel all the stronger for it.

“ Tell me again what happened that night,” Davos demanded, but his voice was low. I realized that he didn't want her to hear us, which made my brows crease. She was there when it happened. What difference did it make if she heard me talk about it?

“ I've already told you,” I said. Sinclair let his horse fall back until he was riding on my other side and my frown deepened. Of all my packmates I liked Sinclair the least. He was part of my family, of course, but he was like that distant cousin I’m told all families possess, the one that we should only acknowledge at weddings, and then as briefly as possible. Of course, any such cousin in my blood family would have to be terrible indeed to compete with my father or the brothers that weren’t in my pack.

I preferred everything to be open and clear and logical. Sinclair, on the other hand, enjoyed logic only for the way it could be twisted to his own ends. My eyes drifted to the beta girl again before I snapped them away.

Was that a smirk on Sinclair’s lips? If it was, he hid it very quickly. I narrowed my eyes in suspicion. Was he behind all of …this? I wasn’t even sure what this was, but it had Sinclair’s slimy stench all over it.

“ Sinclair wants to ask some questions. We’ll just go over it again.” Davos never left any room for compromise in his commands. I usually appreciated that, even though I knew I was the only one who did.

For the first time I understood where my packmates were coming from when they complained about arbitrary orders.

It didn’t matter. I would still obey.

“ Carlile and I were standing guard outside Rosemar… outside the beta’s room,” I said, trying to gather my fragmented memories of that night, yet again. “Around one candle after the halfnight bell we heard sounds of a fight from the courtyard. We realized it came from where the guards were stationed at the omega’s room.”

Davos nodded. “I was there. Three of them attacked.” His eyes drifted and I knew he was picturing the fight. “They only feinted for the most part. They seemed to be putting on a show more than anything. A distraction.”

“ Right,” I said and cleared my throat. “One of them came upon us in the corridor and I engaged him in battle. Carlile decided he… would be better utilized at your side.” I pursed my lips. The whelp had already been punished so I didn’t want to belabor that point, but I had not been happy when he raced away from me. “I'm not sure if he was hoping to show off his fighting skills elsewhere or….” I trailed off. Honestly, Carlile wasn't the best fighter. He could barely best our average beta soldiers in a duel. I had no idea whether he could have turned the tide if he'd stayed with me. Seeing him rush off, however, had not been pleasant. Some alphas could ignore the biological imperatives of pack building, but I was not one of them. And one of the most fundamental instincts was to protect your packmates. To fight alongside them. Not to flee when the fight was engaged.

I knew his impulsive move had hit me hard because of that, but what made it worse was that he was my little brother. A brother who had fled while I was fighting.

That sore spot, that damn hurt in my chest that kept asking why he hadn’t stayed with me, infuriated me even more than whatever lusty impulse kept directing my eyes toward the beta. However, Carlile was young. And he loved me, just like I loved him and Davos loved us both. The whelp would learn to be a better man.

Even if I had to whip it into him on the training field.

“ He had barely gotten out of my sight when they attacked me,” I continued, making sure my voice was steady. “Three of them, and they weren't feinting their blows. One seemed to be the leader, or at least the others followed his direction.” I let my eyes drift as I tried to recall every detail. Of course, they moved straight to Rosemary, but surely I had an excuse to be looking at her now. Right?

“ I got one of them down and was holding off the other two but… I was losing.” I cleared my throat. I was the best fighter among us, a feat borne from candles of work rather than natural talent. However, I was no battlemage, and unfortunately steel was no match to magic. “The leader was skilled in magical attacks and defensive spells. I lost my sword, and I couldn’t get past his shield. My power reserves were much smaller than his were. I was close to being overcome when the beta girl came out of her room. I realized she was going to get caught up in the fight, so I…” I trailed off. I found this part particularly difficult to talk about. My instincts had taken over in a way that rarely happened. I blamed Carlile for leaving and setting my alpha instincts alight. I had acted stupidly.

“ I threw myself at one and knocked him out, but he got me in the gut.”

I could feel Davos’ eyes boring into my skull. This was the part he had picked at during our first debriefing. It was what I expected Sinclair to harp on now. Why had I left myself open? Why had I tried to disable an attacker at such cost to myself? Was I sure the beta hadn’t pushed me, or somehow influenced me?

Didn’t I understand my life was more important to the pack than hers was?

A voice, deep inside me, growled a fierce denial of that thought, but I ignored it.

To my surprise, without a single question or comment, Sinclair gestured for me to go on.

“ Ah… I tried to continue but I lost strength and fell to the ground. I believed I was mortally wounded.” I grimaced. Another stupidity. The wound was shallow, barely a scratch, and almost healed already.

“ After that I cannot be completely certain about events. Rosemary crouched over me and… and took my hand.” I swallowed at the memory of her small, warm hand clutching mine so firmly. I had been shaking with the force of the moment, sure I was about to die, and that this sweet, young girl would be killed on my watch, and yet she was comforting me . Trying to save me instead of running like she should have done, to save herself.

