The Alpha's Human Whore

DAMIEN

The command was still inside my head when the knock came again.

If anyone takes her from you, kill them.

I had heard my wolf before, through rage, hunger, blood, pain, but never with that kind of certainty, and I hated the words because some part of me had already decided they were right.

Ava was still trapped against me, staring at the blood on my hand as if she could not understand how something so small had made such a fucking mess.

Neither could I.

The knife remained buried in my side.

I lowered my eyes to it.

The blade had gone in shallowly, but it had no business still being there, and my body had no business behaving like this. I had taken bullets, blades, broken bones and wounds that should have put an ordinary man into the ground, yet my flesh had always closed before the blood had enough time to matter.

This one refused.

I wrapped my fingers around the knife handle.

Ava saw what I was doing and immediately caught my wrist.

“Wait, what are you doing? You cannot just pull that thing out when you are already bleeding like this, Damien, please stop messing with it.”

I looked at her hand around mine.

Her fingers were shaking. Ava's grip tightened around my wrist, but the blade came free with an ease that made my attention snap toward her.

There was no resistance.

None.

The knife slid from my body as though her hand had somehow loosened something I could not see, and I stared down at the blade while blood ran over my fingers.

Ava stared at the knife. Then at me.

Then at the wound.

I watched the realization struggle across her face before fear swallowed it.

“What the hell is happening to you?”

Her voice cracked on the last word.

I did not answer. I could not. The wound was open beneath my palm, hot and wrong, but the moment Ava's fingers brushed against my side, the pain changed.

She had reached out because she was frightened by the blood, because she had seen it pouring between my fingers and apparently forgotten that I was the man she had just stabbed.

Her fingertips pressed against my skin.

Everything stopped.

The pain vanished so violently that my body almost moved away from her.

I stared at her hand.

The torn flesh beneath it pulled together.

Ava gasped and jerked back, but not quickly enough.

The wound closed under her palm, the edges drawing into one another until there was nothing left except blood smeared across my skin.

I caught her wrist before she could pull away.

She looked down at my hand around hers, then back at my side.

“No.”

The word came out of her mouth like she had not meant to say it.

I released her.

She stumbled backward.

Her eyes stayed fixed on my stomach, searching for the wound that was no longer there.

“What did I just do?”

I said nothing. My wolf was no longer screaming.

It was watching her.

Waiting.

Claiming.

The realization I had fought against came back harder than before, dragging everything with it; the bite, the mark beneath her hair, the way my instincts had reacted to her from the moment she walked into my room, the impossible healing beneath her hand.

Mate.

The word was poisonous.

I refused it.

My wolf snarled.

Ava looked at me sharply. She had heard nothing, but she saw something change in my face.

I stepped toward her.

She stepped back.

“You need to stay away from me.”

Her voice was trembling now, and she looked toward the door as though measuring the distance.

I should have stopped her.

Instead, I watched her. Blood covered my hands.

My shirt was ruined. The knife lay on the floor between us.

She looked at me as though she had finally realized that the man in front of her was not the man she thought she had sold one night of her life to.

She grabbed her bag.

I moved but she moved faster.

The door opened, and she slipped through before I could reach her.

“Ava.”

She did not stop. She ran.

I stood there for one second too long, staring at the empty doorway while the smell of her skin still clung to the room.

Then a voice came from the corridor.

“Sir, I heard something break, and I thought you might need… ”

The man stepped inside. He was one of the hotel staff.

His eyes went straight to the blood on my hands.

Then to my shirt. Then to the knife lying near the table.

His face drained.

“What happened in here?”

I turned toward him.

His question irritated me more than it should have.

“Where did she go?”

He blinked.

“I don't know who you're talking about, sir. I came because I heard shouting and…”

“Where did she go?”

I heard the edge in my own voice.

The man swallowed and glanced toward the open corridor.

“I saw a woman running toward the elevators, but I didn't…”

My vision sharpened, and his face changed. His eyes widened as he took one step backward, then another.

I felt the change before I understood it, the heat moving through my eyes as my wolf rose beneath my skin, furious that someone else had seen me like this, furious that Ava was gone.

The man's breathing stopped.

His gaze locked onto mine.

“What the hell are your eyes?”

I did not answer. The room went strangely quiet around us.

His mouth opened.

A scream tore out of him.

He stumbled backward so violently that his heel caught against the doorframe, and he crashed onto the corridor floor, scrambling away from me with both hands as though distance alone could save him.

I looked away from him.

Ava.

I could still smell her. I pushed past the man and ran.

The elevator doors were closing.

I reached them too late.

By the time I reached the lobby, the scent had already thinned beneath perfume, polished marble, coffee, human sweat and hundreds of strangers passing through my hotel every day.

I reached the entrance just as she climbed into the back of a taxi.

Ava slammed the door behind her, and the car pulled away before I reached the curb.

I stopped beneath the hotel lights, watching the rear of the vehicle disappear into traffic.

The plate caught beneath the streetlight. I read it once. Then again.

I had no need for a third look.

I had spent centuries remembering things other men forgot.