The Alpha's Doomed Mate

Chapter 14: Sloane

POV: Asha

“Our Gamma.”

My eyes drifted back to the woman standing beside Zade.

“They seem close,” I pointed out.

Hera's mouth curved upward again. “They are. Sloane's probably the only person outside our family who's known Zade long enough to get away with almost anything.”

A low and irritated growl stirred inside my head.

Don't start.

I didn't say anything, Rylie muttered, her voice better than it had been.

You growled.

There was absolute silence as she didn’t respond again.

“Sloane,” someone called out warmly.

She smiled, genuine and easy, in response, and then turned back to the crowd, exchanging quick words with nearly everyone.

I watched as Dante walked to where she and Zade stood, accepting the brief hug he gave.

“She seems—” I searched for the right word, watching the woman laugh at something Dante said. “Important.”

“She is, after all, she leads the border patrol,” Hera said simply, offering nothing further, though something in her tone made me wonder if there was more she wasn't saying.

I turned back to the herbs in an attempt to shift my focus elsewhere. However, my eyes kept drifting to the doorway, to the two of them standing close even though I actually couldn’t see them again.

“Asha, please get me the jar from the shelf,” Hestia called my attention back.

I reached for a jar on the shelf above me, still watching them out of the corner of my eye, and my sleeve caught the edge of a glass beaker beside it.

It hit the floor in a spray of shards wider than I expected.

“I'm so sorry—” I started, already crouching to gather the pieces with my bare hands.

My mind flashed unhelpfully to every time I'd broken something at Moonmere and the punishment that had always followed.

“Don't.” A voice cut in sharply as a hand caught my wrist before I reached for another shard.

I turned sideways to see Sloane plucking the larger shards with a thick cloth around her hand. I hadn’t even noticed her entering.

“You'll cut yourself doing this with your bare hands,” she said, not unkindly, though her tone carried the edge of someone who found carelessness mildly inconvenient rather than infuriating.

I'd already managed exactly that. A thin line of blood welled along my fingertip from a shard I hadn't seen in time.

Sloane clicked her tongue, pulled a clean cloth from a nearby shelf without needing to be told where it was kept, and wrapped my finger with practiced smoothness.

“Thank you,” I said, startled by the gesture. “I'm sorry, I'm usually not this clumsy.”

“You're clumsy,” she said flatly, tying off the cloth. “It's fine. Use a broom next time, it’s just two feet behind you.”

I looked, and there was, in fact, a broom.

“You're Asha, aren't you?”

I blinked. “You know me?”

“I've been gone, not dead.” She rolled her eyes slightly. “I’ve been briefed on what I need to know.”

“She’s staying under sanctuary,” Hera said as she came to stand next to me.

“I heard.”

The door opened.

“What happened?" Zade's eyes went straight to the cloth around my finger.

“Nothing,” I said.

Sloane straightened. “She tried picking up broken glass with her hands.”

“I picked up one piece.”

Zade glanced toward the broom in the corner, then back at me. “There was a broom.”

I stared at him.

Sloane nodded. “That's what I said.”

“I liked you better five minutes ago,” I muttered.

Sloane's mouth twitched, almost a smile, before she turned and walked off without another word.

Dinner that evening was a larger affair than I'd grown used to.

Several of the pack's higher-ranking members gathered around the long table, the air thick with easy conversation and the smell of roasted meat.

Sloane sat near Zade and Dante, close enough that their conversation carried down the table to where I sat beside Hera. I wasn’t even sure why Hera had dragged me down when I usually ate in my room.

“You doubled the night rotation without telling me,” Sloane said, arms crossed.

“Temporarily,” Zade replied, not looking up from his plate.

“Half my patrol just spent six days on the northern line. They need rest, not another week of double shifts.”

“And something still got through our borders while they were resting,” Zade replied evenly, not remotely intimidated by her tone, barely glancing up from his plate. “I don't need permission for that.”

“Exhausted wolves aren't going to catch whatever that was either.” Her voice sharpened. “You're running them into the ground for a threat we haven't even identified.”

I realized, watching them, that very few people in this pack would speak to Zade that way. Dante and Hera, I had noticed, did so. Now, apparently Sloane too, without a flicker of hesitation.

Zade was quiet for a moment, jaw working like he wanted to argue further.

“Fine,” he said finally. "Cut the additional rotation in half."

I blinked, surprised. He'd changed his mind. Not because Sloane outranked him, but because she'd made a fair point and he'd actually listened.

I thought of the lockdown argument, of him bending on that too, once I'd given him a reason.

Rylie's irritation stirred faintly in the back of my mind again, though I couldn't have said exactly why it mattered to either of us at all.

I looked down at my plate, pushing food around without really eating it.

“You know they're not together, right?”

Hera's voice, low and amused, pulled my attention sideways.

“I wasn't asking,” I said quickly.

“No. You were glaring.”

“I wasn't glaring.” I gritted my teeth. “Please, enough of the back and forth.”

Hera's grin widened. “Rylie was, then.”

I don't like her sitting beside him. Rylie growled at the back of my mind.

I nearly choked on my drink.

Neither of us knows her.

Exactly.

Annoyingly, that didn’t explain why I had been watching Sloane since she arrived.

“Can we please stop talking about this?” I glanced sideways at Hera.

“Gladly.”

My eyes flicked toward Sloane before I could stop them. Her gaze caught mine from across the table, and I immediately looked away.

“Something wrong, Asha?”

Damn it.

I looked back at Sloane to see one of her brows raised.

“Nothing is,” I muttered.

Her eyes flicked toward Zade for barely a second before biting into her food. “Good.”

“You know,” Hera whispered, glancing briefly at Sloane before looking at me, “you should probably tell your wolf that Gamma always sits beside the Alpha.”

“Enough.”