Claimed By The Banished Alpha

Chapter 6: The Pull.

Sylvia Fenris' POV

His lips touched mine; something inside me broke open. It was not gentle, nor was it slow. It was like a wire pulled taut between us, finally snapping into place, and every nerve in my body lit up at once.

My fingers gripped the leather of his jacket collar like I might fall without it. His hand went to my back, drawing me closer as if he had to make sure I was real.

The night air was cold a moment ago, but I did not feel it anymore. He kissed me like he had waited his whole life for permission and finally decided he didn’t need it.

The kiss was done with no care. It was not like kissing Rand, soft and measured, and knowing there was an audience even when there wasn't. I felt as if my entire body had been asleep for eighteen years, and somebody just shook me awake.

Then, he recoiled so quickly, I almost pitched forward. "No," he said; it was like it hurt him to say it. He took a step back, giving us space, his chest heaving too fast for the man meant to be in charge of everything. His hands hung in the air between us for a second, as if he didn't know what to do with them now that they weren't holding on to me.

"I don't," I said, putting my fingers to my lips. They were warm and still. My entire face was hot, but I don't know why I did that.

“You know damn well why." His voice was rougher. "You felt it, too." I felt it like a chord struck deep in your chest, low and humming, not fading.

I had read about the bonding of mates in school. I heard my friends whisper about the day they felt it. Always giggled romantically, like it was something soft and easy. Nobody said it would be like this, the ground shifting under my feet on the worst night of my life.

I never thought it would come from him. The school was terrified of and fascinated by the boy, at the same time, the one whose name alone made teachers straighten their spines.

“This can't happen”, I whispered, more for my own sake than for his. “Two hours ago, I had a destined mate, and that guy had a girl’s mouth on him”. Now this, my chest couldn’t decide which wound to focus on.

“No,” he said, and something in his eyes went cold and far away, like a shutter closing over a lit window. What had been opened in his face a moment before and had let me see the boy beneath the legend shut itself off.

"It can't," he said with a low voice.

"Why not?" I asked. “It came out before I could stop it, small and stupid and desperate in a way I hated.”

He stared at me a second too long, as if trying to memorize something he had already made his mind up to turn his back on, and then, he turned before I could say anything else to him, walking backward in the dark like the moonlight itself had swallowed him until I could no longer see him, but I heard his footsteps fade away through the trees.

I stood on that porch for a long time, my heart a drum I couldn't hush, and the taste of him in my mouth. The dormitory behind me was quiet and dark. Inside, my friends were asleep, and the whole shape of my life had just tilted sideways twice in one night. I turned my back to the cold wooden post and slid down until I could sit on the top step with my arms around my knees, staring at nothing.

I remembered Rand's face when he called me frigid. I thought of Morgana's slyness and her satisfied grin. Underneath it all, quieter but somehow louder than anything, I thought about the way Thoros had looked at me right before he kissed me like I was something he had been forbidden and wanted anyway.

Two boys, two very different kinds of danger. Rand wanted to have me like he had everything else: a title, a trophy, and an example of what he could have if he wanted it.

Thoros hadn’t wanted anything from me at all. He had been almost angry that he wanted me again. Like his own desire was a betrayal of something bigger than the two of us. I did not get it yet, but some tiny, stubborn part of me wanted to.

I wondered what it meant that the moon goddess had chosen him too. Fateful mates were not supposed to be a mistake. All the stories I had grown up with said the bond only happened between two souls made for each other, no matter how impossible the circumstances looked from the outside. But nothing tonight was like the stories. To fall into the arms of the one boy her entire clan had been taught to fear? Nothing about a rejected Omega felt like fate. It was like a cruel joke or a warning, and I couldn't decide which was worse.

Finally, the cold was too much, and I forced myself back inside. I moved quietly so I would not wake anyone and climbed into my bunk fully dressed. I didn’t sleep; I lay there, replaying every second of it: the porch light, his hand on my back, and the low gravel of his voice saying “you felt it too.” The only sound in the room is Nina’s soft snoring below me and my own racing pulse.

Sometime after midnight, I heard something outside my window. A branch breaking, too slow for wind, too heavy for a squirrel, or a bird roosting for the night. My whole body froze, every hair on my arms standing up at once.

I sat up gingerly, not wanting to disturb the mattress, and pulled back the thin curtain just enough to look out into the courtyard below.

A tall shadow passed over the grass, still, looking at my window with a patience that turned my stomach.

I knew that shadow. I knew the set of those shoulders, the way he stood as if he owned whatever ground he was standing on. "Rand."

He wasn't looking at the dormitory in its entirety. He was still staring right at my window like he had been standing there long enough to see everything that went on, on that porch.

He had seen it all.