Page 21 of Ruthless Alpha
“Seriously, what is it?”
“You just—you’re kind of a nerd about this stuff,” Rosie said. She was still smiling, but there was an edge of nervousness in her expression, as if she didn’t know whether she’d gone too far. I let out a huff of laughter, and her posture eased.
“You bet I am,” I confirmed, pushing a pair of imaginary glasses up my nose as I continued my explanation in a terrible, nasal voice.
That made her burst out laughing, and I’d never heard a more beautiful sound; it was like the pealing of delicate bells, and I wanted to hear it every day for the rest of my life. It was hard not to stare at her, not to reach out and draw her close, to find out what that smile tasted like.
“Sounds like I’m missing the party,” came a voice from the top of the stairs, and I whirled around to see a familiar, tall figure standing in the doorway. His dark curls were cropped short against his scalp, the deep brown of his skin contrasting against the whiteness of his smile, and I grinned back at him.
“Rosie, meet Jace. Jace, this is Rosie.”
Chapter 10 - Rosie
After my impromptu lesson in weapon history, it was almost easy to accept that Xander wasn’t mad, that there would be no consequences for my failed seduction attempt. As far as I could tell, the only consequence was that I felt confused, mortified, and disappointed in a way that I didn’t want to examine.
The atmosphere in the house had changed, certainly, but it was—as far as I could tell—a positive one. Jace was polite and friendly, and his presence changed something in Xander. I’d only really known him to be direct and taciturn, but Jace brought out something more relaxed in him; when they returned home after a day of development, they were laughing and joking together—a far cry from Xander’s usual heavy tread after he’d spent the day with his Pack.
This new and energetic Xander was also eager for me to have more regular fight training. Once I’d mastered the tennis balls, we moved on to handheld weapons. This, of course, involved dedicated time spent looking at the weapons on Xander’s wall and listening to him ramble about their history. I knew no other setting in which he was so expressive—his hands gestured with every word, and his dark eyes were alight with enthusiasm. In those moments, he might have been an excitable boy, not the stern leader I knew him to be. More than once, I wondered what he’d been like at my age.
It wasn’t until the third such lecture that we came to a weapon about which he knew very little, and I couldn’t help being disappointed. It was the first weapon to catch my eye; with shimmering gold woven into the steel of the blade, it stood in stark contrast to the dark chromes of the other weapons. My fingers itched to take the hilt in my hand, to test its weight andhear the sound it made when it cut through the air—Xander called it the blade’s song.
“I’m sure you can deduce that this one wasn’t purely an Ensign design,” he said with a wry smile. “It’s very light, but the balance is flawless, and the blade is a really unique shape.”
Once he pointed that out, I wondered how I hadn’t noticed it before. The taper of the blade was stark, the end slightly curved.
“What’s the shape for?”
“Now you’re asking the right questions,” Xander replied. “I don’t know. It’s not one that we get out often—it really is too light for our fighters. If the curve was more pronounced, then you might be looking at something designed for disembowelment, but I doubt that’s what such a light weapon would be for. It’s our little mystery. Probably only the collaborators could tell us, and I don’t know who they were.”
“Can I hold it?” I asked before I could stop myself. I expected a kind rebuff—I couldn’t say when I’d started expecting kindness from him—but he looked like he’d been waiting for me to ask.
“Of course,” he said, reaching up to take it carefully from the wall. He held it differently from the others—as if it was some creature he’d plucked out of the sea, beautiful but alien. He placed it carefully into my hands, and my skin tingled where the metal touched it. Even in the limited, static light of the basement, the metal of the blade seemed to shimmer, the rivers of gold running through it shifting and changing even when the weapon was still.
“Hold it by the hilt,” said Xander softly, seeming almost as captivated as I was. “See how it feels in your hand.”
I obeyed him, shifting my hold so that my right hand gripped the weapon’s hilt.
“It feels… good,” I said, unable to tear my gaze away from the blade in my hand. “I think I understand what you mean about the balance.”
“Looks like we’ve found you a training weapon.” That got my attention. When I snapped my head around to look at him, Xander was smiling down at me. He looked—he was pleased, I could tell that, but there was something else in that expression, too. Relief? Whatever it was, it softened his stern features, and then my stomach flipped pleasantly. It was strange to feel my heartbeat accelerate without the sharp stab of fear, to shiver without the cold ache of dread.
“This?” I said, stupidly. “Surely it’s—”
“It’s perfect for you,” he promised. The way his lips rounded out the syllables made me want to reach out and touch, to feel if they were as soft as they looked. What waswrongwith me? I shook my head to clear it as he continued, “Like I said, none of my guys are getting any use out of something like that. I’m glad it’s found a home, if you like it.”
I did like the weapon. I liked the way the metal stayed cool in my hand, even after long drills. I liked how light it was, how it seemed to know what I wanted it to do before I did it. Xander told me I was a natural, but I didn’t know how to explain that it wasn’t me, it was the sword he’d put in my hands.
I also didn’t know how to explain the way my body reacted to him when I was holding it. Perhaps it was the thrill of adrenaline and the heavy, thumping heartbeat that came with exercise. Perhaps I was imagining it; perhaps it was a natural extension of the grudging attraction I had come to feel for Xander. It didn’t feel the same, though. I might appreciatethe cut of his jaw, or become distracted by the morning light bouncing off his dark hair over breakfast, but those feelings were easy to squash. At any other time, I could push that attraction down, ignore them, remind myself that he wasn’t just a cute boy who’d caught my eye, he was the Alpha of the most terrifying Pack in the archipelago, and he literally owned me.
When I was training, with that sword in my hands, my body was in charge: it was the only reasonable explanation for how easily I became fixated on a single bead of sweat running down his neck, the crease between his brows when he was concentrating, or the network of raised veins that decorated his forearms and the backs of his hands. A few weeks ago, I might have suspected he was doing something to me, that the hilt of the weapon was laced with some kind of aphrodisiac, but I didn’t entertain that paranoia now. If Xander wanted me, he’d have had the opportunity, and he’d passed it up.
I only had myself to blame when Xander sent the weapon flying out of my hands and clattering to the ground on a Friday afternoon. After three weeks of training with it, I should have seen that move coming, and we both knew it. The problem was, I’d been distracted by the way his pupils dilated when he was concentrating—his eyes, I had come to realize, were not utterly black, but the deepest brown I’d ever known—and I hadn’t seen the disarm coming.
“That was embarrassing for you,” said Xander, a smile tugging at one side of his mouth. I’d stopped expecting reprimands for messing up in training, resigning myself to light teasing instead.
“Maybe I’m just lulling you into a false sense of security,” I replied. Talking back still sent a little jolt of adrenaline through my system—a warning that I was stepping out of bounds, that I needed to brace myself—but I was learning to ignore it. Xanderliked itwhen I joked around with him, I reminded myself. It felt dangerous to lean into it, like I might fool myself into forgetting that he’d bought and paid for me, that I wasn’t free to leave. Still, I was desperate enough for a little slice of joy that I allowed myself to forget the truth, even if just for a while.
“Sure you are,” Xander said, humoring me. “Pick that up.”
