The Exiled Alpha's Human Mate

CH.6 - The Voice That Reached Me

Evan's POV

I make it three streets from the party before my legs give out.

There's an alley between a closed bait shop and someone's back fence. I get into it and put my back against the wall and slide down until I'm sitting on the wet ground. My hands are shaking. I hold them up in front of my face and watch them do it, and I can't make them stop.

I almost killed that boy tonight.

I want to say almost like it means something, but it doesn't. My fist was already coming down when she shouted. One more second and Liam would be on his way to the hospital, or worse, and the only reason he isn't is a girl across a crowded room saying three words.

Are you crazy.

That's all it took. Three words over the music and the noise, and I stopped. My hand just stopped in the air.

That's not how it works. When I go under, I don't hear anything. My father screamed at me the day I hurt Josh and I never heard one word of it. People can shout my name an inch from my face and it doesn't reach me. But she said one thing from the other side of a room and the wolf turned around like she'd yanked a leash.

I scrub my hands down my face and try to breathe slower.

The wolf is still awake. Usually after a slip he's wired and angry, pacing, hard to settle. Not tonight. Tonight he's calm. Worse than calm. He's happy, sitting there in my chest with his attention pointed back toward the party, toward her, and every few seconds he says the same thing.

Mate.

I've known since the boat. I've just been refusing to say it to myself, because the second I do, I have to deal with it, and I've spent three years making sure I never have to deal with anything.

She's human. The bond doesn't care. I take enough suppressant every day to knock out a grown wolf and it barely holds him down, and none of that matters to the thing in my chest that has decided a fisherman's daughter is mine. She bit my hand away on that boat. She told me I owed her an apology and nothing else. And the wolf looked at all of that and picked her anyway, and he won't be talked out of it.

I let my head fall back against the brick.

Her face is the thing I keep coming back to. Not the rumors people tell about me, not the cold transfer act I put on. She saw the real thing tonight. She saw exactly what I am and what I can do, and she looked right at me over that boy's body, and she was afraid.

Good, I tell myself.

She should be. Being afraid of me is the smart thing. If she's afraid, she stays away, and staying away is the only thing that keeps her safe, because the one certainty in my life is that I hurt the people who get close. Josh. And Josh never came near me again after, and he was right not to.

So I do the math. It's simple.

I stay away from her.

I don't collect the favor she owes me. I don't wait by her locker. I don't go to the dock. I let her go back to her swim team and her harbor and the sweet kid who follows her around, and I keep my head down until I graduate and leave, and she never finds out how close she came to something that could get her killed.

It's the right call. I sit with it for a second, almost relieved to have decided.

Then the wolf comes up hard against the inside of my ribs, and the breath goes out of me.

It's not a sound. It's a shove. He throws himself at the walls I keep him behind, harder than he has in years, harder than any night since Josh, and for a second my vision tips and I grip the wet ground with both hands because I honestly don't know which of us is in charge. He wants to go back to the party. He wants her. He does not care about safe, or smart, or the boy I nearly put in the ground an hour ago.

Down, I tell him. The word I've used a thousand times.

He doesn't go down.

He sits at the front of me like a dog refusing to leave a door, and I get it then. This isn't the old fight. For three years it's been me against him, and I've won most nights. This is different. The bond has changed him. Staying away from her isn't a choice I make once. It's a thing I'm going to have to win every day, over and over, and I already watched tonight what happens to my grip on him when she so much as raises her voice.

Three words and I stopped mid-swing.

What happens the day she's actually in trouble and I've promised myself I won't go?

I push to my feet. My legs hold this time. The party's still going behind me, bass thudding low over the water, and I make myself walk the other way, back toward my room.

I don't get far.

"There he is."

Will's leaning against his bike at the mouth of the next street, one boot up on the pedal, lighter flicking open and shut in his hand. He's older than me by about ten years, built heavy, with a smile he uses like a tool. He was the first person in this town to hand me anything without wanting to fight me for it. A room. A way to make money. For a while that meant something.

"You disappeared fast," he says. "One minute you're cleaning that kid's clock, the next you're gone."

"Wasn't feeling it."

"You looked like you were feeling it plenty." He pushes off the bike and comes closer, and I make myself stay loose, hands in my pockets, face bored. He watches me too carefully these days. "That was a good hit, Evan. Real good. The kind of thing people pay to see."

"He was done. I stopped."

"You stopped." Will tilts his head. "Yeah. Why'd you stop?"

There it is. He's not asking about the boy. He's asking about the thing he's seen flicker in me a few times now and can't name, the switch that flips when there's blood, the part he'd love to put on a card and sell tickets for.

"Got bored," I say.

He looks at me a moment longer, then grins and claps me on the shoulder, and I don't flinch even though every part of me wants to.

"Sure. Bored." He swings back onto the bike. "There's a big card coming up. Money's good. Real good this time, new backer, deep pockets. I want you on it."

"I'll think about it."

"Think fast." He kicks the engine over. "This one's worth it. Trust me."

He rides off, and I stand there in the dark thinking about the way he said new backer, and the way his eyes stayed on me the whole time like he was pricing me out, and I don't know yet why it sits so wrong. I just know it does.

Then I go home, to the pills and another night of not sleeping.

I take two more than I should when I get in. It's stupid. I do it anyway, because I want him quiet enough that I can't hear her name.

It doesn't work.

I lie in the dark with the sea going outside the window, and no matter how much I take, he stays right at the surface, turned toward the other side of town like a needle that's finally found north and won't spin off it.

Mate, he says. Quieter now. Almost patient, like he's waiting for me to catch up.

Ours.

And here's the part I'd never say to anyone. Under all the fear, under all the good reasons to let her go, some part of me that isn't the wolf at all answers him. Just the tired part of me that's been alone since I was seventeen.

I know, I tell him. Ours.

Then I put my arm over my eyes and tell myself again that I'll stay away from her, and deep down neither of us believes it.