Alpha's Strength (Fallen Alpha) (11 page)

She willed him to believe he could relax with her, to not feel as though he had to be doing something, to let whatever was troubling him leave for the night.

It was everything she could do to keep herself awake, given that all the things she wanted him to feel she’d experienced herself. But she was determined to see that he slept and wasn’t going to give up until she’d done that.

Betsy felt rather than saw when he fell asleep. His breathing changed, and he relaxed. She let herself glance up at him then. He appeared different than he had passed out at the desk. With his eyes closed, and his mouth slightly open, Cyrus came across as younger. They’d not discussed his age, but she’d guess him to be in his mid-thirties. Maybe that was wrong. Maybe werewolves aged differently.

She bit down on her lip. How could she feel so connected to a man and not know how old he was? Betsy exhaled the breath she’d been holding. Somehow, she had to change her thinking. It was okay to feel the way she did about him—they were mates, and she wasn’t human. She was mated to the Alpha of Manhattan. She’d gotten him to fall asleep when he’d claimed it impossible after giving him his very first blowjob.

She’d ask him his age in the morning. And what his company did. For now, she knew that he had a really big heart that no one had taken proper care of in however many years he happened to have been on the planet. That would change now that she was around.

Not daring to move for fear of waking him, she snuggled closer and gave into the lethargy threatening to overtake her. Sleep would work for both of them.

****

The next time she opened her eyes, light streamed in underneath the curtains into the room. Her muscles were sore from lack of movement, and she had to blink several times to clear the fog from her brain. The clock read eight in the morning, which meant she’d been asleep for five hours.

Betsy grinned. Not only had she been asleep, but the Alpha snoring lightly next to her still slept on. It had taken a little TLC to get Cyrus to conk out. Now she wanted to make him food before he woke up, checked the clock, and panicked.

He didn’t stir when she got out of the bed. She’d made it to the bathroom and out when she heard his phone vibrating. Betsy bit down on her lip as she debated for a second whether she should leave it alone. People were very private about their cell phones. Still, she wanted him to sleep, not get awoken by somebody needing something the second he opened his eyes.

She grabbed the phone and walked out of the room. The screen read Lake, and she answered.

“Hello?”

There was a pause on the other end before Lake spoke. “Betsy? Is Cyrus okay?”

“He is.” She cleared her throat. Having not spoken yet, she still sounded hoarse. “He’s actually asleep.”

“Really?” The tone of Lake’s voice raised a fraction in surprise. “I’ve never ever known him to sleep late.”

“Well, today he is, unless there’s an emergency I need to wake him for?” She glanced back at the door toward the room where he slept. Betsy would hate to disturb him, but an emergency was an emergency.

“No.” His sister laughed, and Betsy had no idea why. Something was funny? “I’m getting texts from Alexei’s people wanting to know the time for the meeting today.”

Betsy rolled her eyes. She hadn’t liked the Alpha, and he had certainly not cared about timing the day before when he’d shown up announced and uninvited. “Lunch time. He’ll be in for lunch.”

“Thanks. Oh, hey, Betsy?” Lake stopped her before she could hang up.

“Yes?”

“I’m really sorry if I harmed you in any way by making you turn into a full-fledged werewolf. There’s no excuse. I should be in better control than that.”

“Oh.” Betsy smiled. That was nice of her to say. “Thanks for the apology, but I think it was the best thing that could have happened to me.”

“Good. And you’re clearly the best thing that’s ever happened to my brother if he is sleeping in. I mean he has never done that. Not even when we were kids.”

“I don’t think I had anything to do with that. The Alpha wanted to sleep in, so that’s what he did.”

She heard the words come out of her mouth as she said them. There had been no conscious decision to lie to Lake. The other woman was his sister. Surely she’d want him rested and healthy. But it had felt as though the way to protect Cyrus had been to not let anyone know he needed extra sleep. Betsy would never purposely expose anything that might be considered a weakness.

“Right. Of course.” Lake continued, “Would you be interested in doing something with me and some of the other pack women some time? Like a movie or dancing?”

Betsy gasped. “Oh, I’d love that. So much.” She’d never had friends. It hadn’t been possible. She’s had her parents. They’d gotten less and less attentive as she’d gotten older. But they’d been there.

