Page 2 of Wishes in the Moonlight (Rocky Mountain Wolves #4)
~Present day~
~Troy~
The familiar ache started in my chest as soon as I lay down on the narrow bed in the guard’s barracks.
Over the past seven years, the pull of the mate bond had shifted from an all-consuming sting, like being stabbed with a thousand small knives all at once, to a blanket of loss and sadness that covered me each time my mind quieted.
If I could keep busy, I could keep the ache at bay, so I filled every waking moment with as much purpose and business as possible.
Only at night did I give into the pain, indulging in it almost like an addiction.
In a twisted sort of way, I treasured each moment of the torture. When it stopped, it would mean my bond to Amanda had been completely severed and she belonged to someone else instead. That kind of emptiness would be worse than any pain.
Some nights, the nights she took other men to her bed, the pain worsened to the point that I had to bite down on my pillow to keep from crying out and alerting the other men in my unit to my distress.
Did she think of me in those moments? I almost hoped she did, that it gave her some kind of cruel pleasure to imagine the suffering she inflicted on me, because the alternative would be far worse: that I didn’t cross her mind at all.
Tossing onto my side, I tried to find a position that made the ache a little less so I could go to sleep, but before I managed it, a voice sounded in my head.
Captain, the Alpha has asked to see you. Are you available?
Up until a couple of weeks ago, ‘the Alpha’ would have referred to that smug bastard Alpha Warren who never failed to look down on me like a pile of shit that he’d accidentally stepped in.
If he were the one asking, I might have come up with an excuse to put off the late-night meeting request, since it was a request and not an order.
However, since Amanda deposed her father, she’d become the Alpha, and the idea of her asking for me, even for work-related reasons, intensified the aching need inside me so much that sleep would have been impossible even if I wanted to refuse.
And I didn’t want to. More than anything in the world, I wanted to see her.
On my way, I responded to my subordinate, trying not to be annoyed over the fact that Amanda sent the message through official channels rather than reaching out to me directly.
As Alpha, she had the ability to mind-link with any of us, but I’d never heard her voice in my head.
Just the idea sent a shiver of pleasure through me that in turn made the longing for her even worse.
Dressed back in my simple black uniform, I knocked at the pack house’s back door. The guard on duty opened the door wide, already expecting me. “Do you know where you’re going?”
The route to the Alpha’s office had been firmly ingrained into my memory since the day I made my ill-fated visit to Alpha Warren. “I’m fine on my own, thanks.”
Silence swelled in the empty corridors, the lights dim and most of the staff already gone to bed for the night. At the end of the hall, the door to the Alpha’s office stood open, the lights shining bright compared to the darkness of the night outside.
I stopped to knock rather than walking straight in. “Alpha?”
Amanda’s head raised, her nose twitching as my scent carried over to her. A subtle movement, but I didn’t miss it since my nose mirrored the action. Even across the room, I could smell her wild rose scent as clear as day.
What did I smell like to her? I’d never had the chance to ask.
“Come in. Close the door behind you.”
I did as instructed, doing my best to ignore the way my heart began to pound at the prospect of being alone with her.
I’d tried to talk to her a couple of times since she became Alpha but there had always been other people around.
She refused to see me alone. What it meant that she’d changed her mind and invited me there, I had no idea.
With her father’s desk between us, I came to a stop a few feet in front of it and clasped my hands behind my back, feet spread shoulder-width apart. A warrior’s pose, ready for action. “You asked to see me?”
Her beautiful brown wavy hair cascading over her shoulders, Amanda leaned back in her chair, her legs crossed and her hands gripping the armrests tightly. Nothing in her pose suggested she’d called me there for a personal discussion, so her words, when they came, took me completely by surprise.
“This can’t go on any longer. Reject me and let’s be done with it, once and for all.”
Every muscle in my body stiffened and my jaw clenched while my wolf howled in my head.
Fuck that, Hunter snarled.
Trust me, I agree. Let me handle this.
Weighing my words carefully, I cleared my throat, finding my mouth had gone dry. “I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
Her nostrils flared, anger simmering in her deep brown eyes. “Why not?”
She had to be kidding me. The last time we spoke, down in the holding cells when everything with the former Alpha and the mad scientist went down, I told her I wanted to finally accept our bond. Without her father in the way, we had no reason not to. Didn’t she hear a word I said that day?
Keeping my voice as even as possible, I stuck to the basics. “I won’t throw away the Goddess’ blessing. We were chosen for each other. There were obstacles, yes, but there don’t have to be anymore. Why would I have waited all this time, held out for so long, only to reject this gift now?”
She said nothing, her lips pressed into a thin line and nothing but resentment in her expression.
Needing to provoke something more out of her than bitterness, I played my trump card, hoping she wouldn’t call my bluff. “If you want to break the bond, you’ll have to reject me.”
We both knew the consequences of that. Rejected wolves often found second-chance fated mates. The wolves who did the rejecting rarely did. They could take chosen mates, sure, but that magical, indefinable fated connection? It would pass them by forever.
Amanda had been prepared to forsake it, ready to mate with Alpha Vaughan of the Crimsontooth Pack, that bastard who never understood what an incredible woman he’d been presented with. However, now that she was free to choose her own path forward, I had a feeling she wanted a fated bond for herself.
It means something to me , she said to me on that moonlit night so many years ago, the only time she ever looked at me with anything other than pain and resentment in her beautiful eyes. Every moment of that brief encounter would be stamped on my heart as long as I had air in my lungs.
Alpha Warren ordered me not to reject her for fear she’d find another fated mate, one who wouldn’t be so easy to control. Selfishly, I agreed, hoping that somehow, against all odds, we might find a way to be together in the end.
It had seemed impossible at the time, but now? We were so close. All she had to do was say yes and we could get the happy ending we’d both been denied for so long.
Amanda didn’t seem to see it that way.
Still, she didn’t reject me outright.
“I could order you to do it,” she reminded me instead. “As your Alpha, I could force you.”
I bowed my head in acknowledgement of her logic even as I denied her conclusion. “I would renounce my pack link before I let that happen.”
“And become a rogue?” Amanda scoffed. “ Now you would risk it?”
My muscles somehow tensed even tighter. During the last conversation we had, in front of several witnesses down in the prison, I couldn’t stop myself from sharing part of the conversation I had with her father the day I went to ask for his blessing.
He told me in no uncertain terms that if Amanda accepted me, he would banish us both from the pack.
If it were just me, I wouldn’t have cared. But to ask the Alpha’s daughter, the pack Lota, to give up her family, her home, her inheritance, her legacy, just to be with me? How could I be that selfish?
I tried to explain that to her, clumsily, the last time we spoke, but clearly, she hadn’t been impressed.
“I was always ready to risk anything for you. I just wouldn’t put you at risk.”
She snorted an exhale, still unimpressed, before lowering her head with a sigh. “This isn’t over, Troy, but I’m tired. We’ll talk about it later.”
The sound of my name on her lips drove the ache of the bond to almost unbearable heights, coupled with the need to care for her. She did look tired. I could help. I could pamper her, spoil her, take on whatever responsibility she needed me to so she wouldn’t have to do it alone.
I would give her anything, every thing she needed, if she would only let me.
But she turned in her chair, giving me her back in a clear sign of dismissal. Her Alpha authority compelled me to walk away, the ache in my chest deepening with every step I took in the opposite direction.
I wouldn’t be getting any sleep that night.