“Does that feel better?” Mirabelle asks, peering down at my wrists. “I know you said you were fine earlier, but that seriously looks like it hurts.”
I just shrug, my body coiled and tense, waiting.
I don’t know how to ask for what I’m waiting for.
I’m too scared that if I reach out and touch her, I’ll be rejected.
“What’s wrong?” She says, her brows drawing down as she stares up at me.
She sees me.
In a way no one else has.
“I think he wants a hug, Sugar,” the beta says, leaning against the doorway. His gaze is sharp. Assessing.
He sees me too.
Maybe I’m easy to read. Maybe no one has bothered to look at me as a person in a really long time.
“Oh!” Mirabelle says, flashing me a bright smile that has my breath catchingin my chest. “I can do that!”
And then her slender arms are wrapping around me. My movements are hesitant as I watch the beta with a wary gaze.
When the beta just watches on saying nothing, I slowly wrap my arms around her.
She smells like sweet strawberry cake. I press my nose to the top of her head and breathe her in.
I want to hold her in my arms forever, but I let her go when she takes a step back to look up at my face.
“Do you feel better?” She asks, one of her small hands coming to rest in mine.
It looks so delicate in mine. Breakable. Like a bird’s wing.
My gut roils with an all-consuming need to protect her.
I give her a single, jerky nod.
“Okay, time to go,” Rowan calls.
Mirabelle takes a few steps back, and it takes everything I have not to rush over to her and carry her with me. But I don’t.
I crouch down into the cage, squeezing through the doorway and settling in, hunched over on my knees.
“We’ll be there soon. I know it’s cramped in there for you,” Mirabelle says, shoving her hand through the bars to brush against the scars on my face.
I flinch back at her touch.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she says, jerking her hand back out of the cage like I’ve burned her.
I bow my head, hiding the disgusting part of my face.
“Time to go, Sugar. Hop on with me, ‘kay?” Rowan calls.
“Okay!” She says, over the buzz of the engine. She shoots me one last glance, her eyes sad, before she hops onto the back of the ATV, wrapping her arms around Rowan’s waist.
She probably thinks I look disgusting compared to the beta.
Rowan looks nicer than I ever had any hope of looking. And he can keep her safe in a way I can’t.
