Page 50 of Cruel Alpha

“Breathe, Baby,” he was saying, “you’re okay, you’re okay.”

That wasn’t the point. Washeokay? As my vision cleared, his face came into focus, and I might have passed out again if I hadn’t realized that most of the blood decorating his face and neck wasn’t his. There was a bruise blooming above his eyebrow, and his chest was decorated with shallow cuts, but he was whole and here, and his heart was beating strong beneath my palm.

“You’re alive,” I said, my voice cracking with a sob. I’d been so determined to save him, and now that I had, the terror and the grief that I’d had no time for came rushing out of me. “I saw—I saw you die, and I couldn’t—I had to—”

The rest of the sentence was lost to more sobs, clutching him to me and gulping in uneven breaths as he stroked my hair, pulling me into his lap so I could feel his warmth. His chest rose and fell; he smelled of blood and sweat and wolf—beneath it all, that familiar charcoal and pine—and he wasalive.We were both, against all odds, alive.

I was vaguely aware, as I sat in Caleb’s lap trying to regulate my breathing, that people were coming up to us, talking to him, asking and answering questions about the living and the dead, about the next steps. I wiped my face messily against his chest, sitting up properly.

“Sorry,” I said. “You’ve probably got more important things to deal with right now.”

Caleb’s face darkened, cupping my jaw in his dirty hand.

“Nothingis more important than you,” he said, low and fierce. “I’ll get Liam and the guys to sort things for now. We need to get you home.”

I could only nod, too selfish to insist that he leave me and do what he needed to. I slipped out of his lap, letting him jog over to where Leo, Xander, Noah, Jace, and Liam were all standing. Without the warmth of Caleb’s body, I was suddenly freezing. Wrapping my arms around myself, I watched him talk urgently to them.

“Hey.”

A soft voice from behind me made me jump, but it was only one of the females who had ventured out of the hall. I recognized her from school—she’d been friends with Melanie Simons—and I was pretty sure her name was Lydia.

“I thought you might want this,” she said, holding out a thick blue blanket. I took it gratefully, wrapping it around my shoulders. After everything that had happened that day, I didn’t care if the entire Pack saw me naked, but I was freezing.

“Thanks,” I said, attempting a smile. I don’t know if I succeeded, but Lydia smiled back.

“That was pretty cool, what you did out there,” she told me. “We saw from the windows upstairs.”

I hardly knew what to make of that. No one had evercomplimentedmy magic before. I needed to say something,though. I was going to be Alpha female of this Pack; I couldn’t just blink stupidly back at her.

I was saved by Caleb's return.

“Thank you, Lydia,” he said. Lydia nodded, recognizing her dismissal.

“Of course, she’s my Alpha female,” she replied. “Get her home now, Alpha.”

Caleb didn’t waste time.

“Alright, Baby,” he said, sweeping me up off the ground as if I weighed nothing, “let’s get you out of here.”

I’d expected to be taken back to Julia’s, but instead, Caleb carried me around the hall and down the long path that led to his house. I’d only been in the Alpha’s residence once before: the night the twins were conceived. For so long, I’d thought the Caleb who kissed me that night had been an act, a cruel front he put up to get me into bed, but that had never been true. It was the cruel, dismissive Caleb who had been the front all along. I nosed at his neck, hardly caring about the blood drying on his skin, and a low growl began to rumble through his chest.

He had to put me down to get the front door open, and I gripped the doorframe to stay upright, my legs still shaking like Bambi on ice. Something in the house was beeping, and I frowned as Caleb rushed inside and over to the large radio in the hallway. Picking up the headset, he held the receiver up to his ear as he twisted two dials.

“Lapine Alpha receiving. Over.”

The reply only sounded like low buzzing from where I was still attached to the doorframe, but Caleb let out a long, relieved sigh.

“Yeah, I’m alive,” he said. “Alyssa’s fine, just a little shaken. Will they be okay with you and Julia overnight? Over.”

The twins had made it to Ferris. Everyone I loved was safe. I could have collapsed again from the sheer relief of it, but I stayed resolutely upright, hardly listening as Caleb exchanged a few more words with Ethan before turning off the radio. I could hardly believe it: we were all alive, Lapine had won.

“They’re safe?” I asked, just to be certain.

“They’re safe,” he confirmed, wrapping his arms gently around my waist. “Though I’m going to kill Ethan for letting you come back here.”

“No, you’re not.”

“No, I’m not,” he admitted with a smile. “What Iamdoing is putting you in a nice hot shower.” I whimpered at the thought of it, and I felt his cock twitch against my belly.

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