Healed by the Alpha (Hunted Book Two)

Chapter Eight

Logan

The car ride back to the pack house was reassuring, it had felt like my stomach was twisting every minute that I spent away from my pack. I didn't know if it was my pack, or if it was the mate bond tugging at me, but I couldn't wait to get home. The bright lights in the street started to blink into existence as the dark seeped in through the sky, I marvelled at how it looked like ink soaking into a fresh sheet of paper. Nostalgia tore through my brain as I remembered the countless hours in my father's office, watching him sign papers with ink and a fountain pen.

He would write everything with a normal pen, but he would always sign his name and the pack name using an ink jar. It's funny what can bring back those strange and hidden memories, though I was thankful for the slight distraction. I told Whitt that we'd talk after I got back from the Rising Dawn pack, now that I was getting closer to my own pack grounds, I was feeling the nerves creep in. What did I even want to talk to her about? What would we even talk about? Would she even want to talk?

The questions were causing my head to feel full and dizzy, I pulled the car over just outside the pack. Unlike the Rising Dawn pack, we didn't have a wall separating us from the rest of the world. Instead, there was a medium sized welcome sign, it wasn't hard to miss, but it hardly stood out either. I parked up next to it and got out of the car. Just as the door slammed behind me, the clouds opened up and the rain started to pound on the floor around me. I could hear the light dings across the metal of my car and I leaned my head back and took in the feeling of the cool water on my face.

I sighed, this was needed. Walking around my car, I decided to sit on the hood, why? I have no idea, but the cool of the metal against my soaking skin felt good. I lay there for a minute, letting my mind ease. There was a slight nagging in my body, a pull that I couldn't quite explain. It told me to get up, to walk wherever it led. I tried to ignore it but it became harder and harder to brush aside. I sat up, the rain that had pooled on my face suddenly moved with the direction of gravity and it fell in drips from my face into my lap.

I blinked past the droplets on my eyelashes and rubbed them clean, standing in front of me was a soaked through witch, with eyes that burned blue and a face as blank as the faceless trees around me. I went to say something but she moved, heading over to the sign post. She stood there looking at it for a moment before turning back to me.

Though the rain was still coming down with force, I could hear every word she was softly speaking. "I've always had a great appreciation for this pack..." she looked up at me, her eyelashes beading with water, "and the Alpha family that ran it." Looking at her drenched body made my heart speed up, it made my muscles tighten and it made me want to touch her. I refrained. She held her head higher, "I've always appreciated you, Alpha."

The way she said 'Alpha' made my body go crazy. It had never meant too much before, but hearing it come from my mate's mouth, hearing it from those beautiful lips with that beautiful melodic sound... it was everything. It crumbled me, the man that I thought I was, and remade me in the same second. Over and over again, unending. I went to walk to her but she held a hand up, I knew just how much damage those could do, so I stopped. I waited.

I had to be cautious with her, not completely unlike the way that you'd approach a wild deer in the woods surrounding us. She was fierce, she was wild, but she was also just as scared of this as I was. Instead I opened my mouth, "I appreciate that you think that way, but you know as well as I do that you are just as important to this pack now." She shook her head and smiled, "you don't get it." I pushed my hands together out in front of me, pleading. "Please, please help me to understand?"

She kicked at a puddle and it splashed up at the bottom of her legs, "I've been in trying to force myself not to feel anything for you, I've been trying to keep myself away and to limit the time I get with you." I huffed, I'd noticed. "But I can feel this pull and it's driving me crazy." I looked at her stunned, so she could feel it too? She felt that burning rope that tethered us together? She hadn't shown any signs of it previously, she was cold with me, she was short. I had actually started to believe that she couldn't feel it at all.

I moved one foot in front of the other, taking slow steps towards her. She didn't move, she watched my feet, her head pointed towards the ground. The closer I got, the more I could see her chest rising and falling, she could feel the bond getting as tense as I could. The closer we were, the more it seemed to burn deep inside me, like an insatiable hunger that only touching her would appease.

"The more I think about the reasons we shouldn't be doing this," I began to tell her, "the more I forget I have reasons in the first place." I was standing directly in front of her now. I took my hand and brushed it across her jaw, her eyes started to glow brighter and she sighed out loud at the contact. "The closer I am to you, the less reason I seem to have. Why should I not get to be happy? Why would I not deserve my mate?"

I cupped my hand under her jaw and lifted her head to look up at me, the moment her brilliant eyes met mine, my whole world shifted. I couldn't fight this anymore. I didn't want to fight this anymore, I wanted to feel my mate, reassure my mate and give my mate the Alpha she deserved. Looking down at her now, I felt whole. Like her eyes were the only thing that was missing from my life before now. There was a thought trying to get past the burning in my body but I pushed it to the side, nothing was as important as this. Nothing was as important as right now.