The tears kept coming and coming and coming. Then, finally, they slowed, until I fell into a dreamless sleep.
Chapter Fourteen
Tyrone
I lay outside her bedroom window in bear form until her breaths slowed and her tears stopped.
I could pretend all of her tears were from relief and feeling safe with us, but I knew better. She was in pain. We’d offered her some pain meds, but she refused, claiming the marks and bruises didn’t hurt so bad anymore.
And the pain in her body was only a small part of her anguish.
We hadn’t asked her about the abuse she endured under her father, or parents. Millie would tell us in time.
My bear walked away from her bedroom after she fell asleep. I had to do perimeter runs, which I enjoyed, but being away from her was hard.
The animal inside me wanted to snuggle up next to her. Dry her tears with his fur. Keep her warm. Serve as a shield from the world and anything else that threatened to harm her.
All good things but too soon.
Our routine was that the designated person ran three rounds of perimeter checks.
My bear wasn’t ready to stop. I must’ve made the round at least a dozen times when I stopped in my tracks realizing that the sky had evolved from a navy starry night to violets, peaches, and rose hues.
I’d run all night, not getting a wink of sleep.
My bear was calmer before we got Millie. Now that she was here, right here in our den, he’d gone nuts.
I wanted to get some sleep, but my bear wouldn’t allow the shift. Exhaustion set in. I made my way back to her bedroomwindow and curled up under it again, letting the soft rhythm of her breaths lull me to sleep.
It was the first time in a very long time that my sleep had been dreamless.
It was bliss until Cannon’s alpha voice forced me out of the best sleep of my life.
“What?” I asked, shifting back and throwing on some pants I’d stashed by the house.
“What are you doing here? Sleeping under her window?”
“So?” I gruffed back. This alpha clearly hadn’t had his coffee.
“Why?” His hands were on his hips, and his ears were red.
“My bear wanted to?” I threw my hands in the air and let them fall to my hips. If he kept on yelling, he would wake up Millie and then he wouldn’t be the only one pissed.
“Why?”
His questions were starting to grate on my nerves. “Can we get to the point, Cannon?”
“You were sleeping here, under her window. Before that, you were running the perimeter. Safety checks. Did you scent something off? Is that your reason for sleeping here?”
Oh.
Oh…
He continued, “You have to tell us when something is going on. If there’s a threat to our land or our omega or us, you have to tell us, not just set up camp under her window. What if they had attacked and you were alone out here? They attack you, kill you, and then what? Climb right through her window and kidnap her? Worse?”
Cannon was jumping to all kinds of conclusions, and none of them were correct. He was so upset that by the end of his tirade, I thought there was a deeper issue than just this moment. Something to do with his past, maybe?
“Cannon, alpha, I slept here because my bear was restless. I ran all night because of said irritation. He wouldn’t let me shift back and decided to sleep here, near her. That’s all. I didn’t scent or detect anything amiss.”
