Ayla: Always an Alpha

Chapter 18 - The Little Folder

~Ayla~

"Ayla," Killian started trying to warn me again, but I didn't want to hear it.

"Lord, it's really a fucking folder," I mumbled.

He'd come out from his room with an innocuous manila folder clutched in his hands, and suddenly I couldn't focus on anything else. In fact, I hadn't been able to focus on anything else since I'd brought it up. There was something dangerously alluring about getting to read the file, one that, as much as I had joked about, I really had not expected to truly be in a folder, a folder that sure wasn't thin but definitely not as thick as I expected it to be.

Killian, noticing my attention was not on his pointless words of advice but on the file in his hands, immediately hid it behind his back.

"Killian." My tone was caustic. "I'm not a newborn. I have object permanence."

When I tried to reach around him to grab the folder out of his hands, he stopped me with a firm hand on my shoulder. Before the training tonight, we'd never made skin-to-skin contact for that long, and the sparks from the action fanned out all over my body. Killian lightly grabbed my chin, forcing me to look up at him, and the sparks ignited into a tickling fire.

"Ayla," he began. "You can have the folder, but I need you to listen to me first, okay?"

Those coffee-colored eyes of his were pleading with me, so I nodded.

"This folder isn't fun and games, alright? These are notes that someone made about you, and what is in here is what that person found relevant for someone like me to kill you. As in, end your life, Ayla. Do you understand that?"

"I understand," I whispered. Killian hadn't spoken to me like this since the night we'd met, when he'd pleaded with me in the cell, so I knew he felt seriously about this. However, I had my mind set on reading the file since the idea first manifested.

"And you're sure you still want to see it?"

"I'm sure."

Devastation passed quickly over his face as he released his hold on me, but he wasn't so quick to cover it that I didn't notice. Knowing he too could get a sense of calm from the mate bond, I reached my hand up to the side of his face.

"I understand that it's macabre," I told him, running my thumb over his cheekbone. "I can't really explain why, but for some reason I need to see it. And we both know that I'm too stubborn to change my mind once it's made up."

"Well at least you're self aware," he scoffed as the hand holding the folder came out from behind his back.

"I like to think that's one of my best qualities," I declared, trying to lighten the mood.

It didn't work. Killian stepped back, forcing my hand to drop from his face.

"Here. Take it," he demanded, thrusting the file into my grip.

Cautiously, I pulled the folder towards my abdomen, and with a deep breath, I flipped it open.

"I'll be in the back," Killian muttered.

With that, I was alone, so as my eyes quickly scanned the first page, I traipsed over to the couch.

Somehow, they'd managed to get my photo from the first national meeting I'd attended as an alpha. I remember being so thrilled to take the photo for my badge. Even now, I could see the excitement written all over my face. It had only been a year, but I looked different now, aged almost. I certainly felt different. The girl in the photo hadn't experienced life trying to shove itself up her ass yet.

To the right of the photo was all my basic information: name, age, height, hair color, family members, even estimated clothing size, but that first page is where it stopped looking like information a police department would have on any criminal. On the second page, they'd made observations on my daily habits, when I tended to wake up, when I went to sleep, who I spoke to daily... the list went on. My eyes scanned every detail quickly, soaking it all in, as if this person wasn't me but someone completely new to me. After a couple of pages of information like that, including scarily accurate maps and plans of my house, they started to profile me. According to the assassin's investigators, I was unsociable, ill-tempered, and promiscuous. Saying I was offended would be an understatement.

At some point while I was reading, Killian silently crept back into the room and sat on the other end of the couch. I could feel his gaze on me, but I paid him no mind

The file got even more unpleasant as I flipped through pages and pages of how all my weaknesses could be used against me. There were some positive remarks on my defensive skills, but I wasn't flattered. Not when because of those defensive skills, the file ended with a recommendation that I either be poisoned, shot at long range, or killed in my sleep.

Without a word, I closed the folder. My left hand shook as I held it out for Killian. Immediately after he took the damn thing back, I folded my hands together in my lap, trying to hide my body's betrayal. Crushing me beneath it, the weight of the situation landed on me suddenly. I would've been dead already had it not been for the pull of the mate bond. What if Killian and I had never locked eyes, and he'd stabbed me?

"That's what you had planned for me, wasn't it?" I asked him. "Silver knife to the heart while I was sleeping?"

A hint of a frown made its way onto Killian's face, and that was all I needed to know.

"Don't answer that," I spat out and rubbed a shaking hand into my temple. "I don't want to have to hear it."

For a while, all I could focus on was my breathing, on fighting the crippling horror that had overwhelmed me along with the onslaught of all that grisly information.

Everything in that file was out in the world for any of his coworkers to make use of. Hell, I'm sure the other supernatural assassin groups had their own versions as well. The more I thought about it, the more the fear burning through me ignited into anger, into a fiery rage. Whoever made that damn file didn't care that I was a good leader, that I was throwing everything I had into bettering this pack, that some day I'd hoped our pack could be a more progressive example to others in the region. No, all they cared about was putting an end to me. All they cared about was summing up the essentials of my life and making a conclusion on how to end it. Fuck them. Fuck them. Fuck them. Fuck whoever wanted this. My lips moved quickly as I started muttering it over and over to myself.

"Ayla," Killian spoke softly, attempting to placate me.

~~~

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Still in a writing groove! Exciting things happening in my brain because they aren't in real life. (Ya girl is bored as hell and needs an interesting man to stumble into her life to spice things up a bit.)

Question of the week: How would a similar file describe you? Mine would probably say "occasionally annoying, a bitch when threatened, but loyal"