The Alpha Who Waited

Chapter 6

Two weeks into living behind Silverpine's walls, I'd learned exactly how many rules came with being someone's guest.

Don't leave the inner compound without an escort. Don't speak to warriors on patrol. Don't ask questions about the Alpha's schedule, his history, or anything that wasn't strictly necessary. My grandmother explained it gently, my father accepted it without complaint, and I chafed against every single line of it like an itch I couldn't reach.

So when a knock came at our door that afternoon and I opened it to find him standing there, filling the frame the way he seemed to fill every space he walked into, I wasn't exactly in the mood to be polite.

"Alpha Cole." My father was on his feet immediately, some old instinct making him straighten like he was still a soldier reporting for inspection. "Is something wrong?"

"Routine check." His eyes flicked past my father, past Finn on the couch, and landed on me for exactly one second before sliding away again. "Making sure the family's settling in. Pack protocol."

It wasn't protocol. I didn't know how I knew that, but I knew it the way I seemed to know a lot of things about him lately without any explanation for why.

"Everything's fine," my father said. "We're grateful for your hospitality."

"Good." He nodded once, stiff, already half turned to leave, and then Grandma Nora appeared from the kitchen with a tray of tea like she'd been waiting for exactly this moment.

"Nonsense, staying two minutes and calling it an inspection. Sit down, all of you. Rhea, help me in the kitchen."

I didn't want to help in the kitchen. I wanted to know why the most powerful man in this pack kept finding excuses to show up at our door and then couldn't look at me for longer than a heartbeat. But Grandma Nora had a way of making requests that weren't really requests, so I followed her, and somehow, I still don't know how she managed it, I ended up alone in the small pantry room off the kitchen, reaching for cups on a high shelf, when he appeared in the doorway behind me.

"I can get those," he said.

"I don't need help."

"I didn't say you did."

I turned around, cups forgotten, and found him closer than I expected, close enough that the strange pull I still didn't understand roared up loud enough to make my next breath unsteady. The pantry was small. There was nowhere to put distance between us that didn't mean stepping past him entirely.

"Why do you do that," I said, before I could stop myself.

His jaw tightened. "Do what."

"Look at me like..." I struggled for the words, frustration cracking through. "Like you want to say something and won't let yourself. Every time. At the gate. In the yard. Right now."

Something flickered across his face, gone almost as fast as it came. For one second I thought he might actually answer me honestly, might finally explain whatever this strange thing was that lived between us without a name.

"You're imagining things," he said instead, voice low and rough.

"I'm not stupid."

"I never said you were." He stepped back half a pace, putting careful distance between us like it cost him something to do it. "Rhea..."

"Then tell me the truth."

His eyes met mine fully then, and for one unguarded moment I saw something raw underneath all that careful control, something that looked almost like pain, like he was holding back a truth heavy enough to break something if he let it out.

"There are things," he started, low, "that I can't..."

The perimeter alarm tore through the compound, so loud and sudden it rattled the shelves around us. His whole body went rigid, every trace of whatever he'd been about to say vanishing behind a mask of pure Alpha focus.

"Stay inside," he ordered, already moving past me toward the door. "Whatever happens, stay inside this house."

"What's going on..."

"Rhea." He turned back once, just long enough for our eyes to lock across the small room, and in that half second I saw fear on his face for the very first time, not for himself. "Stay inside."

Then he was gone, boots pounding down the hall, shouting orders I couldn't fully make out over the alarm still screaming through the compound, and I stood frozen in the pantry with my heart slamming against my ribs, certain that whatever he'd been about to admit to me had just been swallowed whole by whatever danger was crashing through Silverpine's