Moon Bound

(7) Un/friendly Visits|Regan's POV|

Leaving her alone, fragile, scared, whispering the things I wished to unhear, just leaving her... it was the last thing I wanted to do; I had to.

Her voice repeating its hushed tune, her small body twisting the sheets to wiggle itself out of these ghostly hands that held her, her face as pale as the white fabrics.

To hear her call me in her restless sleep. To know it was my hands she felt on her when they were tucked away. To know that I was the one who frightened her.

"Alpha." The way she called me. "Alpha, please..." Not my name. Never my name but who she saw in me.

That word was like a mantra on her lips, one that she'd been taught to repeat without fail, to repeat until it broke me.

It tore me apart.

It broke me the way I deserved to be broken.

"Please, Alpha..."

I hated it.

"Let me go... please..."

Stealing another part of her, taking that last lingering look at her form, draped in my sheets like a gift ready to be unwrapped, I knew that once I left I was going to do it again.

Fool myself into believing.

"I'll be back before you know it, Scarlet." The words tasted bitter on my tongue, a promise that was a promise for me alone when for her they were a threat—a curse.

"I'll be better."

Another spasm raked her body, her skin losing more of its color as if she could really hear me. Her lips kept pushing out these sounds.

Crushing.

I rose from my seat on the chair by the bed and tiptoed to the door, the handle cold against my palm.

And then, once there was that closed door behind me, once she was behind that closed door, I could breathe.

A breathing coward.

"A visitor came."

I looked up in the direction of the voice to see Hayden approaching down the hall in a quick pace. Stopping in front of me, he waited, his wolf so close to surfacing a thick vein throbbed on his forehead in quiet anger.

"Who?"

"The vampire," my beta clipped out.

"Why did he come?"

Hayden shrugged. I arched a brow. "Didn't you ask him?"

"He wouldn't have told me even if I did," Hayden said with a disgusted expression on his face. "He's Council after all."

"Take me to him." I sighed, shoving my hands into my pockets and following my beta to my office downstairs.

He stopped in front and motioned. I looked at him with what I hoped was a meaningful stare.

"You let him in without my permission?" I gritted.

"He demanded I show him to your cabinet and you were occupied with so--"

"Enough," I cut in, taking a deep breath only to inhale a gulp of fright-infused air as the lesser wolf backtracked away from me.

I knew he was not the right person to be my beta, but there was no one else willing to step up. Yet.

"We're going to talk about this later," I told him and placed my hand on the knob.

The vampire was exactly whom I expected to find inside my office. Perched on the leather couch opposite my desk with the curtains conveniently pulled to shade the light coming into the room, he had made himself plenty comfortable.