Chapter 170: The Alpha’s Favorite Place To Put Her

Captain Harlan double-tapped Jean’s holo identification and the full profile unfolded into the air, rotating slow above the table. Nova read it without meaning to.

CLEARANCE: Restricted Level 3.

SUPERVISOR: Don Gregor.

The war room held its silence.

"Mark her as top priority for questioning," Alpha Thunderfang ordered.

Nova turned the words over and came up with nothing. She didn’t know what that clearance line meant, or why the man at the head of the table had said top priority about a woman who iced her face and talked about raising two boys with the fondness of someone who had. There was a disconnect somewhere, a piece of the picture everyone else could see and she couldn’t, and the harder she stared at the rotating profile the further it got from her.

Hopefully Tavian would relay it to Maria. Hopefully Maria would corner her after and fill in the shape of what Nova had just missed.

The meeting kept moving. Nova barely registered it. Captains traded reports, an elder raised a point about Starborne’s likely response, Alpha Thunderfang answered something with his usual economy, and all of it washed past her like water over a stone. Beside her, Maria had gone still, eyes fixed on the holo-table and the frozen grid of faces hanging above it. On her other side, Sierra was doing the same, chin on her knuckles, not listening either. The three of them sat in a row, present in body, each one somewhere else entirely.

When Alpha Thunderfang finally closed the council, chairs scraped and the room exhaled and people rose in clusters, the energy returning to something human.

Dante found them first. He pulled Maria into a hug, then reached past her and gathered Nova into one of his own, the easy, unhurried embrace of a man who had decided these two belonged to him and wasn’t taking appeals.

"Well." He held Nova at arm’s length, taking in her face with open warmth. "That was a lively one. Scaling, chutes, banned neurotoxins, three separate loophole lawyers in robes." He released her and tucked his hands over his stomach, perfectly content. "Freya keeps telling me I need a hobby. I’m going to start coming to every single one of these."

Maria looked at Nova. Nova looked at Maria. Both of them looked at Dante with the identical expression of two women who had found the one reasonable elder in the room and were never letting him go.

Maria beamed at him. "Every single one. We’ll save you a seat."

Dante’s smile widened, but his eyes lifted past Nova’s shoulder to someone approaching behind her.

"Come back anytime," Alpha Thunderfang said, stopping in front of Dante and shaking his hand. The kind of shake that suggested the Alpha knew this man well and respected him.

"Be careful what you wish for, Alpha," Dante replied with a chuckle, clasping his hand back.

Dante released the grip, gave Nova one last wink, and walked away. The warmth went with him.

"Nova, with me," Alpha Thunderfang ordered, already moving.

???

THIRTY MINUTES LATER

Alpha Thunderfang led the way out of the keep and into the cold, Nova a half-step behind him. Neither of them spoke.

It had started snowing again, fat slow flakes drifting down over the courtyard stone. She kept pace and kept quiet, which seemed to be what the silence wanted.

A little boy broke from the edge of the walkway and ran straight at her, something glowing clutched in both small hands. He thrust it up at her. It was a winter flower, pulsing faint blue against the grey afternoon.

Nova knew him the instant she saw his face. The boy from the parade who she had snatched off the ground before the cargo pod hit him.

"Is this for me?" She crouched enough to take it from him.

He nodded, chest puffing with pure pride.

"Thank you. It’s exactly what my cloak was missing." She tucked the stem into the clasp at her shoulder where it could catch the light.

The boy grinned, then bolted back towards his mother. Nova glanced up. The woman waved hello at her. Nova waved back with her good hand.

When she turned to catch up to Alpha Thunderfang, she found him already watching her. She wasn’t sure how long he had been stopped, but based on his irritated expression, it was for a second too long.

Her face fell. Of course. He was busy. She gathered he was doing her a favor by taking her here and that he was a busy man.

She tried to move quickly. But he moved at Alpha speed. One arm under her knees, one behind her back, and they were moving again at his speed, which was twice hers, which was apparently the point.

Evidently she had lost her walking privileges.

Nova wanted to laugh.

First the war room, now the upstanding citizens of Thunderfang, all getting a good long look at her in the Alpha’s arms.

The optics were not in her favor. She looked exactly like the other woman. The homewrecker in the Alpha’s arms while he was betrothed. The news would get out soon that it had been broken off, and this is what people would remember.

Alpha Thunderfang did not seem to notice that. He was trying so hard, in his grunting, grip-tightening, ice-pack way, that she didn’t have the heart to tell him.

His arm adjusted beneath her knees and pulled her closer to his chest. Probably for balance with the ice. She didn’t know. He was very warm though. She had to give him that.

Her head was against his chest and his heartbeat was faster than she would have expected for an Alpha walking at a leisurely pace. Then again, he was carrying her. A full-grown human.

They entered the hospital.

The woman at the front desk was the one from yesterday. The one who had snorted at Maria’s credentials and turned Nova away like she’d wandered in off the street.

"Alpha Thunderfang." She shot upright, spine snapping straight. Then her eyes flicked sideways and landed on Nova.

Alpha Thunderfang didn’t say a word as he walked past the desk with Nova in his arms like this was normal.

He didn’t set Nova down until they were inside Derek’s room.

The moment she saw him, her heart broke all over again. Her eyes went red before she’d crossed the room. She lowered herself into the chair at his bedside and took his bandaged hand in her good one, careful, in case it hurt him because he wasn’t healed.

The door whispered open. A healer came in with a fresh pack of ice and handed it, without a word, to Alpha Thunderfang.

He crossed to the chair, and before Nova understood the shape of what was happening, he’d picked her up and sat down with her, settling the ice against her shoulder.

This wasn’t the first time. She had genuinely begun to wonder if he knew he was putting her on his lap every time he did this. She also wondered, privately, whether another round of ice was going to accomplish anything her body hadn’t already sorted out on its own. The man did love to ice. It couldn’t hurt.

"I don’t mind holding it, Alpha." She shifted, trying to stand. "Thank you for thinking of me."

He grunted then shifted her sideways so she was cradled in his lap.

The new position pressed her right down onto him. There was no mistaking it. The length of him pressed up against her, thick enough that she could track the shape of it with the slightest movement of her hips.