The Alpha Who Loved Me in Secret

The last time I kissed him before he broke my heart, he was trying to mend a chair. It was an absurd thing for a man to do in a dream. Particularly this man, who usually appeared in my bed with the air of someone who had fought his way through a terrible day to get there. Yet there he sat, barefoot on the floor of our impossible kitchen, holding a loose chair leg between his knees. “You could imagine a new one,” I said. He looked up. His sleeves were rolled to his elbows, and a dark curl had fallen over his forehead. “You could stop leaning back in it.” “I come here to escape criticism.” “You come here and criticize my coffee.” “Your coffee deserves an inquiry.” The corner of his mouth moved. That was usually how it began: a small surrender, almost unwilling, before the smile I had started looking for every night. Outside the window, rain moved across a garden neither of us had planted. The room had acquired things gradually over six months—a second mug, a blue rug, a clock that never showed the right time. I had mentioned wanting a kitchen with enough space to turn around, and the next night there had been one. I had not examined that kindness too closely. Loneliness made a person surprisingly willing to accept gifts from her own imagination. “What?” he asked. “Nothing.” “You’re watching me.” “I’m trying to decide whether I invented you handsome because I’m shallow or useful because I’m practical.” “And your conclusion?” “That chair is still broken.” He set down the leg, reached for my hand, and drew me between his bent knees. I went willingly, settling on the rug with my back against his chest. His arm came around me, warm and familiar beneath my ribs. This was the part I never admitted to myself in daylight. It wasn’t only his mouth I missed. It was the easy assumption that there would be room for me, that if I sat down he would put aside whatever he was holding. “You’re worried about tomorrow,” he said. I traced the veins on the back of his hand. “I’m worried about taking six years of accounts to people who have already decided what the figures mean.” “The delegation?” “Mara says I should keep my answers short and let the Alpha talk.” “Will you?” “Depends how much nonsense he talks.” His quiet laugh touched the back of my neck. Then his arm tightened a fraction. “If it becomes difficult, you don’t have to prove anything by staying.” “Someone has to know where the winter fuel went. Apparently that someone is the woman who orders the envelopes.” He turned my hand over. His thumb moved across the little ridge at the base of my middle finger, where my pen rested through long afternoons. The attention was so precise that it hurt. “You do considerably more than order envelopes.” “I know.” I paused. “It’s pleasant hearing someone else say it.” He kissed the inside of my wrist. I turned in his arms, putting a knee on either side of his hips. He watched me with an expression I still hadn’t learned how to bear: amusement yielding to something quieter as I touched his face. There was a fine white scar at the edge of his lower lip. Another beneath his ribs. I knew these things about him. I knew which shoulder stiffened when he was tired and how he shifted to keep a door within sight. I did not know his name. In the beginning, that had been part of the freedom. I hadn’t needed to be Nina Hart, twenty-eight, overdue on a dentist’s appointment and responsible for three departments’ missing receipts. He hadn’t needed to be anyone at all. Lately, the omission had begun to feel less like freedom. “Tell me something ordinary about you,” I said. His fingers settled at my waist. “I dislike pears.” “That’s not information. That’s a character defect.” “I was afraid you’d say that.” “What do people call you when they want your attention?” The change was small. His hand stopped moving. I waited, suddenly embarrassed by how much the answer mattered. Instead of answering, he brushed a strand of hair away from my cheek. “What would you do with a name?” “Use it. Occasionally shout it from another room.” His gaze held mine. For a moment I thought he would tell me, and I felt an unreasonable lift of hope. Then he said, “Nina—” I had given him mine in our second week. I remembered that now with an uncomfortable clarity. “Never mind.” He caught my hand before I could pull away. He didn’t restrain it; his fingers opened beneath mine, leaving me the choice. “What color?” he asked softly. I frowned. “What?” “The door. In the house you’d have, if the accounts and the missing fuel and everyone else’s problems weren’t yours for a day.” He remembered that conversation, too. A small house. A garden I could neglect without a committee discussing it. A kitchen door that opened onto grass. “Yellow,” I said. “An unreasonable yellow. The sort the neighbors would complain about.” “Good.” “You’d hate it.” “I’d find it in the dark.” The foolish, tender thing