Page 4 of Saving Nevin
4
KACE
After checkingon the loner to make sure he was okay, I went scouting for my mom. I found her wrist-deep in potting soil, tending to her garden. When my shadow fell across the ground in front of her, she glanced up at me and tucked a strand of dark brown hair behind her ear, effectively smearing soil on her face. I bit the inside of my cheek to hide a smile.Oh, Mom.
“How’s he doing?” She knew exactly where I’d been.
My cheeks got a little warm, but I laughed it off. “Busted. He’s awake. He seems a little more coherent, but he’s still pretty doped up. Poor thing.”
She studied me for a moment, then turned back to her flowerbeds. Digging a small hole with a pink-handled trowel, she carefully plucked a petunia from its flimsy plastic flat and set it down in the hole, before filling in around it with potting soil.
“He’s the one you’ve been searching for, isn’t he?” She didn’t bother looking up at me. She didn’t have to. She already knew.
Where my sisters had both settled down and my younger brother Xan was flirting around and playing the field, I hadn’t even been on a date, let alone slept with another man. I believed in fated mates, in the fairytale endings written about in love stories. I’d always believed, since I was just a boy, that one day I would find “The One” and we’d live happily-ever-after.
Mom never once judged me for it. She didn’t want to bring me down, even though I knew she was skeptical. Maybe it was because she’d lost her mate. My Omega father had died when I was eight. The result of a hunting accident, he’d withered away from silver poisoning and Mom hadn’t been able to do anything to save him. I knew she still blamed herself, deep down. Not that she’d ever admit it.
“Yeah,” I murmured. “I knew it the minute I saw him. He’s stunning, Mom. He’s just…” I breathed in deeply, then let it out on a soft sigh. “He’s the one, I just know it.”
She pursed her lips. “And if you get attached, only to find he doesn’t feel the same? What then?”
I hesitated. I’d considered that. This Omega was a stranger. He could be straight. He could be mated to another Alpha, though I highly doubted it. No one had scent-marked him recently, that I knew for a fact.
“Jesus, Mom. It’s not like I’m gonna force him to love me. I’m not a bastard. He doesn’t have to stay,” I said, though the thought of him waltzing right back out of my life made my chest ache. Iwantedhim to stay. Iwantedhim to recover his strength and join the pack and, more than anything else? Iwantedhim to fall for me.
You don’t even know his name.
Mom dusted her hands off on her jeans, then stood. Her smile was knowing. “I want you to be happy, Kace. That’s all a mother ever wants for her babies, but you need to be careful. I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
“If he’s the one, then he’ll feel this…gnawingat his soul, like I do. I know it.”
“And if he isn’t?” she questioned, but we both knew the answer to that. If he wasn’t meant for me, then I would let him go. I would keep looking until I found my mate, and when I found him, I would strive to be the best damn Alpha he’d ever meet.
Mom patted my cheek. “I’ll peek in on him this evening, when I do my night rounds. And in the morning, I’ll check him out. If everything looks good, I’ll bring him your way. Are you sure you want to take him home?”
“Definitely. He seems so sad. I want him to know that he’s safe from whoever attacked him. Right now, him getting better is all I care about, so don’t worry about me. I’ll take care of him.”
In the late-afternoon sunlight, Mom’s brown eyes glittered with flecks of gold. Planting her hands flat on my chest, she leaned up on her tip-toes in order to peck me on the cheek. When she sank back down to the ground, it was with a big smile on her face.
“I love you, Kace. You’re a good boy.”
I grinned. “What can I say? I learned from the best.”
“That you did, pup. That you did.”
5
NEVIN
As exhausted as I was,I was restless. I felt trapped. Locked behind these sturdy bars, in a kennel like a dog, I waited for the Alpha to return.
But it wasn’t Kace who came into the room.
A short woman with a head of brown curls strode over to my cage. At first glance, she looked harmless, but looks could be deceiving. She was an Alpha. The energy that rolled off of her was purely dominant. I tucked my tail and averted my gaze with a whine.
“You’re looking a little perkier this morning, aren’t you?” she said brightly, opening the barred door and carefully unhooking me from the IV. “I know you probably feel pretty crappy right now, but you’ll be back to your old self in no time. Let’s just have a quick look and see how you’re faring, hmm?”
Reaching into the cage, she eased me down to the floor. My claws scrabbled over tile for a moment before I sank to my belly. With firm but gentle hands, the Alpha began to check my bandages and redress my wounds.
