Page 15 of The Alpha King's Mate

“What age are you?”

“Twenty-three.”

Too old to have never taken a dick. Unless the wolf—ahh.

I reluctantly released her wrist.

Great. Now I had a bone and nowhere to bury it. Her wolfless status was inconvenient. I considered calling for Ember, but as my eyes landed on—

“What’s your name?”

“Aliana.”

“You may leave,” I grunted.

She turned and bolted from the bathroom.

All that was left was my left hand or my right, and neither appealed.

Fuck.

Chapter 7

Aliana

I didn’t stop running until I reached my room. I slammed the door shut behind me. The memory hit hard—the back of my hand brushing against his dick. It wasn’t the size of it. Or the metal studs on the tip. It was the fact that a part of me had considered it.

That huge thing.

The man was a giant.

No wonder he needed someone to bathe him. He probably couldn’t reach most places.

I began to pace the length of my room. My heart raced as my mind broke everything down. I paused mid-step when something flickered in my chest.

A heart attack.

Yes, that made sense.

No pain followed. Just the sensation growing. Not flickering now—expanding, filling my chest like warmth poured into a cold room. I rubbed my sternum.

Mmm.

My head whipped around. No one was there.

Hello, Aliana, the voice purred.

I gasped and dropped to the floor.

The tears came before I understood them. I bent my head to the dusty floorboards and sobbed—ugly, heaving sounds I couldn’t have stopped if the whole pack were listening. Years of silence in my own body. Years of wolfless, worthless, of empty where everyone else carried a friend. My mother’s voice drifted back to me, the stories she’d told me of the day her wolf came to her. How it felt like being found.

Mine was five years late. I’d waited every day after my eighteenth birthday.

But she came.

I’ve got you, she whispered.I’m Zira.

The name was so beautiful that it set me off again. Zira. Zira. I pressed my palm flat against my sternum, holding her there, terrified that if I stopped touching the warmth it would leave the way everything left.