“Great. Then we’ll plan that. I’ll see you at lunch.”

“Sure.” Betsy hit End on the phone and walked into the kitchen. She had no idea if Cyrus even had any food in the house. The one thing she could do was cook. It was what she had hoped to do once the business with Nathan was over. That would obviously not be happening now. A pang struck her heart. She was never going to school, never going to become a chef. Never see the world.

Tears threatened, and she blinked them away. She had this whole new world to explore; she’d become a werewolf, or, rather, she had discovered she had always been one. Nathan was being dealt with. Her parents would be okay, one way or another. Cyrus, who was hot as hell, and sweet to boot, belonged to her. What business did she have to be crying over culinary school, which probably would never have happened anyway?

She found the eggs in his fridge, along with some bacon and biscuits. Someone kept it stocked, but she’d guess it wasn’t Cyrus. She smiled at the thought. There were trade-offs, and even if she hadn’t been given a choice, she couldn’t let herself dwell on the negatives. Other things were too good to complain about.

Betsy broke the eggs on the side of a bowl and got started in making breakfast and quit thinking about things that wouldn’t do any good anyway.

Cyrus opened his eyes and took a deep breath. His muscles were loose, and his head clear for the first time in longer than he cared to remember. He rubbed at his eyes and sniffed the air. His apartment smelled different. He scented…eggs. Someone was cooking breakfast.

A rush of memory pushed into his head, and he grinned. Betsy was here. He’d fallen asleep next to her after she had, well, given him immense pleasure the likes of which he had never known before. She’d tried, very badly, to trick him into falling asleep. He’d gone along because the woman had wanted to take care of him and it had felt so nice to he had no intention of arguing with her. Besides, he hadn’t really thought he’d fall asleep.

He threw his legs over the bed and glanced at the clock when he stood up. Did that say nine o’clock? Shit. He wasn’t just late; he was seriously late.

Cyrus bounded into the kitchen and took a deep breath. Wow. Her cooking whatever she prepared smelled like heaven. He’d never actually lived in a house with someone who could cook before. His mother had burned water when she tried. They’d all preferred meals she could reheat.

“What are you making?” He came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her. She fit perfectly to him, and he inhaled her vanilla scent into his lungs. A man could get used to this.

“Eggs.”

It was the sound of her voice that alerted him. He hadn’t smelled distress over the scents of cooking and the vanilla, but it was there. Betsy was upset. Cyrus took a steadying breath. Yesterday had been a lot. It was ridiculous to think she wouldn’t be overwhelmed. Of course, he’d woken up happier than he’d ever been. But that was neither here nor there. This was her first day greeting the dawn as a werewolf. Maybe it didn’t look so pretty in the light of morning. He resisted the urge to chuck something across the room.

“What’s wrong?” Whatever she needed, he’d figure it out. If she wanted space, she could have another apartment in the building. He owned the whole thing. He’d court her or date her or whatever. Surely some member of his pack could tell him how to do that.

“I’m being stupid.” She wiped at her eyes. “I hope you like scrambled eggs. I didn’t want to wake you to ask how you liked them. Oh, and I spoke to Lake. The meeting with Alexei has been moved to lunch. No need to rush in.”

“You did?” She turned off the stovetop, and he turned her around until she faced him. One thing he would not do was stop touching her. That might kill him. She’d adjust, but she’d damn well do it in his arms even if it were three apartments down from his. “That was very kind of you to take care of that. I like my eggs however you want to cook them, and I don’t expect you to cook and clean, by the way. That’s not necessary. You don’t have to.”

“I actually like to cook.”

His cock jumped at the reminder of exactly what those other things she
liked
to do were, one particular act had knocked him for such a loop he’d completely conked out afterwards. He forced his attention back where it belonged. “You’re crying. This doesn’t seem like joyful cooking to me.”

“Look…it’s not your fault. You didn’t make me a latent werewolf. You didn’t even change me into one—and Lake has apologized, and I’ve forgiven her, so we don’t need to keep rehashing it—I’m sort of letting things go, that’s all.” She sniffed, and it stabbed him in the heart as if she had taken a knife and pushed it inside of him.

