My Forbidden Mate

Chapter Seven- The Greenhouse

Alessandra’s POV

“Aaron!” His name was spoken in hurried repetition to garner his attention. That steel attention set to the road ahead. But no matter the desperation in my tone, his foot never released from the pedal. While my fingers gathered at the flannel at his forearm, he simply dropped it around the gear shift before taking yet another turn too quickly. The tires catching the asphalt at its rear tires, bucking the suspension of the car, all while my pleas went unanswered.

“Aaron, please! Stop the car!” He pressed harder. His jaw. His foot. His eyes at the storm ahead. Not an inch was feasible within the sheets of rain veiling the road, and still, he continued. Only headlights and the memory of traveling this road prior acted as a weak comfort within the sudden wall of stone he had become.

“YOU’RE GOING TO GET US BOTH KILLED! STOP THE CAR!” The tears behind my eyes seemed to be enough to gain a break from his transfixation of the backroad, the engine pulling to a slop and deeper away from civilization. His knuckles never broke from the streak of white made from his hold, even as the motor silenced.

We remained in the car in complete stillness, regret washing over his face as he nearly shook. His teeth bared as the weather seemed to focus in on us as if we embodied its existence in our quietude. One of us a cold front to the warm, feeding off the other to create a perfect storm. But it would ultimately be his lips that parted to break the quietness.

“That guy…” He began behind clenched teeth, “The one with the cartoon tattoos and a f*****g death wish…” I tensed. He was jealous, and it terrified me as it made him cold. Even as he spoke of his parents when we were younger or believed Maisie was at death’s door, he had always shown compassion. But this was absent anything but wrath, just waiting to be justified by my response.

“What did he do to you?” My skin chilled, my mouth dried, and my eyes flashed down to my fingers. The chipped polish made sparse by a nervous tick was only a momentary distraction until he turned to me, leaning across the middle console and close enough to feel his breath between us.

“I know that he didn’t…” His eyes fell, drifting to my abdomen and rising back with a sliver of that melancholic existence I found comfort in, but the anger just beneath its surface.

“But you’re scared of him…why?” I struggled to answer. The words caught in my throat. But the longer I kept him without a response, the tighter his grip came around the steering wheel.

“All of my brother’s friends are…intimidating…” His hand came to the chair behind me, nails eating into the leather enough to c***k in pain against him.

“You look at your brother and there’s annoyance…his friends make you upset. Nervous even. But you looked at him and your heart sounded like a goddamn machine gun. So do you want to tell me or do I have to start filling in the blanks?” I swallowed hard, unsure if I liked how he could hear my heart. Had it only been this once? Could he tell every time it shifted in tempo when I was with him? Before any of those questions could be answered, I saw the tension of his jaw slack and his eyes wash over in pain. He wanted to hear those words. The ones I’d never told anyone. Not even Conrad or Laurie. The ones I didn’t want to put forward as a burden for anyone else. Ones I could almost forget when I was with him…

“Alessandra, please…” He steadied himself for a moment, returning to that caring boy I knew. His voice no longer exhibited that domineering tension, “Look at me…” His fingers brushed the hair from my shoulder, his eyes falling to the pulse at my throat, as his lips parted.

“I can’t…” The words escaped as I shuddered. The heat of his eyes to me in my peripheral vision, only irritated my already raw heart.

“Did he hurt you?” His words came out strangled. Labored but restrained, his teeth catching the second half of the question, returning to me with upset that was only made worse by my silence.

“Please…just take me back home…” That comfort I once found in Aaron was as brittle as the branches at a threat of being torn from the trees overhead. I preferred to be alone if I couldn’t find that solace in him. Even if it returned me to the source of my nightmares and pains. At least I knew what to expect.

But as my voice shook and the request came out more hollow, he only rejected my command and turned his gaze back to the shoulder of the road he pulled us on to, a slight angle caused by the uneven ground beneath us.

“Not there.”

