Page 63 of Alpha's Embrace
“What?” He shifted in his seat. ”He came to see you?”
“He told me you might be in danger and the way I could help protect you was to do my best to reject all my feelings for you.” Now, as I spoke those words, they sounded cruel. But I still believed he was trying to help Geo. “I wondered how he knew. He told me I would do great harm to you if I allowed my feelings to continue. I believed him.”
“He ran the blood tests. He knew and he respected me enough to give me time to put things right and leave my job. But he didn’t take into account that when I left I wasn’t going to leave you behind. I thought about it for a long time, but realized I could never do that. Never. An Alpha does not leave his mate.”
My heart thumped hard at the wordmate.
“He should have known that,” Geo continued. “Maybe he thought the bond wasn’t strong enough, or that it could be undone by distance and will power alone.”
“You see me as your mate?” I could not believe I’d heard him correctly.
“I do.”
Ecstasy coursed through me. “I tried to not think about you. But I could feel you all day and all night.” I paused, glancing at him, my body drumming with blood and heat. “You’re very close to a Burn now, aren’t you?”
He nodded.
I smiled. “I can help.”
“I know you can. But I want you do know I don’t just want you because of the Burn.” His voice softened. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you, either. It’s as if I had always known you but didn’t know it. My body and mind were waiting for the moment you crossed my path. I simply never realized it. It was you I wanted, Misha. Just you.”
I wasn’t sure. We Sylphs have seductive ways, and chemical essences that powder the air. Our skins are potent. What if this was still only the Sylph allure, and we’d wake up tomorrow as strangers to each other?
“Maybe you’re simply under my spell,” I said, gripping his hand tighter.
“If I am, I hope that spell never breaks.”
It was the sweetest thing I’d ever heard. My chest constricted. My lungs shivered with escaping air.
Geo’s soft voice broke through my response, the sound bringing me even more pleasure.
“I honestly thought I would be all right working at the colony. I had a residual bond long broken that made me not want any other bond, possibly for the rest of my life.”
“I know. I smelled it on you. You told me at our second meeting it was a partial bond. But you said nothing more.”
“When I was sixteen it happened. Before my first Burn.”
At age sixteen? “But you were just a kid, then!”
He nodded. “His name was Mase and he was an Omega. He was sent away to bond and marry another. I didn’t speak for year afterward.”
“Oh, Geo.”
“It caused my sex drive to be lowered. I had no desire after that for a bondmate or family. I thought my condition would allow me to safely work at Riverside. I never thought I’d meet any Sylphs that weren’t still children. I never thought I’d meet you.”
I bowed my head and pressed my lips tight. I’d cried enough in the past two days. I wasn’t going to let myself go again.
“I’m so sorry about your first bonding,” I said, feeling his pain within me as if it had happened to me.
“Me, too.”
I sensed he didn’t want to speak of this anymore. I took a deep breath. “Where are we going?”
“Tarn.”
“And that’s where we’ll live?”
“Yes.”
