Page 39 of Ruthless Alpha
Ferris wasn’t home, but it felt familiar. The cottages were made of stone rather than wood, but they were arranged in similar little clusters and surrounded by lush foliage, just like the cottages on Arbor. Walking through its winding paths, I felt like I could breathe for the first time in months.
In contrast, Xander seemed to grow more tense with every step. I’d spent the entire, silent trip running over what I could possibly say to him. How would I say goodbye to the man who had saved me and condemned me all at once? To my mate, whom I loved and was abandoning? We’d run for hours as our wolves before shifting back to our human forms for the approach to Ferris Town, but still, I couldn’t think of a way to express my feelings in words that wouldn’t hurt him even more than I already had.
Xander, too, seemed to struggle with the silence. Every few steps, I could feel his eyes flick over to me, hear him inhale as if to speak, only to think better of it.
The first voice to break the silence didn’t belong to either of us, but to a small boy. He couldn’t have been older than three or four, but he was barreling down the path as fast as his little legs would carry him, arms outstretched.
“Xander!” he cried, and Xander immediately ducked down to pick him up and swing him around in a wide arc.
“Hey buddy! How you doing?”
“I’m good. I foun’ a big bug inna yard!” said the boy as Xander settled him on his hip. His little face was so serious, as if the finding of the bug was an important scientific breakthrough.
“A big bug?” Xander exclaimed, and I really believed this was the most exciting news he’d heard in weeks. “You’ll have to show me.”
“Ok. Who’s that?”
“This is Rosie,” said Xander.” She’s—she’s a friend of mine, and she’s going to be staying on Ferris for a bit. Rosie, this is Adam.”
“Hi, Adam,” I said, giving him a little wave.
“Hi,” he replied. “You’re pretty.”
“Thank you. You’re pretty too.”
“I know,” he said. Then, apparently done with both of us, he tapped Xander’s shoulder impatiently. “You put me down.”
Xander obediently set him down, and Adam bolted off toward the large house at the end of the path, where a dark-haired woman was standing on the porch.
“Mom! Mom!” he cried as he ran. “Xander’s here!”
“I can see that,” said Julia indulgently, carding a hand through her son’s dark hair as he wrapped his little arms around her leg. I hadn’t realized how tall she was when she’d been tied to a chair in a spare cabin on Arbor, but as we approached, I realized she had almost a foot on me, her body long and willowy—or at least, it would have been, if not for the bump that protruded from her abdomen. She stroked her belly absent-mindedly as she smiled at the pair of us.
Xander bounded up the porch steps to greet her.
“I keep telling you not to swallow watermelons whole like that,” he joked, and Julia gave him a playful shove that made my wolf stand to attention, her hackles up. I had no right to bejealous of the easy way she touched him, especially considering the context, but my wolf neither knew nor cared.
“Good to see you too, idiot,” she said, before turning to me. Her smile didn’t falter for a moment; she seemed genuinely pleased to see me. “Hey, Rosie. Do you remember me?”
“You’re kind of hard to forget,” I replied, realizing as I spoke that she could absolutely take that the wrong way. I rushed to correct myself: “Not—not in a bad way! I just meant—”
“I know what you meant,” Julia assured me. “You probably weren’t giving a captured witch an awkward sponge bath every day, huh?”
“Only on weekends,” I replied, relieved.
Julia let out a full-throated laugh, her black hair reflecting the late afternoon sun as she threw her head back. She was truly hard to forget, with her mismatched eyes and her unrelenting sense of humor.
“I like you,” she said, clapping her hands together briskly. “Okay, let’s get you set up in your new home. Of course, you can eat with us tonight—you too, Xander, if you don’t want to go back to Ensign right away.”
Julia kept up a steady stream of pleasant small talk as she guided us through the town, either completely unaware of the tension that had respawned when she mentioned my “new home” or choosing to ignore it. Adam scurried along after us, stopping to examine various rocks and flowers along the way, until he grew tired and demanded to be carried again.
Watching the ease with which Xander scooped him up and the patience with which he listened to the mostly incoherent child babble made my heart ache. He would be a wonderfulfather, but would we ever have such a happy, carefree child on Ensign?
Adam’s cheerfulness seemed to be mirrored by everyone on Ferris. Many waved to Julia from their front porches or through windows, a few calling greetings and enquiries after her pregnancy. A few even waved at me or Xander, easy and friendly with the strangers in their midst.
My new home was tucked away behind some larger cottages. Inside, it was small and cozy, with a single open room making up the downstairs. It was filled with mismatched furniture and hand-knitted blankets, a fire built but not lit in the grate. It was the sort of home I’d dreamed of: a space of my own where I didn’t have to look over my shoulder or manage anyone else’s moods.
“The bed is all made up for you upstairs,” Julia was saying. “There should be a bit of food in the cupboards, but we can take you down to the commissary to pick up more supplies tomorrow. Xander mentioned that you didn’t have much in the way of clothes, but you’re about Alys’s size, so you can have a few of the things I normally keep for her.”
