Chapter 26: CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

Sarah stretched a little, the tiredness she felt radiating all over her face. She had her head on Adam's lap while the man was getting some work done on his iPhone. He would stop what he was doing at intervals and thread his right hand through Sarah's hair to feel the softness of it. Sometimes, he would love a few strands between his fingers and twist them around to play with them. A time or two, he had bent down and stolen a kiss from Sarah when she least expected it.

Sarah felt very happy despite how tired she was. After that day she had cooked for him a few weeks ago, they had both gradually gotten to an agreement between themselves, although it was not a verbal one. Sarah would cook for him every day while he was away to the pack house or his business. He never reflected his thoughts after that first night but Sarah got to know that he was already used to her meals when she had not prepared anything for him about two weeks later.

When he got home and hadn't met any food at the usual place, he had rushed to Sarah's room to make sure she was okay. Baffled, Sarah had asked him what happened when he kept checking her for injuries. When he was sure that she was fine, he cleared his throat and asked her why there was no food on the dining table for him that day. Of course, Sarah had laughed, then kissed him; a kiss he didn't refuse from her.

One thing she had noticed however was the fact that he took their relationship to a plateau level. Every time they tried to get much closer than kissing, he would withdraw from her and would sometimes leave her alone wherever they had been. While that hurt Sarah, she was willing to take the journey with him one step at a time; baby steps, just as she had read on the internet a few weeks back.

"What are you so lost in thought about?" Adam asked her, breaking her out of the thoughts she had wrapped herself in.

"Just how far I've managed to keep you to myself," she replied truthfully.

Adam dropped his phone beside him and took one of Sarah's hands in his. He interlocked them together and Sarah didn't fail to notice how his big hands covered hers entirely in protection.

"Sarah…" Adam started but then he paused.

He looked at Sarah and shrugged like he was at loss for words or he simply didn't know how to put his thoughts into words. After a minute of just staring at her, she untangled her hand from his and fingered his flying wolf tattoo. Adam closed his eyes and mumbled something she couldn't comprehend and she stopped moving her fingers around the tattoo but didn't remove them from where they rested.

"What did you say?" Sarah asked him.

Adam opened his eyes and saw the surprise on Sarah's face. Without any confirmation from anyone, Adam knew that he was spotting the fire blue eyes again. These days, it was getting harder for him to keep his wolf under check whenever she got close to him. Try as he may also, he found out that he couldn't stay away from Sarah anymore. He was growing more and more attached to her and he couldn't tell if it was the mating bond or he was completely in love with her.

"Why do your eyes mostly change to a mixture of a wolf eye color and your true eye color when you are with me?" Sarah asked him.

Adam's palm faced his face in agony. He had known that the question would come from her since he was always like that with her. Damn his treacherous wolf for always trying to show himself when he was with her.

"Adam? Is it that I make you uncomfortable?"

When he didn't answer on time, Sarah tried to remove her fingers from his chest but Adam held them back. He fingered the back of the hand while wondering if he should tell her the truth. When his wolf kept saying yes in his head, Adam knew that it wouldn't end well. Besides, he thought that if he let her in on the secret, Sarah could exploit home with it in the future. So, it would be better to keep her in the dark.

"It's nothing you need to worry about, Sarah."

Sarah sat up and sat on his lap instead of the couch. Before Adam knew what she was up to, she kissed him on the lips. When he tried to deepen the kiss, however, she broke free from him.

"You have the eye color again," she told him solemnly.

"Sarah—"

"It's obvious I bother you."

She stood up from his laps and tried to move away. Adam held her wrist to stop her from leaving, already deciding in his mind to tell her everything about how the mating works. When she turned back to look at him, he saw the hurt reflecting in her glassy eyes.

"Sarah, you don't make me uncomfortable. The thing is—"

A loud knock sounded on the door, interrupting him. Adam grunge as Sarah freed herself and rushed to the door to escape from him. When Sarah pushed the door open, Adam strained his eyes to see who it was but she was blocking the door with her body, so he couldn't see.

"Who are you?" Sarah asked the strange woman she was looking at immediately when she opened the door.

Rather than replying to her question, the strange woman tried to get into the house and Sarah halted her movement with her body blocking the doorway. She was already angry with herself and Adam, so she didn't need this strange woman to add to it.

"I said, who are you?" Sarah asked the woman again.

Alisha looked at the woman standing protectively by the door like a soldier set to defend his homeland at all cost. When she had arrived at the pack house after her exams and everyone had kept talking about the vampire mate her brother had got saddled with, she had decided to check out the truth of the story herself since she wasn't one to judge a person by what she heard from others about them. However, with the kind of attitude she was getting from her, Alisha was sure that she was just as vicious as they had claimed her to be. She tried to push Sarah away from the doorway but she was surprised to see that the woman was strong.

"I. Said. Who. Are. You?" Sarah asked again, stretching each word as she spoke.

"And how is that any of your business?" Alisha asked. "Just get lost, will you?"

"Oh. I'll do more than get lost," Sarah responded with a hint of anger.

She moved away from the doorway and Alisha thought that the vampire was finally letting her in. When Sarah moved into the room, leaving the doorway exposed, Alisha tried to get in the house. Sarah waited until Alisha was at the door and she slammed the door with everything fiber of her being. A loud wolf-like growl sounds from outside the door and that eased Sarah's anger a little.

"Nonsense," she said, walking back to where Adam was.

"Who was that?" Adam asked his mate when she returned to the room.

