Page 91 of Mate to the Alpha Of All Alphas

Taking a good look at him now, she noticed the lines of exhaustion on his face—his posture too might be screaming 'Keep your distance!' but there was something vulnerable about it.

Ismena shifted uncomfortably from one foot to another. She wanted nothing more than to comfort him, but she couldn't. She has no idea howto break through those invisible walls around him. He would not let her do so.

"Can I help with anything?" She asked softly.

Please, say yes. Please, ask me to stay. Please, look at me. Please, say yes.

"No." Firm. Uncompromising. Final.

Her heart crumbled.

She hid it well. "Okay. I'll...uhh...I'll just get going."

She walked past him towards the door. She'd opened the door when his voice stopped her.

"I am going to the Elephant Clan for the meeting in regards to the family that was killed. I will be back in the morning. If..." he paused for five seconds, "If the wolf in the dungeon makes a fuss during the night, send one of the sentinels to come and get me."

"I will do that." He was hurting—especially about his sister—and he is doing it alone. He is not letting her in.

Ismena wondered if he has started hating her as much as he hated her kind?

The thought left a sore taste in her mouth. In her heart.

She walked past the door and closed it behind her.

Hours later, Ismena in her night robes walked through the long, hallway that leads to Nalaila's bedroom.

Her heart was in her throat for what she was about to do. But then again, playing it safe was no longer helping the situation, neither was it helping Nalaila.

Passing a sconce lit with fire, she unattached it from the wall and held it in her hand using it as a torchlight. At the door, she re-attached it back to the wall before she opened the door and entered inside.

Her eyes found the wolf curled into itself protectively, and sleeping peacefully behind the thick barricades confined her to the bedroom. She stood there for a few minutes, allowing the silence to wash over her.

Then, she began:

"A subject I have always tried to keep away from whenever I visit you here is the subject I will be talking about tonight, my dear friend, Nalaila." She said aloud, doing her best to suppress the fear. The nervousness.

"You know, when I first met him, he scared the very devils out of me." A nervous laugh, "I'll have you know that I'm not the only woman that he has that effect on. Men and women fear him—and they have every reason to do so. Your brother is a very strong man. And he does not smile, do you know?"

"He does not. The frown lines on his face create a path to his hair, that's how hard the man keeps his face squeezed all the damn time. You know, when we first met, some men were gonna rape me in a public bathroom. Not to brag or anything but I'm a beautiful woman, baby girl. We were in a club and those men decided they wanted a piece of me."

Damn, stupid Ismena. The lady does NOT need a story about rape, you fool. Damned nervousness!

I'll just rush through it, she decided.

"Anyway, I was drunk, but I was determined to feed them a few of their teeth. They overpowered me but your brother entered in the nick of time. He beat them up in seconds." A smile touched her lips at thememory, "He hated that he was saving me, a human. But he did it anyway. A saw a gold ring on the floor and stole it, thinking it belonged to my abusers but it turned out that it belonged to your brother."

She walked to the window and looked out into the night sky, "Turns out it was his special ring. I didn't know and pawned it. When I found out it belonged to him, I ran away. He chased me around the world, caught me, and brought me to this place. Not only because of the ring, but because I was his mate."

It hurts to say that word 'mate.' It hurts badly.

"I got to know him really well here. He is a great male. He is also a sad and lonely one. He hates my kind to the core because of what happened to him eighteen years ago." A pause, "...because of what happened to his beloved sister. It lives with him every day. He talks about you all the time. For the strongest of males, he always looks on the verge of tears whenever he talks about his beloved sister."

Her eyes tracking a particular moving star, she smiled a little, even as tears prickled her eyes. "He blames himself for everything. He was unable to protect you when you were taken, he blames himself for that. He was unable to protect you from the hideous things that happened in the lab, he blames himself for that too. Every night. Every day."

"He does not sleep well at night. He is a troubled male. Sometimes, he has to fight hard to hold down his other halves, knowing that he will become feral if those part of him ever wins in the battle of control. His Alphas are worried. They think he is not fighting hard enough, because he does not have the zeal to fight hard enough."

She blinked hard to keep the tears at bay, "He does not feel he has the right to live well while you live in misery, trapped in your wolf. He is sorry, every day, for what he did to you, Nalaila."

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