The Alphas Broken Mate novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: The Terms Fall

He walked me to my room that night with eighty empty beds behind us.

He did not carry me.

I had told him so on the slate, and he matched his steps to my crutches.

At my door he stopped and put his back against the wall.

"There will be guards on every stair," he said. "I will be outside this door. Sleep."

His hands were shaking.

He had put them behind him so I would not see, and I saw.

I had spent five days on terms, and every one of them had kept him on the far side of a line.

He had kept every one.

I looked at the man who had torn down a cage with his bare hands.

A third of his pack had just walked out on him for my sake.

Then I dropped one crutch, and then the other.

He moved to catch me, and stopped himself.

I took one step on my own legs, and put my palm flat on his chest.

His heart hammered under it.

"Touch," I said. It came out cracked. "Me."

His eyes went gold, all at once.

"You wrote a rule," he said. His voice was nearly gone. "Only when you reach."

"I reached."

I took the front of his shirt in my fist and pulled, and he came down to me.

He kissed me with his whole mouth, hungry and careful at once, and the bond lit up from my mouth to my knees.

I kissed him back until my hands hurt from holding on.

He lifted me against the door, and his hands closed on my thighs above the splints, and every place he held went hot.

"Inside," I said.

He kicked the door open and carried me to the bed.

He laid me down slowly, with both hands under my back, and I hated how careful it was.

I got my hands in his hair and dragged his mouth to my throat.

"Not glass," I rasped. "Mine."

I said it as an order, and he heard it as one.

He made a sound low in his chest, and his teeth closed on my collarbone.

His hands went under my shift and pulled it up over my ribs.

I helped him.

I sat up to get it over my head and threw it on the floor, and he looked at me.

He looked at every scar, and the pale skin the cage had left, and the thin ribs.

"Lark," he said. "You're the most beautiful thing I have ever seen."

"Say it," I said. "Again."

He said it against my breast, and then his mouth closed on it and my back came off the sheet.

Heat poured from his tongue into me.

I dragged at his shirt until the buttons gave.

I put my hands on his chest, on the hot hard muscle and the old scars, and he shuddered.

"You said touch only if I reach," I whispered.

"Yes."

"I'm reaching."

He laughed, rough and helpless, and let me push him back on his heels so I could get my hands on his belt.

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