chapter one

Phoenix’ POV

 

I could almost feel the sweat beading on my brow and running down my nose before dripping onto her perfectly pale skin, as if it’s really happening. Her chest moving rapidly, her tight nipples grazing my pecks and her otherworldly sapphire eyes gazing up at me. Her breaths are deep and gasping as a dive into her warm, velvety depths, sinking deeper and deeper with every thrust but never feeling like I truly own her, not on the level my soul cries out for. I need to own her completely, she is mine.

I push myself harder, my toes digging into the mattress, my hands wrapped in her silky auburn hair as I try to anchor myself and keep her here, under me, right where she belongs, but I know I’m chasing an end that will never come. Even in my dreams, I can’t have her. My Rose, my little flower, she is far too precious to be tainted by the likes of me, I’m a monster.

It’s the fifth time in as many days, that I have woken up with a stiff cock and sinking feeling deep in my gut that makes me groan out loud with want and need. It’s getting worse and for the briefest second I consider telling my brothers about my nightly torment but that urge is soon put to bed when I think about the mountain of crap we still have to deal with. They don’t need to be burdened with my woman troubles when we are up to our necks in it. They know she is mine, and they know I could never put her in the kind of danger that would mean for her if I give into the mate bond and claim her.

When did little Rose, the only pure and precious thing in my life, grow up and become my deepest torment?

When I returned to visit after a couple of years chasing mafia scum from one country to the next, she was grown. Her chest is what stood out the most, perfectly round, high and firm, her tits begged to be held, nibbled and enjoyed, and my fucked up world came crashing down around me.

That wasn’t the only change, just the most glaringly obvious. Her hips were wider, more womanly, perfect for baring my sons and daughters. Her face had changed too. Her cheekbones more defined, her lips more plump and a deeper shade of red against her pale milky complexion. She didn’t look like the little girl I spent years protecting and providing for. She looked like a woman, my woman. The thoughts going through my mind as I stood there, completely poleaxed at the bottom of the steps, scared the living shit out if me.

She may not have looked like a kid anymore but she was only 16, what the fuck?  The only choice I had was to walk away, so that is exactly what I did. It turns out the monster I needed to save her from all along was me. Even if turning my back on her felt like I was severing a limb, I had to do it. I made myself a promise right there and then that I would wait until she is 18 and see if what I felt was pure lust, being caught up in the moment, or what I feared the most, but I knew deep down that I was fucked.

Two years passed and my brothers and I were barely ever home in Lunar cove, so it was easy to keep my distance physically but she was never too far from my mind. They all told me it was pointless to fight the mate bond, especially when I started coming undone when we were in the thick of it. My wolf slipped his leash more than once, luckily no innocents ever got hurt.

“You know how dangerous it is for an Alpha to deny the mate bond and we are hardly typical Alphas, who knows what will happen to us?” Ranger, Jackson, Ryder and Braydon, had all told me at one point or another. As Alphas themselves they knew about the insanity that would slowly eat away at me, mind and soul, until my wolf became rogue and I was nothing  more than a shell of a man and a vicious killing machine. At least, that is how it would happen naturally.

How could they not see? That is why I had to keep my distance. She isn’t like us, nobody is but she is human. Even if by some miracle she wasn’t totally freaked out by what I am, how would someone so tiny and delicate survive the mating process, and with an Alpha no less? It just wasn’t possible so there was no point in trying. I don’t care what becomes of me, as long as I know she is okay.

Seeing her standing there at the waters edge all alone has got to be the most fucking heart breaking thing I have ever seen.

“... under the light of the midsummer moon.” Her sweet, melodic voice drifts to me on the ocean breeze. How does she know that song?