The Alpha’s Parasite

CHAPTER FOUR

I stopped breathing.

The truck cab smelled like leather, rain, and the faint, unmistakable tang of copper. Blood. He hadn't washed it all off.

His chest pressed against mine, a solid wall of heat in the freezing air. My hands were flat against the cracked vinyl of the passenger seat. I should have pushed him away. I should have screamed. I just sat there, my pulse hammering against my throat so hard it hurt.

"You killed him." My voice sounded thin. It didn't sound like me at all.

Kaelen didn’t blink. His thumb brushed my jaw. The pad of it was rough, calloused, and entirely unforgiving.

"I tore his throat out," he repeated. The words were slow. Deliberate. He wanted me to hear the violence in them. He wanted me to feel it. "Right in front of the council."

A shudder ripped through me. Marcus hadn't just been the Alpha. He was Kaelen’s uncle. The man who had raised him. The man who had looked at me a year ago, sneered at my weak bloodline, and ordered Kaelen to reject the mate bond.

And Kaelen had done it. He had stood there, his jaw locked, and let Marcus banish me from the territory.

"Why?" I whispered. My throat burned. "You followed his orders for a year. Why now?"

"Because a year was how long it took to systematically strip him of every ally he had." Kaelen leaned in a fraction of an inch closer. His lips brushed the shell of my ear. "You think I just let you go?"

My stomach dropped.

"I knew exactly where you were," he murmured, his breath hot on my freezing skin. "I knew you worked at that diner on 4th Street. I knew you always bought the cheap vanilla coffee on Tuesdays. I knew the name of the human neighbor who looked at you too long last month."

He pulled back just enough to look at my eyes. The amber in his irises was swallowing the dark brown of his human pupils. The wolf was right at the surface.

"I broke his jaw, by the way," Kaelen said casually. "Your neighbor."

I stared at him. The sheer, suffocating weight of his obsession hit me all at once. He hadn't abandoned me. He had tethered me from the dark, watching me build a pathetic, lonely human life, just waiting until he had the power to drag me back.

He didn't give me time to process it. Kaelen pulled away, the sudden absence of his heat leaving me shivering. He shoved his door open and stepped out into the night.

The cold air rushed into the cab. I sat frozen for exactly three seconds before my door was yanked open.

"Out," he commanded.

I didn't move fast enough. Kaelen reached in, his large hands gripping my waist, and hauled me out of the truck. My cheap canvas sneakers hit the gravel. My knees buckled slightly, but he didn't let me fall. He kept one arm locked around my waist, pulling me flush against his side.

The stone house loomed in front of us. It looked like a tomb.

"Where is everyone?" I asked, my voice shaking as I stared at the empty, dark windows. The pack house was never this quiet. Never. There were always enforcers on the porch, wolves patrolling the tree line.

"Waiting in the woods," Kaelen said. He started walking, forcing me to move with him. "They don't come inside until I say so. And I wanted you to myself tonight."

Glass crunched under his heavy boots as we stepped onto the porch. I looked down. The overhead bulb had been shattered.

He pushed the massive oak front doors open. They weren't locked.

The foyer was pitch black, save for the pale moonlight slicing through the tall windows. The silence inside was heavy, thick with the lingering tension of a m******e.

Then the smell hit me.

Bleach. Industrial bleach, sharp and chemical, burning the back of my nose. But underneath it, sweet and cloying and rotten, was the smell of blood. They had tried to scrub the floors, but you can't hide death from a wolf.

I stopped walking. My heels dug into the expensive Persian rug.

"Kaelen," I breathed, staring at a massive, dark stain near the base of the grand staircase. The wood was warped. A silver vase lay on its side, dented in the middle.

"Don't look at it," he said. His voice was completely devoid of emotion.

He tugged my arm. I pulled back.

"You brought me back to a slaughterhouse," I said, panic finally clawing its way up my throat. The reality of what he was doing was setting in. He wasn't the brooding, quiet enforcer I fell in love with a year ago. He was the Alpha now. He took it in blood.

"I brought you home," he corrected.

"This isn't my home! You rejected me!"

The words echoed in the empty foyer. As soon as they left my mouth, the air in the room seemed to drop ten degrees.

Kaelen turned. He moved so fast I didn't even see him shift his weight. One second he was pulling my arm, the next he had me backed hard against the heavy wooden banister. The carved wood dug painfully into my spine.

He crowded into my space, trapping me between his arms. His hands gripped the banister on either side of my hips.

"I never rejected you," he snarled. The human mask slipped entirely. A low, terrifying growl vibrated in his chest, pressing against mine. "I never said the words. I let him banish you because if I had fought him that day, he would have killed you to punish me. I didn't have the numbers. I didn't have the power."

He leaned down, his nose brushing my jaw. He inhaled deeply, a long, dragging breath that made my treacherous body flush with heat.

"I have the power now," he whispered against my skin.

He pulled back, his eyes blazing with a possessive fury that made my breath catch. He didn't ask if I was okay. He didn't ask if I understood. He simply slipped one arm under my knees, the other behind my back, and lifted me off the floor.

"Put me down!" I gasped, grabbing his shoulders as he carried me up the stairs.

"No."

He took the steps two at a time. The darkness of the second floor swallowed us. We bypassed the guest wing. We bypassed the narrow hallway that led to his old room.

He was walking straight toward the double doors at the end of the hall. The Alpha’s suite.

"Kaelen, stop," I said, my voice cracking. "Please."

He kicked the double doors open. They slammed against the walls with a deafening crack.

The room was massive. A king-sized bed dominated the center, covered in dark silk. The moonlight illuminated the heavy velvet drapes and the massive stone fireplace. It smelled entirely of him. Rain, leather, and dark, suffocating power. He had already moved his things in.

He walked over to the bed and dropped me onto the mattress.

I scrambled backward, my back hitting the massive wooden headboard. I pulled my knees to my chest, my heart threatening to crack my ribs.

Kaelen stood at the edge of the bed. He reached down to the hem of his dark shirt and pulled it over his head. He tossed it onto the floor. In the silver light, I could see the fresh, angry bruises painting his ribs. Deep claw marks tracked across his left shoulder.

He hadn't just killed Marcus. He had fought for his life to get to me.

He stepped toward the bed, his amber eyes fixed on mine.

"You're not leaving this room," Kaelen said, his voice dropping into a dark, lethal register. "You're not leaving this territory. You belong to me. And tomorrow morning, the entire pack is going to smell my mark on you."