☾ Eden ☽ [discontinued]

Sleeping Beauty

I stopped outside of the doorway, wrapping my arms around myself as I waited for her to appear. But the longer she took to appear, the more time I had to continue thinking about what happened.

What was I going to do now? I can't just go along like this never happened, like Riker didn't just keep a very important secret from me that he should've been upfront about since the beginning.

Not to mention he had me watch over his own flesh and blood...

I could feel my hand creep up to the spot on my neck where Riker's mark was placed, wishing nothing more than to get rid of it. He doesn't deserve anything from me. In fact, no man like Riker deserves a mate.

"You wanted to talk to me?" Dalia asked me, her eyes never leaving Max as if he could disappear at any moment. Snapping out of my thoughts, I quickly removed my hand from his mark, wrapping it around myself once again before I spoke the words that have been on my mind for a while now.

"Why didn't you tell me about Riker and Max?"

I tried my best to mask my feelings towards the subject from her, but I just couldn't cover up the hurt that I was feeling. Just mentioning the situation sent bile rising from my stomach, threatening to escape me.

Processing my words, Dalia's eyes suddenly widened as she looked around the small hallway, not meeting my eyes.

"I-I was going to tell you," she whispered, playing with the ends of her blonde locks, twirling them in between her fingers. "It's just, you know, Alpha Riker... he - I really did want to, Eden, I swear..."

It didn't matter at that point for I stopped listening to what she had to say. All I could listen to was the little voice in my head telling me of the secrets being kept from me, and if this were one of them, who knew how many more they had left to hide.

I could've stayed there for another hour or so watching and pretending to listen to Dalia's nervous rambling if it weren't for the little interruption.

"Dalia," Riker's voice rang out, scaring me right back down to earth. Dalia looked just as frightened as I did, as she turned around to face Riker who was standing by the open front door. His attention, however, was only focused on her for a brief moment before his eyes found mine, trying to hide behind her slim frame.

However, I wasn't prepared for what was to come next.

These past few days I have done nothing but avoid Riker whenever I could - not even allowing myself to look at him - but in that moment, I was able to see what has become of my mate since I've last seen him.

I was surprised to say the least, the bags under his eyes so prominent and his eyes so bloodshot that I couldn't help but think about when was the last time he actually slept. The worry began to eat away at me as I saw him swaying about slightly, droplets of sweat forming on his forehead for reasons unknown to me.