“Like what?” He stroked the back of her head.

“Well, I had these ridiculous dreams about what I would do when this was over with Nathan.” She pulled away from him, and he let her go. He wanted her to talk, not to clam up, and if she needed space to do so, then that was fine. For now.

“Why were they ridiculous? Were you planning on doing something so outlandish it could never happen?” Because his pack had resources, he could probably make about anything she wanted an eventuality.

“No.” She laughed, and he felt better. Betsy picked up a bit of egg on a fork and motioned toward his mouth with it. He opened and let her feed him the food. It was warm and melted on his tongue. He savored it for a second before swallowing it down. She’d put heaven in her scrambled eggs.

“Then what?” He wasn’t going to let this go. It wasn’t in his nature.

“It was ridiculous because I was never getting away from Nathan, so they were never going to happen. I think I wanted to hold onto the idea.”

“Which was what?” If she were trying to be deliberately evasive, she would quickly find that, once he started to dig out a problem, he didn’t stop until he’d fully uncovered it. His mate had been crying while she cooked scrambled eggs on their first morning together. This constituted a problem.

Not to mention he was feeling all kinds of rested and energized. No way would he let this go unfinished.

“I wanted to go to culinary school.” She looked down at the pan of eggs before she scooped them out onto a waiting plate.

“Why can’t you still do that? This is New York. We have such schools here. You can certainly go. I went to college. And got a master’s in business actually.”

Betsy raised a blonde eyebrow when she handed him his plate of eggs. He took it and went to sit at the counter. She sipped at a cup of coffee before placing one down in front of him. This whole thing seemed really domestic. If only she were happier, he’d be ready to declare it the best morning of his life.

“How old are you exactly? You took over the pack at twenty, and you look about thirty-five. Where did you find the time to go to college, business school, and then develop a very large company that does whatever it does in the last fifteen years?”

He grinned. Oh, there were things about their life that were going to blow his mate’s mind. He hoped in a good way. She might be really weirded out by the whole thing. His smile fell.

“I’m older than I look. By a considerable number of years. Werewolves have longer life spans. We look younger, longer. Given good nutrition and no one killing us, we tend to come to the end of our lives at about 150 years, give or take some.” He sipped his coffee.

Betsy’s eyes seemed to dance around in their sockets. She processed what he said quietly, but her body was absorbing every shock. He might need to get her a massage. Or give her one. His mood brightened considerably at the idea. She’d taken care of him…

“Which would make you how old exactly?” Like him, she didn’t let go of a carrot once it had been dangled in front of her.

He cleared his throat. “I will be forty-six on my next birthday, which I guess would make me about twice your age.”

She set down her mug “Holy cow. You don’t look a day over thirty-five.”

“Thanks.” He needed to lighten this up. “But most people would say thirty. Maybe the stress of the last twenty-four hours has aged me all of a sudden. Thirty-five? I should be insulted.”

She threw her napkin at him, and he caught it. There was some humor back in her eyes. “I had no idea I’d mated such an elderly gentleman…”

“Elderly?” He lunged for her and pulled her up against him. “I’ll show you elderly.”

He kissed her, and she melted against him. This was how they should start every morning. After a moment, he withdrew, wishing he could stand there and kiss her forever. If only the outside world didn’t wait for them.

“My company handles privacy issues for business in terms of telecommunication. We identify potential spy issues, breaches in security. Basically, we’re a private company that helps public companies keep their business secrets safer.”

She sighed. “You say the most romantic things. Kiss a girl, talk about breaches in secrecy.”

He rubbed his finger down the slope of her nose, memorizing the features of her face. “You said you didn’t know what my company did. I thought you should. Now, tell me again why you thought you couldn’t go to culinary school?”

“Well, besides the small detail of not having a high school diploma since I was educated at home? I don’t think my parents ever took care of that officially.”

Another check-minus for her family. He ground his teeth together. Were there manuals for dealing with horrendous in-laws? How did human males deal with this? How long did they wait before they threw them off cliffs?

“Other than that? Your educational background can be handled.” Or forged if need be.

“Why should I bother? I’m never going to get to work in a restaurant, am I? I mean, all of your people work at your company.”

