Claimed by the Ruthless Alpha

Chapter 4

I did not sleep.

I laid on my back in the dark and stared at the ceiling and thought about grey eyes and the way the air had changed when he stood close to me, and I told myself over and over that it was nothing.

It was probably proximity and nerves and maybe the strange energy of a room full of powerful wolves. It was something explainable,although he did not mean what part of me was afraid it meant.

Jeremy came in at two a.m in the morning.

He did not say anything about the nightmare because there had not been one. He just sat at the end of my bed in the dark and looked at me.

"You're not sleeping," he said.

"I noticed."

"Zara."

"Jeremy….."

He was quiet for a moment.

"Did something happen tonight? At the gathering?"

I looked at the ceiling. "No."

"You're lying."

"I'm fine."

He moved up the bed and lay down next to me, looking at the ceiling too. That was the thing about Jeremy and me. We had known each other long enough that we could have conversations that were mostly silence and still come out the other side having said something real.

"He looked at you," Jeremy said after a while

"Ryker. He looked at you more than once and that's not something he usually does. He's the kind of Alpha that looks through people, not at them. Like they're geography, not individuals."

"Maybe he was curious. I'm human."

"Maybe." He did not sound convinced. "What did you feel?"

I turned my head to look at him. He was already looking at me.

"Nothing," I said.

His jaw worked. He knew I was lying. He always knew. But whatever he was thinking, he kept it behind his eyes and did not push it.

"I know how to behave at pack functions, Jeremy."

"I know you do." He paused. "I just need you close right now, okay? Just for tomorrow."

There was something in his voice I did not understand. It was heavy but I decided to let it go for the night.

I was in the kitchen the next morning, early, before most of the house was awake. I was nursing my second coffee and going over the studio's scheduling notes on my phone when I heard the back door open.

I did not look up.

The pack members came and went at all hours.

But then, the air shifted and I just had to put my coffee down.

Ryker Cole stood just inside the doorway to the kitchen, looking at me like he had expected the room to be empty and was now recalculating. He was wearing a dark jacket and looked like he had slept fine, which I resented.

"You couldn't find the front door?" I asked.

He walked to the counter on the opposite side of the kitchen and poured himself a coffee from the pot with the ease of someone completely comfortable taking up space in places he had not been invited.

"Your Luna offered the kitchen to our group."

"Right." I picked up my phone again, pretending to read. "Enjoy it then."

He did not leave.

I could feel him looking at me from across the kitchen the same way I could feel the pull, which had not diminished overnight. It had gotten louder, sitting quiet under everything like a second heartbeat.

"You were told what you are to me?" he asked.

I set my phone down. I looked at him. "I was told nothing. By anyone."

Something flickered in his expression. Surprise, maybe, but it was quickly buried.

"No one explained it to you last night? After…..?”He paused.

"After you told me to stay away from you?" I said. "No. No one pulled me aside and explained anything. I just went to bed and had a wonderful night's sleep." I picked up my coffee. "What am I to you?"

He was quiet for long enough that I thought he was not going to answer.

"It doesn't matter," he said finally. "I came to tell you in person, which is more courtesy than most wolves get. What I said last night stands." He set his mug down. "Stay away from me, Zara."

My name in his mouth did something I did not appreciate.

"How do you know my name?" I said.

"I know everything about every person in every house I walk into. That's not a gift. It's preparation." His grey eyes held mine steadily.

"This doesn't work. You're human, I'm an Alpha with a pack that has enemies on three borders and a leadership council that would never accept……." He stopped and started again. "It doesn't work."

"I did not ask for it to," I said, very calmly, for someone who felt like the floor was dropping under her feet. "I do not know what you think I'm going to do, show up at your pack house with a suitcase and expectations? I have a plan. It has nothing to do with you. So stop coming into rooms I'm already in and explaining why it doesn't work. I already know."

He looked at me for a long moment.

Then, softly, he said the words.

"I, Ryker Cole, Alpha of Dark Moon Pack, reject you as my mate."

The pull snapped.

It did not fade or ease or dissolve gently. It broke, like something being torn, and the pain of it went through me so fast and so deep that I had to grab the edge of the counter to stay standing. My coffee cup hit the floor. I did not feel it.

I had never felt anything like it. I had no wolf, no bond, no context for what a mate rejection was supposed to feel like. But I felt every inch of it.

I straightened.

I looked him in the eyes.

"Okay," I said. My voice did not shake. I made sure of that.

His expression, just for one second, cracked. Something moved behind his eyes that looked like pain.

Then it was gone and he was the closedoff, stormgrey Alpha again.

"You'll recover quickly," he said. "Humans usually do."

He walked out.

I stood in the kitchen alone, hand still gripping the counter, and breathed through the kind of pain that has no visible wound, and told myself the same thing I had told myself for two years whenever something threatened to break me.

*Not here. Not now. Later.*

I had gotten very good at later.

But when Jeremy walked into the kitchen twenty minutes later and looked at my face and went very still, I knew that later had run out of time.

"Zara," he said quietly. "What did he do?"

I opened my mouth.

And Jeremy's phone rang.

He looked at the screen and something changed in his face. Something I had never seen before. His hand tightened on the phone and he looked at me and then at the door Ryker had walked through, and back at me, and whatever he was looking at, it was not something simple.

"I have to take this," he said, carefully. "Don't go anywhere. Please."

He stepped out.

I stood in the kitchen, broken open and alone, with a coffee cup shattered on the floor at my feet and the absolute certainty that whatever Jeremy was hearing on that phone, it was about me.

And it was going to change everything