AGAIN MY HEART: Her Alphas Regret

WRITTEN IN RED

LEILANI

Hours passed, and I still couldn’t shake off thoughts of my uncanny encounter with my mate who just so happened to be the king of Eitbjorn.

The sound of his voice, how flat and final his words had been, and the cold detachment it carried still sat in my chest.

I was finding it difficult to process any of it. Everything had happened so fast, and so unexpected, that now I was left wondering if he even felt the mate bond.

His voice didn’t sound like that of an Alpha who had just found his mate. Still, I could’ve sworn he felt a fraction of that electric joy that sparked through me because it came from his touch, so how could he not feel it? It wouldn’t make sense for him not to feel it, and what happened when his eyes changed to crimson for a moment?

If he felt it and had chosen not to acknowledge it… I straightened up as a thought struck me. Had I been rejected without even realizing it?

‘Maybe he was just surprised and confused. He’s the king, he can’t just claim you so suddenly.’ Aina tried to reason. ‘He won’t reject us.’

‘He was cold, Aina, and he looked like he wanted to be anywhere but in front of me. Didn’t you hear him when he said I shouldn’t touch him? He sounded as if I was filthy, and unworthy of his presence. If that’s not a hint of rejection to you, then I don’t know what is,’ I replied, shaking my head.

‘Looks to me like you’re making assumptions, and just jumping to conclusions. I am sure there is an explanation.’

‘Yes, I am excited to hear what explanation he has for flinging away his mate’s hand as if I was some contagious disease.’ I rolled my eyes, sighing as the sting in my heart deepened.

Maybe it wasn’t an outright rejection, but it still hurts to know my mate couldn’t even allow me a moment of patience. Flinging my hand away right after meeting him, telling me not to touch him… I’ve been treated like a disease ever since I understood what it meant to be different.

And, I was never an Omega who daydreamed about a Prince Charming coming to give me a better life, but I had hoped my mate wouldn’t also treat me like dirt. And that was what the King had done in that split second. He had treated me as if I was unworthy of his arse and that feeling sucks.

‘I know it sucks to be constantly treated like we don’t belong anywhere. And I’m not happy that he acted like that, but I still think it was the fact that everything happened so fast and…” Aina stopped talking out of nowhere.

I felt the hair on my skin rise, and my nose tingled as citrus bergamot floated into the room just as the door creaked open, and then closed behind me.

‘Our Mate is here,’ Aina purred with delight that ran straight through me.

“Mate,” I muttered, turning on my heel to face the king, and my entire body froze as an onslaught of targeted lustful pheromones hit me like a lightning bolt, momentarily cutting off my train of thought.

My body swayed from the impact, my eyes lazy, and my head felt lighter but hazy as a low heat stirred in my lower abdomen, and slick…

No, no, no. I chanted in my mind, shaking my head as I tried to clear the fog clouding the edges of my senses. This wasn’t the time for lust because I needed answers, and I needed to know why he’d acted so indifferent to the mate bond.

“Why did you tell me not to touch you but now you’re here? I thought you wanted nothing to do with me?” My voice came out unsteady as the heat pooling low in my stomach stretched farther between my legs, and then clamped them together.

He crossed the room without answering me, and whatever else I’d intended to ask at that moment dissolved the second his hand found my jaw, tilting my face up toward his.

His thumb traced a slow pattern along my cheekbone, his touch reverent, like he was memorizing something he couldn’t keep.

“You didn’t answer me… You’re touching me now but earlier you…” I tried again. Even though I sounded breathless swaying on my feet, my hand found the front of his shirt and I held onto it to steady myself instead of pushing him away.

“Later,” he numbered, and it wasn’t the cold, flat command from earlier. His voice now, was low and rough at the edges, but it sounded like the heavy base of the sweetest rhythm I’d ever heard, and it sent vibrating signals down my spine.

My legs shook even as I held onto him, and slick came running down my thigh between my thighs. This close, I could see the faint bleed of red lingering at the edges of his grey eyes, like embers that hadn’t fully burned out.

