His Lover, My Mate

Twenty-Four: King of the Night

Another image of Rush. THANK YOU SARA!

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*Aletha*

Never in her life would she have thought of trusting Alpha Rushika of the Night Pack, but after her Luna Trials began, Aletha began to realize that if she didn't cooperate with him, she would be endangered. Every time she was alone outside, she would feel the malicious gazes of his pack members watching her, like one wrong move from her would end her.

She knew they were defending their Alpha and they didn't trust her after she abandoned the pack to go to Lucien. Their loyalty was solely with Rush, not her. So as days passed, she knew her only choice was to accept him. Maybe if she made him think that she was cooperating, then perhaps she would be safe. Then his pack wouldn't try to threaten her with their eyes. Maybe someone won't jump at her neck the moment she let her guard down.

And for the most part, she'd believed that compartmentalizing was her best solution. She would put up an act for however long as she could until she found a better way out.

Then she started to dream. In her dreams, she saw him. He would watch her with haunting silver eyes, never saying anything. And then she would wake up without realizing hours would pass with her just staring at him in her sleep. It was then that she began to grow curious of him. Who was he? What kind of an Alpha was he?

She never once thought to inquire much about Lucien's life, but Rush was different. His essence was mysterious, strange, haunting. So she watched him in the distance. How he would train his warriors during her training sessions with Sirka. How he would eat, speaking softly to his Beta and Gamma. He liked to keep to himself, and everyone had the perception that he was cold, calculating, and somewhat sinister. That was exactly her first impression of him. Yet...she remembered the haunting silver eyes in her dreams, so she continued to watch him.

By the end of the night, she saw something that took her breath away. She saw him out in the fields, standing by the hills as he basked in the morning rays of the sunrise. She saw agony in his face...and tears in his eyes.

It was that day that she knew he wasn't as she thought he was. Something was wrong, out of place, and it twisted her soul. She found herself desperately seeking to know why he was in so much pain, why he was crying. It made her restless, and it hung heavily in her chest.

When he'd finally asked to see her, she had been running thin in control. Her heart had pounded hard, and the harrowing sight of him all alone and lethargic from the sun had been something she'd never seen before in her life. It was raw, the look in his eyes, the desolate gleam in them. He was fighting a battle with his soul, and he'd grown tired of it.

She'd wanted to ask him so many things, but when his gaze landed on her, she stopped breathing. There was something close to devotion in the way he'd stared at her, like she was some sort of miracle. She never saw something so intense before. All she'd seen on his face was harshness and calculativeness. It was then that she knew he'd let his guard down. The male she saw before her was the real Rush, not Alpha Rush.

And that was enough to break some of the notions she had about him. She saw another side to him, and it wasn't evil. It was ghastly. It reminded her of herself. And when he finally spoke to her, smiled at her, assured her that he wanted to protect her in the darkest night, she went along with it and let him believe she trusted him. No matter what he said or did, he was from the Darklands. He knew how to manipulate well. She would never believe him.

But he hadn't stopped until he made her see his blood. He hadn't stopped breaking her beliefs about him when he told her he never intended for her to kill that rogue he locked in the cage. She would still have believed she was merely acting to save herself from his wrath, but then he pulled her so close to his heart, she could feel every moment of it pounding against her skin. The sound of his heartbeat was almost...fragile. It had scared her. It unsettled her to be so close to his vulnerability. So she'd pulled him closer, trying to hear more of that loud thudding sound. And with every breath she took, she realized she really was really beginning to trust him.