Page 20 of Ruthless Alpha
I would make it up to her in the morning if she let me. For now, I had to let her slam the door behind her, listen to her hurried footsteps, and the hitched sobs of her breath as she fled back to her room. The moment she was gone, that quiet descended again, and I was alone. I almost wondered if it had happened at all. It had been the strangest mix of dream and nightmare, so surreal that if it weren’t for her lingering scent and the stubborn hardness in my pants, I might have imagined the whole ordeal.
Sleep evaded me for a long time that night. Even once I had rubbed myself to a furtive, guilty climax, I couldn’t still my racing mind. I’d been trying to keep her safe with me, but would she be better off in the dormitories, away from the pressure of being the Alpha’s wife? I’d almost forgotten about the marriage aspect of her purchase, but Rosie clearly hadn’t. It had been mostly for her benefit, after all.
When I finally did drift to sleep, my dreams were fractured and anxious, and the blare of my alarm clock was almost welcome. My morning workout was a challenge for mytired body, but a relief to my restless mind, and by the time I emerged for breakfast, I knew exactly what to say to Rosie.
I was a little surprised to find her in the kitchen at all, though I really shouldn’t have been. If I’d learned anything about Rosie over the past week, it was that she took her duty—or what she saw as her duty—as seriously as a heart attack.
She was doing her best to ignore me when I entered the room, busying herself with preparing breakfast—French toast, because she’d already figured out how to butter me up. I let her avoid me for a few minutes, mulling over my little speech as she plated up my breakfast, setting it in front of me before turning her attention to cleaning the countertops.
“Will you sit down, please?” I said. It was difficult to ignore the delicious, steaming plate of goodness in front of me, but this was more important.
It was with enormous reluctance that Rosie put down her cloth and took a seat opposite me. Even seated, her body was turned away from mine, her eyes downcast.
“First of all, I want you to know that I’m not mad,” I said, “and nothing bad is going to happen. Okay?”
“Okay,” she echoed, her voice trembling and uncertain. I could only put her at ease by explaining, so I ploughed on.
“I know that when I—when I bought you, it was as a wife, but I don’t consider you that way,” I told her. “The traders use the marriage ceremony to convince you that we’re bound somehow, even if it’s a lesser bond than mating. They only do it so you feel like you owe us something, and that you can’t leave.”
Rosie didn’t respond, her gaze still downcast, her body still turned away from me.
“I want you to know that you don’t owe me anything,” I assured her. “If you wanted to just… sit around and maybe make some of this amazing French toast on occasion, that would be fine by me.” I smiled at her, hoping for a glimpse of hers in return, but when she finally met my eyes, her face was set and hostile.
“And if I wanted to leave?” she demanded. I should have expected that, but it still hit me like a truck. She’d be happier on another island, I knew that. I’d seen her little white wolf running laps around my backyard, looking increasingly frustrated with every completed circuit. Ensign life wasn’t for everyone, and Rosie had made it clear that she didn’t agree with the way we did things. The problem was that even if she’d be happy elsewhere, I wasn’t certain that she’d besafe.She was so young, so vulnerable and small, making her easy to take advantage of. Sure, Ethan or Leo would keep an eye on her if I dropped her on one of their islands, but nothing more. I couldn’t stand the thought of her out on her own somewhere, with no one to fight for her.
I had a feeling that if I said all that, I was going to scare the shit out of her.
“I’d prefer it if you stayed,” I said instead, and her bottom lip began to tremble.
“That’s what I thought you’d say,” she breathed. Her face was softly creased with sadness, but her eyes were hard as flint, full of resentment and blame. I had nothing to say to that expression, nothing to offer her beyond a desperate hope that she would grow to be comfortable on my island, that she would grow to be comfortable with me.
“I’m not eating breakfast alone,” I said, pushing my plate toward her and rising to fetch a new one. There was a single,smaller piece of toast still in the pan, with the saddest little strip of bacon, and I helped myself to those. On any other day, Rosie would have protested, insisting I take the larger plate, but this morning she was angry with me, and so she tucked into the breakfast that now belonged to her without complaint. It was kind of adorable, watching her pour out syrup with such clear passive aggression.
“Come on,” I said, once both plates were clean. “Time for some training. You look like you want to punch me in the face, and I’m of a mind to let you.”
“But I have to—” she started to protest.
“The dishes will be there when we get back,” I reminded her. “Come on.”
She only hesitated for a second before she rose to join me, and I couldn’t tell if that was a good sign or a bad one. I thought she’d enjoyed our previous training session at least a little bit, so she might have been eager to go again, or she might simply have been so mad at me that she was leaping at the promised opportunity to punch me in the face.
Either way, she followed me down to the basement, quiet and a little nervous, just like always, waiting patiently while I rifled through the equipment. When I turned around, the box of tennis balls in my arms, she was standing in front of the weapon wall, staring up at the array of knives and flails, and projectiles that were on display.
“Anything in particular caught your eye today, Madam?” I joked, trying not to be offended that she flinched at the sound of my voice. I needed to be better at not surprising her.
“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” she said, slightly awed, and I couldn’t help puffing my chest out a little.
“For a long time, shifters didn’t use weapons,” I told her. “We’ve kinda got them built in, right?”
She nodded, apparently listening with interest. I needed very little encouragement to talk about the history of shifter weapon development, so a nod was more than enough to set me off.
“This here is one of the first weapons that Ensign developed,” I explained. “Human weapons are designed to help their fighters keep grip on the handle, but this one is designed to be easily dropped with the shift, even thrown at the final moment. Now, the balance on this one makes switching to use as a projectile a little tricky, but that was improved on in the second model, which is this one here…”
It was easy to lose myself in the rich history of Ensign’s weapons. For all the shame I sometimes felt about how our island operated, I had always loved our work, and it felt good to share this part of my culture with Rosie. She was smiling as I spoke, her gaze intent on the things I showed her—she seemed at ease for the first time since I met her, so much so that when I moved on to explaining the history of projectile weapons, she gave a little giggle.
“What?” I asked, and she shook her head.
“Nothing.”