"One stupid woman who I'm sure is one of your lady loves," Sarah responded with an 'I don't care who she is' tone'

When the angry growl sounded outside again, Adam froze a little. He would recognize that growl anywhere he heard it in the world. It was the growl his younger sister usually made when her prey escaped from her during their hunting nights. If he was right, Alisha was already shifting into her wolf form and would be barging in at any moment from then if he didn't stop her. Without wasting any more time, he ran to the door.

Sarah felt hurt when she saw Adam rush to the door to open up for the woman she had closed the door on. She should have known that he would choose one of his lovers over her since he was always uncomfortable with her. But still, the reality of the situation hit her hard in the face as she felt not just hurt but humiliated. She glanced up just as Adam threw the door open.

What she saw next captivated her. The blue-eyed woman she had banged the door on no longer has the face of a woman but that of a wolf. Her hands were beginning to cover in fur and some parts of her clothes had torn apart at the elongation of her body. All through her life, the only times Sarah knew that the werewolves shifted into their animal forms was during the full moon. Seeing a werewolf shifting during the day was something she hadn't bargained for, so she got awestruck. She told herself that it was not just the human era that had changed but also the paranormal world as the humans termed them.

When the werewolf turns to her with a menacing growl though, Sarah knew that she was in trouble. At that moment, the hatred she felt for her father sufficed again. If he hadn't pulled her fangs out, then she wouldn't feel so helpless right now in the face of trouble. Maybe she could try to mind-control the wolf, she thought and decided to try it.

Turn away from this place and leave, she said into the wolf woman's mind.

Rather than obey her, the wolf growled even louder and Sarah watched in horror as the woman's upper body turned completely into that of a wolf. She wondered what had gone wrong since she was sure that the mind-control had worked. She heard that animalistic growl again and looked up. She saw Adam saying something to the woman and nearly rolled her eyes. Does he think she was afraid of facing the woman just because she was a werewolf that could shift during the day and that too on a moonless night?

"Sarah, whatever you are doing, stop it. It's getting her angry even more," Adam screamed, without looking away from the half woman, half wolf in front of him.

"Whatever!" Sarah screamed back at him.

"Lisha, I need you to calm down. For my sake, please calm down," Adam told his sister.

That seemed to work on Alisha as she commanded her wolf to withdraw. Slowly, the upper part of her body began to change back from her wolf form to human. Adam turned around when he saw that she was changing.

"Sarah, grab my shirt on the couch for me, will you?"

Reluctantly, Sarah did as he said and went over to pick the shirt. She went to where they were and handed the shirt to the woman whose top had torn into different pieces and was naked. Alisha took the shirt she offered with a sneer and put it on. When she was done, she moved into the house and Sarah heard Adam sigh in relief.

"How dare that fucking woman slammed the door on my face? How dare she try to mind-control me?" Alisha said in anger once she was in the living room.

Adam turned to look at Sarah in surprise and she blushed. If she knew that the wolf-woman would realize that she tried to control her, then Sarah wouldn't have attempted it.

"You can control minds?" Adam asked Sarah and she blushed again before she nodded.

"Adam!" Alisha screamed at her elder brother.

"Lisha, I apologize on her behalf," the Alpha told his sister.

"Don't you dare apologize on my behalf? Who is she anyway that you are choosing her over me?" Sarah said.

"Sarah, she's my younger sister and her name is Alisha. You haven't met her yet because she had been away for her finals at the university," Adam explained to her. Then he turned to his sister. "Lisha, meet Sarah, my mate." He said as an introduction.

"I know who the fuck she is and that is exactly why I am here to see you," Alisha retorted.

"I'm sorry about what happened earlier, Alisha. I thought you were one of his concubines," Sarah said in an apology. The only answer she got from Alisha in response to her words was a loud hiss.

"I want to see you, Adam. Now. And I'm not sure I want a third party," Alisha said to her brother who nodded, then turned to Sarah.

"Sarah, I'm just going to drop Lisha off at the pack house and return soon."

Sarah nodded to acknowledge his words. Adam swiped up his car keys and told his sister to follow him. Sarah watched as the two of them went out of the house. When they've gone from her view, she sat down on the three-seaters and pulled her face into her two palms. She thought about the incident that had happened and how she allowed her emotions to get the better part of her. If she had exercised control as she had been teaching herself to, perhaps she would not have treated Adam's sister in such a way.

She remembered how the young woman had been able to shift without the moon and she picked up her phone to search for the possibility of it. After one hour of searching through various sites and the only response she had been getting were assumptions or books the human race had written about what they thought they knew about werewolves, Sarah dropped her phone beside her and stretched to rest her body on the seat.

Somewhere in Sarah's subconscious mind, she heard a loud knock sounds at the door and groaned. When the louder knock sounded again, Sarah reluctantly woke up from her sleep and she picked up her phone to see what the time said. She was amazed to see that she had slept all through the afternoon since it was already evening. When the knock sounded again, she got up to see who was at the door. She opened the door to find a redhead woman waiting at the door.

Sarah knew that she had seen the redhead with Adam before and she felt jealous when she remembered how the redhead had held Adam tightly back then at the park. But since she had made a wrong judgment of a woman earlier who turned out to be Adam's sister, she didn't want to repeat the same mistake.

Surprise registered in the face of Xana when she saw that it was a woman that opened the door. Her mind registered the fact that the woman she was staring at could be the one rumored to be Adam's mate.

"Are you Sarah?" Xana asked to be sure.

"Yes, I am," Sarah answered with a polite smile.

Xana didn't say anything again after that and she just turned and walked away from Sarah. When she was gone, Sarah shrugged and locked the door firmly behind her when she was inside.