Page 34 of Alpha's Bullied Mate
I had ran away on the highway, seizing a chance. But I knew that despite Aidan’s walls appearing lowered, every member of his pack would be on guard for my escape attempts again. I could jump the garden fence. I could stroll right out the front door. I could shimmy through a window.
I might not get far before I was caught, but Icoulddo it.
And yet…
I didn’t want to.
Something had shifted between Aidan and me today, and it intrigued me. I did not trust him but there had been an element of comfort, sat around the dinner table tonight, eating with his pack. I’d felt included in a way Fenrys’s pack never quite had. I loved that pack, I did, but here, the hierarchy was visible but not rigid. Conall enjoyed pulling rank. But even Jason, with his angry, sharp way, didn’t seem as threatening as Conall was.
So even when the house fell silent, all I did was curl up on the couch, sat upright, knees tucked to my chest, and attempted to sleep, aware of the footsteps outside the living room door of someone who had likely been put onDakota duty.
When I dreamed, what I saw was confusing. Aidan and me, spinning down a ravine in a forest, getting soaked, laughing—naked. His hands found my hips and my legs tangled withus as we’d fallen gracelessly. When we’d rolled to a stop at the bottom, Aidan had lowered himself down my body and ate me out until my cries echoed through the woods.
I woke up with a high-pitched moan and startled. The footsteps outside continued, and I was embarrassed to be overheard having a dream like that but I forced that embarrassment away. I trusted Aidan’s word that none of them would take advantage of me. However, I thought about the wetness in the sweatpants of Aidan’s I’d had to borrow. I thought about slipping my hand beneath the waistband and touching myself to the thought of the dream but that felt too much like admitting Iwantedhim. So I settled for knowing that when I returned the sweatpants to Aidan, he would smell my arousal on it, and, judging from the erection I’d seen tenting his jeans earlier, it would do something to him.
I fell back into a sleep filled with more dreams of the alpha who had softened up to me for at least one day.
***
A few days passed, and I kept expecting Aidan to approach me with more rope to bind me again. He never. He came and went, working, cooking dinner when it was his turn, hanging out with his pack. While I wasn’tpartof the pack, of course; I wasn’t exactlynotpart of them, either.
I played card games with Ryan out on the porch when he wasn’t working at the local bakery that his parents owned. He told me his story about his mom and stepdad. How his dad hadn’t been a great person, had bullied Ryan until Ryan until one day, when he was fifteen, he’d lashed out and got sent to juvie for beating his dad up. He’d hit the gym, bulked up, cameout at eighteen, and struggled to get a job and a place to belong until Aidan had met him and asked him to join the pack. He was still building a relationship with his mother and stepdad now.
The afternoon marked a full week since I had been taken. I still kept looking up at every shadow falling over the room, foolishly hoping Fenrys’s pack had stormed the place to take me back. But with each day, I checked less and less. The more comfortable I got, back in Oak Hill, the less I looked to be rescued. The only thing Iwasweary of was my parents.
Aidan still hadn’t agreed to let me leave the house, so I was able to avoid them but my phone had been left back at Silverlake Valley. While it wasn’t uncommon for me to not check in with my parents, usually after a week or so, they started to worry. I didn’t want them traveling to Silverlake Valley, looking for me. If it was true what Aidan had told me—that the pack didn’t want me back—they would have to make up a story to my parents. It is likely that the story would say that I abandoned them, became a lone wolf. The thought of that turned my stomach.
But what could I tell them? That I wasn’t with the only pack they’d ever dreamed of me being a part of? The illustrious Randon pack, under the protection of Silverlake Valley’s golden alpha? How could I explain where I was without alerting them?
Most importantly,whydidn’t I want to alert them?
I could ask Ryan to deliver a message and tell them I was in Oak Hill. That I’d been captured, that I needed saving. But the problem with pack dynamics was that a lot of it was about shame when a pack was left without good reason. I couldn’t admit I’d shown weakness and let myself be kidnapped, as they would see it. But I also couldn’t pretend I’d left of my own accord because they’d ask why.
Ultimately, I did nothing and hoped they wouldn’t notice my lack of checking in. It was a fool’s hope, but it was something.
In the living room, with the doors to the garden thrown open, the rest of the pack and I watched Jason and Declan spar. I realized it wasn’t unusual for them to do it when all the pack knew exactly where to sit and watch. It was like a dance: someone grabbed the beers, someone caught the hoodies that the men shucked off, and someone grabbed a speaker to blast music.
“They get one day off a week at the same time, and this is how they spend it,” Ryan told me. I sat next to him, on the edge of the living room as the rest of the pack crowded in the dining room and kitchen, calling out Declan’s or Jason’s name. It was dumb and fun; I loved it.
“Why? None of the others do it, right?”
“Sometimes Aidan and Jason spar,” Ryan said, and I stopped short, thinking of Aidan being stripped of his t-shirt, in the garden, sweat glistening down his torso as he threw punches. “But mostly these two. Declan always says he should have been Aidan’s second. Jason continues to show him why he didn’t make the cut.”
As if they heard Ryan’s murmur, Jason flipped Declan over in the grass, and he landed with a winded sound on his back. But he was back up his seconds and hauled himself at Jason, flinging his arms around Jason’s waist and ramming him backward into the garden shed. It was brutal, intense, and Dakota couldn’t look away.
“Do they ever fight as wolves?” she asked.
“Once or twice,” Ryan said. “But Aidan put a stop to that pretty quickly when he realized that they’d just try to bite eachother’s throats. Jason’s a biter even as a man, but Declan fights fast and dirty no matter what. It’s why Aidan recruited him.”
At midday, they were interrupted by the doorbell ringing. The music drowned it out, and I snuck to the back of the living room and out of the door. I opened up the front door, knowing it would be the pizza that one of the pack had ordered earlier.
By the weary look on the delivery guy’s face, he knew exactly what house he knocked at, but as I opened the door to take the pizza, that fear morphed into surprise.
“It was paid for online, yeah?” I asked.
Silently, he nodded and then backed off in his car. I rolled my eyes and then looked out, pausing. I could bolt now. Once again, Aidan was working. The pack was distracted. Food and drink and semi-decent sleep had been given to me. I could make a run for it and survive. Shift into a wolf in the woods and keep running until I hit Fenrys’s territory.
But a roaring cry went up from the garden, alongside laughter. I didn’t think I’d ever heard that sort of carefree energy from Fenrys’s pack, and something about the sound of it had me closing the door, wonderingwhyI did. Why didn’t I just escape?
