Cassandra woke up to someone’s light snores. Her head felt heavy and her body ached. She slowly sat up in bed and found someone holding her hand.
Glancing in the direction she found Siroos’s face right closer to her hand. He was sleeping on a chair, his enormous hand resting on hers in a delicate grip. The worries etched on his sandy-shaded forehead in the form of ridges of a desert.
The fire still cackled in the fireplace, giving an orangish glow to Siroos’s hair. She couldn’t help but observe his sharp features, everything about him seemed to have been dipped in steel and forged in iron.
And she wondered if his heart possessed mercy or if he would be as abusive as most Alphas were known to be. He had a temper and he showed no traces of remorse or mercy towards the people he had killed.
The man terrified Cassandra, and his obsessiveness to own her further cemented this belief that he would rather kill her than let her go free.
Yet there was this yearning inside her, to let him consume and burn her like ambers in a hearth. He had protected her when her own fiancé had refused. The man she had known since childhood. The man she had tried to love but only received coldness from.
She was at such a crossroads with no direction on which path to follow.
With a sigh, Cassandra slowly extracted her hand so as not to wake him. She tried to check up on her wounds and found them healed. Her special costume had reduced the damage caused to her body for she knew how dangerous Stephanie’s power was. If it hadn’t been for Lotus and the timely intrusion of her father and Siroos, she would have been dead.
She tried to sit up straight and the silken bedsheets under her rustled, waking Siroos up. His gorgeous eyes opened in confusion and found her.
Panic was what he found in her eyes as she tried to curl into herself, trying to put distance between them.
Her reactions he didn’t understand. He wouldn’t hurt her, why was she always frightened of him?
"How are you feeling?" He softly asked, sitting up straight and spreading his legs, his eyes never leaving hers.
"Better!"
"We are leaving first thing in the morning. All arrangements are in place. Unlike your family, I won’t try to kill you. I will always protect you," he tried to reassure her, but his over-the-edge demeanour and his desire to enforce his decisions instead of asking for her choices made Cassandra wary of him.
"Leaving? We didn’t even have a conversation about what happened in the arena. You didn’t even explain or tell me what this ’mate’ term you keep referring me to is. Nor have we addressed the fact that you hid your identity from me. I don’t even know what you are. A shifter or a mage? A combination of both or something entirely different. And now you demand I leave with a stranger," she ranted, trying to inject some semblance of confidence in her voice. It trembled.
His meticulous gaze easily unnerved her, he didn’t blink. His hands stapled in front of him.
"Later, we leave here first." He offered a few words while observing the dip in her slender neck, the soft light from the fire painted it orangish yellow.
"What if I say I don’t want to leave with you?" She asked, rubbing her shoulders, trying to comfort herself and not be unsettled by his magnetic gaze.
Siroos slowly placed his hand on his face, his index finger resting on his temple while his thumb remained elegantly perched under his chin.
"That’s not an option for you. Do you want to die so desperately?"
He couldn’t fathom why she wished to stay after the chaos that had unfolded. Or maybe it was because of that jester fiancé of hers. If he wished, he would squash him like a bug, but he didn’t want her to hate him even before they had a chance to start a relationship.
"I just..." she tried to speak but he cut her off with his sharp words. The idea of her rejecting him for another man turned his insides.
"We are leaving and that’s final." He mindlinked his beta and the door knocked in that very instant. She felt the flip in his mood and pulled the sheets up her body as if trying to protect herself.
"Come in," he ordered, never tearing his eyes off her. Ranon and two other men entered and stood behind him, waiting for instructions. Their eyes remained downcast.
"Pack your Luna’s stuff, we are leaving this forsaken place."
"Yes, Alpha!" They bowed and began to open her closet and drawers.
Cassandra was horrified for a second. How could they rampage through her personal stuff? Didn’t they understand the word privacy?
"Wait? What are you doing? Stop touching my belongings." She yelled out, pulling the sheets aside to get up.
They didn’t listen as if deaf.
"Keep lying down, they know what they need to do," Siroos told her in calmness, seeing her get agitated.
"Tell your men to stop." Cassandra turned to Siroos and demanded, she felt so weak she could hardly stand up.
Her head was heady and whirling and she blacked out for standing up too hastily. Fast like lightning he got up and caught her. Cassandra’s hand went to her head.
"What’s wrong with my head?" She wondered aloud as his rough hands scalded her wherever they touched.
"You lost too much blood and now you stood up quickly when I told you to rest. Can you ever listen?" He so wished to roll his eyes at her, laying her down back in bed he kept holding her.
Memories of something hit Cassandra like a tornado of fire amidst an avalanche. It sent her spiralling.
Why was his touch so familiar and yet so foreign?
That voice seemed to have whispered sweet nothings and sultry murmurs to her countless times.
She was lying in his lap amidst a meadow. His sonorous laughter filled her vicinity as she found herself smiling back at him.
But when? And how?
Her body seemed different, felt different.
And then she remembered a name. Her mouth seemed to be murmuring it.
’Kael’
’Kael’
Who was Kael?
Her eyes slowly closed and the last thing she saw was his lush hair falling on his concerned eyes.