Saving the Alpha's Dream Mate

Letter

I felt a sickening twisting in my stomach as the world around me shifted and warped in unimaginable ways until, finally, my eyes focussed again and I found myself back in the room beside Alpha Walker.

He was rubbing his eyes and he sat up with a dazed expression and glanced around the room.

My heart fluttered when he looked in my direction, and I smiled nervously - he had seen me, and asked my name, and now...now my smile was fading, because he wasn't looking at me, he was staring straight through me.

I looked down at myself and saw that I was wearing the same ragged clothes I had been in when I died; the pale pink satin I had been so enchanted by was gone.

There was no way for me to interact with Alpha Walker here, but in some respects I was relieved by that. I didn't want him to see me like this when he thought I was a mystical being from another world... when that's what I really had been to him...

There were tears welling in my eyes, but I didn't try to stop them spilling over; there was no point hiding my pain when he didn't even know I was right beside him.

He ran his hands through his hair and stared at the door opposite the bed for a while before he finally got up.

He was clearly heartbroken and a few hours of broken sleep was not enough to ease the pain that was etched on his features; this would haunt him for the rest of his life.

I regretted running from him when he approached me, and I wondered whether I would ever get that chance again, or if it had even been real to begin with.

He sat down at the large desk, pushed the paper he had left before he went to sleep away, and rested his head in his hands. My chest was tight again as I watched him suffer with no way of easing his pain, but he drew a deep breath when there was a knock at the door, and brushed himself off before going to open it with a blank expression.

I watched as a small, dark haired woman with soft brown eyes handed him a set of fresh clothes and smiled sympathetically at him without saying a word before she closed the door between them and left him in the room alone.

It was more than providing him with something fresh to wear; she had come to show him he was needed, and she didn't have to say anything for that to be obvious.

Alpha Walker was a leader, and no matter what had happened, his Pack needed him.

He looked down at the clothes he had been handed and swallowed a lump in his throat before turning away from the door and tossing them over to the bed as if they were worthless rags.

I expected him to sit back down at the desk, but he pulled off the bloodstained shirt he had slept in and held the cuff to his lips for a moment before he lay it gently on the bed.

It still smelled of his Mate, and I don't think he could stand the thought of washing away the trace of her, no matter how upsetting it was.

I was still standing beside the desk, and I was so caught up in the way he had treated something as simple as removing his shirt in such a poignant way that I hadn't even registered the fact he hadn't put the clean shirt on.

I blushed fiercely when I realized I was staring at his body, and the fact it excited me to see how perfect he was beneath those clothes made me feel guilty.

I screwed my eyes shut and bit the inside of my lip so that I wouldn't end up staring at him as he changed with no idea I was there, because it felt so violative, but I opened them again when I sensed he was approaching me.

For a moment I thought he might be able to see me, but he sat down at the desk without even glancing in my direction; I was still nothing but a spectre.

I breathed in deeply, trying to calm myself, and I felt another flush of attraction because his scent was overwhelming and it drove my crazy.

He was a powerful man, and everything about him made that obvious, but his own scent was mingling with the faint traces of something that was oddly familar.

It took me a moment to register what it was - the most subtle hint of pine and moss; an ancient, primordial scent that was unmistakable.

He smelled like the forest we had been in together, as if it was more than a hallucination or a figment of my imagination, and it was startling. If he smelled like that mystical realm...if we had really been there together... that meant he had seen me, and spoken to me, and that he had cared enough to ask my name.

I wondered again whether it might be possible to make him see me, or to communicate with him somehow, but I didn't know what I could possibly try and he would be furious if he found out I couldn't save his Mate.

He needed more time to gather himself anyway, and I wouldn't have known what to say to him when it had been nearly impossible for me to whisper my name into the enchanted air that surrounded us in the forest.

He sighed again, and reached hesitantly for the pen that he had abandoned the previous evening.

I probably shouldn't have intruded on this moment, but I needed to know and there was nobody to shout at me.

I thought he might be writing to tell the other Alpha's about Lady Katelyn's murder, or perhaps listing the people who might be responsible, but as his shaking hand brought the pen to the paper I had the strangest feeling that he was writing to me.

He hadn't even written a single letter, and I knew the thought was ludicrous, but I watched with a racing heart to see what he was trying to tell me.

He sighed, and put the pen back down.

Whatever he had been planning to write was apparently not important, or necessary, or perhaps it was too difficult for him.

He pressed his hands to the edge of the desk, moving as if he was going to get up, but at the last second he sat back down, picked up the pen, and finally began to write.

It was only a single word, written in the top left hand side of the paper, as if he was penning a private letter.

I watched him form the letters in an elegant script, then lean back in the chair and stare down at the paper as if he had written something crazy.

Sienna...