Page 61 of The Alpha's Fake Mate
I caught up to Holland easily once he had made it out back and slowed. I came up to him fast, and touched him on the elbow.
Holland turned in a dash of fury, hands out. His face was turned in, eyes wild as they looked past me, mouth scrunched down hard. His eyebrows were so close together they looked like one line.
“I’m bonded to a monster. A monster!” His voice came from some hollow place inside him, full of echoes and cries. Seething, frenzied, and very very lost.
I wanted to hold him but he would never allow that.
“There’s nothing we can do!” he yelled.
I stood before him and rage leaped within me as well. I cared about him. Too much. Softly, I said, “I could kill him.”
I already felt it—the propriety over Holland. It occupied my thoughts day and night. Holland was mine. I claimed him. Even if it was fake to him, it had become real to me.
So what if the Challenge only happened in the old days or in some secret sect in a foreign country. I’d break the law to engage it. I’d break all laws for Holland. I’d known it for some time now, even in the early days of our emails.
Even if Holland had never heard of the Challenge, I had. I’d learned it in the history texts my tutors had made me read. Wilde had described it only briefly. Centuries ago, two Alphas who made a claim on the same Omega would face the Challenge. My text books had funky illustrations. Fancy arenas. Full moon gatherings. Witnesses standing around in robes like it was a graduation or a birthday.
After much feasting and drinking, the two Alphas would face off in the stone-floored arena and fight to the death. Maybe one was in the Burn. Maybe they both were. It would be bloody. Some of my text books showed them fighting naked and erect, like mindless animals in rut, sometimes even using their cocks as weapons, trying to rape each other right at the onset of a kill. It was disgusting and feral. A tradition best left to the distant past.
But even that—
A feeling that I wanted even that, that I might kill for Holland, rose up in me. It was like nothing I’d ever felt before. I didn’t have a bond with him, and only a fake claim. Yet it felt real.
But it couldn’t be real; it had to be the result of my own outrage for him. For his predicament. For the horror he’d lived through.
“Why didn’t my scent change? Why can’t I feel it?”
Intermittent drops of rain fell around us. The pool flickered off to our right, and I could see the droplets making little circles in the water’s surface. Everything smelled of water and tears and desperation. Like drowning.
“I don’t know,” I said, as Holland’s new plea broke my reverie.
“If the bond is real, wouldn’t it be noticed? A change in my scent?”
“The trauma. That has to be why.” A damp gust of wind whipped over me, sweeping my hair into my face and I raised my hand to push it back. My fingers tangled in it, yanking it hard. The pain made me gasp. “Ah! This is so frustrating!”
“For me, not you!”
“For me, too! Holland, damn it, don’t you know by now, after these months? I don’t care if it was only emails where we communicated. I think I’m quite obvious. Or you’re just unobservant if you can’t see it. I’d do anything for you!”
There. The truth. It was out now.
He stared up at me, blue eyes unreadable. Chest heaving.
“I would do anything to keep you safe, including things you don’t want.” More truth. Too much? I’d said it now and there was no turning back.
I watched him, his eyes boring into me. But this time, it was he who dropped his gaze first. He who stood before me. He kicked at the wet grass and his shoes shone with rain. My coat on him hung long, making him look even more bedraggled than he was.
Finally, he looked up at me again, blinking hard. “What do you even see when you look at me?”
I must not have answered fast enough, because he turned away, grumbling, “I thought so!”
“Wait!” I reached out for him. This time my hand brushed against his upper arm. “You didn’t give me time to answer. What do I see when I look at you?”
He did not pull away from my touch, but he didn’t turn back to face me, either. He appeared to be listening.
Without waiting another second, I said, “I see you. Just you. Not your name, not your status. Just a man who is brilliant, brave, daring and a survivor. You fling challenges everywhere you go. That’s a good thing. That’s a start to patching up such a broken world. You’re someone who sees the world differently and isn’t afraid to say. That’s what I see, and it’s what I saw when we first met. I admire it greatly.”
Voice low, “You think we’re friends.”
