The Alpha who was Meant to Kill Me

Chapter 6.2

She wanted the night air. She wanted the river I could hear distantly through the open shutters. She wanted out of the little room where the Alpha king of Specter had pressed his presence against our door like a hand for half an hour before he had gone to his own bed.

I sat up slow. I strapped on my helmet. I belted on my swords. I opened the door quietly, and I slipped out.

The moon was low and bright. The air was cool on my face. The grass bent under my boots in a silver hush. Somewhere ahead of me, I could hear a river running fast over rocks, and fireflies moved through the tall grass like slow sparks. Two deer broke from a stand of reeds and bounded away. The world out here was alive in a way the room had not been.

I walked until I reached the embankment and looked down at the water. It was wild here. Rapids foamed white over black rock. The current was the kind that eats boats.

"Why are you out here at this late hour? Are you waiting for someone?"

I knew the voice without turning. The low edge of it, the darkness woven through. My wolf went alert but did not startle.

I tilted my chin just enough to see him over my shoulder.

Darien stood a few yards away.

"I wanted a quiet walk," I said, pitching my voice back down. "Who are you waiting on?"

"You." He said it flat. "Interesting that you take your helmet and sword on a walk."

"You brought yours."

"Where did you learn to fight like that?"

"I've spent my whole life with a sword in my hand," I said. And then, because I was tired, because his eyes had the gold line in them again, because something in me did not want to lie to him any more than the disguise already demanded, "But I don't know how I fought like that."

His head tilted.

"Don't play dumb with me." Low. Dangerous. "Who trained you? What do you want with Alec? That was not your first battle."

"I don't expect you to understand it. I don't either. I have never killed anyone in my life, and in one afternoon I—" I closed my mouth. I looked up at him under the helmet. "Is there something wrong with me? Is it not possible, what I did? I know you won't spare my feelings. Tell me."

He stared at me a long moment.

"Sure. Plenty of fighters move like that. None of them are on their first day." His mouth curved without warmth. "No wonder Alec believes you. You're very good at sounding honest."

I rolled my eyes so hard I thought they might detach.

"I appreciate you looking out for him. Go play spy with someone else."

"You are very disrespectful."

"You are very insufferable."

"Excuse me?"

"You heard me. A pompous, arrogant, self-absorbed ass."

His Alpha rolled out of him in a wave that should have forced me to my knees.

It rolled over me. My wolf braced. It did not buckle. Whatever she was behind the Shadow Gladius's seal, she did not bow to him. She did not bow to anyone.

He took a menacing step forward.

"What did you say?"

I was committed now so I went for it. "I said," I enunciated, "you are an ASS. HOLE."

"Tell me what is between you and Alec."

"Are you jealous?"

His mouth dropped open.

I had him. I had him, and I was tired, and I was furious, and I was going to drag this moment down into the mud and stomp on it.

"You don't have to be, you know." I stepped closer. "Alec likes you. He told me. The same way he likes me." I tilted my helmet up at him. "The three of us could have so much fun, don't you think? He promised we would all be very close."

His hand came up. He took a step back.

"Alec is my best friend and we do not—stop messing with my head."

"I don't want to mess with your head," I said, and took one more slow step toward him. My voice dropped. "I want to mess with your body."

His eyes went wide.

And then they narrowed.

And then the Alpha king of Specter, who had earned a reputation that traveled faster than any of his riders, who was standing on the wrong side of twenty-nine and had probably seen a thousand women try to take him to their beds, took another step back from a muddy boy with a helmet on.

"I am not interested." His voice cracked slightly. "And I still don't trust you."

"I wonder if Alec likes you more than me." I gave him the most pitiful pouting look I could manage under the helmet.

Darien took one more step back.

The embankment took him.

The bank of soft earth beneath his boot gave, simply and without warning, and Darien went sideways off the edge, hitting a rock, and disappeared.

"DARIEN!"

I was at the lip of the embankment in a heartbeat. I saw a glimpse of him in the water, dark against white foam, spinning, then gone. He did not come up.

My hands moved before my brain did. I tore off my helmet and threw it. I ripped at the straps of my armor and shoved it off. I pulled my own sword off my back and dropped it on the grass, and then I reached for the strap of the Shadow Gladius, and the sheath resisted.

Not a lot. Just a hitch. Like a hand on my wrist. Don't leave me.

"I have to," I snapped at it. "He'll drown."

I pulled the strap off and laid the black sheath down on top of my armor. The shadow at the mouth of it reached once, briefly, toward my fingers as I withdrew.

I did not have time to think about that.

I jumped.