Sacrificed To The Triplet Alpha Kings

Chapter 224: The Next Morning

She woke on Nicholas’s chest with his arm was around her waist and his heartbeat steady under her cheek.

She didn’t move, she Just listened to him breathe.

The sky was grey, which means that it was almost dawn.

She could feel the bond now. Warm. Settled. Like it had finally stopped pulling and just had started existing.

She pressed her hand flat against his chest.

Felt his heartbeat under her palm.

Steady. Slow. Unhurried.

She lifted her head and looked at his face.

She had never seen him sleep before.

The mask was gone. The cold calculation he wore like armor. Just gone. His jaw relaxed. His face softer.

There was a small scar at the corner of his jaw she had never noticed.

She almost touched it, but she stopped herself, then she put her head back down on his chest.

***

He woke maybe twenty minutes later.

She felt it first. The slight change in his breathing. The almost imperceptible shift in the arm around her waist.

Before he moved at all.

She considered pretending to still be asleep.

But she also decided against it almost immediately.

She lifted her head and found him already looking at her.

Silver eyes. Completely awake with his mask back.

He looked down at her and kissed her head.

"How long have you been awake," he said finally.

"For a while now." Lilith replied.

"You should have woken me."

"You needed the sleep," she said.

"Is that the only reason."

She held his gaze. "No."

He looked at her for another moment, then he sat up, bringing her with him. She was suddenly very aware they were both still mostly naked and the light was coming now, pale and thin through the sky.

She looked away from him.

"We should go back," he said.

"I know." she replied and then looked up at him and called his name. "Nicholas."

"Yes." he replied.

"What are you not telling me."

Nicholas looked at her face, reading the emotions on her face and deciding the information to share and to withhold.

"Many things," he said. "But i also can’t tell you any of them now."

She turned and looked at him and found that e was already looking at her.

"That’s not good enough," she said.

"I know," he said. "I know it isn’t, but i will tell you everything when the time is right. I promise." His jaw tightened. "But not now. Not yet."

She studied his face for a while and then shook her head.

"Okay," she said. "But Nicholas. When you do tell me. Whatever it is. Just tell me. Don’t sugar coat it it. Don’t calculate how I’m going to react and adjust accordingly." She held his gaze. "Just tell me the truth."

Nicholas was quiet for a moment. then he nodded and said "Yes, i will tell you at it is without changing a thing."

Lilith believed him.

She didn’t know why. She probably shouldn’t. This was the man who had used her body in the most cruelest way possible for days. The man who had brought her somewhere nobody else had ever been. The man whose heartbeat she had just spent twenty minutes listening to in the dark.

She stood up.

Found her clothes on the rock where she had left them. Dressed with her back to him. Not because she was ashamed. Because she needed a moment where he couldn’t see her face.

She heard him dressing behind her.

When she turned around he was already done. Standing at the edge of the tree line watching her. The waterfall behind him. The early morning light touching the tops of the trees.

"Ready?" he asked.

"Yes," she said.

***

The ride back home was diffirent.

She had known this would be different.

From the moment she climbed onto the bike behind him. Her arms around his waist. The estate disappearing behind them.

Last night she had held on because she was afraid of falling.

This morning she held on because she wanted to.

Her face pressed into his back. Her arms around him. The territory moving past them in the early grey light. Still enormous. Still wild. The forest still going on forever in both directions.

But different now.

Not foreign anymore. Not something she was passing through.

Something she was coming back to.

She tightened her arms slightly.

She felt him stiffen, but he didn’t turn back and he didn’t say anything.

Just kept driving.

The pack lands opened up around them. She watched over his shoulder. The river catching the first pale light. The mountains behind everything. The distant warmth of the pack village.

She thought about what it felt like to belong somewhere.

Because she hadn’t felt that in months now since her father died.

Since the world he had kept steady for her had simply stopped being steady. She had been trying to find her footing ever since on ground that kept shifting.

She pressed her face back into his jacket.

Breathed him in.

Pine and smoke and something darker underneath that was just him.

Kael, she thought. That’s the name of his wolf.

The wolf that had known before the man would admit it. The wolf that had said mate and meant it. Hadn’t cared about wolfless or bloodlines or the hundred reasons his human half had constructed for why it was impossible.

She wondered what that was like.

To just know something. To be certain without needing reasons. To look at a person and feel something click into place like a lock finding its key.

She thought maybe she understood it a little better this morning than she had yesterday.

***

The estate appeared through the trees.

Iron gates. Long drive. The enormous house with its dark stone and tall windows catching the first light.

Nicholas slowed the bike as they passed through the gates.

Lilith lifted her head and saw Sebastian.

He was standing at the bottom of the front steps.

Not pacing. Just standing there. Arms crossed. His dark eyes moving from Nicholas to her and then back again.