Cyrus let go of her and took a few steps away. She had no idea how closely this resembled a conversation he’d had with Lake weeks earlier. His sister was desperate to work in a human hospital since she was now educated to the point of being a nurse practitioner.

“You are fortunate in that you will never know what it is to live here, in New York, under the rule of Shepherd. We used to have much higher numbers than we do now. The pack was under constant attack both by other werewolves and from snooping humans. It is a lot trickier than you might imagine to arrange a life as a werewolf out there in the human world. Can you disappear from a normal job every full moon? Can you explain to your bosses why you have to? People start to ask questions.”

“Listen, I get it, I’m not arguing with you. I just became a werewolf. I’m going to have to let some of my human dreams go.” She shrugged. “You do the dishes. I’m going to go get ready to see what today has in store for me. Oh wait, I can’t.” She turned back to him. “I don’t have any clothes.”

“That’s taken care of. I sent two of the females to the brownstone to collect your clothing. It’s all put away in the second closet in my room. Also, you have a set of drawers in there too, next to mine.”

She shook her head. “Do you always think of everything?”

With a spin of her heel, she turned and headed back toward the bathroom. If he thought of everything, he’d have remembered to tell her where her clothes were before then. Of course, forgetting had granted him the gift of seeing her in one his college T-shirts.

He cleared his plate and carried it to the sink. When was the last time he’d cleaned a dish? Never eating at home meant never having to clean up after himself. He scrubbed at the dishes before going after the pan. She’d never cooked the bacon so he put that and the biscuits away. His mother would be so proud that he still remembered how to do the things she’d made him do when he was a child. It had been so many years since he’d done ‘chores.’

Always need to be able to take care of yourself…
Her voice sounded in his mind, and he smiled at the memory. He almost never thought of his parents anymore. The memory of them simply didn’t fit into his daily life. Nothing about his life now resembled anything about his time with them.

Well, maybe now it did.

He turned off the water and took a deep breath. Giving up her dreams. He hated the thought of that. As soon as the Nathan problem was settled, he wanted her as blissfully happy as she could be. And then when she wasn’t, he’d kiss her back to happiness.

There really wasn’t anything he could do about her dilemma short of purchasing a restaurant for her to work in. But then he’d have to buy Lake a hospital, and he suspected that his handing them careers was not what either lady had in mind. Although that wasn’t much different than what he did at the company.

Cyrus shook his head. He wasn’t going to solve the world’s problems standing over a sink. He had to get dressed and get to the office. Alexei would be bound, by the end of the day, by a blood oath to not invade Cyrus’ territory, or there would be hell to pay. Then they would move on to Montana.

Some things he could be sure of. Cyrus had always known how to get things done.

****

Nathan quivered in the cage like a shaking leaf. Cyrus hadn’t even spoken to the pathetic excuse for a man yet, and the human was about two seconds from pissing himself out of fear.

Cyrus glanced at Jensen, who leaned up against the back wall. The other werewolf only pretended to be at ease. He could smell the tangy taste of Jensen’s vigilance across the room.

“Join me,” he called out to Jensen, and his pack mate walked over immediately.

“Yes, my Alpha?” Jensen held eye contact for a second before he looked slightly down. It was the appropriate behavior to show respect, although Cyrus had no doubt that, given the provocation, Jensen could easily meet his gaze for extended periods of time.

“Anyone abuse him last night?”

“No.” Jensen shook his head. “I was here the whole time. He got fed, watered, and was allowed to use the bathroom. He even got to take a shower this morning.”

“Fed, watered, showered. That’s good.” He laughed, and Jensen’s eyebrows furrowed downward.

“Sir, I didn’t mean that to be funny.”

“I know.” He patted Jensen on the arm, and Jensen stared at the spot he’d touched as though he couldn’t believe the contact.

“He thought your phrasing was funny.” Betsy walked up next to him and handed him the coffee she’d purchased across the street.

“How so?” Jensen followed the conversation. .

“It’s like you were talking about a dog, sort of.” Betsy shrugged. “If you’d said you let him outside, it would have fit perfectly.”

Cyrus smiled into his cup. Betsy understood his sense of humor perfectly. Bizarre, really. Very few people ever followed the direction of his thoughts.