Alpha Rising

Chapter Eight

Alban’s P.O.V.

There were flashes of scenes that I could feel trying to form in my memory. I lost most of what happened after I’d started the bonfire for Vira and Nell, but pieces still managed to wiggle in between my time spent sleeping. My limbs felt heavy, and there was an aching pain shooting through my veins like fire. Muddled voices drifted in and out, but all I could really feel was the consistent pull of sleep. 

“Wolfsbane,” some unfamiliar voice said low. The rest of the sentence was a blur, and I fell back into darkness. My wolf was weak. He wasn’t as energetic as usual, and the exhaustion he felt was hard for me to fight against. 

My eyelids opened slowly, but the room was still dark and hazy. A warmth was there though, calm and pressing to my forehead. It smelled like Mom, but that didn’t make sense. She wasn’t at the lake house with us. Where was I now? My left arm shifted, and I felt someone squeeze my hand. 

“Alban?” It sounded like my mother’s voice again, and the confusion made me answer in a mumbled muddle of consonants. She shushed me again and I felt the soothing touch of her hand on my head. The feel and the familiar scent instantly soothed me, just like when I was little. “Alban, baby. Shhh, it’s okay.”

With some great effort, I was able to fully open my eyes and focus on her face. “Mom?”

There were tears in her eyes still, but she lunged forward to hold me tight and wrap me in a hug so tight it made me wince in pain. The sound elicited a gasp from my mother, who pulled back with her hand to her lips. Before she could apologize, I was already asking “Where am I?”

Her lips still stuttered with an apology, but she made no move to vocalize it. A quick dart of her eyes signaled to the second bed in the room, hidden by a thin curtain. “Carnelian,” she finally said. But that made no sense to me. Why weren’t we back in Black Opal? “Nell and Vira got you here as fast as they could. Do...you remember anything?” She pulled her chair closer to me before reaching for an unopened bottle of water on a table. "Here," she said while pushing it into my hand. "Drink some. You need to keep your fluids up."

She didn't need to tell me twice. As soon as she mentioned it, it felt like my mouth was full of sand, and I all but demolished the bottle handed to me. I don't think I'd ever tasted anything so pure and so sweet in my life. But honestly I think I was just stalling by the time I was done, tearing at the label and crunching the plastic between my hands.

“Alban.” Mom’s tone was firm, probative but understanding. “You really have to try…”

“I know, Mom.” And I wanted to remember, I really did. But everything was hazy and kept bringing an overwhelming ball of anxiety to my chest. My left hand clenched open and shut once, twice. When it went to go a third time, Mom’s hand was there to force my fingers apart and offer a reassuring squeeze of support. Goddess above, this was one hell of a birthday month. 

“I remember,” I started, letting my head fall back on the pillow and clenching my eyes shut. “We smelled something in the wind. And then…” My nose scrunched up and my brow furrowed deeply as I tried to just remember what happened. Minutes passed, but...nothing. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “Maybe soon.”

She let out a sigh and brushed my hair away again before leaning down to press a kiss to my forehead. 

In the background, I heard the door to the room creak open and then shut again. “Ah,” came a much deeper voice. “Good. You’re awake.” I looked up from my mother to a broad shouldered older man in a doctor’s coat standing at the end of my bed. “Mister Lundine,” the man said. “I’m Doctor Alvarez. How are you feeling?”

He was speaking. I knew he was, and I heard the words. But they weren’t sinking in. There was this scent that wafted off of him, subtle but beyond alluring. I could feel my nostrils flare as I sat up just to bring myself a little bit closer to him. My head felt like it was in a bucket; nothing anyone was saying to me was even remotely decipherable. 

I was just feeling this intense urge to get up and move. I had to stand, had to walk. Had to follow that smell. Musk and honey, warm and full of a feeling that made me think of home. I could almost taste it on the tip of my tongue with a spiced edge just beyond that hint of sweetness. 

