Page 26 of The Alpha's Mail Order Bride

“Should eat and drink something,” he pointed out. Claire grumbled a protest, curling into a ball on her side, and he chuckled softly, moving in to press a kiss to the point of her shoulder. With a dramatic sigh, she sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. “What kind of a host would let his guest starve?”

“What kind of a guest would make such a mess of her host’s bed?” she challenged him, gesturing lazily at the tangle of blankets at the foot of the bed. “Face it. I’m no guest. I live here.” But before he could respond to that utterly delightful comment, she was already onto the next idea, uttering a mighty yawn as she stretched her arms above her head. “But breakfast is a good idea. Need to keep our strength up.” Her eyes gleamed as she looked back at him coyly over her naked shoulder, and in that moment, he was more than willing to forgo food for the rest of his life if it meant reaching out to catch her by the arm and draw her in…

At last, and only a little later (owing to his tremendous restraint), they made it to the kitchen. Claire was bundled up in his robe, which was large even on him, and about twice the size she would have needed. He’d found his discarded pants on the route from the bedroom to the kitchen, and snorted laughter at the dismayed little whine Claire uttered when she saw him putting them on. He hadn’t realized quite how many admiring looks he’d received since she’d arrived here—not until last night, when she’d sat astride him with her hands pinning him firmly against the bed and told him in explicit, almost overwhelming detail just how good he looked. From anyone else, that kind of compliment would have made him feel self-conscious, not to mention annoyed by the level of scrutiny. But coming from Claire, it made him feel like his heart was going to burst out of his chest with elation.

Not a feeling he was familiar with, he thought as he watched her padding about in the kitchen, dragging out ingredients for the latest breakfast he’d ever had. But a feeling he wouldn’t mind getting used to.

Claire had always been fondest of breakfast foods, so it didn’t surprise him to find himself helping her work through a truly enormous fried breakfast. Scrambled eggs, fried tomatoes, bacon cooked the precise way he liked it—he pressed her on that detail, wondering if she’d figured out his exact preference by spying on him in the kitchen, only to be met with a gale of laughter and the rejoinder that she’d cooked it exactly the waysheliked it.

While she presided over the frying pan, he made toast with lashings of melted butter, experiencing a strange feeling of unreality. A month ago, simply having another person in his house was an enormous disruption to his regular routine—even someone like Lyrie he’d known all his life. But here he was with a woman he’d barely known for a month standing there in his robe, using all his implements, humming to herself as she cooked onhisstove…and far from his usual tendency to recoil from any kind of company but his own, he was realizing that he felt…comfortable. More comfortable, even, than he did when he was alone. She was easy to be with, that was the thing. He hadn’t thought it was possible for another person to be so easy to be around. He’d thought it was just her being polite, accommodating him, keeping out of his way and creeping around like a shy little mouse, but it wasn’t that, was it? She’d grown more and more confident as the weeks had gone by, and he’d only come to like her company more. Even when she was deliberately antagonizing him, or pushing him out of his comfort zone. Especially then, he thought. And though the smile on his face felt unfamiliar, it also felt like it belonged there.

The sun had set before his first worries began to creep in. That had to be some kind of record, he reflected. Nearly a full day without second-guessing himself. But Claire was upstairs taking one of her famously long showers, and he was on the couch downstairs, alone again. And just like they always did, his doubts began to circle in his mind, nibbling away at the impossible glow of happiness that had been front and center in his heart all day. What exactly did he think he was doing here? What was his plan, exactly? After all the fuss he’d made in front of the Council, after the promises he’d extracted from the other Alphas to ensure that Claire could be returned safely to her own life, what was he going to do—change his mind? Ask her to stay with him? What gave him the idea that she’d want that? Ever since that first night, she’d been referring to her stay here as a holiday, calling herself his guest. And guests were temporary.

And through that initial crack in his good mood, more doubts started seeping, faster and faster. He’d seen enough human movies at this point to know how they felt about sex and intimacy. The fact that he and Claire had spent the whole day making love didn’t necessarily mean anything—not to a human, at any rate. Sure, it felt like something sacred to him, something holy—the way her eyes glowed, the desperate way she whispered his name when she was close—his body twitched uneasily with the arousal those memories summoned. But was he just being hopelessly naive? For her, this was just another pastime, another fun little holiday activity, like going dancing with the island’s young wolves, or taking a swim at the beach. It didn’t mean anything had changed between them.

