Page 44 of Trust No Alpha
Back in bed, he curled under the blankets and brought a pillow tight to his chest.
The dream images had ebbed a little, but not enough. It took him a long time to fall back to sleep.
Chapter Sixteen
Kris
I heard Thorne get up in the middle of the night and turn on the shower. I managed to sleep some, but had awakened from a weird dream I could not recall. I was on my back under thick blankets when I heard the footsteps above me and the pipes in the walls hum.
I grabbed a pillow and put it over my head to try to blind myself from imagining my dangerous Alpha neighbor naked, stepping into the hot water, and all that black hair streaming wet around his head.
Of course, I hadn’t ever seen him naked, but I have a great imagination, damn it. And pillows don’t block images in the mind.
I still wasn’t sure what to make of Thorne. I had told him my story, but he remained vague about his own past, and his story about losing his Omega mate. All I had to go on was rumor.
Instinct told me whatever had happened, Thorne could not have done anything intentionally. He was too caring. Too controlled. And he honored life.
After the speech he’d given me over dinner about not defining yourself by your label, I knew he was not one of those cocky Alphas who thought they owned all Omegas as if they were slaves. He wouldn’t have hurt anyone if he could have helped it. That made me wonder all the more how his Omega mate actually died.
How could I have lived down the road from him my whole life and never even been half-curious? Or wanted to get to know a neighbor who lived so close by?
It was an impossible scenario all the way around. Father liked to remain undisturbed in his work and the raising of his perfect Alpha sons. And Thorne chose isolation. Never the two shall meet.
Exhausted from the last couple of days, I turned onto my side and curled up, willing myself to sleep. It was hard not to think of Thorne above me in his own room trying to go back to sleep as well after a midnight shower. Hard not to feel his presence in every breath I took, in the walls of the room and the sheets and blankets and worn pillows that surrounded me. Everything here was Thorne’s. Everything was marked by him invisibly by virtue of being in his home.
I fell asleep with one thought:Was I marked now too?
*
Days passed in slow, quiet succession. The snow stayed on the ground though the weather cleared. The temperatures remained low.
I kept to myself, but Thorne and I ate together. He cooked. I helped him with small chores around the house.
We took more walks in the backyard but never went far.
One day, alone, I came around from back to the front yard, which I mostly avoided unless there were trees to block me from view of Father’s house, and saw the slight bit of snow-melt over the last few days had revealed a headstone under a huge Live Oak. The name readIan.
I had not known Thorne kept his Omega mate’s body and had it interred in his front yard. I couldn’t stop staring at it, immune to the cold as it seeped through my coat and sweater and into my bones.
After awhile, I heard the front door open and footsteps on the porch.
“I see you found Ian.”
I turned to see Thorne standing at the top of the porch steps. He was all in shadow except for his chin and nose. He looked angry but I knew he wasn’t.
“I’m sorry.”
His head tilted until I saw his eyes, soft at the edges, lids downcast, the moisture within glimmering.
The pit of my stomach widened. A weight settled. This was wrong. All wrong. Ian should be here with Thorne. They should both be standing on that porch together smiling down at me, happy neighbors sharing happy times. This grim grave should not exist.
“Come in out of the cold,” Thorne said. “I have a fire going.”
Without waiting for my response, he turned and went back into the house.
I stayed behind a few more minutes.
“Ian,” I said to the air. Nothing more.
