164

164


ALTHEA
I tried to keep my distance after that night.
I really did.
But distance is a lie inside a pack house—especially when the Alpha knows exactly where you are, how fast your heart is beating, and whether you’re lying to yourself.
I felt him before I saw him again.
The air shifted. Thickened. My wolf stirred uneasily, not in fear this time, but in wary awareness. I was standing near the window in the sitting room when his presence rolled over me like an incoming storm.
I turned too late.
“Stop backing away,” Alpha Collin said.
I hadn’t even realized I was doing it until my shoulders brushed the wall behind me.
“I wasn’t,” I lied.
His jaw tightened. “You were.”
I crossed my arms over my chest, a useless shield. “I have every right to.”
“I know,” he said immediately.
That stopped me.
I looked at him—really looked. He wasn’t masked. His eyes weren’t glowing. He looked… tired. Worn down in a way I’d never seen before.
“I know I don’t deserve for you to stay close,” he continued. “But watching you flinch every time I breathe is not something I can tolerate.”
“That sounds like a you problem,” I snapped, even as my voice shook.
He took a step closer. I stiffened.
Then he stopped.
“I won’t touch you,” he said firmly. “Sit down, Althea.”
It wasn’t a command laced with Alpha force. It was a request pretending to be an order because he didn’t know how else to speak.
Against my better judgment, I sat.
He sat across from me, elbows on his knees, hands clasped together like he was holding himself back.
“My anger,” he said bluntly, “is not something I can erase.”
I said nothing.
“It’s how I survived,” he went on. “How this pack survived. When others hesitated, I acted. When enemies tested us, I crushed them. Fear kept us alive.”
“And it broke me,” I said quietly.
His throat bobbed. “Yes.”
Silence stretched between us, heavy and raw.
“I was raised to believe rage was control,” he said. “That if I ever let it go, everything would burn. And now…” His gaze lifted to me. “Now the thing I fear losing most is standing right in front of me.”
My chest tightened painfully.
“I can’t change overnight,” he continued. “The roots are too deep. They’re part of my bones, Althea. Part of my wolf. I don’t know who I am without them.”
“Then why should I stay?” I whispered.
He didn’t answer right away. When he did, his voice was low and careful.
“Because I won’t pretend anymore that I’m safe when I’m not.”
That scared me more than any lie would have.
“I know my anger will hurt something precious to me one day,” he said. “It already did.”
My arm throbbed phantom pain.
“So I planned for it,” he went on quietly. “Long before you ever came here.”
I frowned. “Planned for what?”
“For failure,” he said. “For the day I’d lose control.”
He stood and motioned toward the hallway. Hesitant, guarded, I followed—keeping space between us like a fragile truce.
He stopped in front of my bedroom door.
“This room,” he said, placing his palm flat against the wall, “is reinforced with steel beneath the stone. Soundproofed. Locked by a mechanism only you and Kaylie can open from the inside.”
My breath caught.
“I can’t break it,” he said simply. “Not even with Alpha strength.”
I stared at the door like I was seeing it for the first time.
“When I feel a fit coming,” he continued, “you will bring me water. Nothing else. No arguing. No staying. You hand it to me, and you leave.”
I turned to him slowly. “And if I don’t?”
His eyes darkened—not with anger, but fear. “Then I’ll leave first.”
I searched his face for deception. Found none.
“I don’t want you pulling away,” he said quietly. “I don’t want you leaving this pack—or me. But I won’t cage you beside a monster.”
My heart pounded painfully. “You already did.”
“Yes,” he said. “And I’ll regret it until the day I die.”
The honesty cracked something open inside me.
“I don’t trust you,” I admitted.
“I know.”
“I don’t forgive you.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
I swallowed hard. “And yet you want me to stay.”
“I want you to be safe,” he corrected. “Even from me.”
The words settled heavy and complicated in my chest.
I hated that part of me softened.
Hated that my body leaned toward him even as my mind screamed to run.
Hated that, despite everything, he had thought ahead—to protect me from himself.
“I’ll think about it,” I said finally.
His shoulders loosened slightly, like he’d been holding his breath.
“That’s all I ask.”
As he turned to leave, I watched his back—broad, powerful, dangerous.
And broken.
I hated him for what he’d done.
But I hated myself even more for realizing that, somehow, he was trying to love me in the only way he knew how.
Even if it terrified us both.