Page 95 of Chasing The Alpha's Son
“It’s gotten late,” Agatha says, pulling me from my thoughts. “You must be tired, little blood wolf. At least I know I am. Maybe it’s just my old bones, but I will say good night. Omar will take care of your sleeping arrangements.”
Agatha gets up, and as she waddles toward her bedroom I stand and reach for her hand.
“Thank you,” I say.
She eyes me once again, nodding slightly, and pats my hand. Without saying another word, she drifts off behind the curtained doorway. Jasper is watching me keenly from where he sits, and I force a smile.
“Jasp—”
He stands, interrupting me. “We should get some sleep.”
“Yeah…okay.”
“I can get that tent and heater set up for you,” Omar says, jumping up from his makeshift workshop. Clearly he’s been listening this whole time.
“That would be great,” Jasper replies and follows Omar outside.
Around ten minutes later the door swings open again and Omar comes back in, shaking off the cold as he hangs his puffer on a hook by the door. I’m sitting up in my cot with a blanket over my legs.
“Oh,” I say, when Jasper doesn’t follow him.
“I’d tell you he said to say good night, but…” Omar shrugs.
Omar kicks off his boots and starts gathering blankets from a basket in the corner. “I know he’s your mate and all, but that dude needs to learn how to chill.” Omar tosses the blankets onto the armchair in the corner. “Suppose a night outside in a tent might do him some good.”
I scrunch up my sheets in my fingers, unable to shake the image of Jasper’s guilty face from my mind.
Omar plonks himself down in the armchair, pulling the blankets over his legs.I guess we’re sharing a room then.I should have figured this cot was where Omar usually slept.
“Jasper has a lot on his shoulders,” I say, but the words don’t quite come out right. My statement turns into a question before I can finish it. By trying to defend him I’ve fallen into the same trap as everyone else, giving Jasper the benefit of the doubt just because he’s under a mountain of pressure.
“Hey, it’s your life, cuz.”
“Yeah it is.” I huff and pull the covers up over my shoulders, rolling onto my side to face away from Omar.
“All right,” he says, and I hear him shifting about. “Time for sleep.”
He flicks off the light and the room goes dark. Down here in the valley there isn’t much light to begin with, and without the soft glow of the electric bulb, I can barely see a thing. The only illumination a dull-blue light, coming from the digital clock on the oven.
Scrunched into a ball, I try to close my eyes and sleep, but thoughts keep racing through my mind: my vision of Jasper’s mom, the guilty look on his face, the way his hands gripped the steering wheel when we slid off the road, how he reacted similarly when we burst a tire on the way to Rogue City in the summer. Is this why Jasper has been pushing me away? Telling me he’s trying to protect me? Because he blames himself for his mother’s death?
And then there’s this whole blood wolf situation. Have I changed completely? Why did the blood moon pull this out of me? Was it there to begin with or was it random? What am I now?
I sigh and roll onto my back. Tingles tickle the side of my face and I have the distinct feeling I’m being watched.
“Can’t sleep?” Omar asks, his voice low.
With a huff I lay my forearm over my eyes. “Nope.”
“Has the pain come back?”
I think over Omar’s question as I stare at the ceiling. The intense physical pain is definitely not back, but this sense of uncertainty is almost worse. I shake my head and a long pause stretches out for what feels like minutes.
“This may not mean much to you,” Omar says finally, “but in my old pack we believe in the blood wolf too.”
“Great,” I say, unable to stop the sarcasm from busting out.
“Only in my pack we don’t tell stories of a monster, a wolf driven crazy.”
