The Alpha's Sun-Blessed Mate

Chapter 4.2

Luca was leaning against the hood of a sleek black SUV, arms crossed over his chest, watching us come through the door.

The porchlight caught the hard planes of his face, his blue eyes sharp in the semi-darkness. He’d loosened his tie. Rolled his sleeves to his elbows, exposing forearms corded with muscle and laced with veins. The casual adjustment should have made him look relaxed.

It didn’t. He looked like a predator at rest. The kind that doesn’t need to move because everything comes to it eventually.

His gaze tracked from Albert to me to Albert’s hand on my suitcase. Something shifted behind his eyes. Not anger exactly. Possession. Territory.

Albert set the suitcase down at the bottom of the porch steps. For a moment, father and son stood facing each other. Same height within inches. Same dark hair. Same jaw. Same blue eyes. But the resemblance only made the differences sharper. Albert was the unfinished version. Younger, leaner, still searching for who he was. Luca was the final draft. Hardened by decades of command, by loss, by the kind of power that reshapes a man from the inside out.

Whatever passed between them was silent. Twenty-five years of history compressed into a look that lasted three seconds.

Luca pushed off the car and walked forward. He picked up the suitcase from the ground without acknowledging Albert. His fingers wrapped around the handle right where Albert’s had been. Like he was erasing the contact.

“Say goodbye to your parents,” he said to me. His voice was neutral. Measured. Giving absolutely nothing away.

My mother came down the porch steps, crying openly now. She grabbed me in a hug so fierce my ribs creaked.

“Call me every day,” she whispered. “Every single day, Annabelle. Promise me.”

“I promise, Mom. I love you.”

“I love you more than you will ever know.” She pulled back and cupped my face in her hands, studying my features like she was memorizing them. Her thumbs brushed my cheekbones, traced the edge of my jaw. “You look so much like my mother. She would be so proud of you.”

My father hugged me next. His arms were tight enough to hurt, and I was glad for it. When he pulled back, he looked past me at Luca.

“You take care of my daughter.” His voice was low, lined with steel. “Alpha or not, you answer to me if she’s harmed.”

I expected Luca to bristle. To flex his dominance. Instead, something that might have been respect flickered across his face.

“You have my word,” he said. “No harm will come to her.”

Harm. Such a careful word. It left room for so many other things.

Luca opened the back door of the SUV. I moved toward it, my legs steady even though my heart was sprinting. As I passed him, his hand caught my waist.

Just for a second.

His fingers pressed into the curve above my hip, firm enough that I felt the heat of each one through my dress. His thumb grazed the strip of bare skin where the fabric had ridden up, and the contact was so electric that I stopped breathing. My whole body went tight.

I looked up at him. He was close enough that I could see the faint lines at the corners of his eyes. The small scar along his jaw. The way his pupils had swallowed most of the blue. His gaze dropped to my mouth, lingered there for one agonizing heartbeat, then dragged back up to my eyes.

Then he let go. His hand dropped to his side. His face went blank again, that iron mask sliding back into place.

I climbed into the car on shaking legs.

He slid in beside me. The door closed with a heavy thud, sealing us in together. The car smelled like leather and him. Pine, something sharp, something warm underneath that I wanted to press my face into, which was insane. This man was my fiancé’s father. He was twice my age. He had just claimed me like livestock in front of my entire pack.

And my wolf was purring.

The driver pulled away without a word.

Through the tinted windows, I watched my house shrink. My parents on the porch, my mother leaning into my father. Albert standing alone on the bottom step, his hands in his pockets, watching the taillights disappear. He looked like a younger version of the man sitting next to me. The irony was enough to choke on.

I pressed myself against the door. As far from Luca as the backseat allowed.

The silence was thick enough to drown in.

His hand rested on the seat between us. Just sitting there. Close enough that I could feel the warmth radiating from his skin.

My wolf was losing her mind. Every instinct I had was screaming at me to close the distance. To press myself against him. To bury my face in his neck and breathe him in until the ache in my chest stopped.

But he’d called me his companion. Not his mate. Not his luna. His companion.

I pressed harder against the door.

We drove in silence for ten minutes before he spoke.

“You’re afraid of me.” Not a question.

“I’m cautious,” I corrected without looking at him. “There’s a difference.”

“Is there?”

I turned my head. In the dim glow of passing streetlights, his face was all shadow and angles. His jaw was tight. His eyes straight ahead. But his hand, the one resting between us, had shifted closer to my thigh. Maybe an inch. Maybe less.

“You claimed me in front of the entire pack,” I said. “Said I belong to you. But you never said what that means. So yes. I’m cautious.”

His eyes cut to mine. Held. Steady and unblinking.

“What do you think I want from you, Annabelle?”

“I have no idea.” My voice came out steadier than I felt. “That’s the problem.”

He held my gaze for three more seconds. Then he turned and looked out his window.

“We have a long drive,” he said. “And an even longer flight. Use that time to think about what you want to ask me.”

“I already have questions.”

“Then save them.” His hand moved from the seat to my knee. Not slow. Not tentative. Just there, suddenly, his palm covering my kneecap, his fingers curling around the inside of my leg. Heavy. Warm. Proprietary. “You’ll get your answers. When I’m ready to give them.”

I should have pushed his hand away. Should have told him he didn’t get to touch me without explaining himself first. Should have demanded answers right there in the backseat of his car on a dark road in the middle of nowhere.

But his thumb had started moving. Drawing a slow, deliberate circle against the inside of my knee. So light it might have been accidental.

It wasn’t accidental.

And I didn’t push his hand away.