The Final Alpha

Chapter Two- For Everything, A Reason

Aria's POV

Consciousness shook me awake to the sight of the frame filled once again. Only now, it wasn’t of the six-foot-two buzzed blonde I was promised to marry. Instead, it was of a man healing to where he shouldn’t have been able to stand. His eyes leveled to me and took in every detail as I pulled myself upwards. But where Donovan had studied me with greed, these steel eyes had done so in compassion. When his eyes fell to my chest, a cool brush of wind made me aware that I was left uncovered. I quickly returned myself to modesty before matching his look of patience with one of bewilderment.

“How did you get out?” This was the only question that left my tongue aside from those that were born from my personal curiosity. Like his name. Instead, my job overtook my humanity.

His eyes only sharpened harder as he looked down to my lips. Swollen, I’m sure from stolen kisses that were heavy like tar on my mouth. A blush in my cheeks came from how he looked at my kiss. Not as if he wanted to worsen the swell, but almost as if he wanted to nurture it himself. And for the first time, it was showing hunger. Similar to Donovan, but still more reserved as a man beneath the primal beast he was accused of being by reputation alone.

“You shouldn’t be here…” My next break to our silence came as a warning. My conflicted heart could only offer this as I’d been instilled to know a fight or flight response he made me question. The understanding beasts were without feeling made a liar of the lessons leading to this moment. As this was the first time I’d been looked at as a person and not some bartering chip.

It was when my eyes adjusted to the darkness that I noticed the short distance he stood away from me and I saw him entirely. Shirtless with a dusting of matching sable hair sprinkling an otherwise smooth chest. Hungry eyes abated in a reservation I couldn't pin or understand. A tense jaw tightening the longer we stood in silence as I suddenly understood the reason those girls talked about Donovan. How they saw him, I saw this ‘mutt’.

“How can you heal?” It was the question we’d wanted to know for generations. Of course, the definition was something we couldn’t truly comprehend as nobody wanted to believe in magic without an explanation of some kind. But the lack of an answer lifted the edges of my fingertips all the same. Higher and higher until closing on that temperate skin, almost painful to touch. It was equivalent to running your fingers over a birthing flame. Only instead of a hover, making contact made your fingers feel submerged.

He shivered to the contact as I pulled back to retract our proximity and he closed that new distance. He then mirrored the action I made of reaching for him until his hand came to my skin. I only noticed when I watched his eyes fall to me that he’d been tracing my bruises, where his had long since healed. It seemed like a trick of light being blanketed in the darkness that I could imagine him without a single scar, but I’d memorized him for hours and found him flawless before me now. Not a single mark of The Legion came across his skin and still, somehow, he embedded himself into mine.

We were curious of each other. Tracing as a friend might do to check for someone’s well-being. And yet between us, it was the most dangerous thing either of us could do.

“You feel…” His body pressed to mine. A rage of differed heartbeats pulsed together in a rhythmic moment of reckless abandon as he held me tight enough to leave new marks. The masochist within me silently prayed that he would.

He stared at my lips before his gaze fell to my clothes. Whatever remained at the seams was now pleading to be parted in any moment as long as it came from his fingers. My free hand left his arm where it had come to brace for his touch, before falling back to my hips. It only made his fingers eat harder into my waist and pull a gasp that livened his eyes to that celestial sheen. Never before had I seen eyes like his. More than that, never before had I been looked at in a way that was an exclusive brand belonging to him.

He clenched his back teeth while taking the liberty of touch. Drawing lines along my skin from shoulder to shoulder, never passing the perimeter of any fabric, he studied me as if I was the first woman, or even human, he’d ever seen. The scars from my induction as well as the scratches left by Donovan forced his brows to bow in upset as I understood his anger in seeing me hurt, just as I held the same for him.

When his fingers dusted my pulse, taunting over my heart, he paused in study. I saw his eyes focus intently on the point as he seemed to almost count every inhale and following exhale. Almost thankful. Maybe even relieved for it.

The door to my room suddenly swept open to reveal my father’s unit. A collection of his most trained wielded crossbows and knives, one lifting up the chains the man before me had clearly broken from. Which begged the question why he allowed them to be placed in the first place and only decided to break them after hours of torment, and still, he didn’t use his freedom to escape-but to save me.

“Mutt,” my father sneered.

“Dad, wait-” I tried to plead as the man was forced to his palms and flogged over his back. A spray of blood stained my sheets and cast my eyes to the floor wearing aged blood. I’d been so distracted by my savior that I hadn’t noticed the methods he’d used to garner such a title. Donovan was pulled to his feet, clasping at a throat left cut by a single s***h of sharp nails, as my eyes came to the ‘mutt’s’ fingers dyed in the evidence of blood. Still, my pity fell with anyone but Donovan.

“He saved me…” The truth left my lips but was only given the response of my father’s scoff.

“I know the entire story, Aria. And I’ll deal with my disappointment with you later.”

