Page 42 of The Alpha Wolf Defying Fate

“It’s just like before,” she mused. “The voice went away when you held me like this the last time. And he had been gone when we slept together. He only came back when the kelpie pulled me under water.”

She gripped me tighter. Her face pressed into my chest as she let out a sound somewhere between a laugh and a cry.

“Please, Ayden, just hold me,” she whispered. “Keep him away from my mind.”

I slowly tightened my arms around her, my chin dipping down to rest on top of her head. “I got you,” I assured her. “I won’t let go.”

I could hear the others approaching the camp. My gaze going over everything left to do, finding that the only thing that was not finished was lighting a fire. I decided that Baer could handle that on his own and lifted Sasha into my arms.

“What are you doing?” she asked, startled by the sudden movement.

“I’m taking us somewhere a little more private. Unless you don’t mind your cousin and her mate seeing you like this.”

Sasha looked over my shoulder in the direction of Aurora’s voice before nodding to me. “Okay.”

I didn’t have far to go. My tent was private enough. At least the other two couldn’t see, as Sasha clung to me for the comfort she needed just to stay sane.

We laid down on top of my sleeping bag. Her head rested on my chest as I propped myself up with my bag.

I felt guilty for not taking her more seriously before when she mentioned the voice. I should have had alarm bells going off long before we got to this point.

Lightly, I began to draw sigils on her back. Each symbol aimed to protect her mind from outside forces. I could feel the fear still deep inside her. Fear that if she let go of me that the voice would come back to taunt her.

The sigils were ancient. Symbols that I had once come across in my family’s library of diaries courtesy of my ancestors. Their original use was to keep vampires out of human minds as a way to protect them from compulsion, but I had hopes that they could help Sasha with the voice as well.

“Why is this happening to me?” she asked as I drew the symbols over and over across her back.

“What do you mean?” I asked her.

“If I’m not evil, then why did this voice occur in my head?”

I paused my drawings as I tried to think of the appropriate response to her question.

“Sometimes, the brightest light is what all beings follow. Maybe you are like a beacon compared to the rest of us. A challenge to dim your light.” I offered.

She looked up at me and frowned. “That’s a hell of a way of telling someone that they might just be too perfect.”

I laughed. “I never said you were perfect.”

“Oh? So, I’m not perfect? And here I thought that I was the most magnificent creature you’ve ever laid your eyes on?”

I stuttered for a moment before seeing her lips curl into a mischievous smile.

“And here I thought you hadn’t had an evil bone in your body,” I teased her back.

Her smile dimmed a little.

“Too soon?”

“Just a little,” she said with a nod.

She laid her head back down on my chest, her fingers playing with my shirt as I returned to the sigils I had been tracing over her back.

“What do you think the voice is? And why is it he isn’t there when you’re with me?”

I gave a shrug, my fingers still moving along her back. “This is the Forgotten Realm. Who knows what beings are around here. As far as it being gone when I’m near you, that’s simple.” She looked up at me curiously. “Come on, you know this.”

She shook her head. “If I did, I wouldn’t be asking you.”

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