“ I don’t know what happened,” I admitted. “I was barely conscious. My guess is that she is a strong magic user… Or maybe it was just dumb luck? She threw a bolt of magic at the remaining bandit. The leader. It was strong enough to knock him down and I didn’t see what happened to him after that. Rosem- the beta seemed to faint as well. I felt… better. Maybe she used some magic to heal me? Or perhaps my wound was not as bad as I originally thought.”

It had certainly felt like a fatal wound. It had bled so badly I had been sure I was about to die, but when I checked under the bandages, there was only a small gash that barely grazed the muscle of my abdomen.

“ What color was the beta’s magic?”

Sinclair asked the strangest questions. What difference could it make? The color of magic had no bearing on power or ability. It was arbitrary, like the color of hair or eyes. And besides, why not just ask her to demonstrate?

“ I thought you saw,” I said, resentment plain in my voice. “Weren't you right there watching it all play out?” And without lifting a finger to help us , I added silently, knowing he would hear the missing words by implication.

“ I only arrived in time to see him thrown back,” he insisted. “I want your account of what happened.”

Davos turned to frown at Sinclair. I was too tired for this. Sinclair was playing some kind of game again and he was using all of us as pawns, and it didn’t matter whether I could see that or not. A pawn can’t decide its own fate, can’t see anything except the square in front. Davos gave the man too much rope, and he would end up hanging us all. I sighed, heavily, letting them both know my displeasure.

“ I guess it was a very light brown?” I tried to picture it. My eyes had been propped open only by sheer force of will at that point, by a need to witness our deaths if that was the only thing left in my power. The bolt of magic had streaked across me in the dark, like lightning. “It was muddy looking, like young children's magic often is before they settle on their final color.” That was odd, come to think of it. I was no mage, and small bits of attack magic were all I could really muster on my best days. However I didn't think I'd ever seen magic like that in an adult. Maybe because she was a foreigner?

I shrugged. “It almost looked like the color of my own magic, but with a bit of brown mixed in.”

“ And did you feel anything when she used it?”

I arched a brow at Sinclair. “Feel anything?”

“ She was holding your hand.” Sinclair looked at me intensely. “Did you feel… a connection between the two of you, or…” He trailed off.

I realized my eyes were on her again. She was laughing at something Bastian was whispering in her ear, her long mane of coppery curls glinting in the sunlight. I waited for jealousy to flare, but it was strangely absent. I only wished I was there alongside them, that I could share the joke with them both.

My first instinct was to say no in answer to Sinclair’s question. Why would I feel a connection with a random beta? But I did, didn’t I? I turned the idea over in my head, not because Sinclair had asked, but because it felt like I was somehow getting closer to a truth I desperately needed to know. Did I feel something that night? Blood sang in my ears as a memory fragment suddenly slid back into place. Yes. Yes , I had felt something. In spite of the spreading pool of blood under me, in spite of the pain and the bitter cold that was stroking my extremities, I’d felt like I wanted to throw her to the ground and take her, right then and there. I’d felt like I wanted to reach up and tuck her under myself to shield her from harm. I’d felt like the fact that we were two people, in two separate bodies, was dangerous and wrong, and I needed to rectify that immediately.

I'd dismissed it at the time as a surge of battle hormones, the need to rut, and the need to protect, and the need to spill blood all part and parcel of being an alpha. I'd never felt them quite so strongly before, or felt such a surge of heat that seemed to emanate from between our grasping hands, but…. It was there. A connection.

There was no way I was going to admit that intensity to Sinclair.

“ I felt… something,” I muttered as quietly as possible, forcing my eyes to the sides of the road, avoiding my packmates, and especially avoiding her. The beta.

Thankfully, that answer seemed satisfy Sinclair, if not Davos.

“ Why are you asking these questions, Sinclair?” Davos demanded, because of course he didn’t know. He just assumed Sinclair was working for our good, as he always did.

“ I suspect our little…” Sinclair hesitated. “Our little beta might have potential as a mage,” he continued, so smoothly, as if he hadn’t hesitated at all. I wondered what he had been about to say, then decided I didn’t care. All I wanted was for them to go, so that I could brood in peace.

“ As a healer, perhaps,” he said. Was the man babbling? “I wanted to know if she had healed Lynter’s wound.”

“ Why not just ask that then?” Davos said, reasonably enough, and then heaved a sigh. “Being straightforward isn’t a character flaw, my friend.”

Sinclair glowered as though he was the one being interrogated.

“ In the heat of battle people might not… recognize exactly what the facts are. I find it's best to ask leading questions about such events.” He didn't quite look down his nose at us, but I could tell he wanted to.

Greasy bastard.

“ Thank you for your time, Lynter,” he said, and I, the second-in-command, was dismissed.

Sinclair urged his horse away without another word.

Davos might have been my packlead, but he was also my brother. We had been inseparable as children, and to this day I knew him better than anyone else in the world. So I knew he was thinking the exact same thing as I was, as we watched Sinclair ride away.

That prick is up to something.

Maybe keeping an eye on the beta girl wasn't such a bad idea after all.