There’s a moment of silence while he vapes, exhaling the vapor upward, and then I say,
"Sorry for being such an annoying brat… and thank you for… I guess, looking after him all these years. Guiding him through his darkest hours."
Ennio fidgets with the vape between his fingers and doesn’t react to my words at all.
"But I hope you didn’t fuck?!" I blurt out, simply because I have to.
Ennio shoots me a dry glance and rolls his eyes.
"I don’t do alphas."
I study him for a moment, and then a particular thought crosses my mind.
"So? Looks like I’m standing next to the new capo right now. I really don’t think Rocco would just let them walk away without any resistance."
My words finally trigger a stronger reaction. Ennio slowly turns toward me, and a rare expression appears on his face.
A dark, triumphant smile.
Four months later
ALEX
Crawling on my knees, I push through the thick brush and forest undergrowth. I lied. I texted my stalker that I needed his help, but didn’t tell him anything else, not where I was and not what exactly was happening.
These little tests for him are something I immensely enjoy.
I force my way through the dense thicket because I want to get as far from the beaten paths as possible.
Another sixty, another eighty feet, and I’ll reach the spot from which I can see him if he comes, while staying hidden myself.
The stalker arrives exactly twenty-three minutes later.
He walks straight toward me as if following an invisible line, because no one could find me like this, only my True Mate.
I smirk subtly.
Only he could know I was in danger. Back then in the park, when the Tanners attacked me. Or the Hansons. Then again when he showed up on the day Oswald entered my house. There were no cameras that could have led him to me, not in the park and not near my home, because the storm knocked them out.
It’s only the particular Bond we share. He could sense its energy better than I could with my damaged DNA, and he obviously read much more from it throughout the years.
I watch him. I know his movements, his body, strong yet feline-like.
He looks around the wooded slope, but the instinct guides him toward me without fail. Yeah, today I will finally look him in the face.
That’s my plan.
My heat has just started and the first wave is slowly washing over me, but I honestly doubt that it’s my scent pulling him in, because the wind is blowing the other way.
The wave keeps rising as I strip off my pants and sweater, lying completely naked on the forest floor, a bed of fallen leaves beneath me. I spread my legs wide, as far as they’ll go.
That’s when the stalker emerges from the bushes. He stops dead in his tracks.
His dark mask turns straight toward me, my pale body sharply outlined against the shadowed ground. I must look obscene. I’m sure of it, and I intend to keep it that way.
I don’t say a word. My cock stands at attention, ready and waiting.
Silence.