inside my chest gave way. I kissed him because I wanted to, and because I knew that if I kept asking questions the room might disappear. His answering breath caught against my lips. One hand came to the back of my neck; the other rested firmly at my waist as I leaned closer. There was nothing hurried about him then. He kissed the corner of my mouth, the line of my jaw, the place beneath my ear that made my fingers tighten in his shirt. When I drew back enough to look at him, his composure had deserted him in a way I loved far too much. “Stay a little longer,” he said. It sounded like an ordinary request. That was what made it dangerous. I rested my forehead against his. “My alarm has different ambitions.” His hand moved slowly over my back. I could feel him breathe, could feel the solid warmth of his chest through the thin cotton between us. Then, beyond the kitchen, a floorboard creaked. He went still. I glanced toward the open doorway. “Did we imagine a cat?” He was already getting to his feet, bringing me up with him. “Wake up, Nina.” “What?” His hands closed around my shoulders, and there was something in his face I had never seen directed at me before. Fear. “Now.” My alarm sounded. I woke alone, with one hand reaching across a cold sheet. By eleven that morning, I had convinced myself that the ending of the dream was nerves. By noon, I was too angry about an invented debt to think about it. “This is the revised figure?” I asked. Across the railway carriage, Mara Bell lifted her eyes from the court packet. At fifty-three, our finance officer could express a remarkable amount of contempt by removing her reading glasses. “That is the figure they sent last night.” “It’s eleven thousand higher than the one they sent on Monday.” “They’ve added administrative costs.” “For what? Carrying the number upstairs?” “Hart.” Alpha Mercer spoke without turning from the window. He had been silent for most of the journey, one hand folded over the other on the head of his walking stick. In the reflection, his face looked older than it had at last month’s payroll meeting. I lowered my voice. “Sorry.” “Don’t apologize for noticing. Just remember who will be listening.” I looked down at the papers. Briar Glen had supplied timber, winter stores, and road maintenance to the northern territory for years. Now the court claimed we had defaulted on emergency advances and failed to deliver contracted supplies. At four that afternoon, our Alpha was expected to sign away control of the eastern woods and accept a court administrator. Those woods paid thirty-seven households. I knew because I paid them. I also knew that the court’s list of missing deliveries included fuel we had never received. The original requisitions were in my bag, indexed with paper tabs because our office printer couldn’t manage colors unless it was in a generous mood. Mara leaned toward me. “Whatever happens, keep your copies.” “I have another set at home.” “Good girl.” She caught my expression. “Good terrifying accounts woman.” “That’s better.” She nudged a wrapped sandwich across the table. I ate it because she would notice if I didn’t, and watched the hills give way to the dark roofs of Highmere. I had never seen the High Alpha in person. Adrian Vale had inherited the office less than a year ago. The official notice on our hall wall carried a seal rather than a photograph; the installation broadcast had happened while I was reconciling storm-damage claims, and nobody had thought it necessary to explain what his cheekbones looked like. I knew he had signed the emergency orders. For the moment, that seemed enough. The court clerk wanted my bag. “The financial officer may retain her papers,” he explained, indicating Mara. “Assistants surrender personal belongings before entering.” “I’m carrying the original delivery records.” “Then give them to the financial officer.” Mara was already holding two binders and her cane. I smiled at him. “Or you could inspect the bag.” He did, with enough ceremony to suggest we had both suffered a diplomatic setback, and finally let me through. The hearing chamber smelled of beeswax, damp wool, and wolves trying not to show fear. Rain silvered the tall windows. At the far end of the room, beneath a carved crescent, stood a long table with an empty chair at its center. Councillor Silas Venn rose to greet us. He was neatly dressed, silver at the temples, with the reassuring manner of someone accustomed to delivering bad news on expensive paper. “Mercer. I wish we were meeting under happier circumstances.” “So do I,” our Alpha replied. Venn offered Mara a chair and asked whether her knee was improving. The courtesy made me feel briefly ashamed of disliking him on sight. Then he set the surrender instrument in front of Alpha Mercer, already marked for signature. “We’ve brought discrepancies in the schedule,” I said. Venn glanced at me. “And you are?” “Nina Hart. Payroll and