Alpha Wolf (Darkmore Penitentiary, #2)

by Caroline Peckham

“Nothing like a knee to the balls or a fist squeezing them until I nearly black out.”

I realised that he'd gone further than just finding out about me and Ethan and our escape plans when he'd pillaged my brain for information. He'd probed into the darkest corners of my psyche and torn the memories of my papa into the light too. He knew.

Those things didn’t define me. I'd escaped them and that life. I'd risen from the ashes of it and built myself up into someone feared and respected throughout the whole of Alestria and the rest of Solaria beyond. Fear knew my name and whispered it on the breeze.

He wanted to put me back into my nightmares and use them as a torture device just as thoroughly as any weapon. Fuck him.

"If I'd lost you, I... " He cut himself off but as his gaze flickered to my mouth, I realised where his mind was going and the faintest twist of guilt tugged at me.

"We broke up before I came here. I really like anal and he didn't, so..." Bless his little cotton socks, Hastings' eyes almost bugged out of his damn face.

"Frankly, I hope you try to kill each other and I come back here to find a body waiting at the end of your shift. Then I can get rid of one of you for good and send the other to rot in the hole again.

"You know, when you call me that, I don't fucking like it," I snapped. "And I feel like you just do it to remind yourself that I'm younger than you, but I don't really care about your reasons. I'm twenty-four years old - the same age you were when you got locked up here. Tell me, did you think of yourself as a child then?"

"I see a Fae worth respecting, fearing, following. I see one of the only good things in here and a piece of home I never dared to believe I’d have again. I don't think you're some stupid pup. I think you're the one thing I needed more than anything in this place. Hope."

The silver rose vine had reached my shoulder now, wrapping around it and binding me even more tightly to her. To my oncoming fucking death.

I became nothing but a vicious, bloodthirsty animal with no boundaries, no rules holding me back, nothing but the primal need to protect the girl they wanted to hurt. I didn't see red. I saw the fires of hell blazing everywhere, flaring through every corner of my mind.

And so long as I was Rosalie's beast, I didn't want to hide it. I'd gladly spill the blood of her enemies again and again until there was no creature left on earth who'd dare touch her.

And I no longer hungered for death, I hungered for her. I was laid bare. What I'd done was admitting how I felt about her a thousand times louder than words ever could have.

I'd never wanted to kneel for any Fae. But she held more power over me than the stars themselves. And I wanted to surrender everything I was to her in that moment.

"You're the only person I could ever imagine being cooped up with alone like that and loving every single second of it."

"I think I'd follow you to the moon itself at this point," he sighed.

I could shift into pretty much any Order and a bunch of cross-Orders like fluffy Dragons, pocket sized Pegasuses and Basilisks that looked like giant cocks. All the family favourites.

But right now, it was time to scare the shit out of some people and give Rosalie the ride of her life before I gave her, well, the ride of her life.

A bunch of them looked back at me, whimpering in alarm and picking up speed as I let out a roar that sent bubbles shooting all over them, popping on their fur.

"Sometimes I wanna shift into a beetle and crawl in your ear all the way to your brain to find out what's going on in there,"

I was one dirty motherfucker and she was so into it that she didn’t realise how dirty she became for me in return.

My favourite Fae in Solaria. My perfect desire. And she liked me for who I was.

"Well, I guess it was the first time I realised how good it could feel to ride two cocks at once. As a matter of fact, the two of them were pretty famous, though I probably shouldn't say who-"

Seth and Caleb - I bet it did.

I really believed he was my destiny. The moon wouldn't have just mated us because we happened to fuck under it. It knew as well as we both did that we were a perfect match and that this was always inevitable no matter how hard it might be.

"I'll come with you, love,” he said in a rough voice. “I'll dive right into the depths of the Oscura Clan and trust you to make sure I don't fall flat on my face when we get there.

What could possibly go wrong?"

God dammit, Ethan! You just fucking jinxed it.

Pleasing my mate was ingrained in me by the moon, and if Sin pleased her then maybe I was going to have to get used to the occasional orgy with my mate.

"I love you, Rosa. I love you in all the ways I thought I shouldn't and I'm sick of being afraid of that. I'm sick of wanting you and not having you. Of needing you and not owning you. I meant it when I said I wanted to run away to a desert island with you. But I'd stay in Darkmore for the rest of my life if this was the only place where you were too."

"I've been in love with you since I was fourteen years old, Roar,"

"I see everything, Rosa. I'm just not sure I deserve that much."

I was bloody and bruised but never broken. There was no chance of that.

"I knew you'd come save me," I replied softly, realising that there was truth in those words. Ethan would always come when I needed him, just as I would for him. The stars had given us that gift.