by Mia Rose
Too much had happened in such a brief period of time that she felt like she was going to explode, the only evidence of her melancholy being scattered along the highway. Her mind swirled and voices in her head were making no sense as scraps of conversations replayed in a wicked montage. She was shaking from crying so hard and she could feel her throat growing raw. She banged her hand against the steering wheel, trying futilely to find something to take out her frustrations.
She had made the decision to follow her ancestor’s legacy, then her father told her to choose her own legacy. She had made the decision to love Declan despite everything, then a vindictive werewolf comes out and claims him as her own. It seemed that with every choice she made, someone always stepped in to send her running in the opposite direction. She was so fucking tired of running.
She punched the gas even harder as if the speed of the car could outrun her mind. She neared a turn on the highway and directed the wheel smoothly, picking up even more speed. She rounded another corner, but this time, her tires skidded against the road before she reclaimed the vehicle. Too quickly another corner came and she didn’t have the chance to redirect the car. She hit the side barrier of the highway and her car flipped over once, twice, then three times, before it came to a screeching halt.
Noelle was trapped between the airbag and her seat. Her seatbelt was stuck in its position and she could feel the blood trickling down her face. Her vision started getting black along the edges and she couldn’t hear anything other than the ringing in her ears. It was so very late at night, she realized.
No one is coming for me, she thought to herself. She faded away into a sweet blackness.
Declan slept fitfully, but when he woke up, he couldn’t recall any part of his dream. He remained in his position and closed his eyes, willing the dream to come back to him, but to no avail. He got up and got dressed and headed downstairs to his office. He was so focused on his work, that he didn’t even look up when someone walked into his office.
“Hey,” the voice called out. Declan looked up to see Gabriel standing in front of him.
“Gabriel, what’s up?”
“It’s that time again,” Gabriel said. Declan pulled his eyebrows together in confusion and Gabriel added, “For training. Remember?”
“Oh damn, already?” Gabriel nodded and Declan looked down at his desk.
He had managed to work through a great deal of the papers that were occupying it, but he still had about two or three hours of work left to do.
“Can you take this one today, Gabe? I’m slammed here and I’ve really got to get this shit done, today. Then I have to meet with Aria later to see if everything is okay with her. She kind of lost it on me last night.”
“Sure, man. Should we just do the same thing as yesterday?”
“Yeah pretty much. It’s a different group today, so make sure they all learn the key lesson from yesterday, too.”
“Don’t stop…”
“Until you’re sure they’re dead.” Gabriel left and shut the door behind him.
Declan looked at his phone and saw no new notifications, which at this point didn’t surprise him. He knew now that Noelle had ignored him at the coffee shop and she had stood him up last night. For whatever reason, she was done with him. Clearly, she didn’t think that much of their relationship to offer him any sort of an explanation, so he made a vow not to think about it anymore. Maybe it was for the best, after all. He didn’t need any distractions at this point, his one and only concern should be his pack and making sure they were kept safe.
He finished up his work and looked proudly at his clean desk. He wasn’t sure the last time he had seen it void of any papers. He picked up his phone and walked out, locking the door behind him. He walked downstairs just in time to catch the last few minutes of training. The pack looked good and he felt accomplished like he was finally making the right moves. Like he was finally doing what an alpha would do.
He walked upstairs to his apartment and took a quick shower. He tidied up a bit and then sat down at the kitchen table, waiting for Aria to arrive. About twenty minutes passed and Declan started to wonder if she had forgotten about their agreement last night.
Just another woman standing me up, I guess.
He shook the thought from his mind, refusing to drift over to Noelle. He stood up from the table and went to grab his laptop, but he heard a small knock. He pulled open the door and saw Aria standing before him wearing a floor-length, strapless black dress. The skirt had various slits made in it with a sheer mesh material that went dangerously high. In that moment, Declan knew without a doubt, exactly what Aria wanted from him.
But first, he needed some answers from her. “Aria,” he said smoothly, “please come in. Have a seat. Would you like something to drink?”
“Do you have any wine?” she asked.
Declan smiled as he walked into the kitchen and pulled out a bottle of wine. He uncorked it slowly and his eyes never left hers as he poured the wine into a glass for her and then one for himself.
“To Cassidy!” Aria said. Declan nodded and they clinked their glasses together in a toast.
“That’s a strange thing to toast to, considering what you came here for, Aria.”
She looked at him with big eyes, faking a sense of innocence, and said, “What do you mean?”
“I think we both know the answer to that.” Declan took a long sip of wine from his glass before he spoke again, “So, what’s the deal?”
Aria looked at him from behind her own glass and said, “What’s the deal with what?”
“Please, don’t play coy with me. You come over to my apartment and my office and try to convince me to take you hunting. Then you show up where I am hunting, uninvited, talking to yourself… apparently. And then you lose it last night, talking about Cassidy, yet you’re here today dressed like that…” he trailed off.
