Becoming Alpha (28 page)

Before I could read one sentence, Dastien yanked the book from my hands. “You don’t need this.”

I narrowed my gaze at him. “Just because you’re handsome doesn’t mean you get to boss me around. I’m trying to learn some control. I can’t be stuck at this school forever. I’ll go crazy.”

“Don’t be so stubborn. When you feel lost or don’t get something, just come to me. I’ll always be there to help.”

That was sweet. “I can’t always lean on you. I have to figure this out for myself.”

He nodded slowly. “I admire that, but sometimes it’s smarter to ask for help when you need it.” He walked around the nook and pulled me up. “Let’s go for a walk.”

My heart sped at the thought of being alone with him. It hadn’t been just us since the party.

I separated our hands to pull off my gloves and tuck them in my pocket. It was Dastien, and I never got much of anything from him. And if I got something from him today, I didn’t think I’d mind it. Extra intel on the boy would be more than welcome. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s go.”

He held out his hand. As soon as we touched, an electric spark stung my fingertips. I pulled away, shaking my hand. “What was that?”

Dastien looked at his hand as if it were a stranger. “I don’t know.”

“I’d say static electricity, but that doesn’t quite cover it.” I’d felt it in my soul.

“No. That was something else. Something more.” He reached out again.

I hesitated this time.

“Let’s just see if it happens again,” he said.

I closed my eyes as I put my hand in his. It was different the second time. Something clicked into place and I could almost sense a line of energy connecting us. I gasped as it tightened around my heart.

When I dared to open my eyes, he was staring again at our linked hands. “What was that?” I said.

“I don’t know for sure.”

My heart raced. “Guess.”

“Your heart’s racing. Let’s drop it for now. It can wait.” He finally looked up at me. A slow grin spread across his face. “Trust me. It can wait.”

“Okaaaay.” Weirdo. But I had enough to worry about without this thing, whatever it was. “Are we still going on the walk?”

“I wouldn’t let you out of my sight if I could manage it.”

I tugged on his hand. “Not cool. That’s more than a little stalker-ish, dude.”

He laughed. “Okay. So that didn’t come out right.” He thought for a second. “How about I’d like to spend as much time with you as you’ll let me.”

I nodded. “Better. Just this side of Stalkerville.”

He gazed down at me. “I thought girls liked that kind of thing.”

“Yeah. It’s kind of nice.” I grinned.

We walked in silence. I didn’t know where he was leading me, and I didn’t care. The ground crunched beneath my shoes. The smell of trees, grass, dirt and clean air was intoxicating. It wasn’t the same air as LA. You had to breathe through the layer of smog there. Some days it was so thick, you couldn’t even see the mountains. Totally gross. But in Texas, the fresh air made me long to spend time outside even in spite of the heat.

We reached a sharp drop. I glimpsed the rocky bed below us. “The creek?”

“Yep. We’ll get heavy rains in the winter and spring and it’ll fill up for a while, but by summer it’s always dry,” he said. “Want to go back or climb down?”

Caves pocked the wall on the other side of the creek bed. One of them looked large enough for someone to live in. Shadows filled its depths. But the thing that made me pause was the ladder that hung between it and the cave below. It was weather-beaten and missing a few rungs, which made it look ancient. “What’s in those caves?”

Dastien looked where I pointed. “Some Native American drawings. It was a popular place for spirit quests.”

“Seriously?”

“Yep.”

Cool. I shaded the sun to try to get a better look, but it didn’t do any good. “Can we go look?”

The side of Dastien’s mouth lifted. “Sure. There’s a small path down here. Be careful. It’s steep.”

I watched Dastien take the first couple of steps. His lithe movements mesmerized me. His muscles tensed and released under his tight grey T-shirt, and his jeans made his butt look so cute. I titled my head as I stared.

He chose that moment to look back at me.

“You coming?” A grin spread across his face. “What are you looking at?”

“Just enjoying the view.” No guy ever caught my attention the way Dastien did. I studied his face, with its strong angles. His amber eyes seemed to be laughing at me, and his grin sure said I was amusing.

It took some effort to reign in my hormones.