“I’ll be fine,” He wrapped his fingers tighter around the wheel as I corrected myself, “I’ve been fine…” But suddenly he was at the defense yet again.

“Tell me what he did and then I’ll decide if you go back.” He didn’t face me, but it was clear he was no longer selfless to my safety. Whatever this reaction, unfair due to his promised positioning, it was undeserving. He was now Aaron the alpha. Brusque. Bruitish. The parts I adored of him had now faltered. Even if our lives, ambitions, and fates couldn’t be anymore different, we were somehow level. Until now. As he spoke to me as if I was beneath him. As if he owned me.

“You decide?” I slacked from the rigidity my body took from being so tense. The memory of how pained he had been so early on in life had kept me from speaking cruelty to him. But now, he had no right. Not when he acted as if he had a claim on my heart when it was clear he was beyond unavailable and as made clear as being ‘complicated’.

“I’ve managed, Aaron,” The leather of the wheel whimpered in that identifiable stretch, “Anything and everything that’s happened, I’ve handled.” The words threatened my lips. The ones I knew may push him over whatever edge he stood at in this moment, “Without you-” Before my lashes could meet my cheek, he threw himself into the storm, leaving me behind as he disappeared into the canopy of trees. His height was quickly swallowed along with the darkness of the storm and the haze of my own tears.

Thunder and lightning raged out of tune from one another. One always followed the other to create that storm. Much like Aaron and myself. Chaos looming but beauty in its admirable disarray, making up whatever space we existed in. But within the flashes of those strikes came something bubbling from within. The right that I had to have an answer without him running away as he had before. He would not get to abandon me again without having to face me.

Ignoring the cruel rush of rain that came down cold to my temperate skin, I followed his steps until coming to where he found refuge. A fractured greenhouse plagued with time. The roof of the conservatory shattered at the far right to such a degree that water gathered and poured as a waterfall to the flowers. Drowning them as I compared that suffocating feeling in my chest to them. Sympathizing with a plant…

My eyes scanned the interior, finding various colored pots harboring the ruin of what once bloomed with life. A line of treslises making up the rim of the building were now overgrown with ivy with sporadic blooms, forgotten with evidence of neglect. The beauty and its end synonymous to now, a tragedy within a reality of what we were both forced to live. My gander continued until coming to the sight of his body hovered over a far table at the very left corner of the room. If not for the flashes of the storm, I could have easily ignored him and compared him to a shadow as he stood so still. His body mostly against me but at such an angle that I could see his fists against the counter, my arms wrapping around myself as I came closer.

“I have done everything I could to keep you safe…” He began. “I stayed away because being close meant that they saw you as a threat. “ He looked just beyond his shoulder. “But your threats are closer…aren’t they?” I remained silent. Compared to the lives of those I knew, I had a simple blip to the stains they were forced to endure. “I couldn’t protect you from those…from him…”

“Nothing happened-” I swallowed, unable to even attempt to believe my own words as he rushed against me, my arms in his hands as I trembled at how quickly he was against me.

“Even just the thought of him wanting to touch you makes me envision every way I could make him pay for it-”

“Aaron, I-” His strength was beyond that of any I had known. As if his fingers were suddenly vices made at my skin, enough to guarantee bruising and even the compression of my bones if he weren’t to let up. The first signs of his inhuman existence showed in the supposed care he had for me.

“You’re hurting me-” My words were weak as I could only try and play on his mercy. A flash of emptiness behind otherwise soulful eyes existed now as I whimpered.

“I haven’t even begun to start hurting you.” His voice altered. Something sinister behind that silk cadence I found ease whenever I heard it. The immediate reaction of my eyes widening to him in horror broke that grip, my feet stumbling back as I caught myself on the decaying table. Pots and glass were now at the mercy of his rage, the greenhouse no longer standing a chance between him and the storm.

