Bound To The Alpha Who Broke Me のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 21 - チャプター 30

ALTHEA'S POV I woke up to bright sunlight and a pounding in my head that made opening my eyes feel like a punishment. For a moment I just lay there staring at the ceiling of Riley's room, waiting for the world to stop tilting. My mouth tasted terrible. My body felt heavy and slow in the particular way that only came from too much wine and not enough sleep. Then the memories started coming back. Riley sitting beside me on the bed, refilling my glass while I talked too much and cried too easily about things I should have kept to myself. The empty bottle on its side. The room spinning pleasantly at the edges. And then Xavier. Heat flooded my face before I was fully awake. Shit! Shit! Shit! Xavier had come. He had stood in the doorway looking at me with that careful unreadable expression while Riley made her exit with suspicious efficiency. I remembered how I leaned on him and touched his face. How his hands were at my waist and his chest was warm. And solid when I ended up closer

ALTHEA'S POV An hour passed. Then another. I knew because I counted them. I stood at the window and watched the dark treeline and counted the minutes the way you do when there is nothing else to do and your mind needs something to hold onto so it doesn't go somewhere worse. My legs were literally shaking with impatience. Then the sounds came through the glass faintly. The impact of bodies. A howl that cut off too abruptly. Then another that went on too long, high and pained, before it faded into something that was harder to hear than silence. I pressed my palm flat against the window glass and told myself to stay where I was. I paced the length of the room and sat on the edge of the bed. I stood at the window again and sit back down. My heart was doing something uneven and too fast. The ache in my chest mixed with a fear that had nothing to do with the transplant and everything to do with a black wolf somewhere in the dark beyond those trees. What if Xavier got hurt? The t

ALTHEA’s P.O.V Three days after the rogue attack, Dr. Chen finally cleared me to leave the medical building. Obviously with the expression of a man who had already made peace with the fact that his instructions were more suggestions than law where I was concerned. "The wound is healing beautifully." He said while unwrapping the last of the bandages to reveal pink new skin pulled tight across my shoulder. He pressed two fingers gently along the edge of it, checking. "You'll carry a scar. Don’t worry, it will be a small one." "Good," I said proudly. "I've earned it." His mouth twitched. "What you've earned is three more days of rest and absolutely no heroics of any kind." He pressed his stethoscope to my chest and listened. His eyes went to the middle distance the way they did when he was processing that specific inward look of a man whose mind was working faster than his face could keep up with. Then he pulled the instrument from his ears and looked at me with something warm sittin

XAVIER'S POVI made the tea every morning before she came downstairs.It had started practically enough. I had noticed the way I noticed most things about the compound and the people in it that she drank tea and that the kitchen only kept coffee. So I had mentioned it to Marla. Marla had looked at me for a moment longer than the request warranted."Tea." She had said."Yes." I had said.So now I made a cup every morning and left it beside the coffee pot and took mine to the window. I needed those few minutes before the day started. The compound was quiet at that hour and there was pack business to think through. The border rotations, the investigation, the eastern perimeter report Leo had left on my desk. Important things. Things that required a clear head and uninterrupted focus.I thought about all of those things.I also happened to still be at the window at the exact moment she came downstairs. That was simply the natural length of time it took to think through the morning's conc

ALTHEA’S POV Two more weeks passed and the restlessness became a fixture. Not the kind of thing that would alarm anyone looking from the outside. I still slept, still ate and still walked the morning circuit with Xavier and sat in the sitting room in the evenings and laughed at things Riley said. I still helped Marla in the garden on the days my shoulder allowed it. Life at Redmoon continued to be the warmest and most confusing thing that had ever happened to me and I held all of it carefully the way you held things that felt too good to be permanent. But underneath it, like a current running below still water, the restlessness pulled. I woke up every two or three nights now. Never from anything I could name. Just awake with a hand over my chest. The feeling of having been somewhere that dissolved before I could look at it. And each time it took a little longer to go back under and each time the feeling lingered a little further into the morning before the warmth of the day chase