I turned my gaze to the ground and started down the path. He wasn’t kidding. It was steep. Dastien made it look easy as he climbed down, but dirt and rocks skidded out from under my shoes, dropping the forty feet or so to the bottom. I kept one hand against the cliff wall as we walked.

I gasped as I slipped, pebbles scattering.

Dastien grabbed my waist. “Careful.”

“You didn’t tell me I might die on this trail.”

He didn’t laugh like I expected. “I would never let you fall.”

I rolled my eyes. “I was kidding.”

“But I’m not.”

The moment was too intense for words. He kept eye contact a second longer than was comfortable, and then turned back to the trail.

By the time we reached the bottom, I’d worked up a good sweat. I scanned up and down the creek. “It’s so quiet.” With the creek walls and trees cutting off even the normal outdoor noise, it felt like we were the only people for miles.

Dastien sat down on a large rock. “Yeah.”

“It’s peaceful here. I’m peaceful.” I sat down next to him and took a deep breath. It was the most settled I’d felt in days. Years. I’d always been frazzled from the torrent of visions. Sure, I’d gotten used to them, managed them, but it was never easy. “Something’s changed.”

Dastien stared at me. He knew what was going on and the jerk wasn’t sharing.

“What?” I said.

He shrugged.

“Why do I feel so calm?”

“I’m an alpha. One of the perks of being a strong alpha means that you can hold a pack.” He laughed at the confusion on my face. “I’ve used it on you a couple of times. Made you feel calm. Settled down your wolf to stop the shift.”

I crossed my arms. He had done something to me before, but I’d been too grateful for it to ask about what it was. “Are you doing it now?”

“Not exactly, but your wolf is content with mine.”

His gaze was too intense to hold. I stared at the caves. “God. I’ve been acting like a crazy person.” I sighed. “My temper’s gone totally nutso.”

“You’ll be okay. Everyone goes through a phase where they feel like that.”

I guessed that was true, especially after Imogene’s display in the cafeteria. That girl was out of control for sure. Or maybe she was just psycho in general. Which brought the question up again. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why me? Am I really what you wanted? From what I hear, you had your pick of the girls. Why would you risk it? With me.”

He ran a finger along my bottom lip. “You want to know what was going through my mind when I bit you?”

God. I wished he wouldn’t do that. It took everything in me not to lick his finger. “Yeah. It might help.”

“It’s hard to…” He sighed. “Okay. So I guess I should start at the beginning. My whole life I’ve felt as if part of myself was missing. It was a nagging feeling, and it made me anxious. Irritable.”

“You mean it made you a dick.”

He chuckled. “You could say that. I wasn’t mean to anyone, but closed off. And then a few days before you came…there was this sense one day when I was in Michael’s cabin. I felt this presence and it was like something clicked. But just as it did, it was gone. I knew I was missing my other half, but had no idea how to find you. I kind of went a little crazy.”

“It’s not like I planned to do that—”

“So it was you?”

I nodded. “Nothing like that has ever happened to me before. I left that vision and punched this jerk from my class in his face. Broke his nose. In the middle of my dad’s going-away party. It was kind of a disaster.” And one I wasn’t proud of.

His grin made me laugh. “When I first saw you at your house, for a second the wolf took over. He was drawn to you. Had to have you. I’d let you get away once already and he wasn’t going to allow it to happen again.” He started pacing. “I didn’t get control back for days. I was restless, so I went to the mall. But after I talked to you—it only got worse. I convinced some of the guys to go hiking, hoping to burn off steam. And then I found you.”

But why me? He wasn’t giving me the answer that I wanted—needed—and a heaviness settled in my chest.

“What I did—it’s unforgivable. And yet, I want you to do the impossible.”

His amber gaze was so intense, I couldn’t look away. My heart sped. “What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to forgive me. I want you to be mine.”

I was short of breath. “You’re not answering my question. Why me? You don’t even know me. I don’t know you.”

“Don’t lie.”

He was frustrating the crap out of me. “I’m not lying! You’re the one that’s avoiding the question.”

“Okay. So I don’t have a perfect answer. When you meet your match you just know. The more we get to know each other, the more we’ll know how right we are.”

That warmed me. “Good answer.”

His gaze turned from amber to gold. “I want to announce it to the pack at the next full moon.”