It wasn’t long before she came back downstairs, skin pink and flushed from the heat of the shower, still bundled in his robe—but the moment she looked at him, he could see that she knew something was wrong. Her smile faded, and that alone was almost enough to break his heart. In a strange way, it was a relief. All he had to offer her was disappointment like that, over and over again. How had he even considered asking her to stay here for good? It had been wrong, horribly wrong of his brother to even bring her here in the first place. And Claire was such a sweet person, so positive, so full of sunlight…if he asked her to stay, she probably would.

And Darion knew as he looked at her that he loved her far too much to let her throw her life away like that.

Chapter 15 - Claire

What had justhappened?

Claire dragged herself up the stairs, her hair half-dry from her shower and sticking up in unpleasant clumps. Some irrational part of her blamed the shower. She shouldn’t have left the room, that had been her first mistake. Should have stayed wrapped around him like a scarf until they’d both died of old age. Because clearly, the minute she’d left him alone, some gang of maniacs had broken into the house, kidnapped the man she’d been in bed with all day, and replaced him with—

Tears sprang to her eyes, and she dashed them furiously away, shoving her bedroom door open with the heel of her other hand. She didn’t want to cry. Not yet. She was trying to make light of the damn situation.

But for once, there wasn’t much light to be found. She’d gone downstairs, freshly showered and already full of ideas for how they might spend the evening—she had been thinking wicked thoughts about the particular configurations that the couch would allow. But the moment she’d seen him sitting there, stock-still in the dark like some kind of gargoyle on the edge of an old church, those thoughts had been placed firmly on the back burner. She’d joined him there, hoping against hope that the look on his face had some exterior cause; maybe he’d had a message from one of the other Alphas about demons or something. Maybe it was something inconsequential, like a cyclone or a tidal wave or some other natural disaster that would send the island sinking to the bottom of the sea.

Anything would have been better than what he’d actually said to her down there.

Disbelief, that had been her first reaction. Then jokes. The two of them had been joking all day—she’d heard more of his laugh over the last twenty-four hours than she had since they’d met, and it was every bit as delightful as she’d hoped. But there was no hint of that rough, precious laugh now. His face had turned to stone again, and all her efforts amounted to nothing more than a breeze brushing against the rocks.

Claire had experienced enough breakups to know what she was dealing with fairly quickly, and once she’d given up trying to make him laugh, anger took the place of her faint confusion, her hope that she’d misunderstood. But the more she’d raised her voice, the quieter he’d become, the more doggedly he clung to his point. There was no future for the two of them, he insisted. She had a life to return to in the human world. He’d liked having her here, he said, and she was still welcome to stay as long as she liked…but falling into bed together had been a mistake they shouldn’t repeat.

That was when she’d really embarrassed herself. It was the vulnerability of having spent such an intimate day with him; she winced with embarrassment with every fresh recollection of the conversation as she drifted in and out of a shallow sleep in her lonely bed upstairs. She’d trusted him with the most intimate parts of her body, and then she’d made the mistake of thinking she could trust him with the most intimate parts of her heart. She’d dropped the optimism, dropped her relentlessly positive spin on the world. She’d gotten well and truly carried away. What had she even said? It had been like a fever dream…but she’d definitely mentioned several times that they were married. That was particularly embarrassing. She’d even called herself his mail-order bride. And then, when anger had failed her, she’d begged. That was the most galling part of all.

Because none of it had worked. They’d argued for an hour—or, more accurately, she’d argued at him—but Darion had made up his mind that whatever this was between them, it couldn’t work. And there was absolutely nothing she could do about that. But what had really infuriated her, the blow that had really knocked her out for good, was the last thing he’d said. He’d been gazing at her with those silver eyes, suddenly as remote as the stars. And then he’d told her that he wasn’t good enough for her.

There was nothing to say after that. She’d fled the room, feeling like everything inside her was broken, jagged glass. How many times had she heard that? Had she ever dated anyone who hadn’t pulled that particular checkmate out eventually? A hateful, spineless little statement, absolving its speaker of all responsibility while neatly assigning all the blame to her, for having made the mistake of expecting better of him.

She’d thought he was different. She’d really thought that there was something special here, something unique about Darion, something that was finally going to break every pattern she’d been stuck in for her whole life. After what had happened last night, the explosive chemistry between them, the borderline religious experience that had been their lovemaking, she’d been certain of it. How could the sex be that good if the relationship didn’t hold some promise? But she couldn’t have been more wrong. He might have been a shapeshifter from another world, but he was still just like every disastrous guy she’d ever dated.