Aria smiled, but it wasn’t a genuine smile. It was forced and looked unnaturally large on her face.
“You know, Declan, the entire time Cassidy was sick, she talked about you. She talked about how much she admired you and loved you and just how much you meant to her. Really, it was so fucking adorable, it made me sick.” Declan coughed on his wine at her last sentence.
Aria reached over for his glass of wine and set down both glasses on the counter. She grabbed Declan’s hand and walked him over to the couch where she sat him down.
Climbing on top of him, she pressed her lips close to his ear, “She was so in love with you, Declan. And I thought you loved her, too. So, imagine my surprise when I followed you and found out that you were fucking the enemy.”
Declan froze.
What did she just say? Have I heard her wrong?
Aria let out a quiet laugh. “Oh yeah, Declan. See at first, I was just curious to see where you were spending all your time instead of being with Cassidy. The first time I saw you too was in the alley, really discrete, by the way. Then I followed you while you went to the hotel. Well, I had to use my imagination for that one. But then, I think my favorite one was the one in the woods. This is because this was after you knew that she murdered your mate —yet she still managed to make you hard.”
“Shut the fuck up, you stupid…” Declan grabbed her by the shoulders and lifted her off him.
He sent her rocketing across the room slamming into the wall. A picture of him and Cassidy came crashing down and he could see the shards of glass spread across the floor.
“Oh Declan, Declan!” Aria laughed. “You can’t possibly think that you’re in control of this situation, can you?”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“See, here’s the thing. I’ve kept my mouth shut about your little secret, but there’s something that I want in return.”
Declan stared at the woman standing across from him. Her honey-brown eyes now in slits reminded him of a snake. He couldn’t think of any way out of this other than to kill her, but he knew the other pack members would notice he
r gone. Plus, he’d told Gabriel that he was meeting with her… tonight.
Declan felt the fight within him slowly dissipate into an abyss. His shoulders relaxed and he fingers stretched out from the balled-up fists. Aria noticed and took a few steps closer to him.
“It’s nothing you can’t do, Declan,” she whispered. “All I want is for you to be mine.”
“Oh yeah?” Declan responded.
He reached out his hand and grabbed Aria by the neck. She gasped and began scratching at his hand, he was squeezing so tightly, she could barely breathe. He slammed her down on the couch and tore open her dress from top to bottom. She was wearing no bra or panties.
Real classy, he thought.
He reached down to her pussy and stuck his fingers inside with a brutal force. She let out a moan —either from pain or satisfaction, he wasn’t sure, not that he cared at this point. She was already wet, so he unzipped his jeans. He turned her over onto her back and forced her face into the cushions while he lifted her hips and ass into the air.
He plunged inside of her with no concern for how gentle or slow she wanted it. Besides, something told him that she probably enjoyed her sex rough. He rocked his hips back and forth into her at an unforgiving speed and he could hear her panting. He felt the inside of her pulsing against him as his cock was covered with a new wetness he hadn’t felt before.
She tried to lift herself up, but with his other hand, he pushed her face back down into the cushions. He pushed inside of her again and again until finally, he felt himself let go. She moaned out, soaked from his arousal.
Her eyelids felt like they weighed a ton each as she struggled trying to open them. A white light blinded her and she clenched them shut again. She could hear a voice, but it was garbled as if they were trying to speak to her underwater.
Am I drowning? she asked herself.
“Where…” she tried to say. Her throat was so dry that the word scratched its way forward from her lips. She tried wetting her lips before she asked again. “Where am I?”
“Miss,” a gentle voice called out.
She struggled to open her eyes again, and this time she realized that the light was coming from the ceiling. She blinked a few times to clear her vision. She was finally able to zero in on the source of the voice. A man stood next to her, wearing a concerned smile.
“Can you hear me?”
She nodded slowly and felt a piercing pain shoot through her head.
“I know it hurts, Ma’am. I’ve just got a few questions for you, okay? Can you try to answer?”
She nodded again.
“Okay, thank you. Do you know where you are?”
“No.”
“You’re at St. Joseph’s hospital. My name is Doctor Edmund Stone. You can call me Edmund. Do you know how you got here?”
“No,” she breathed, closing her eyes against the pain.
“Okay, you were in a pretty bad car accident last night. It looks like you hit the barrier on the highway and your car flipped over a few times. You were pretty banged up, but we are going to do our best to get you back up and running, okay?”
She nodded.
“Okay, Ma’am, this is our final question. Do you have anyone we can call? We didn’t find a cell phone or wallet with you in your car.”
“I… I don’t know,” she choked out. She saw the doctor furrow his eyebrows together. She closed her eyes again as her vision started swimming.
“Ma’am, do you know who you are?”
Her eyes shot open and her mouth stood agape, but nothing came out.
The doctor repeated his question and finally, she said, “I can’t… I can’t remember.”
