Page 8 of Trust No Alpha
Feeling more myself, I padded barefoot into my bedroom.
There, in the center of my room, stood Father.
Chapter Three
Thorne
Autumn had killed the grapevine. Well, it wasn’t exactly dead. It was dormant.
Thorne ran his fingers along the roughness of the ropey vine, in awe over how something so dead-looking could spring back to life in a matter of a few months just because of a turn in the weather. Dormancy, hibernation, the fairytale of sleeping for a hundred years… it was all so amazing how nature worked to keep itself going, to perpetuate life even in the harshest conditions.
The Virginia creeper turned bright red in fall. Apples dropped along with leaves of every hue. Trees became sticks like skeletal sentinels against the coming long night. The lucky ones, the roses, white, pink or red, all continued through sunshine and gloom, never deterred. Along with the pine trees and winterberries and oleander.
Thorne kept a garden for every season. He loved running his hands through fresh earth or even snow if he had on gloves. He loved the sounds of sprinklers churning water to thirsty life forms reaching for the sun, and craved the scent of lavender by the gate, and rosemary at the door. He had a pond just for his water lilies. He had a path primarily so his daffodils, in springtime, could mark the way.
Today it was cold, so he only stayed outdoors a short time. He was fifty, but that was still quite young by Alpha standards. The oldest Alpha on record had lived to be two hundred and ninety nine.
Thorne looked up at the darkening sky. Brown clouds edged in red were blowing in from the west. The weather report said it would definitely rain by morning, if not outright snow.
On a distant hill, the golden lights of the Vandergale Mansion started going on one by one, making the house look like a Christmas ornament year-round. He knew five boys lived there with their father, Varian Vandergale, but he rarely saw them.
Kids trespassed on his property all the time, taking shortcuts home from school, or to visit friends. But never the Vandergale children. Once in a while he saw them go by on some special outing in their sleek, Rolls Royce van, but as neighbors they were taciturn and unfriendly. Everyone knew the Vandergales stayed mostly to themselves.
For a long moment, he watched the house, thinking of the inhabitants within their vast rooms and vast wealth, shut off from the world on purpose. But why?
For Thorne, he’d had no choice. The world had thrown him away long ago. It didn’t want him. It looked at him askance.
Markeddangerousas an Alpha, the blot had destroyed his career, not to mention his prospects for love.
Now he turned away from the pretty mansion on the hill and moved toward the back door of his house, but not before stopping one more time before going in.
Under the spreading oak he’d planted twenty-five years ago lay a grave, also twenty-five years old. The marker read:Ian.No last name.
Thorne sighed as he reached out to stroke the top of the marble marker. “The long nights are coming,” he said softly. “Sleep well, love.”
Twenty-five years later and the pain in his chest was just as strong.
No one understood he had not meant to kill his mate.
No one understood Ian had been the love of his life. He was an Omega with no last name. A nobody. And killing him had broken no Alpha laws because it had happened during the Burn.
But Thorne had to live with it forever. And be marked for it, as well.Dangerous.An Alpha who could not control the Burn for long enough to see to his mate’s needs. An Alpha who blacked out when the need grew too strong.
His kind was rare. There were places—special places—set up just for those like him to go to when the Burn hit him. Where Omegas were quietly kept to be abused by those Alphas who couldn’t control themselves, or Alphas who were sadists, rapists, murderers or worse.
He was none of those. Ithadbeen an accident. He’d blacked out. He had not been conscious when his mate stopped breathing. The doctors said Ian had died of natural causes. Those natural causes included an undiagnosed weak heart and too low electrolytes. Thorne felt responsible. He had not seen to his mate’s needs. He had not adequately observed the signs that his mate might be ill.
He could have gotten a lawyer and fought against being labeled dangerous. But he wanted the label. He felt he deserved it.
In the end, it didn’t matter how Ian died. Thorne felt responsible. Never again could he trust himself around Omegas during a burn.
It was terrible. Horrifying. Mortifying. For not only was he branded, but he’d lost the man he loved most in the world.
Luckily, by age twenty-five he had managed his business well enough that he could sell it for enough money to buy a place and live frugally. He still did temp work and free-lance jobs in computer software.
Otherwise, he stayed to himself. He tended his plants, his sore heart, and Ian’s grave. Beyond that, he had no purpose, no reason for being.
He got by, and that was all.
