Page 3 of Wishes in the Moonlight (Rocky Mountain Wolves #4)

~Amanda~

“Good night, Alpha.”

The guard at the top of the stairs nodded his head in greeting as I walked past on the way to my bedroom.

It had been a long day - another long day - and arriving in my room for some much-needed sleep should have been a relief.

However, as I entered and flipped the light on, the vast space felt utterly cold and unwelcoming.

This had been my parents’ bedroom as long as I could remember, the place I ran to when I couldn’t sleep as a child and the place I visited my mother almost daily during her months-long illness.

When I claimed the Alpha position as my own, moving into this room had been the last thing on my mind.

In fact, I tried to resist it when the house manager asked about redecorating.

“Can’t I stay in my current room?” I asked.

His lips pursed in a way I had already come to learn meant that he disagreed with me but respected my position too much to say so directly. “The master suite, the Alpha’s room, has the best security in the house. Everything is set up to keep you safe.”

He left unsaid that asking them to change all the arrangements would be a waste of everyone’s time, but I got the message.

My parents’ things were moved into storage until we knew their long-term plans and the staff brought my belongings to the Alpha’s room, along with a brand-new bed-and-dresser set.

The king-sized bed took up nearly twice the space as my old double and still looked small in the sprawling top-floor suite.

Besides the bedroom with its sitting area complete with a fireplace and a door to a private balcony beyond, the room had an ensuite bathroom bigger than many of the staff bedrooms, and a walk-in closet that even my substantial wardrobe seemed to get lost in.

With a partner, the space might have seemed a little more reasonable, but for me alone, it felt excessive.

Not to mention lonely.

With a sigh, I headed to the bathroom and stripped off my clothes for the day, replacing them with the pajama set that had already been laid out for me.

Even with the clothes in the hamper, Troy’s scent lingered, so I scrubbed my face and applied my nighttime cream, its warm vanilla aroma drowning out any other smells.

Brushing my hair and my teeth, I managed to keep my mind off him until I padded back out to the bedroom and climbed into the enormous bed, reaching over to the panel on the wall that turned off all the lights.

The room plunged into darkness and the ache in my chest swelled.

For years, I’d been living with this pain, this unfulfilled need inside me.

Most of the time, I could ignore it, but since returning from the Crimsontooth pack, since seeing Troy more in the past few weeks than I had in years, the pull of the bond seemed to be growing stronger again.

I called him to my office that night out of sheer desperation for it to stop.

I had enough on my plate without throwing my fated mate into the mix.

I’m glad he didn’t agree, Cinder mumbled quietly inside my head. It would have hurt more if he rejected us.

Rejection will only hurt temporarily, I corrected. After the initial shock, the pain will stop.

I don’t mean physical pain. Emotionally, it would hurt you if he gave in.

We’d had some variation of this discussion too many times to count over the past seven years. Cinder swore she could feel Troy’s wolf’s devotion whenever we were near him. He wanted us more than anything, she declared.

The same couldn’t be said of his human side, though. He wanted us now , once the hardship and struggle had vanished, but he’d never been willing to fight for it before.

He told you what your father said, Cinder reminded me, as if I hadn’t just listened to Troy’s excuses for myself. We would have been kicked out of the pack.

And? I’m not some fragile princess who needs to live in the lap of luxury. I would have gone with him if it came to that.

He didn’t know that.

Only because he never bothered to ask! My frustration boiled over as I tossed onto my other side, still trying to ease the ache in my soul.

That’s what bothers me more than anything.

He made the decision for both of us without talking to me, without asking me what I wanted.

And now he’s doing the same thing, deciding on his own that we should accept the bond instead of really listening to me.

All he’d done since I became Alpha was tell me how we could finally be together. Not once did he ask me how I felt about the past seven years or if I even wanted a mate at all.

That should have been the end of it but Cinder refused to let it go. You never gave him a chance, Amanda. He tried to talk to you over the years. You never let him get close.

We were never going to agree on this. I really need to go to sleep. Can we pick this fight back up in the morning?

Fine, but don’t think I’ll forget.

Wouldn’t dream of it. Good night, Cin.

My wolf fell silent and soon, sleep thankfully claimed me.

The reprieve didn’t last long. A sharp knock on my door woke me up just after three in the morning.

“Alpha?” The muffled sound of the guard’s voice filtered through my bedroom door. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” I called back groggily, hauling myself up to check the time. “What’s going on?”

“A skirmish at the border. It’s under control but my protocol is to check on you and make sure it wasn’t a distraction and you’re secure.”

At the sound of the word ‘border’, an image of Troy’s wolf, standing atop the rock on the night we met, flashed through my mind. Was he on duty? Had he been involved in the ‘skirmish’? Was he okay?

Pushing those thoughts aside, I swung my feet over the side of the bed, wiping the last of the sleep from my eyes.

“Have the senior officer responsible for the team in my office in ten minutes to make a report.”

“Yes, sir,” the response came through the door. “I mean, ma’am.”

It would take some time for that particular habit to die off among my staff.

With the clock ticking, I tied my hair back into a loose ponytail and threw on some workout clothes, a fitted top and yoga pants, before heading back down to my office.

Things were just as I’d left them only a few hours earlier, and I woke up my computer screen just in time to see the camera feed from the back door showing a tall, broad man walking in.

Most of the men in the pack fit that description, but somehow, even though I could only see the back of his head, I recognized Troy immediately. Cinder stirred in my head and the ache in my chest deepened.

Apparently, fate took my comment about picking things up again in the morning a little too literally.