Page 13 of Born Wild
She flails again, weaker than before. Her palms pummel his chest, sliding down past his pecs when she’s unable to muster the strength required to hold on to him. “Undo it. I beg of you, my lord.”
Her voice is different now. Weak. Raw. Still primitive but defeated too.
He leans his forehead close to hers.
She has her back to me, and he’s facing her. I can see his face clearly, though his eyes are shadowed. By the night. By a storm that rages in him, not around him.
His gaze drops to meet hers, and for a moment, thunder falls silent. “I will not.”
She throws her head back and wails like the wind. Like torment and pain working themselves through gaps between window frames and lead glass.
“Ceclia,” he says. She is a woman in need of shaking. A woman outside of herself. I can see that. Anyone could. He doesn’t treat her like that though. He cups her face gently, respectfully. So respectfully that something about it irks me. “Let me help you. Let me take this from you.”
She goes slack, head lolling back as she stills and then nods.
He takes one of her hands in his and tilts her chin up with the other so she’s looking into his eyes. His demeanor changes. His posture straightens. Strengthens. His shoulders grow broader. He grows bigger.
Something shifts.
Something in his eyes.
In his heart.
In the untamed corners of his soul.
It’s quick. A flash so bright that my spine contracts with fear as I wait for the crash of thunder that lightning usually delivers.
It doesn’t come.
What does come is the rolling sound of his voice when he says her name. It’s his alpha voice. And it’s unlike anything I’ve heard before. It’s so deep that I feel it in my ankles and my knees. I feel it in the ground beneath me. In the floorboards. In the walls around me and in the ceiling and stars above me.
It’s scratchy and ancient. A little hoarse, but not much.
A record that’s been stuck for a while and has just started spinning again.
It’s not the sound of it that’s unusual. It’s the force it’s delivered with. It’s the devastating blast. The way it detonates when it lands.
“You are free of me.” The art on the wall rattles and the old wooden beams creak. “You are well. You are your own person and are content without me.”
His words land, and as they do, she draws a sharp breath that makes her entire body jerk. She bobs her head slowly and looks around, evidently dazed.
Then she walks into the night.
I blink back my shock. Lord Augustus stands on the threshold of Beaumont Craven House, drenched to the bone. His hair is so dark it almost looks blue. Rainwater runs down his face. His features look severe at this time of night. More severe than usual.
“What just happened?” I ask.
At least, that’s what I mean to ask. No words, no sound leaves my mouth. My entire body is made of jelly. Warm jelly that quivers despite the fact that no one is shaking it. It’s a feeling I know well. A feeling I love and hate in equal measure. A feeling I love and hate, depending entirely on the situation.
I’ve been alphaed.
An alpha voice has entered my body and reshuffled my nervous system. My ligaments are bendy and loose. My body is relaxed from head to toe. My mind is vacant.
It’s a familiar feeling, but it’s odd because he wasn’t talking to me. He wasn’t looking at me when he spoke. He wasn’t even all that close to me. There’s no possible way his voice could have affected me. At least, it shouldn’t have been able to affect me.
“Are you all right?” he asks quietly.
It’s almost as if he knows I’m affected. But how would he know? This doesn’t happen. You don’t get affected by an alpha voice when it isn’t directed at you. It’s impossible. It’s not a thing.
