Filed to story: The Alpha’s Pen Pal Book
The nurse wheels the cart—which I now realize is an ultrasound machine—closer to the bed. She has me lie back and helps me adjust my feet and knees so she can insert the ultrasound wand. The screen lights up, and she moves the wand around, taking measurements on the screen as Dr. Russo looks on.
“This is the fetus,” he explains, pointing at the tiny creature shown in black and white on the screen. “And… yep. It’s measuring at a little over eight weeks.” He pushes a button, and a line appears on the screen, pulsing and spiking. “The heartbeat is strong, too. Looks like a healthy little one in there.”
He turns and smiles at me, but my eyes are locked on the screen, glued to the little gummy bear in my stomach who already owns my whole heart.
My pup.
REIDI
hate hospitals.
They are too clean, too white, too stifling. And underneath the surface, the hint—the threat—of death lingers.
Nothing good ever comes from a visit to the pack hospital.
One visit to the pack hospital eighteen years ago changed the entire trajectory of my childhood—of my life. I walked into the hospital thinking my mom was hurt, just needing extra medical attention after an intense rogue attack.
And I walked out of it motherless.
The wall against my back is cold—almost as cold as the snow covering the ground outside—even through my T-shirt. It’s uncomfortable, but it keeps me here, keeps me anchored in the present. For the most part.
It’s difficult, though, now that I’m not with Taryn. Her presence and touch kept the demons at bay, but the reality of what happened hits me full force. The similarities between this night and that fateful night—it’s overwhelming.
Taryn is lucky. We are lucky. Rogues are ruthless, relentless, especially when in wolf form. Their connection to and control of their animal is tenuous at best and gets weaker the longer they are rogues. I don’t want to think about what he’d have done if I’d taken any longer to get to her.
The door to her room opens, and a nurse walks into it, but my chin is dropped to my chest, and I don’t look up. Taryn’s pissed at me. And I can’t blame her. The only one I can blame is myself.
I let it go too far.
Her emotions shoot down the bond to me, running the gamut of every emotion known to wolfkind. I sit there, waiting, absorbing all of them, feeling the full force of everything she’s feeling combined with everything I’m feeling. Then, as suddenly as the flow of them began earlier this week, it stops. I push, reaching out to her, but there is a solid brick wall erected between us on her side of the bond.
She’s blocked me.
My wolf whines and scratches against the confines of my mind, and I force myself to stay on the floor instead of barging in there to make sure she’s fine, to find out what it is she thinks she needs to hide from me. And since the rooms are soundproofed, I can’t hear any of what they are saying. I’m being kept in the dark.
Footsteps approach me, and someone sits next to me, matching my posture with their knees up and arms resting on them. I glance over, and Maddie sits there, a fading bruise on her cheek from the fight with the rogues and her hair damp from a shower. “Why so glum?” she asks.
I sigh and lean my head against the wall. “Taryn’s probably going to reject me.”
“She’s your mate?” I nod, my head still against the wall, my hair scratching it. “Well, that saves you the trouble, right? Since you don’t want a mate?” I groan and pinch the bridge of my nose, looking at her from the corner of my eye. “Oh. OH.” She glances between the door to Taryn’s hospital room and me several times before a slow smile creeps across her face. “Well. How the turntables.”
I sigh and shove her shoulder. “Shut up.”
“Why do you think she’s going to reject you?”
“Because I’ve known she’s my mate since the moment I met her, and I didn’t tell her.”
“Yikes,” Maddie says, grimacing. “At least you have almost a month until the next full moon. Because you’re going to have to grovel.”
“Thank you, oh wise one.”
“Maybe you can ask Wes for tips.”
I scoff. “He wouldn’t have any. Haven wasn’t going to reject him. He didn’t have to grovel. Not like I’ll have to, anyway.”
The door to Taryn’s room opens again, and the nurse and Dr. Russo exit. I jump to my feet and enter the room in long strides, eager to be near her again, no matter how angry she is with me.
She’s curled on her side, facing away from me, the blankets tucked up high around her, a pillow hugged to her chest. Her braids and curls spill across the white of the bedding, and she doesn’t move or acknowledge me as I approach her bed with slow steps.
My fingers twitch, itching to touch her, to reach for her, but I stop myself and stand there. She’s reinforced the wall between us, the wall she put up to block me out. It’s a wall of brick, stubbornness, and sheer iron will. And all it does is urge me to push harder so I can break through that barrier and claim her heart.
“Taryn?”
She hugs the pillow tighter to her chest. “Please just go, Reid. I’m tired, and I’ve been through a lot. I can’t do this right now.”
“But—“
“I want to believe you. I want to give you a chance. But you lied to me, you hurt me and broke my trust, and I don’t know where to go from here.”
“Let me prove myself to you. Let me convince you I can be the male you need. Let me show you that I—“
I bite my lip and clench my fists.
“See. You can’t even say it,” she says, shaking her head.
“Because I don’t want to say it like this. I don’t want you to think I’m just throwing the words out to paint a pretty picture for you. When I say it for the first time, you’ll know I mean it. And that’s why I’m not going to accept you yet, either.”
“What?”
“Everything in me is screaming to say those words to you—to accept you. I want it, my wolf wants it, and my heart wants it. And it’s killing me to not accept you as my mate right now. But you’re not ready for that yet. I will only accept you when you’ve accepted me first. You should have that choice. Someone already fucked with your mate bond, and I kind of did, too, so it’s only fair that I leave this decision in your hands. But I swear to Selene, Taryn, I’m all in. As soon as you accept me, as soon as you’re ready, I will be waiting, ready to accept you too.”
She pulls her bottom lip into her mouth and squeezes her eyes shut. The bond flickers, breaking through the wall for a second before it disappears again. Just the briefest snippet of gratitude, of love, but I felt it.
New Book: Veiled Desires of the Alpha King Novel
Dayson was the alpha of the largest pack in North America. Powerful figures from other packs sought to offer gorgeous girls as potential mates for Dayson. He steadfastly rejected these advances, he was not a pawn to be manipulated. But eventually there came a mysterious girl he could hardly say No. Who was she?