supplies.” “Of course. Those can be addressed during implementation.” “Some of them affect whether there should be an implementation.” Mara’s shoe touched mine beneath the table. Not a warning to stop. A reminder to breathe. Before Venn could answer, the side doors opened. Everyone stood. I rose with them, one hand inside my bag, fingers caught around a folder tab. The man from my dreams entered carrying a slim black file. For a moment I experienced an almost joyful confusion. He was here. I knew him. Whatever this day had been becoming, it had brought me to someone whose hands I could have recognized in darkness. His hair was neatly combed. His coat was charcoal, his shirt buttoned at the throat. A silver signet rested on the finger I had kissed that morning. He handed the file to an aide and looked toward our table. His gaze found me. I saw recognition. I would later return to that instant until I hated myself for examining it, but there was no mistaking what happened to his face. His eyes widened slightly; his mouth softened before he brought it under control. Then his attention moved past me, searching the room. “High Alpha,” Venn said. The words reached me separately. High. Alpha. Adrian Vale. My hand slipped off the folder. He took the central chair. Everyone else sat, and I remained standing because my knees seemed to have forgotten their purpose. “Miss Hart?” Venn prompted. I barely heard him. “You,” I said. Adrian’s eyes came back to mine. There were a dozen people in the room. I knew that. I knew Mara was looking at me, that Mercer had turned, that I was doing something I ought to stop. But I had been in this man’s arms a few hours earlier. His mouth had been warm against my wrist. “You know me,” I said, more quietly. A silence opened around the table. Adrian laid his hands flat on the file. “I’m afraid you’re mistaken, Miss Hart. We’ve never met.” I looked at his left hand. There was the small pale line across his knuckle, the one I had once traced while he slept. Heat climbed my neck. I could have endured surprise. Confusion. Even a request to wait. His polished courtesy left me standing alone in front of strangers with something private spilling out of me. “Nina?” Mara murmured. I sat down too quickly and caught the corner of my chair against the table. The noise was appallingly loud. “My mistake,” I said. Adrian did not look away. Somehow that made it worse. Venn began speaking about repayment obligations. I listened to the shape of his sentences without understanding them. Beside me, Mara opened her binder. Someone offered water. I refused because my hands were shaking. Then I heard the number eleven thousand. Thirty-seven households. I pulled the original requisition from my bag. “Before anyone signs,” I said, “I would like this entered into the record.” My voice sounded thin, but it held. Venn paused. “We have already reviewed the supplied accounts.” “This is a fuel requisition your office records as fulfilled. It has no receiving signature because no delivery was made. You’ve charged us for the fuel, interest on the advance, and now a penalty for failing to repay it.” I slid the paper across the table without looking at Adrian. “Which of those charges would you like us to accept first?” Mara put a second document beside it. The hearing lasted another twenty minutes. I answered questions. I found dates. I wrote down the name of the official assigned to examine our records. Adrian postponed the signature until the following afternoon. He did not say my name again. When we were dismissed, I followed Mara out. I kept my shoulders straight until the chamber doors closed behind us. Then she took my elbow. “Who did you think he was?” she asked gently. I looked down the corridor, past the guards and polished windows and people who belonged in a world I had only just discovered existed. “Someone else,” I said. At the delegation lodging, I told Mara I had a headache. It was true, as far as it went. She left a cup of tea outside my room and went downstairs to argue with Mercer about tomorrow. I put the cup on the desk and sat on the edge of the bed without taking off my coat. All the questions I had declined to ask returned together. Had he laughed when he woke? Had he known whose accounts I kept? Had I described our shortages to the man signing the orders that caused them? Worst of all, I remembered his voice saying he would find my yellow door in the dark. I unbuttoned my coat with careful fingers. I would not sleep. At half past nine, someone knocked. A uniformed courier stood outside with an envelope. He asked me to confirm my name, handed it over, and left before I could ask who had sent it. There was no seal, no crest, only my name written in dark ink. I knew the slant of the letters. In our kitchen, he had once made a shopping list for a house that did not exist. Inside were two lines. Do not fall asleep tonight. Someone followed me out.