Alpha Ruined, page 11
The drunk man grunts and bares his yellowing teeth, swaying in place as he stares Bree down.
She stares right back, keeping the bravado on her face until he stumbles back down the driveway.
Once she’s sure he’s gone, she shoots a text to Darlene, and heads to the café.
Eugene’s words are the ramblings of a drunk man, and they shouldn’t bother her.
But it’s a reminder that she’s alone.
She’s going to go through another Heat by herself, and she pushed away the only person she had an attraction to.
She’s defective and broken—she can’t even handle being kissed without having a breakdown.
Tears fill her eyes, and she blinks them away as she reaches the light to turn to the café.
But it’s obvious she’s been crying, and she doesn’t want to have to see the look of pity on Darlene’s face.
So, she turns the opposite way of the café and heads to a place she spotted the day she arrived in Green Woods.
She’s always liked cemeteries.
She stopped mentioning it after she turned eighteen; her mother screamed at her so much when she said it offhandedly that she’s kept the thought to herself since then.
Carol has never been a fan of them, especially after her husband was placed in one.
But Green Woods Cemetery makes Bree feel at peace.
Small gray headstones line the neatly trimmed green lawn, protected by an intricate wrought-iron fence. Each grave appears well kept and visited enough that the memories of the dead aren’t forgotten.
She’s the only visitor at the moment, and she breathes in the crisp, fresh air and pays her respects to the buried.
There’s a bench donated in the name of a couple that has passed away, and she takes a seat there, her loneliness eating at her.
She allows herself a quick cry, letting out a soft sob, desperate to release the stress she carries.
She lets the breeze play with her hair as she stares off into the distance, becoming as quiet as the people buried beneath.
It startles her that she senses Cole before she even scents him.
Goosebumps prick at her skin as he takes a seat next to her, his scent soothing her. The wind carries his essence, swirling it around her until her head is dizzy with nothing but Alpha.
Relief washes over her in waves.
He came back.
It doesn’t matter how he found her—Cole’s returned and is sitting with her. Dressed in fitted dark jeans and a black sweatshirt, he looks casual but still polished.
He doesn’t speak, just drapes his arm over the top of the bench, subtly caging her in.
She sighs in relief as they sit in silence.
She can feel him watching her as she stares into nothingness, enjoying the stillness of the graveyard.
The other day, his attention would have bothered her.
But today, she welcomes it.
“I owe you an apology,” she says as clouds roll in and cast a shadow over them
“You never need to apologize to me,” he says, his voice low.
A lump forms in her throat. “I figured you’d never want to see me again,” she admits, “after how I acted the other night.”
He hums. “Silly girl,” he murmurs, his voice silky. “I’m never far from you.”
She shivers.
“And as for the other night,” he continues, slightly amused. “I frightened you. I could sense it, and I just kept pushing you. I’m surprised you didn’t run screaming from me.”
She swears she can smell a hint of something metallic emanating from him, clashing with his citrusy, delicious scent, but she blames it on the wind.
She chances a glance at him, smiling as she notices the slightly disheveled hair and twinkle of amusement in his eyes.
“That’s not why I ran,” she says softly. “I panicked for a different reason.”
“Do you want to tell me?”
She swallows. “Not really, no.”
“Alright.”
He just accepts her answer without argument, and she’s grateful for it. He doesn’t push her like he did the other night. He just lets her exist without judgement as he watches her.
His attention, albeit intense and at times overbearing, is starting to grow on her.
“I’m not leaving until next week,” she continues, unable to look at him as she says it. She kicks her booted feet anxiously, digging at the grass underneath her. “My interview was moved, and I extended my stay at the cabin.”
“Lucky me.”
She chuckles and shakes her head. “If you say so.”
“I do say so. You know, I’m sure the Elmwood Press could use an overzealous, rule breaking journalist.”
She quirks her lip. “Sure. Are you going to buy the cabin, too? Or am I going to live in my car while I do that?”
“The deed to the cabin is already in your name, but if you want to go somewhere else, I’m sure we could do that.”
She snorts. Maybe they shouldn’t be telling so many jokes at a cemetery. She’s never smiled this much in front of gravestones.
“I am sorry, though. About the other night,” she adds.
Cole shakes his head. “Like I said, I pushed you. I wanted you to see what was between us before you were ready.”
Alarms blare in her head, louder than the ones in the prison. She stiffens slightly and frowns, wondering if her original intuition about him was right.
Her inner Omega preens, remembering what Darlene said about soulmates.
But rational, realistic Bree knows better.
“You have to stop saying things like that,” she murmurs.
“Why?” He tilts his head curiously, as if he doesn’t realize the impact of his words.
“Because it’s not fair. It’s not right. You can’t mess with someone’s emotions that way.” She turns on the bench to face him fully, her thighs almost touching his. “Cole, saying those things and not meaning them, or exaggerating them…”
For the first time, he looks bewildered. “You think I’m exaggerating? That I don’t mean what I’m saying?” His scent deepens, the citrus turning peppery and spicy, as he shakes his head in disbelief. “You really have no idea, do you?”
