Chapter 159
“How old is she?”
I jumped around and saw Gabe barely an inch away, his shoulder brushed up against mine and he was looking at Mathilda and Elisa disappear around a
corner.
“Thirteen,” I said with a hand over my heart while I steadied my breathing.
I remembered her thirteenth birthday, it was a few months before the Hunt and I was blissfully ignorant about where life was heading.
There was cake, food for a whole village that my mother spent a week preparing and all of our neighbors came to celebrate with us. Thirteen is the sendoff into youth, the last, and some would say most difficult years, before you gain your wolf and life truly begins. During those five years, a person changes more than I could tell you in words alone; it’s physical and mental, your brain sort of adjusts itself during those years to make room for another living, breathing creature to take its rightful place and bind your souls together. It’s painful, rough in every aspect, and the most beautiful moment- other than actually getting your wolf- that we will ever live through. Of course, I had my mother to help me threw it, and now I would have to help Mathilda through it…I can’t fuck this up.
In just a year her height will spike and after that comes every other change to her body and she will gain muscle, and boobs, eat like her stomach is made of an empty pit where food magically disappears, and her emotions- oh hell, those emotions, my mother wanted to wring my neck at least once a week and in hindsight I understood her.
“Thirteen, the good years,” Gabe grinned.
I drew a breath and nodded, the good years- right…
He grabbed my shoulders, rolled his head, and turned me to face him and his smoldering gaze.
“You’ll be fine, she will be fine; you’re not alone in this. Whatever happens here on out, you have a whole family behind you that will help with anything you need,”
Were they sure they had the same parents?
Gabe’s words of affirmation did ease my crazed train of thought about how I would raise my sister through this and care for her but it felt as though those feelings were being interjected by a cold and familiar anger coming elsewhere. I knew it too well by now, my body knew him too well.
When I turned my head I knew where to look for the source and watched Darian watching his brother with a dark cloud forming around his head.
“Gabe,” he called roughly.
He turned to face his brother, his arms immediately by his sides and his eyes locked in on Darian’s, no not Darian, on the King.
“Make sure the Guards are in position and that their former posts are covered by the warriors,”
Gabe bowed his head and walked off to follow orders, his eyes briefly brushed over mine like he was sorry for what he’d done but he had brought me actual comfort, unlike that possessive blob of a man.
“Easy darling, I can feel your anger, remember?”
You better feel my anger.
“Was that necessary? All he did was be nice and comforting and you get jealous? He is your brother, Darian,”
“He can be nice without touching you,”
“It’s beyond the point, he was being nice!”
“Lower your voice, please,” he said darkly.
“Whenever I think that you’re taking a step forward you always take three back and we end up in the same place that we were before,”
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Chapter 159
His eyes narrowed and the floorboards creaked under his weight when he moved over them. Nora leaned back, she could feel it too; the dark aura emanating from him like it did when he was reaching a stage of anger that made you want to take cover.
“I will never be okay with another man touching you, whomever that man may be. The sight alone makes it unbelievably difficult for me to remain the calm man you wish me to be but I try, I will always try to be the best for you but this is the one area where I need you to accept how things must be. Because if you can’t, then I can’t be held responsible for the repercussions against those who cross the line,”
It wasn’t a threat- he was telling me how things were and how they wouldn’t change.
He was leaving it up to me to decide but there wasn’t a decision at all, because even if I wasn’t okay with it, he’d still be the one pulling the strings.
In this area at least.
The thought of him not liking that other men touched me did tingle that part of me that wished to feel protected, there was no denying that. But there had to be rules.
“Not against Gabe, I don’t want him to think that he can’t come to me because of you. When I felt the smallest I ever have because of the things you did, he was the one who saw me, not as a broken toy, but as an equal. I won’t let you ruin that, you need to find a way to deal with it,”
His jaw clenched a guttural grunt rose through him.
“But all others, I can accept,” I added. Though it didn’t exactly calm the beast in front of me.
Nora cleared her throat behind him and he rolled back his eyes, slowly turning halfway.
She raised a finger in the air.
“I believe that’s called a compromise, my King,”
“Do not laugh,” Trixy barked.
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The Alpha’s Hunt
