THE MATE THE ROGUE ALPHA WAS MEANT TO KILL

Chapter 21—Sleepless Thoughts

Elara's POV

The dormitory was warm after the rain and Freya was sitting cross legged on her bed with a book open in her lap when I walked in, her eyes lifting the moment the door opened with the particular attention of someone who had been waiting and was now very ready to receive information, and I took one look at her face and decided immediately that the less I offered the better.

"You have been gone for ages."

"Training ran long," I said, dropping my bag by the door and pulling my damp jacket off, keeping my back to her for a moment longer than necessary because my face was doing something I had not fully gotten under control yet and Freya had the eyes of someone who noticed everything.

Freya studied me. "Kael kept you that late?"

"The rain slowed things down." I moved to my side of the room, sat on my bed and started unlacing my shoes with deliberate focus.

A pause.

"You have that face again," and I could hear the smile already forming in her voice. "Something happened and you are deciding how much of it to share."

"Nothing happened. Training was good, I am tired and my hair is wet and I genuinely would like to sleep."

Freya said "Fine" in the tone that meant she was filing it away for later and we both knew it, and I lay back on my pillow and stared at the ceiling and listened to the rain still coming down outside the window.

I lay there in the quiet and let my mind go back to where it had been trying to go since I walked through the door, pulled there the way you were pulled toward something warm when everything else around you was still and dark.

The shelter. The rain falling in a soft curtain around us and everything outside it simply gone, just the two of us in that small quiet space with the rest of the school somewhere far behind us, and the way his hands had felt in my hair, warm and unhurried, like he had already decided this was exactly where he wanted to be and saw no reason to rush any part of it.

The rain falling in a curtain around us and everything outside it simply gone, just the two of us in that small quiet space with the rest of the school somewhere far behind us, and the way his hands had felt in my hair, warm and gently, like he was not in a rush to be anywhere else and had decided a long time ago that this was exactly where he wanted to be.

I closed my eyes and stayed in it, the heat of his mouth against my neck and the particular way he had held me closer when I pressed into him, and the stillness that had settled over the whole moment like the world had agreed to give us that time without interruption.

And then he had stopped, and I kept coming back to that part, not because it disappointed me, because it genuinely did not, but because of how he had done it, the deliberateness of reaching up and buttoning my shirt back himself, each button like a decision he was making clearly and without any resentment behind it, and then his forehead resting against mine while he breathed himself back to steady, quiet and warm and entirely present, and the way he had said not here, not like this with the certainty of someone who meant it completely and wanted me to know he meant it.

I thought about his eyes when the heat had hit, that particular glow that had made my breath catch before I even fully understood what I was seeing, warm and specific and directed entirely at me, and the way he had answered my question without flinching or making it strange, just honest and direct and completely steady, and how everything that came after had felt both new and entirely natural at the same time, like something that had been building for weeks had finally been given permission to exist properly.

He had wanted to keep going and had chosen not to, and the choice had been entirely about me, and lying in my bed in the quiet of the dormitory I felt the warmth of that settle through me in a way that had nothing to do with the temperature of the room and everything to do with the fact that he was the kind of person who made choices like that and meant them completely.

I reached up and ran my fingers along the bracelet on my wrist in the dark, the cool metal and the small letters of my name, and thought about the fact that this was the same person who had gone into town and found my favourite chocolate from a passing mention and come back with pastries and a bracelet with my name engraved on it and had not made a single performance of any of it, just set it all down on the bench beside me like it was the most natural thing in the world, and that quiet kind of attention was doing something to me that his kiss had started and his restraint had finished.

Nyx came in sometime later and moved around without turning the main light on, setting her things down softly, and I kept my eyes closed and let her settle, and the rain outside the window slowed to something gentle and the dormitory went still around us.

I was smiling and I knew it and I had absolutely no intention of stopping, and the last thought I had before sleep was Ravin specifically, the corner of his mouth moving into that quiet almost smile he seemed to reserve only for me, and the warmth of his hands, and the glow in his eyes, and the way even the memory of all of it felt like something I wanted to stay inside for as long as possible.

I was already so far gone and the thought did not frighten me at all.