His nose twitched, and his chest rumbled low as he sniffed the air. He leaned down, his mouth trailing over my jaw. His scent had changed from that sweet savory bergamot and vanilla and there was something heavier to it. I sniffed him out of instinct, desire, lust? I couldn’t say why, but I was hit with the dark scent of burnt Iris curling through his sweetness like smoke through incense.

It should have unsettled me, but I relished the new high of his burnt Iris, it felt almost soothing but also consuming.

“You scent, it has changed. It wasn’t like that in the hallway.” He went still against my throat for half a second, as if he hadn’t expected the question.

“Doesn’t matter,” he exhaled against my skin.

“But it…” Whatever I was going to ask was meaningless as his lips found a spot behind my ears to lick, and suck and a moan slipped past my lips.

His hands found the hook of my bra, and he was all over me. Everywhere his fingers grazed, he lingered, tracing lines, squeezing, rubbing, the curve of my shoulder, the dip of my collarbone, the small of my back where he got rid of my top. He touched me like he was coming every inch of me into memory, moving to the next.

“Your Highness…” I tried once again to say something, but my words came out more as a sigh than a question.

He pressed soft kisses to my ear, my throat, down my collarbone, and then my cleavage as his lips were offering an apology.

I gave up on words and whatever questions I had as his mouth closed around my n!poles, and he sucked my breast into his mouth. But by the time he laid me back against the sheets and followed me down, I’d stopped trying to make sense of anything, and let myself feel.

His weight settled over me, and his forehead dropped to rest against mine for one long moment before he moved lower. I felt more than heard the growl rumbling in his chest as he pushed my legs apart and his teeth grazed my thighs.

I felt his hands mapping every inch of me. “Mine,” he growled, as his fingers pushed into me, and I arched into him, into every slow deliberate flicker of his fingers inside me.

Aina hummed with a satisfaction so complete it drowned out every unanswered question. When he finally settled between my thighs, it wasn’t the rough, hurried claim I’d expected given his cold demeanor earlier.

He moved slowly as he found his place inside me, patient, as I whimpered from the new intrusion, the feeling too much and too foreign because I’d never had anything so big inside me.

Every drag of his hips against mine afterward felt like a request only my body could give. My hands found his shoulders as he took from me, and I gave him every part of me. My voice broke on sounds that weren’t his names, and the breath of his heavy grunts against my ear filled the rooms. And I buried my questions and doubts in the throes of pleasure I never thought was possible until this very moment.

***

Two weeks went by in a blur and the King had vanished into thin air. Perhaps I had hoped too much from that encounter, or I had simply been too foolish, and I gave myself to him without thinking for a moment what that meant.

I was lost in how magical it all felt, and I’d deluded myself into thinking he came to me because he wanted me, because he had an explanation for how he’d acted in the corridor. My naivety was my burden to bear.

‘Maybe he is busy,’ Aina murmured.

I sighed, because here she was again, thinking she knew him. ‘Too busy to even ask for my name after taking my virginity and touching me like I meant something to him.’

‘I’m sure there’s a reason, we just have to be patient…’ I blocked her out before she could finish her sentence because I didn’t want to hear her positive comments.

I had a few hours left to finish cleaning the horse shed, and then I’d take a break to eat the food the lady of the house had left for me before she and her family went to bed. But if, by some miracle, I see him again, then we have to sit down and talk because I need to know what this is.

Does he want me as his mate or not?

I was moving the bag of hay out of the way when I heard footsteps behind me. My senses heightened as I became aware of the presence behind me and the dominant aura that immediately filled the barn.

“Your Highness,” I muttered, as I turned to face him. How did he find me? “Have you come to reject me?” My question got no response as he closed the distance between us and his hands were on me.

“No, I miss you,” he drawled, his lips already finding my throat. “Wanted to see you. Need to touch you, need to feel you.”

I recognized that heady scent of burnt Iris again, and with it came the fog gathering at the edges of my mind. Aina strained past my mental block, desperate for a glimpse of our mate, and despite all the things I thought I would say to him, ask him, I was once again at the mercy of the charged sensation between us.

I didn’t care how sudden it was to be in his arms again without explanation as I let him take me against the horse shed.