Her mouth turns dry. “I—”
But he grabs her wrist gently and pulls her hand to his lips, pressing a kiss to her fingers. “You really don’t,” he murmurs, his eyes darkening. “I wonder what I need to do to prove it to you.”
Her sleeve falls, and she snatches her hand away and yanks the fabric up to her knuckles, covering her skin.
Cole notices. Of course, he notices as she clenches her hand into a fist and keeps it in her lap.
Her face flames and nausea churns in her gut.
Did he see?
“Breana.”
She bites her lip, shame coursing through her as she waits for his reaction.
She can’t look at him. Instead, she focuses her gaze on the headstones in the distance, wondering how close she was to joining them at one time.
“Bree.”
She shakes her head and curls in on herself, wrapping her arms around her waist.
Both hands clench into fists as she struggles to hide what shames her every day.
“They’re so ugly,” she chokes out. “I don’t want you to see them. You’ll run.”
She realizes how dramatic she sounds, but it’s the narrative that’s been in her head since the doctors removed the stitches years ago.
People in her life have made it clear how revolting they are on numerous occasions.
She hears Cole chuckle humorlessly beside her. “I promise, the only one that will run from us is you. Nothing you show me would send me away.”
“You sound ridiculous,” she says weakly. “What if I’m a murderer?”
“I highly, highly doubt that.”
“You don’t know that. I could be responsible for what happened in Elmwood.”
Cole barks out a laugh, tilting his head back in dark delight. “Sure, sweetheart. Whatever you say.”
That term of endearment makes her heart flutter, and it gives her the bravery to turn to face him. His smile fades and his gaze falls to her, the piercing blue of his eyes so breathtaking it makes her freeze in place.
“You’ve ruined me, you know,” he tells her gently, the corner of his full lip quirking up. He reaches to caress her cheek with the back of his knuckles, his other hand still slung over the bench. “You’re in the forefront of my mind now. Everything else is a dull buzzing in the back of my head. Working, eating, sleeping…nothing is as important as you now, I’m afraid.”
Run, a part of her whispers. This isn’t normal.
But she’s so tired of being alone.
Tired of coming home to an empty apartment, desperate to write about other people in hopes of forgetting her own life.
Tired of going to bed by herself and creating fluffy nests that no one else can appreciate.
His touch sends tingles down her spine, and she closes her eyes at the contact.
“You can tell me,” Cole breathes. “You don’t have to hide from me.”
Her mind is cloudy when she opens her eyes, and whether it’s from him using his Alpha Influence or her finally letting her guard down, she doesn’t care.
All she knows is that it’s just Cole and her, alone in a graveyard, with nothing but ghosts to witness them.
She extends her right hand out, and he takes it with his own, the cream sleeve falling back, exposing a sliver of mottled skin.
“If I show you…” she trembles, her hand shaking in his as he grasps it tightly, anchoring her to him. “I…”
The sleeve falls a little more, and her wrist is on full display now.
She watches realization dawn on his face as he slowly pushes up her sleeve.
She stops breathing as his jaw clenches.
CHAPTER 20
COLE
He can smell her shame and fear radiating from her, her sweetness soured by her volatile emotions.
What is she afraid of? Nothing she could show him would ever make him leave her.
It clicks into place as her scars reveal themselves, thick, pink jagged lines that travel horizontally from the inside of her wrist almost to the crook of her elbow.
They’re violent and deep, and he’s careful as he caresses the delicate skin, whatever is left of his heart sinking as the air fills with the salt of her tears.
They’re self-inflicted.
It makes sense why she wears the robe to bed and why she panicked when they were kissing the other night—he almost saw her scars.
“I have almost identical marks on the other side,” she laughs shakily. “I wanted to get the job done.”
He gently runs a thumb delicately down the inside of her wrist and she shivers. Then, he brings her wrist to his lips, kissing the marks.
She shakes her head. “You don’t have to do that,” she whispers. “I know they’re revolting.”
As if he could ever find his mate revolting.
“They’re part of your story,” he says simply. “They’re a part of you.”
He curses himself for not being there earlier, to stop whatever chaos was in her mind.
But then she tells him her story.
“My father died when I was fourteen,” she murmurs, fixing her gaze on a headstone. “He was my best friend, even when I was a shitty teenager. He was the buffer between me and my mother, stopping us from fighting all the time. He loved both of us a lot.”
He squeezes her hand, and she squeezes it back.
“After that, I was awful to my mom, and she was awful right back to me. We didn’t know how to cope with him being gone. Then, when I turned eighteen…I presented.”
She lets out a shaky breath, and he fights the urge to pull her into his arms.
But he needs to hear her story.
All of it.
“I wasn’t expecting it.” Bree turns to him, her eyes glossy with tears. “My mother sure as hell didn’t know what to do, and…it terrified me. I felt helpless, and alone.”
“You’re not alone,” he murmurs. “You’ll never be alone again.”