“STOP! AARON!” His fury only seemed to break when he appeared to tire. As he turned back to me, he was something of a beast. His jaw left parted with teeth in a snarl, eyes once rich with passion were now plagued with the need for an outlet, and his hands were trembling with a set of nails black and broken at the tips, blood dripping down his hands from the transition he was able to stall. My body fighting the tremors of the unknown as he moved towards me.

“I’m sorry…” He confessed as he dropped to his knees, his head at a rest at my chest. With the difference in height, a foot difference at least, his head bowed at my breasts, but I don’t believe it was his intention to be anything but vulnerable and true in this moment. His grip softer on my hips as he held me to him, tears staining my clothes as I trembled to reach his face. I prepared to find those eyes still enraged or his teeth at a threat to claim me however he may have been able to. But as I pulled him to me, shuddering, I found him only a shell of the man he had become. In my arms at this instant, he was fractured, held together by a mirage of what others expected him to be. Pain and terror behind his eyes as I lowered to my own knees to make it even.

“I’m fine, Aaron-” His forehead came to mine.

“If I could have it any other way-” He began, as my hand rested at his chest. His heartbeat was powerful like the weather encasing us here. Every pulse only worsened mine as he was too close for what kept us platonic. But I understood now, just as I knew whenever we touched, we were never built for such simplicity.

“Aaron-” My hand tightened against him as he pulled me closer, his nose at rest to my own, his breath a mere echo to my lips. The returned softness made him tempting enough to forget his promise to someone else. But his distance reminded me of it just the same.

“I can’t…” I pulled back the second I would have felt him against me. No sooner had he been rejected had he shot to his feet, his eyes darting to the far window as he muttered to himself.

“Take the car and go. Not back home. I’ll find you-” His words were now that caring passion I remembered. But I was still dizzy from our interaction that I couldn’t comprehend the words as quickly as they left his lips. The lips kept parted now as I came to regret rather quickly not knowing them.

“I-”

“Dammit, Alessandra! Please!” His teeth threatened to shatter with the force made behind his clench as he pulled the keys to my hand. But the second my heels came to the threshold of the greenhouse, a chill ran down my spine. The kind that came in feeling as if you were being watched, something shared with Aaron as he pulled me behind him. My hands quickly wrapped at his arm as a figure made his way into the greenhouse with us.

“You really are a creature of habit, aren’t you…brother?” My eyes narrowed. He was familiar, but not in this form.

“How are you…”

“You should know…it’s harder to kill me. You’ve tried…twice now…” His voice was hypnotic as his blue eyes, but he dripped with the same disordered chaos of those with The Cathedral. Maisie’s aunt, even a hint of Ronan, seconds ago from Aaron. The beast. The werewolf.

“Might want to make sure I’m actually dead before you leave me to rot…again…” His brow raised,a scar over his brow showcased.

“Don’t worry…I won’t kill your little…pet…” He moved around us both as Aaron kept himself in front of me. “But I did get a taste of her…mmm…” He brushed his bottom lip as if savoring something from his fingertip. “I can see why you’ve made so much trouble over her…a human…a virgin…”

“If you touch her, I’ll skin you alive…” He grinned.

“I won't touch her, Aaron…” He moved even closer. “I’ll destroy her…”

“You-”

“It isn’t like you can protect her. Not really…especially from yourself…from them…But I promise to make it quick…maybe then you can use her when I’m done- It’s the only way…So maybe you should thank me-”

“You’ll never get to touch her.”

“Then I guess that makes two of us…” His eyes leveled to mine.

“And don’t worry…I won’t tell them I saw you…I’m expecting the favor returned.” His fingers teased the frame of the door before he disappeared into the night, gone within a flash of the lightning, as Aaron turned back to me.

“All I can do is keep you safe and I’m realizing that that’s with me. So hate me. Hurt me,” His lips pulled to a snarl as if this was more a request than a challenge, “Try to run from me. But there is no way in hell that you’re going back to that trailer and whoever has a problem with that can take it up with me.”