Alpha Alexander

Chapter Twenty

He left me once more after asking me half a dozen times if I was feeling well enough to be alone. His eyes were wary, but less than a minute after he walked out of the bedroom, Julie walked in. She carefully watched me pull on a dry, loose sweatshirt and a pair of cotton sweatpants. She didn't ask me if I was okay; she didn't question me about why I didn't open the bathroom door. Instead, she gently grabbed my battered hands and looked me in the eye. "Kellan already called dibs on your bacon if you aren't up to eating just yet."

A short but pleasant laugh tore pass my lips. "I could eat my weight in breakfast right about now."

She smiled softly. Her eyes were red and puffy—signs she had been crying. I noticed that she wore the same outfit that I saw her wearing the night before—her shirt was slightly wrinkled, as though she had slept in it.

"I'm sorry," I mumbled after a moment.

It was a full minute of silence with our sad gazes locked on to one another before she finally spoke. "Don't scare me like that again," she said, her emotions pitching her voice as she spoke.

"I didn't—" I began but was cut off immediately.

"When I saw him . . . carrying you . . ." She broke off, her hand covering her mouth as her body trembled. She took a deep, shaky breath. "He shifted in the middle of the living room, you know. It took six of the stronger males to drag him outside. I don't think I've ever seen Seth that mad. He nearly had his head torn off along with Spencer and Kellan when Alpha Alexander kept trying to come back into the pack house. He kept screaming at the Alpha to let us help you." She wiped at her sniffling nose almost irritably. "Everyone was running around, you know, trying to be useful. Half the pack had to be used as, like, a human shield between the Alpha and the front porch. Thankfully, no one was hurt. I think Alpha Alexander understood the pack was trying to help but the idea of you hurt kind of drove him to tap into his primal instincts. The doctor finally let him back inside over an hour later."

She was babbling. She knew it and I knew it, but she was telling me what I wanted to know. All I remembered was the painful howl before I passed out on the living room couch. I was out for at least six hours, during which a lot of activity occurred, and I had missed all of it.

"He shifted to human form long enough to ask if you could be moved. The doctor said he needed to be careful, but that was all Alpha Alexander needed to hear. He picked you up and carried you here." She looked at the bed briefly before glancing at me. "Seth said when he came to report, Alpha Alexander was in wolf-form, sitting beside the bed, watching over you."

I listened to her silently, letting the information sink in slowly. Something tugged harshly on my heart and a wave of emotion crashed around me—a wave that nearly drowned me as Julie continued, "I was so scared, Phoebe." Her voice was barely over a whisper and her words pierced me. "I don't know what happened at the school, and Jason won't talk to anyone, but seeing you, bloody, on the couch—it terrified me. It frightened everyone. You finally joined our pack, he finally claimed you, and suddenly, you were nearly taken away from us. I told you—I . . . told you—how important you are to us. Please, for the sake of my own sanity and the survival of this pack, please don't ever put yourself in a situation like that again."

I could have argued. I could have snapped that I didn't willingly put myself in danger at the high school . . . but I would have been wrong. I was the one who asked Jason to drive me to the school. I knew Alpha Alexander had restricted me from leaving the compound, but because I asked, he let me leave. Because I was so headstrong and defiant, I walked right into the rogues' clutches, like a lamb foolishly wandering into the slaughterhouse. I had listened to Julie drill into my mind the importance of an Alpha's mate, but I still left the compound, even after being threatened by an unseen enemy at the mall. They told me how dangerous these rogues were, but I disregarded my own safety for the sake of a stupid class assignment. And now, hearing how Alpha Alexander reacted while the doctor patched me up—it all drove home what everyone was telling me from the beginning: I was the most important, the most fragile member of the pack, and I was purposefully exposing myself and putting myself in danger by defying orders meant to protect me. I still didn't like the idea of obeying everything Alpha Alexander said, but I also didn't like the pain in Julie's eyes, or the fear that gripped me when she said Alpha Alexander fought his own pack members to get back to me.