Outliers

Eleven

"You were so beautiful to me then - your soul of light, you wraith-like figure - it was as though I could pass my hand through you, untouched, unreachable... like that of spirit - but still, your essence pressed to mine, tethered to me, as though I could turn it in my fingers, as thought it was so much my own."

Segovia Amil

The following two weeks had been - not to be too dramatic - absolute hell.

I had been playing that dreadful scene over and over and over again, every day torturing myself. The Alpha had escaped almost immediately after Sandra had made her presence known and it had taken me at least a minute to stop my stream of a repetitive 'thank you' to her for disrupting us.

All she had said on the situation was how terrified I had looked that she couldn't not interrupt, before she was propping up the mirror against my wall and jokingly asking me to do a twirl.

Since that evening I hadn't sparred once with Alpha Harris, the only physical contact we'd shared was the brief touch of his hands when he'd have to correct my positioning during certain exercises in training. Even that had my skin burning in ways I really wished it didn't.

I couldn't be in the same room as him, and I avoided him whenever I could.

I couldn't explain my attraction to him. I couldn't even begin to understand it. With Jack, my affections for the Alpha had been a slow burn, the heat growing between us over an expanse of three years until it had eventually grown too overwhelming. My last three months in Idaho had been a struggle, another reason for my desire to transfer to Colorado.

But my attraction to Alpha Harris, to Thane? It wasn't a slow burn but a raging forest fire, all consuming, growing too fast to control. It had been sparked from a minute appreciation, or simply just an acknowledgement of his attractive figure, and all too quickly devoured me without mercy. But I didn't know the male, I hadn't bonded with him, it wasn't the love I felt for Jack but lust. A distraction my body was forcing onto me to forget the Alpha who held my heart so far away; a distraction that was driving me absolutely insane. Even today, two weeks after the incident, I could still feel the bush of Thane's lips against my neck, the graze of his hands across my back.

So I couldn't be around him, not when looking into his eyes set me alight all over again. Not as I was beginning to realise the fire inside me hadn't yet ceased to burn.

Unfortunately when you lived in the same house together within an exceedingly small pack, it was almost impossible to hide forever.

I was sat at the kitchen island with a mug of green tea, Nero opposite me on another tall bar stool as he devoured his cereal, when Alpha Harris stormed into the kitchen with his usual impatient strides. I kept my eyes ahead of me, on Nero, and saw him shudder. If the Alpha didn't acknowledge me, I didn't have to acknowledge him. Usually I could eat my breakfast in peace as the Alpha helped with the first group of trainees right after my training but this morning he had followed me right back into the main house and disappeared upstairs.

He moved behind me to a counter-top and I couldn't stop my muscles from tensing. My focus immediately shifted to the male, who from the sounds of it, was pouring himself a coffee, instead of Nero who was still talking to me. I refused to look at the Alpha, but I could hear his every movement, I could practically feel the minuscule distance between us.

The younger wolf's words trailed off when he noticed he had lost my attention and thick silence overcame the room. Even the other wolves of the main pack, who were sat over on the dining table eating their breakfasts, had settled into a quiet hush. I felt like I was holding my breath, my lungs refusing to work in the presence of the Alpha male. But I far preferred the growing burn in my chest to breathing in his scent.