MATED TO THE MAFIA ALPHA

Chapter 7 - The Devil In Black

Consciousness comes back to me in fragments, disjointed and strange, like a film reel someone keeps cutting and splicing wrong. The gunshot. That's the first thing I remember, sharp cracks tearing through the trees, and rogues scattering like startled birds. Then pain, distant and muffled now, like it belongs to someone else's body. Then a voice, low and rough, saying a word that didn't make sense to me at the time and still doesn't. Mine. I force my eyes open, and the forest swims into half-focus around me. I'm still on the ground, propped against something a stone that wasn’t there before, I believe that my savior must have brought it to support my head, and the chaos I remember has gone, everywhere was eerily quiet. Two rogues lie unmoving several yards off. The rest are gone, fled or worse, I can't tell which and I'm too disoriented to care. Standing over what's left of them, silhouetted against the trees under the bright moonlight, is the man who apparently just saved my life. He's not what I expect a savior to look like. Everything about him reads as danger rather than rescue, black clothes cut sharp and expensive even out here in the middle of rogue territory, a gun held loose and competent in one hand like it's just another part of his body, shoulders set with the kind of stillness that isn't calm so much as coiled.

When he turns and the moonlight finally catches his face, I understand, with a clarity that cuts straight through the pain and the shock, exactly why most of the rogues in that clearing ran instead of fighting. He looks daringly beautiful in the way certain predators aren’t assumed to be, sharp-jawed, dark-haired, eyes so pale gold they look lit from somewhere behind them. And underneath the beauty is something colder, something that makes every instinct I have left whisper danger, danger, danger even as another part of me, deeper and more insistent, whispers something entirely different. "Who……." My voice comes out distorted, with my throat aching. "Don't talk." He crouches beside me, and up close the authority radiating off him is almost suffocating, a presence so heavy it feels like a hand pressing down on the back of my neck. "You're bleeding and dying, and from the smell of it, for reasons that have nothing to do with those rogues." The smell of it, “Rejection sickness”. He can scent it on me, the way anyone with a working nose could. "How many rogues did you kill tonight," I manage, half question, half accusation, though I'm not entirely sure why I'm picking a fight with the one person currently keeping me alive. I guess it’s me trying to act alive. Something that isn't quite a smile moves across his mouth. "Two. They'll live, barely." He says it the way other people report the weather flat, bluntly, no cruelty and no mercy either, just the truth of a man who has clearly done far worse than wound two rogues and thought nothing of it. "You should be more worried about yourself." He says.

He's right, and the reminder makes the pain flare up again, sharp enough that I gasp and curl inward, and his hand comes to my shoulder not gentle, exactly, but careful in a way that surprises me, like he's handling something he doesn't want to break further than it already is. "Rejected mate," he says, not a question. I don't answer. I don't have to. My silence is answer enough. "Tonight, of all nights." Something shifts in his voice, something I can't place not quite anger, not quite pity, something more complicated than either. "Whoever did this to you is either a coward or a fool. Possibly both." He murmurs but loud enough for me to hear. I should be afraid of him. Every part of my upbringing tells me I should be, a stranger with a gun in rogue territory, a man who moves like violence is simply his native language, who dismisses two mauled bodies with the same tone he'd use to mention traffic. And I am afraid, somewhere underneath everything else. But it's tangled up with something I don't have a name for yet, some pull low in my chest that has nothing to do with fear at all, a strange warmth spreading through the wreckage of the bond Damian just tore out of me. He leans down, close enough that I can feel his breath against my temple, and I go rigid, too weak to pull away, too disoriented to know if I even want to. He inhales, slow and deliberate, scenting me the way wolves do when something matters really scenting, cataloguing, committing to memory, as if he won’t get this opportunity again.

I watch something change in his expression as he does it, the cold composure cracking just slightly, just enough to let something raw show through underneath. His eyes find mine, gold, startled and absolutely certain. "Mine," he whispers again, and this time there's no mistaking the disbelief in it, like fate has just handed him something he stopped expecting a long time ago.