The Alpha's Doomed Mate

Chapter 17: Against His Heart

POV: Asha

Hestia had won the argument earlier, sort of. Zade had refused the longer contact she wanted, agreeing only to brief periods of hand contact while she monitored me.

It had worked for a few hours.

Until now.

The episode came harder that night, well past midnight, dragging me out of sleep with a violent, disorienting jolt.

Rylie's presence felt very shaky in my mind, caught halfway between surfacing and retreating, neither fully here nor fully gone.

Pain pierced through my skull with every failed attempt, sharp enough that I curled into myself as I held back sounds I didn't want carrying through the walls.

A cry escaped me before I could bite it back.

Ry, hold on.

I gasped, gripping the sheets as the room blurred around me and my heartbeat pounded loudly in my ears.

Footsteps pounded in the corridor, and less than a minute or so later, Hera burst through my door. Her expression was tight with alarm at whatever she found on my face.

Hestia arrived moments after, moving with the unhurried effort of someone who had handled worse. Her frown deepened the longer she studied me.

“She's stuck,” Hestia said, pressing two fingers to my pulse point, frowning at whatever she found there. “Hand contact isn't going to be enough this time.”

“What does that mean?” Zade's voice cut through the room in a low manner.

He must have come the moment Hera called, still dressed as though he'd never made it to bed.

“It means the bond needs sustained skin contact,” Hestia said, already moving toward the linen chest at the foot of the bed. “Longer and more direct, all while Xavier stays near the surface, not retreating the second the crisis passes.”

Zade went very still, a stillness that felt heavier than his usual restraint.

“You have to do it, Alpha.” Hestia's tone left no room for argument, the same brisk efficiency she'd used stitching wounds and setting bones. “Her wolf is caught in the threshold. If she doesn't stabilize, the strain could damage her permanently.”

I hated how much that word, permanently, silenced every protest either of us might have made.

I was suddenly, painfully aware of the thin sleeveless nightdress I'd gone to bed in, and how much of my arms and shoulders it left bare.

Zade's jaw worked, some private battle playing out behind his eyes, before he finally exhaled, long and rough, and reached for the collar of his shirt.

I looked away too late.

The fabric fell aside, revealing dark markings swept across his chest and shoulders, seeming to shift only when his muscles moved beneath them.

I tried very hard not to stare.

I failed completely.

“Sit,” Hestia instructed, guiding me forward with brisk hands, arranging a thick blanket around my shoulders before nodding Zade closer. “Stay behind her, Alpha. Also, his arms have to be against yours. Hands too. There has to be as much direct contact as we can manage.”

Zade lowered himself onto the bed behind me without another word, and a moment later his bare arms closed around mine, his forearms settling against my exposed skin while the heat of his chest seeped through the thin fabric of my nightdress.

The sparks hit instantly, a current that seemed to sink into muscle and bone rather than simply skim across skin, spreading until my whole body hummed with it.

It was too much and not nearly enough all at once.

I felt his heartbeat against my back, fast and uneven despite the carefully blank expression I knew, without looking, sat fixed on his face.

Swallowing a huge amount of saliva, I shut my eyes.

Ry? I reached inward, breathless.

Closer, she urged, her voice stronger than it had been in days, pressing eagerly toward the warmth at my back.

My eyes flew open when something answered her. Not words, not quite, but a presence, deep and low, curling toward Rylie like recognition given shape. His wolf.

Hestia watched us for several minutes, checking my pulse twice more, before she finally sat back.

“That's stable,” she said. “Keep Xavier there. Twenty minutes, no less. If her senses spike again, send for me.”

She rose, gathering her things. Hera lingered a moment longer, squeezing my shoulder gently.

“Call me if you need me,” she said, quiet, none of her usual teasing in it.

Then she followed Hestia out, the door clicking shut behind them. And then it was only the two of us, the candle guttering low against the wall.

I felt the frantic pull inside me finally soften as our wolves met somewhere along the bond, instead of Rylie fighting her way toward him alone.

Nothing I'd felt with Cole had ever come remotely near this.

His heartbeat thudded against my back, much faster than I expected from someone sitting so completely still.

Zade's breath shifted against the side of my neck, and I felt him go rigid behind me, every muscle locking at once, his arms tightening.

I turned, and my own breath caught when I saw his eyes had bled fully crimson.

Then his gaze dropped. Not to my mouth, but lower, to the place where my neck met my shoulder.

“Zade?” I whispered.

He didn't answer. His gaze didn't move, didn't so much as flicker toward mine.

Then I saw it, the faint, unmistakable gleam of fangs lengthening past his lips, catching the candlelight.

My heart slammed against my ribs, some instinct too old to name recognizing exactly what that meant, exactly how close we suddenly were to something neither of us had agreed to, something that could undo every careful distance he'd built between us.

Zade jerked his face away so fast I flinched. He turned sharply toward the wall, his whole body trembling with the effort of restraint, with his arms still locked around me like he couldn't quite make himself let go, even with every instinct in him clearly screaming otherwise.

I made to turn slightly to have a glance at his face.

“Don't move.”

I froze. His voice came rough against the darkness.

“Just... don't move.”

Neither of us spoke again or moved in any way for a long moment; the only sound in the room was our uneven breathing and the faint crackle of the candle beside the bed.

Inside my mind, Rylie's voice surfaced again, steadier and stronger than she'd managed in days.

This is mate, she whispered.

I swallowed hard, my throat tight as I stared into the darkness. I had once been certain Cole was too.

Then what was Cole?

I waited, but Rylie said nothing.

And somehow, after everything I'd just felt in Zade's arms, that silence frightened me more than any answer could have.