The wrong gift
1108 Words
The wrong gift.
The ceiling had nothing new to offer.
I'd been staring at it long enough to map every crack, every shadow the moonlight carved across the plaster. I turned onto my side. Then my back. Then my side again, the sheets twisting around my legs like they had a point to make.
My mind wouldn't stop.
It kept circling back to her. The way she moved through the kitchen that morning not asking for help and not expecting it. The way she set that bread basket down after Mandy looked through her like she was furniture. The steadiness of her hands when everything in her face said she was anything but steady.
Broken.
That was the word sitting in my chest like something swallowed wrong. The Moon Goddess, in all her infinite wisdom, had looked across the whole of existence and decided that this — a blind, half-deaf girl who didn't even know her own name — was what she was saving me for.
My jaw clenched.
Years. I had waited years. Watched Klaus find his mate, watched my Beta commanders build families, watched men I didn't even like settle into something easy and whole. And I had waited. I had stayed. I had kept the animal in me leashed and told myself the Moon knew what she was doing.
And she gave me this.
A warm hand settled on my chest.
I hadn't heard Mandy wake up.Her fingers spread across my sternum, and she propped herself up beside me, her dark hair spilling over one shoulder, her eyes catching the low light.
"You're still awake." Her voice was soft. Practiced. "What is it?"
"Nothing."
She studied me for a moment the way she always did — like she was looking for a foothold. Then she leaned down and pressed her lips to the corner of my jaw.
I stared at the ceiling.
She kissed me again, slower this time, her hand sliding up my chest toward my neck. Mandy had always known exactly what she was doing. That had never been the problem.
The problem was that something about it made my skin crawl tonight.
The rage came quietly, which was almost worse than when it came loud. A slow heat climbing my spine, my jaw locking. I let the kiss go on two seconds longer than I should have before I pulled back and sat up, swinging my legs over the side of the bed.
"I need water."
I didn't wait for a response.
The kitchen was dark and cold and blessedly empty. I stood at the counter and drank half the glass in one go, the chill spreading down my throat, doing nothing for the heat under my skin. I pressed my knuckles against the countertop and looked at nothing.
This was idiotic. I was the Alpha of Silver Blade. I had survived war, loss, and a childhood that would have gutted a lesser man. I was not going to stand in my own kitchen at two in the morning unraveling over a maid.
I put the glass down and went back upstairs.
My feet stopped outside her door.
I stood there in the dim corridor, one hand braced against the wall, looking at the strip of darkness beneath the frame. No light. No sound. I told myself I was checking on her. Making sure she hadn't done something reckless. It was a reasonable thing for an Alpha to do — monitor a vulnerable member of the household.
I stood there for almost a full minute.
Then I heard myself think the word “checking”again and almost laughed.
I never checked on anyone.
I pushed off the wall and walked back to my room.
Mandy had lit the bedside lamp. She was standing near the foot of the bed in a slip of black lace that covered approximately nothing — thin straps, the hem barely grazing her upper thigh, the fabric doing more suggesting than concealing. She looked exactly like what she was: a beautiful woman who knew her own power and had never had reason to doubt it.
She tilted her head when she saw me, a slow smile pulling at the corner of her mouth. Then she crossed the room toward me, unhurried, one hand coming up to rest against my chest as she rose onto her toes and pressed her lips just below my jaw.
Her tongue traced my skin.
I felt my hands curl into fists at my sides.
She did it again — that slow drag, that practiced heat — and something in me recoiled so sharply that the rage came up before I could stop it. The rage came from the wrongness of it. At the fact that my skin knew the difference now between something it wanted and something it didn't, and it had apparently decided to make that very clear tonight.
I stepped back.
"Get out."
My voice came out flat. There was no heat in it, which was somehow worse.
Mandy lowered herself back onto her heels. The smile didn't fall — it just changed, became something more careful. Her eyes moved over my face, searching.
"What did I do?"
I said nothing. She knew my silences well enough to read them. She knew I didn't repeat myself.
A beat passed. Two.
She reached for the robe draped over the chair beside her, pulled it on, and left without another word. The door clicked shut behind her.
I stood in the center of the room in the quiet she left behind.
This woman — Lyra. Blind, broken, borrowed. She didn't know my name two weeks ago. She carried a bread basket and wiped baseboards and moved through my house like she was trying not to take up too much space.
And she had completely unraveled me.
I dragged a hand through my hair and sat on the edge of the bed, elbows on my knees, staring at the floor.
My wolf stirred.
“Mate.”
"Don't," I said quietly, to no one.
I was not taking her as my Luna. I had made that decision clearly, with a clear head, and I was not revisiting it. She was an Omega. She was damaged. She didn't even know who she was. My pack needed a Luna who could stand beside me — not one who needed someone to stand beside her.
I lay back against the mattress and closed my eyes.
My wolf went quiet.
But the scent of wild lilacs was still there, faint and stubborn at the edges of my mind, and it did not leave for a very long time.
- Writer