When she woke up in the morning, her pillow was soaked with tears, and she felt like she’d run a marathon in a hailstorm, but there was an odd, grim kind of peace in her. She’d spent the last month of her life on tenterhooks here, hoping against hope that she’d be the exception to Darion’s grumpy, antisocial worldview. Well, she had her answer now: she categorically was not. But she’d be damned if she was going to mope around in her room feeling sad about it. She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. There was a beautiful tropical island out there, and she was going to enjoy her holiday if it killed her.

The weather, unfortunately, seemed to have other ideas. Her spiteful momentum carried her through her whole morning routine, down the stairs and through the spotless, empty house; she barely paused to wonder whether Darion was there, or how late he’d stayed up cleaning the kitchen after she’d given up on their conversation and taken herself to bed alone. But when she stepped out into the morning air of the island, she couldn’t help but slow her pace a little. The day was drizzly and overcast, the ever-present humidity more oppressive than usual. She’d hoped to go for a swim to clear her head, but with the air pressing wetly against her skin and the faint mist of unpleasantly warm rain to contend with, she couldn’t face the idea of adding sand to the mixture.

Instead, she set off in a different direction, following a path that was usually used by the island’s nightly patrols. The path’s sandy surface was marked with pawprints, and despite her sadness, she couldn’t help but smile a little as she pictured the great paws of the island’s wolves pressing into these paths over and over. She’d come to be very fond of this place, she realized as she walked, thinking back to the friends she’d made among the island’s wolves. It was a shame to let it end on such a sour note with Darion. She’d imagined herself leaving right away, but right now she was wondering if that was the right move. Maybe the real victory would be to spend another week or two here, all of it in the company of wolves who actually liked her. Why had she wasted so much time on Darion’s emotional rollercoaster when there was a whole community of people she could have been getting to know instead?

By the time she was halfway around the island, strides lengthening as she marched along the sandy trail, Claire was on a warpath. She almost wished she’d brought her laptop—she badly wanted to get all of this anger written down. It felt good. It felt righteous. It felt like it had been building up for a very long time. If it hadn’t been for the absolute lack of cell service on the island, she would have been on the phone with Suzanne already. Well, she’d just have to content herself with the mother of all vent emails. Or maybe she could just wait until she saw her friend again in person. It wouldn’t be long now, would it?

Claire had reached the edge of the forest, and as she stepped through the trees, she realized with a jolt that she’d come to the cliffs at the northernmost edge of Kurivon. She’d been walking for longer than she’d thought—that, or her anger had doubled her speed. The overcast sky was vast and cryptic above her, and she moved a little closer to the cliff’s edge to gaze out over the roiling sea. This place probably offered an absolutely stunning view when the weather was nicer. Maybe she’d come back before she left.

She realized, as she settled on a conveniently placed rock to watch the ocean for a while, that this was the first time in a long time that she’d actually thought about leaving Kurivon. Sure, Darion and the other wolves had made it very clear that she only needed to say the word and they’d arrange passage home for her, but that idea had always been a faint hypothetical in the back of her mind, the way people often thought about quitting their jobs but never actually following through. The truth was, as much as she’d given lip service to the idea that she was just coming here to see how it went, some part of Claire had been very serious when she’d agreed to move here as Darion’s wife. She’d called herself his houseguest and characterized her stay here as a holiday, but that had been more about diffusing the awkwardness.

The truth was, until their argument last night, Claire had had no intention of leaving Kurivon. As far as she was concerned, she’d been here as Darion’s wife, and she’d been happy to wait for him to realize what a good idea that was, too. That had been one of the first things Reeve had told her about his brother. That Darion was a good man, but slow to change, stubborn about recognizing a good thing when he saw it. Claire exhaled hard, blinking away the tears that had sprung to her eyes yet again and drawing her knees closer to her chest despite the oppressively hot weather. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so resoundingly stupid.

A sound caught her ear then, something that stood out against the usual background noise of the wildlife in the forest and the low roar of the ocean. For a horrified second, she wondered if a demon had crept up on her, despite it being broad daylight. That would be just what she needed—a demon attack, a stuffy lecture from Darion about keeping herself safe—but when she turned, she was relieved to see a humanoid figure, not an unnerving tangle of limbs and flesh like the creature that had attacked her in the forest that day.

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