My name fell from the doctor’s lips again, but it fell on deaf ears. I was nearly shoving my mother off of me as I swung my legs over the edge of the hospital bed and let my shaky legs hit the cold tile floor.

The scent swirled around the doctor, who was trying to force me back into the bed with a firm hand on my chest. My eyes darkened and a low growl hit a deep timbre in my chest. I needed to follow it. It was on him, but it wasn’t from him. 

Pushing past them both, I was out the door to the room and already down the hallway. Vira’s voice in the background almost caught my attention, but I caught a deeper whiff of that warm honeyed smell as I rounded the corner at a near run. All at once, I was hit with the scent of it full force, and the beat of my heart rose higher and higher while a nervous twitch took up residence in my fingers as they ached to reach out and touch something I couldn’t yet see. 

The path led me to the door of a longer hallway, flanked on either side by key card readers, and I whined in defiance standing there for just a moment. Yes, it may have been fleering, but it felt like hours as I waited. I could feel my wolf perk back up too, for the first time since arriving at the lake. He was pacing and panting, pawing at the air as the beat of my heart grew louder and louder. 

So loud it was that it drowned out even the drone of the hospital’s normal functions. No ringing phones or mechanical beeping, no calls over the intercom. None of it. I just heard a rush of air and the steadily increasing thump of my pulse. Closer. The smell was coming closer. And it was moving faster too.

All of it culminated in one great swell as the doors in front of me swung open and there before me was a red-faced and flustered young man. My eyes fell to his neck almost immediately, his pulse throbbing wildly just under lightly tanned skin. Then up to his lips, chapped, but looking like he’s recently been chewing on them- a thought that already had my wolf eliciting a growl in approval. Finally, they fell on his eyes. 

And oh, those eyes.

They were as rich and warm as the honey I so plainly smelled in the air around him. Golden, with little flecks of the sun shining brightly in that already devoted gaze. 

My hand shot out for his arm, and I was pulling him closer to me in one swift motion. The hand that held his raised as I moved to cup his cheek, the end of my nose hitting his cheek as I leaned in closer. 

The word left our lips in unison, just barely audible enough to get over the sound of our matched heartbeats. 

“Mate.”

And no sooner had we said it,  we felt that bond and that pull that had already guided us so far towards one another tug once more. I could taste the puff of air that left him in a gasp as my lips came crashing down over his. And though I didn’t know his name yet, I already knew him. He was my other half, my missing piece. He would be my beginning, my middle, and my end of every day until the Moon Goddess called me home.

I don’t know how long we stayed like that with one another. It could have been minutes, or it could have just been a second or two. But everything felt right in my soul again and that was all that mattered to me.

Something else started to wash over us though; it was something akin to my father’s pull as an Alpha, but nowhere near as strong. I could resist it, easily. It was a surface emotion. But the young man in my arms, it would seem, could not. A near possessive growl left me as I felt him pull back from the embrace. But I heard my sister call my name with a hushed hint of fear on the back end. 

Vira? Oh, s**t. Without letting go of the young man, I turned to see that we’d accumulated some fair number of onlookers. Including my father.

Oh.

Now that wouldn’t be a fun conversation now would it. 

The man who had introduced himself as Dr. Alvarez spoke in such a low tone I could barely hear him. But now I knew the name of the nurse  in my arms at least. “Richie,” I repeated low enough for only him to hear. I could feel him shudder involuntarily, both at my voice and at the Doctor’s tone. 

“Richie,” the Doctor said again. I could see the twitch of his eyebrow from where I stood, and automatically tightened my hold on his arm. “Get aw-”

But he couldn’t finish the sentence before my father stepped in and whispered something to him that I couldn’t hear. Vira could, though, and the way her shoulders slackened with relief made me feel the same. 

And before I knew it, the lot of us were shuffling back to my hospital room. My father was leading the Doctor ahead, and Vira was attempting to keep Mom calm. But me?

I had my Richie by my side. And that was all that I could think about.