POSSESSION OF THE ALPHA BROTHERS

I CANNOT LOSE TOBIAS

Breathless, I stared at the impertinent one with my mouth agape, contemplating what should be said after being disposed of such indecency. To relieve me of such employment, Kai withdrew from the room, probably overpowered by the penitence that such an act is bound to produce.

Comforted by the older knight’s departure, I collected myself and then rose from bed to hurry to the bedroom door to descend the staircase and then move to the exit to leave this estate, located in the most foreign and isolated part of the town. Getting back to my place was thus proven much more arduous than anticipated while leaving Kai behind, the one who'd brought me there.

Vulnerably, I walk the neighbourhood in search of transportation, but I find none in this scarcely populated locality. Somewhat defeated, I deliberated over preferring to seek a lift than opting for public transportation, and so I waved at the very first vehicle that came towards me. Fortunately, the benevolent driver stopped the vehicle.

My heart sank in my chest when I neared the car and discovered the identity of the driver, and expressed my dissatisfaction with the same by questioning the man inside the car, “Why are you following me, class rep?”

Astonished as an enquiry containing such a profound charge might elicit, he clarified the reason behind his early morning excursion, “Since you are unfamiliar with this place and I brought you here, I feel obliged to drop you at your place.”

“Only if you swear not to touch me,” I said, crossed with what had transpired but an hour ago between us.

His dark eyes rested on my face, reading the petulance exhibited by my pouty lips, something that presumably caused an unintended frown on his face and compelled him to offer me a promise to keep his hands to himself. Considering the celebrated class rep’s reputation for being prudent in both the school and the pack, I grew confident that he mightn’t do anything that could tarnish his reputation.

Sliding inside the car to perch my back on the front passenger seat, I asked him to get the car moving. Snapping out of one of his reveries that kept him quiet a lot of the time, he nodded and turned on the engine to get us out of that Cimmerian neighbourhood.

We’d made just two miles from the spot we’d met, and instead of making the most of the music that his car’s stereo system could afford to ease our awkwardness a little, Kai brought the subject I’d kill to avoid, the forced intimacy we’d participated in not more than an hour ago.

“I do not understand what happened to me. If you know anything at all about me, you must be aware of how unlikely it is for me to distress to something as bawdy as courting the affection of my brother’s girl,” said Kai, trying to hunt reason for his unruly behaviour from before. “Maybe it was because—”

The hiatus produced by the self-remonstrance deprived me of whatever he thought could’ve prompted him to overlook his relationship with his brother and shove his tongue inside my mouth. Even though my countenance betrayed my willingness to appear uninterested, I still persisted with the wish and looked outside of the window, implying how I too did not want any more of that conversation.

Clearly failing to grasp the clue, Kai questions me, once again getting too prying for comfort, “Aren’t you ever haunted by the thought of not being accepted in the pack as my brother’s bride?”

“Bride?” I asked, reliving all the late-night melancholic deliberations that I did over the same, but chose to say nothing of it to him. “I never thought about it.”

Though he was absolutely engrossed on the road and the steering wheels before him, he still managed to hold the conversation by further questioning me about my intentions regarding my relationship with his brother, a question I couldn’t answer without shedding tears from recognising how my intentions might seem too demanding. Of course, I wanted nothing less than the ability to become an unalienable part of my love, Tobias’s life.

“Your silence speaks volumes, Dimitra,” said Kai, reading hints of forlornness in my eyes. “But, the continuation of such an inappropriate and unsound match is bound to produce nothing but melancholy for you. Do think about it before supplying this connection with any more time and effort than it deserves.”

To say that the older Knight’s admonitions hadn’t picked and poked at the wounds that my own pessimistic meditations had inflicted would be wrong, but there was hardly any difference in opinions generated in the process. I still very much couldn’t abandon my love for Tobias, but before I could make any declaration regarding the same, he halted the car and my humble home came into my view.

At the front of the building, my aunt, Gretchen, stood with her arms crossed, appearing as bilious as ever, the intensity of which was heightened by her crooked brows and an unpleasant frown. Knowing in my heart that I wasn’t prepared to be abused so early in the morning, I failed to restrain the panic that surfaced in my face.

Too quick to grasp my perturbation before I’d concealed it beneath a gratuitous smile, he said, “You can always come up to me if you can’t seem to get help from anywhere, regarding the cruelty exhibited by your aunt.”

“Why should I come to you? We’re not even friends. Though I am highly grateful for your kindness the other day, I do not want you to meddle any more in my life, for my relationship with your brother cannot afford it,” I averred before leaving. “And, I cannot afford to lose him until it is desired by him.”

Removing myself from his car, I made my way to my aunt, whose mouth did justice to her contentious countenance as she said on watching me emerge out of the car of possibly the next Alpha of our pack, “Aren’t you like your mother in all regards? Huh, Dimitra? You, too, are fond of climbing the laps of the most prosperous men like her.”

Had her demurral been confined to my faults, I would’ve endured it with a smile, but including my faultless mother in her usual derogatory remarks was crossing the line, and therefore I knew how I shouldn’t be blamed for what was to ensue next.

Conquered by the hatred which had several times tried but failed to unite to produce action, I pushed the stout woman to the ground, crying, “How come the advancing age has rewarded you only with wrinkles and no wisdom?”

Just what’s expected of someone as vulgar as my aunt, she grabbed my leg and pushed me downwards to seek revenge, something that could’ve ended up uglier for her if my father hadn’t arrived at the spot in time. Helping the two of us get to our feet, my father asked me what had caused me to suddenly take off on spotting my aunt, who’d visited my school to bring me home, clearly misinformed about what actually transpired the previous afternoon.

Expecting me to lie, my aunt smiled complacently. Things, however, weren’t going to go as smoothly for her as she’d expected, for I had had enough of her obloquy and beatings, and thus I gave my father a real account behind my absence and the insult she’d uttered about my mother.

Attentively, my father heard every word that came out of my mouth and exhibited his disapproval of my aunt’s conduct through a shake of the head and a frown, but there wasn’t anything significant that he’d done in that regard. Promising to punish my aunt severely the next time she tried hurting me, my father instructed me to my bedroom to get ready for the celebration of my eighteenth birthday party.

“Celebration? I am not a kid anymore,” I protested, remembering I needed to meet Tobias tonight at his place.

Offering no further argument to persuade me on the subject, my unbending old man declared, “I will require you to get down around five o’clock, as we are summoned to the Beauchamp estate for the same. Do not be late.”

“To the Knight’s place?” I asked, incapable of grasping the necessity of being summoned to Alpha’s manor on my birthday.

Since I was doing what was asked by my father even when no explanation was offered, I reluctantly entered the bathroom to prepare for the day ahead. As soon as I had discarded all my clothes and the smell of the older knight from before, I shut my eyes and felt myself drowning in the sorrow that produced some unsolicited tears,

What the older knight had warned me against wasn’t anything I hadn’t been apprised of by my own common sense, but the very fear of losing the love of my life made me turn a blind eye to it, something I know I might have to confront sooner or later.

Not allowed to even seek solace in solitude, somebody, who I believed couldn’t be anyone else besides my aunt, swung open the door to my bathroom, causing me to hurriedly step out of the shower, grab onto my towel and wrap it around myself.