That sounded serious. “Wouldn’t Imogene oppose that?”

He grinned. “Jealous?”

“Hey! I’m not the one going around beating my chest. From what I’ve heard, she was the one you were supposed to be with, and isn’t she your girlfriend?”

“She’s not my girlfriend. She’s my friend that’s a girl. We grew up together. Our families went on vacation together. I think both she and her father wanted us to end up mated. And to be honest, I did give it a shot. But it didn’t feel right and I ended it before summer.”

I hugged my knees into my chest. The need for him filled me up, threatening to take any will power I had left. Whatever happened, I couldn’t let him take over my life. I wouldn’t let myself be
that
girl.

He knelt in front of me. “Give me a chance.”

Crap. He was going to get his way. “This is way insane. I’m a normal, ordinary girl. Okay maybe not normal exactly, but normal-ish.”

“You don’t honestly believe that, do you?”

I narrowed my gaze at him. “If you wanted me so badly, then why’d you ignore me?”

“I was trying to let you adjust. To give you space. Like Mr. Dawson asked. Not to mention your family. It wasn’t easy to stay away from you.”

I opened my mouth with a retort, but he held up a hand.

“No. Not as hard as adjusting has been for you. But seeing the guys following you around…” His eyes flashed even brighter. He paced all the way to the other side of the creek and when he came back they were amber again. “I did something awful to you. Everyone thought it would be best if I stayed away, gave you time to get used to everything before I staked my claim as your mate.”

It killed me to say it, but I had to ask. “And if I didn’t want to be with you?”

“I’d let you go. Or try to.” He ran his fingers through his hair, making it stand on end. “No. I don’t know that I could do that. I’d wait. I’d do my best to win you over.”

“Okay.” I swallowed my nerves. “The whole mate word freaks me out. So let’s just leave that out for now.”

The smile that spread across his face made me melt.

Yep. He was dangerous.

“Deal.” He held out a hand and pulled me off the bedrock.

His hand brushed against my arm and a tingle ran up it. “What’s that?”

“Best guess?”

Something was better than nothing. “I’ll take it.”

“It’s our mate bond settling in.”

My heart kicked into over-drive. “Hey! Ix-nay on the ate-may word.”

“Don’t freak out on me. A deal is a deal. Our wolves are on a different level than us right now. But we’ll catch up. We’ve got time.”

“Time.” My gut was screaming at me that I didn’t need any time to know he was the one, but my brain knew better. “But don’t I have to choose before my birthday?”

“I don’t think they’ll hold you to those rules.” He brushed his fingertips along my face, and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “Just try to relax.”

Heat spread through my body at his touch. “Right. Relax.” The guy was turning me into a mumbling moron with the touch of his fingertips. This was bad news. Or maybe good news, depending on how I looked at it. I shook my head, trying to clear it. “Can I ask you a question?”

“You can ask me anything.”

“How come I don’t see anything from you?”

He raised his eyebrows, proving that I’d managed to catch him by surprise. “I’m not just an alpha. I’m Alpha. You’ll only see what I want you to see. Or what you ask to see.”

“How come I get stuff from Chris? Isn’t he an alpha?”

He ran his hand over his stubble. “I guess you really do need to read the book.”

I pushed him away from me, but he didn’t budge. “Jerk. That’s what I was supposed to be doing.”

“What I meant was that there is alpha and then there is Alpha. The level of power a person has is unique to that person. I have more than Chris—much more than him—and since I found out about your abilities, I’ve been trying to guard my thoughts.”

That made sense. Mom did that too. She wasn’t as good as Dastien was, but she was decent at letting me only see some things. “One more. Why do you call Mr. Dawson, Michael?”

“That’s his name.”

I gave him a soft punch in the shoulder.

He grabbed my fist and opened it to link our fingers together. “My parents died when I was eight. Michael was their best friend, as were the Hoels. But Michael was the one who took me in, raised me.”

I felt terrible for asking. “I’m sorry. That must’ve been awful.”

“Thanks.”

I stared at his larger hand enveloping mine. “Why did you leave? At the party after…” He’d run away that night. It bugged me that he’d done that.

“I didn’t leave you at the party, but my wolf had control. I shifted and couldn’t let myself get close to any of the other people there.”