Chapter Seven
986 Words
Hazel’s POV
I didn’t breathe until the door to the Alpha’s room shut behind me.
My hands shook so badly I nearly dropped the silver tray. “You’re dismissed.” His voice still scraped against my skin like claws.
I’d pushed him. Gods, I’d pushed the most ruthless Alpha on the continent. Vincent used to say Alaric killed omegas for looking at him wrong. And I’d stood in his bedroom, touched his blood, and told him Aurella would hate him.
I should be dead.
Instead, I was walking to the nursery, my heart pounding for a different reason.
Because for three seconds, when I covered his fist with my hand, his eyes hadn’t looked like a monster’s. They’d looked… lost.
“Don’t,” I’d whispered. “Not for me. You’ll scare Aurella if you lose control.”
And he’d listened.
The nursery was dark except for one small lamp. Aurella was curled under her bear-print blankets, but her eyes snapped open when I entered. Not scared. Expectant.
“Did you see Papa?” she whispered, like it was our secret.
I nodded, setting the tray down. My fingers were still stained faintly pink from his blood. I hid them in my skirts. “He’s… cleaning up.”
“Was he mad?”
Yes. “He’s always a little mad,” I said instead. “But he asked about you.”
Her whole face lit up. That was new. When I first came, Aurella only spoke in one-word answers and flinched if I moved too fast. The maids said she hadn’t smiled since her mother died.
Now she patted the bed beside her. “Will you stay? Until Papa comes?”
I climbed in, careful not to jostle her. She was so small. So fragile. And yet, she was the reason I was alive. Vincent had made it clear what happened to omegas who couldn’t work. But the day Aurella grabbed my hand and refused to let go during breakfast… everything changed.
We waited. The halls were silent. I counted Aurella’s breaths to keep my own steady. One, two, three…
Then I heard him.
Footsteps. Heavy, measured, stopping outside the nursery door. He didn’t knock. Alphas didn’t knock.
But he didn’t burst in either.
There was a long pause. And then,his voice. Low, rumbling, deliberately soft.
“‘The Warrior Bear stomped through the forest,’” he read. “‘His roar shook the leaves from the trees. But when he found the little cub crying…’”
I froze.
He was doing the voices.
Aurella’s hand shot out and clamped around my wrist, her eyes huge in the dark. She mouthed, Papa.
“‘...he didn’t roar,’” Alaric continued from the hallway. “‘He knelt. And he said, in his biggest, softest voice… Who hurt you, little one?’”
My throat closed.
This was the man who’d just told Vincent he’d strip him of everything. The man who bled without flinching. The man who told me to get out like I was nothing.
And he was in the hallway, reading a children’s book, because his daughter asked.
Aurella was vibrating with joy. She kicked her blankets off. “Papa!” she whisper-yelled.
The reading stopped.
For a second, I thought he’d leave. Alphas didn’t do bedtime stories. Not after they’d spent the day delivering punishments and hunting.
The door creaked open.
He filled the frame, still in his black hunting clothes, hair damp from a quick wash. He didn’t look at me. His eyes went straight to Aurella.
“I heard someone was demanding I read to her,”he said, his voice gravel. But the corner of his mouth… it twitched. Not a smile. Never a smile. But something close.
Aurella patted the other side of the bed. “Hazel’s here too! She can listen!”
That’s when his gaze cut to me. Ice blue, unreadable. A warning. A question.
I started to get up. “I should go”
“No.” Aurella grabbed my nightdress. “Stay. Please? Papa does the bear voice better when you’re here.”
He does?
Alaric’s jaw ticked. He looked like he wanted to order me out again. Like he wanted to order himself out.
But then Aurella coughed. A tiny, fragile sound.
And the Alpha of millions of wolves, the man who’d just destroyed Vincent’s life with three sentences, crossed the room and sat on the edge of his daughter’s bed.
He didn’t touch me. Didn’t acknowledge me. He picked up the battered book from Aurella’s nightstand and opened it.
“Where was I?” he muttered.
“The cub was crying,” Aurella supplied, snuggling down. Her foot brushed mine under the blankets.
“Right.” He cleared his throat. “‘Who hurt you, little one?’ the Warrior Bear asked. And the cub whispered…”
I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.
Because the Alpha wasn’t reading to Aurella.
He was reading to us.
And when he got to the bear’s line “Then I will tear the world apart until you’re safe”, his eyes lifted from the page.
And they found mine.
He didn’t stop reading. But his voice went deeper, darker, like a promise. Like a threat.
“No one touches what is mine.”
The book said “what is the cub’s.”
He didn’t say cub.
Aurella was already asleep, her breathing even. She didn’t notice.
But I did.
And so did he.
He closed the book slowly. Set it down. Stood.
For a second, we just stared at each other over his sleeping daughter. Predator and prey. Alpha and omega.
He didn’t say “leave” this time.
He didn’t have to.
He walked out.
And I lay there in the dark, Aurella’s hand still holding my nightdress, my heart hammering against my ribs, and realized something terrifying:
The ruthless Alpha didn’t want me dead anymore.
He wanted me.
- Writer