The darkness overwhelmed her and she sank back into a deep, but troubled sleep. Her head felt raw and the pain was surreal. She needed to heal, now.
“Am I coming undone?”
Chapter 11
Frustrated
“Sometimes, I don’t know what to say.”
Aria sat on the couch, naked. She was watching Declan moving about the apartment. He was frustrated, that much she knew. For the first time, she didn’t know what to say. She hadn’t wanted him to take her in that way, she had never wanted to reveal the secret she knew, but he forced her hand.
“Declan,” she called out from the couch.
“What?” he said without looking at her.
“Come sit by me.” Aria patted the cushion next to her, and Declan looked over at her not even sure what to say.
“What do you think we are doing, Aria? Are we playing house in that little-demented mind of yours?”
She sighed and said, “Can you please just sit down for a moment. Let’s talk.”
Declan hesitated, but then he sat down in the arm chair across from her, “Speak.”
“Declan, I didn’t want things to go this way —you have to know how much I care for you, how much I have always cared for you…” she trailed off.
“Are you being serious right now? You’re blackmailing me and yet you’re sitting there trying to tell me that you care for me? How does this all play out for you in the end, exactly?”
“Declan, just listen to me, please. I know how this seems, trust me. I’ve doubted this plan too, but at the end of the day, I’m not really the one who did anything wrong. You are. Not only did you cheat on Cassidy, but you cheated on her with a human female. A human who ended up being a hunter. A hunter who ended up killing your Cassidy.” She stopped for a moment and watched as Declan considered her words. “You let the wolf into the hen house, for lack of a better metaphor, right at this very moment.”
Declan looked at the woman sitting across from him. She had her knees pulled up to her chest with her arms wrapped around them. He looked down at her dress laying torn on the floor. With a sigh, he reached down and took off his own shirt and he threw it to her.
“Put that on,” he said. Aria took it and slipped it on over her head.
She looked at him and continued, “You’re the alpha of the pack, Declan. I know that you have been making the right decisions lately to get that for all of us, but you cannot go back to her. She will ruin us, you know that. You need to be with one of your own, you need to be with someone who understands who and what you are, truly.”
“So, you’re saying I need to be with you?”
“No!” Aria pressed her face into her hands. “No, I promise I won’t tell anyone what I know about you. I’m not going to force you to be with me, I don’t want that. I want you to choose me, like you did with Cassidy. Like you did with Noelle.”
The sound of her name left a pit in his throat and he had to swallow it down. He stood up and reached out his hand to Aria. She looked at it, unsure of what he was doing. Declan realized that she was actually scared of him; all of her confidence and bravado, gone.
“Take my hand,” Declan said.
“Where are we going?” He didn’t answer, but Aria put her hand in his and followed him into the bathroom.
He turned on the water and watched her confused face. He pulled off his jeans and then his underwear, revealing his own nakedness. Aria stood frozen, so Declan walked over and gently tugged off his shirt from her body. She covered her breasts with her arms reflexively and Declan pushed them down.
“You don’t have to be afraid, Aria,” he whispered, “I am not going to hurt you again.” She nodded at him and placed her hands into his. “I do have one more question, though.”
“What is it?” said Aria.
“Last night, in the woods, who were you talking to?”
Aria looked at him, her honey-brown eyes never wavering.
She replied, “No one. I was talking out loud to myself.” Declan nodded and guided her into the shower.
He took the soap and softly massaged her neck trailing over her collarbone and down to her breasts. He cupped her small breast in his hand and softly kissed her nipple before bringing it into his mouth. Aria let out a soft moan and tilted her head back, enjoying the pleasure he gave her.
She grabbed his hair with one of her hands while holding herself up with the other, then she began moving her pussy back and forth on his mouth. He grabbed her hips and sank his tongue in deeper. He did it with want, right into the sweetest part of her. He did it over and over again until she let out a victorious cry of pleasure.
Noelle felt someone touching her arm lightly and she tried to turn her head and open her eyes to see them, to no avail.
“Hello?” she whispered softly, glad to find her voice still worked.
“Oh, Sweetie, you’re awake,” a female voice cried out. “Doctor? Doctor! She’s awake now!”
She could hear footsteps approaching and she was still struggling to open her eyes to see who was sitting next to her. She remembered the last time she woke up. From that information, she already knew she’d been in a car accident and that she was at the hospital. Maybe this person next to her knew who she was and came to find her.
“Hey, Noelle, how are you feeling?” the doctor’s voice hummed.
“I can’t… I can’t open my eyes, really.”
“Yeah, it will take some adjusting because of the pain medication you’re on, you might be a bit sluggish. It should wear off a bit, soon.”
“You called me Noelle? Is that my name?” The person next to her let out a small cry.
“It is. We were lucky that another doctor here recognized you. He’d just treated your dad a few days back. We were able to pull his records since he had an extremely unique animal attack and then we tracked down your mom. She’s here with you, now.”