The door slammed and I fell against the wall beside the door. Being his pride and joy meant words like this seared deeply, creating a cavern of insufficiency too vast to fill. But the look of my savior’s eyes pleading for my safety along with the echo of his touch sent me after him in rebellion he awoke within.

“Donovan came into my room that was supposed to be guarded by your right hands!” I called after him as the man whose touch I had ingrained in my skin was dragged without a fight. I spoke loud enough to stir anyone in earshot to wake as many of the women were wide-eyed in fear of my confession.

“He saved me!” I reinstated.

“Animals aren’t able to differentiate between right and wrong. That thing is an animal. Nothing more. You’ve always wanted to protect the little rabbits, Aria. But make no mistake, that beast will eat you alive if given the chance.” I wanted to counter. He was given the chance. And all he ever did was protect me.

“Then why is he the only one showing restraint?” The question left my throat quickly as my father stepped close until I was silenced by the back of his hand to my cheek. An old-fashioned punishment was all it took for the mutt to rise. Tearing the chains keeping him in some feigned placement tossed the men holding them into each other and incapacitated. He then rushed my father with a snarl as I stopped him with a hand to his chest. Our eyes locked in a moment of understanding before a grunt dropped him to his knees.

A syringe harboring the tranquilizer made me understand why I was useless against Donovan. But where I was given the dose to remain complacent, my savior had done so as he moved to rescue me.

“Go to your room. I’ll deal with you in the morning. Your excuses are over. Your classes are done. Your life outside of The Legion ended the second you brought a wild animal into your room.” I had no choice with the way the collective of hunters surrounded us. I was outnumbered by those who trained me of what I knew. For it, I watched from my bedroom window as the man was caged again. This time, burned and beaten between chastised comments. He took it all, all while looking in the direction of my window.

With each strike, I jolted with tears pulled down my cheeks as I clutched the satin of my curtains to a man who didn’t falter unless it was when my life was in danger. His fingers may have tightened around the metal of his cage, but he never faltered in anything from his breath to his focus. And in it, I found some comfort.

I waited until daybreak and avoided my father to keep from invoking his wrath. I already knew he had already made preparations to end my life outside of The Legion and I was on limited time. I had approximately two minutes before my every move would be reported back to him. My only chance came in the single guard sitting against the cage set at the center of the compound, standing at attention as I came close.

“Junie, I saw some from my window. There had to have been at least ten…” I played my role of damsel the best I could from the inspiration of my favorite movies. A hand committed over my chest to prolong the believability of desperation that seemed to convince him as he whistled to the few guards nearby and left me alone with my mutt’s melancholic stones for eyes.

“We have to go…” I urged as the man reached through the sterling silver bars and hissed. Of the few things we learned of them through millennia of our hunt, we knew they could heal from everything but a departed head from their shoulders, but the pure element of silver left them in pain that lasted long enough for us to have a chance against them. It wouldn’t kill them and it wouldn’t scar, but it was enough to capture them if need be. For this, the steam that came from his wounded palms was ignored as I reached to move his hands and he only gripped mine tighter to the metal.

His eyes flashed to the direction of the open road over his shoulder, a path he must have noted, and maybe even come to regret, that he didn’t take. But when looking back to me, it was to nudge me forward as he released my fingers.

“They are going to kill you.” He seemed to listen but not understand the fatality of those words. And the time it took to get him to understand left my chance of success dwindling by the second.

“I won’t let them.” I pulled the lock free with the use of a heavy rock and a bit of physics, until the weighted lock fell to my feet. As the door came open, the space became thick with tension. Something between fear and excitement came as he stepped towards me until it was interrupted with the sound of distant voices. Not allowing either of us the chance to think beyond what was necessary for survival, I tugged him to the direction of my waiting car just beyond the perimeter along a makeshift lot of dirt and fellow clan’s vehicles, before tugging my way inside.

“My keys,” I grunted in realizing I left everything inside. My phone. My wallet. My report. My sanity.

As if he understood, he used a single fist to the door, shattering it open. Unfortunately for me, the access still wouldn’t make the car run. To this, he motioned me inside as I stared at the wound almost poetic against his somehow smooth skin. I knew he’d heal and maybe it was why it was anything but disgusting to see it drip against the door of my father’s sixteenth birthday gift from four years ago.

The abrupt ping of a bullet set me to yank him inside the passenger door as we both bowed for cover. But as I reached into my glove box for the waiting pistol, the ‘mutt’ shuffled near my feet. By the time I raised my weapon to view, watching Roquelle herself racing towards the car, I heard the rev of my car’s engine. He’d hotwired my Kia. I shared a single moment of awe with the man at my side before charging the gas and driving us away from the mix of low copes and swamp before coming to familiar, human, territory.

I’d always imagined my freedom away from The Legion, but never expected it would be with who I was always told was my enemy. The same one who saved my life as I had saved his.