She gifts him a small smile. “Still…the feeling never went away. It loomed in the back of my mind, and it got to be too much one day.” She clears her throat and swallows. “I rented a hotel room, downed a bunch of my mom’s anxiety meds and alcohol, then used a box cutter.”
The image of a younger Bree, heartbroken and desperate to end her life, is almost enough to drive him insane.
Still, she continues.
“I rented the room for four days, and put up the Do Not Disturb sign, but the cleaners came in anyway. They found me the next morning.”
A rumble starts in his chest, subtle and slow, as she speaks.
“The doctors made it clear I should have died. I was on the verge of bleeding out, and I vomited in my sleep—if I had turned onto my back, I would have suffocated. It was…awful. I woke up with stitches in my arms and feeling like I had been hit by a truck.”
She looks back at him, a small, sad smile crossing her face. “I hate the way they look,” she whispers. “I was tired of answering questions with lies. I was sick of the pitying looks. So, now I wear sweaters to avoid awful conversations. And the other night…I realized that if we went further, you would see the scars.”
Tears fall down her cheeks, and he can’t help himself anymore.
“Come here,” he whispers, and she nestles her head against his chest as he wraps his arms around her. He cages her in, breathing in her scent, as his chest rumbles louder than before.
He purrs for her, and she lets out a gasp when she realizes what he’s doing. Her body relaxes, and her scent sweetens as his chest vibrates, soothing her inner Omega.
He didn’t think anything could be better than tasting her. But to comfort her, to be the person she opens up to and trusts…
It’s addicting. She shared her secrets with him, and only him.
“You’re safe with me,” he promises, as she burrows her cheek into his chest. “Always. You never have to hide who you are from me.”
Her other sleeve has pushed up, and he sees the marks on her other arm, as deep and jagged as the other ones.
He hates that he’s not marred. He’s done things that deserve scars, yet his skin is untouched.
“I don’t know how this could work,” she says quietly. “I’m leaving soon.”
No, you’re not, he thinks. Not without me.
But he remains silent and plants a kiss at the top of her hair.
“But I think…” she continues, her voice trailing off, “I think I’d like to try for now, at least. I’ve never done this before.”
He frowns, playing with a piece of her hair. “Never done what before?”
She looks up at him, her eyes open and earnest. “I’ve never been with an Alpha,” she breathes.
He raises an eyebrow. “Never?”
She shakes her head. “I was always too scared,” she admits. “The intensity frightened me.”
His head spins.
His love, his mate, has never been with another Alpha.
Something primal inside him roars, and he fights the urge to sink his teeth into her neck, claiming her in the cemetery.
It’s even too macabre for him, as tempting as it is.
But he can’t stop the slight smile that crosses his face.
He’ll be her first and only.
“I’ll take care of you,” he promises softly. “You don’t have to be afraid anymore.”
Maybe a little afraid, if she finds out just how deep his obsession with her runs.
But it’s too late.
Bree bared her soul to him, and he’ll be the only one that will ever have her.
She surprises him by initiating the kiss, and something inside him snaps.
CHAPTER 21
BREE
She’s vaguely aware that she’s making out with him in a cemetery.
It’s entirely inappropriate, but that doesn’t stop her.
Her body aches for him and her heart is vulnerable as she pours all of her emotions into her kisses, tasting him the same way she did the other night.
Only this time, she won’t need to shove him away.
She showed Cole her scars, and he didn’t run.
He’s the first one to know her story—the full story—and not turn away or judge her.
It’s also the first time she’s experienced an Alpha purr.
His chest still rumbles, even as she straddles him on the bench, her thighs on either side of his hips.
“I missed this,” he breathes against her mouth, his hands gripping her hips as she rocks down on him. “I kept imagining your taste, fuck.”
She whimpers in his hold, kissing him back fiercely until a car drives down the road, startling her out of her lust-filled haze.
“We shouldn’t be doing this here,” she whispers, looking down at his kiss swollen lips and tangled hair. She never wants to stop running her fingers through it just to hear him make the delicious groan that sounds in his throat.
He grins up at her, and she smiles back, giddy.
He didn’t run. He didn’t judge her.
And now, she can kiss him as much as she wants for at least the next week.
She’s free.
“We shouldn’t,” he agrees, running his hands down her back. Her chest is almost in his face, and she finds it a miracle that he looks in her eyes instead of at her breasts. “No one else deserves to smell you like this. You smell like liquid sugar,” he rasps.
She gasps at his praise and shifts in his lap. “Really?”
He pulls her down by her hair until his mouth is at her ear. “That pretty cunt is leaking for me, and anyone within a mile of here can scent it.”
She moans and hears him chuckle. “I’ll drive you home, baby.”
Regretfully, she moves off his lap and grabs her purse at the edge of the bench. “I drove here, though.”
“And I walked.”
“Wait.” She turns to him, her brow furrowing. “You were taking a walk in Green Woods Cemetery?”
He shrugs and smirks. “I’ve always found them peaceful.”
