Chapter 109

Helen POV

I kept my head bowed, trying to be compliant so he would forgive me easier. I closed my eyes, my breath hitched, hearing my mate cross the space between us. The grass settled under his weight as he stood in front of me.

“Helen,” he hummed, saying my name in a calm, kind manner for the first time in forever. “Look at me right now.”

I finally opened my eyes and stared through my fated mate, seeing him knelt on the ground just centimeters in front of my face. He grinned lightly, fighting it down but he failed.

“Are you angry with me?” I pressed, thinking of the bonfire and the dinner for the packs coming together, and yet here he was with me. “I’m sorry, Justin. It was all a mistake and it was my fault and—”

He jolted forward in a sudden movement, his lips finding mine. I snaked my arms around his shoulders and his neck, bringing me to his chest so our lips could work together better.

He tensed when my arms came across the ridged scar on his spine and he released me with a reflexive shove. I hit the grass in shame, blushing too hard for comfort, and bowing my head in hated misery.

“I’m sorry,” he panted, trying to catch his breath. “It’s just—”

“I know what it is,” I hummed. “It’s fine, Alpha. I understand. You can punish me accordingly. I won’t be upset, Justin. I made a mistake tonight… and before.”

He sat back, bringing his fingertips to my throat and dragging them up my neck. It forced me to look at him closer, to admire his stoic, pale features and the sadness that stirred inside.

Somehow I could read that he wasn’t planning on hurting me.

For now, he dropped his hand, sat back against the tree beside me and motioned to the top of the branches. I didn’t have to ask him to explain what he wanted, I could feel it.

I sat against his lap and waved my hands slow in the air, the pixies coming down from above and descending onto my arms like little brushes of feathers.

When I fixed the pixie in the woods and healed her wing after we collided, they seemed to grow their trust with my attendance around them. I sat by the cave fire for awhile but when the howling rogues left, I was drawn out by the little pixies lights.

They have been swarming me ever since that moment.

The little pixies come around my body and in-turn, they dance alone Justin’s posture against the tree. He held a palm out like feeding a cardinal bird in his hand but instead, beams of light and wings danced on the insides of his knuckles.

He grinned lightly at the feeling of their itty-bitty bodies prancing alone his skin.

“They’re amazing, mate,” he hummed.

I nodded, playing with them and watching as Oscar stalked along the inside of the willow tree, pulling the focus of one pixie in particular.

She sat on his shoulder, leaning into his neck, and looked like nothing more than a diamond on his bare shoulder.

I couldn’t help but grin at the cute relationship this edgy rough held with a pixie.

A deep, familiar howl rung outside the willow tree and I froze, feeling dread come over me again like it had when I first got lost out here. Justin waved the pixies away and grabbed my shoulder, lifting me from the ground.

“We have to go. There are rogues coming… lots of them,” he growled.

There was more howls, deeper and closer than before. Oscar tried to calm down the pixies in their fluttering panic and he shushed them down enough to where they stopped squealing lightly.

“What about Oscar?” I purred.

Justin looked to the rogue who helped me. He has odd eyes and a special friendship with abnormal creatures, ones I never knew existed in the first place, but he did help protect me.

“We can’t leave him here to fend for himself,” I pleaded. “He protected me.”

Justin finally inhaled slowly and at last, he nodded and agreed. “He can join.”

Oscar seemed happy to be included with the protection of the Alpha King. He waved the pixies over and they all clung to his shoulders and his back, engulfing him in a bright, encasing light.

With one snap of his fingers, their light dissipated, and the world was dark in night again. Justin parted the leaves first, looking back and forth through the trees and waiting for another howl.

When the coast was clear, we left the safety of the large, aged willow tree and the three of us walked quickly through the forest, retracing our steps back to what used to be Lone Wolf.

We came close to the boarder and Justin dropped his grasp on my shoulder, knitting our fingers together while our hands came together at our hips. I thought of our kiss before, my cheeks hot again with the felling of his precious love.

I missed his gentleness, his kind kisses, but the new rougher ones weren’t so bad either…

Just thinking about the new heat in our romance made my stomach hurt. We still had a few miles until we would make it to the pack grounds, but my aching core had grown more harsh, a little more sharp and striking.

I hiccupped and doubled forward, landing on my side.

Justin came over me, kneeling on my dress while his knee brushed my stomach. “Are you okay? What is going on, mate?”

I fought through gritted teeth, unsure how my wolf and my mind had triggered my heat now, of all moments. I felt waves of hot pain come down by front and I screamed in response.

Oscar turned his head, his hand pulled over his nose and mouth.

He was trying to block the scent of my heat from affecting him which means it’s already slithering through the air, carried by the wind, and the rogues will catch my scent soon.

A howl in the distance roared louder than before.

Justin looked over me in hesitating confidence. “I can’t fix you now, mate, not in these conditions in the woods. We have rogues coming from the South. But if you carry on through this heat and I carry you to the pack boundary, they will track us easier.”

I shook my head and stuttered through my labored breath. “Leave me, Justin. Go! You can’t get hurt, please, don’t let me cause you to get hurt again, Justin.”

He furrowed his brow. After a long, grisly pause, he asked, “What the hell are you saying?”

All at once he hiked me off the grass and pulled me into his chest with sovereignty and love and some twinge of exhaustion. But still, he carried me, cooing for me to relax as he walked faster.

Oscar hung back, trying to keep away from my scent, but the pixies on his back came fluttering forward. They landed on my stomach and chest and lit up, blinding my mate for a second, but he kept pushing forward.

I sniffled a hard inhale and when I exhaled, the pain of my heat was gone.

We both looked at the pixies, confused, and Oscar returned to our sides.

“Oh yeah,” he said, snickering slightly. “They have some wild powers.”