Back and Stronger: Alpha's Daughter

It was definitely a full moon again. Other than her nervous excitement due to the knowledge of the calendar date, she could feel Her enchanting forces bewitching Sophia’s senses already.

It made her feel jittery and like she wanted to leap out of her skin the whole time. She had to breathe in deeply a few times already that morning to calm herself before she would squeal, or do something even more embarrassing like fist-pumping the air or something.

There had been a few close calls, so she rather opted for keeping her mind busy, for her anxious enthusiasm for the night ahead was not only for having her first guided shift, it was more the who her ‘guide’ was going to be that caused such a heady mix of emotions within her.

After watching the boys play Call of Duty for a while, she found that it wasn’t able to keep her mind preoccupied. It kept slipping ahead of time to tonight, at midnight, when she will shift again, and then back in time again to when Neil had stood so close to her last night and promised that he will be there every step of the way for her shift. He basically made himself her Shift Mentor, and Sophia couldn’t help but feel her toes curl at just remembering the intimacy in his voice and eyes.

She stole a covert glance at him then, his hair messy from sleep and still in his sweets, his laser-sharp focus on the split-screen that allowed him and Scott to play the game together while being able to see where the other was and did at the same time, she bit her lip in anticipation of spending the night alone with Neil out somewhere in the woods. He hadn’t given her any details of where he intended to take her. He’d only said that they were going to a location he knew to be safe for them to shift.

Even though that should have sounded shady as hell to her, especially since she was still working on not jerking away from his touch after what happened, Sophia had mostly mastered this tendency when she finally had been able to convince her irrational subconscious mind that she trusted Neil completely now.

Both Neil and Scott had started breaking touch barriers little by little over the last couple of days, and she found she was able to tolerate it now without wanting to freak out on them.

She was particularly relieved that she had been able to do this since she also started feeling like she enjoyed being touched with anything other than violence. She’d started craving it actually.

Sophia still couldn’t wrap her head around it, that one moment she had been utterly repulsed by just the thought of making contact with any other person’s skin, especially that of a male, to finding herself looking at Neil’s hands from time to time, wishing he would cover her hands more, touch her arms more, capture her chin more, lay it on her cheek more or gently tuck her hair behind her ear more. Anything more. But he was still careful with her, and she knew it was for the best. She didn’t want to be forced to jerk away from him for any reason ever again.

At that moment, it was like he seemed to have noticed her eyes on him as she could see his spine straightening as though he was even able to hear her thoughts. His eyes darkened as he paused the game and turned to look at her with an amused smile.

Shit. Not as stealthy as you thought, Sophia.

“You wanna give this another go?” he asked her as he lifted the control in his hand as he said ‘this’. If it hadn’t been for that small gesture, thankfully, she would have totally misinterpreted that question and started blushing profusely.

“Uhh – no. I know when I should stop trying to be good at something that I’m clearly two left thumbs with,” Sophia laughed nervously, quickly trying to come up with something to cover for him having caught her ogling him. “I’m glad I finally got your attention,” she said, clearing her throat and letting her eyes go to Scott as well. “I wanted to ask if you guys would like some breakfast? I’m making it, so you two can keep playing.”

She had thought of it just a moment ago, when she realized she needed something to do that would keep her busy, and making a big breakfast for them would surely take care of her problem for at least an hour.

Besides, she liked treating them and doing them small favors every now and again. Not only did Sophia owe them as much, but she also found that she enjoyed doing it. It made her feel like she was capable of doing things that made them smile.

“Oh, hell, yes!” Neil said with a grin as he pressed play again on the control and continued his ‘headshot’ spree with impressive accuracy the moment the screen started moving again. “You’re speaking the language of my rumbling tummy right now.”

“What the ill-mannered oaf was trying to say, Sophia, is that that would be lovely,” Scott said, heightening the pitch to his voice with every few words in a reprimanding manner and leaning toward Neil’s ear with each, but as both had expected, he just laughed but ignored him as he was running up behind some clueless player on the internet, somewhere else in the world, and stabbed him from behind.

Sophia and Scott shared a humorous look before he too returned to the game. Still smiling, she walked back to the kitchen to start breakfast. She ended up making them eggs, sunny side up for Neil, medium for Scott, Bratwurst sausages, back bacon, patties with melted cheese on top, and heated a can of baked beans to go with all of that.

Overdoing it much? No, these two males were the biggest eaters she’d ever met, but seeing as they were active and muscled guys, she wasn’t all too surprised after the initial shock of watching each one of them gobbling down an amount of food that would have kept her for a whole week in one single sitting.

“Jeez, Sophia, that looks amazing,” Neil suddenly said from behind her over her shoulder as she was just about to call to them that the food was ready, causing her to jump and almost drop the pan full of sausages.

“Careful,” he breathed, still close to her ear as he placed his hands on either side of her arms, steadying her, but his touch made her feel everything but. “I can see you’re on edge tonight. Don’t be. Just relax and be patient. The moon will come at Her time whether you’re angsty about it or not.”

For a moment she could feel heat and tension starting to build within her, and felt his hands moving up her arms slightly, as though he wanted to move them from there to her shoulders. Did he want to give her a massage? It felt like it, but he must have suddenly decided against it when she stiffened at the thought, not entirely certain whether it was because she wanted him to or not.

But when Neil gave her arms a final squeeze before pulling away, she knew immediately that it had been the former.

Willing the buzz in her veins to settle the fuck down, Sophia turned and pretended that she hadn’t been affected by him at all, as she knew he would be studying her for it. When she dared a glance at him, she saw a small smile and knew that he must have seen something he liked.

Sophia ignored him. In fact, she ignored him for the rest of the day after that, as she was nervous enough as it was about the shift tonight. She didn’t need another reason for her stomach to roll and jolt in revolt more to her nerve endings crackling away like live wires in water.

Luckily the two males were doing their own things throughout the day, while she did a bit of school work, vacuumed and tidied the apartment up a bit, as well as did half of the laundry load. By the time that had all been done, she knew she had about an hour left to spare before the time Neil had said they would leave.

She remembered how he’d just smiled amusedly at her indifference toward him when he’d spoken to her earlier. He’d asked her if she was looking forward to tonight as much as he did, and she’d answered with an aloofness that even surprised herself.

“I guess so,” Sophia had said, pretending to be distracted by something else.

That got to him a bit, she had noticed, and had hidden a smile of her own as she walked away from him still feeling his questioning eyes on her back.

With an hour left, she decided to try and simmer her nerves down with a hot shower, and it worked. Only a little. Sophia still felt like she needed to do more, finding herself taking out the make-up Scott had brought her once when he came back after shopping for some new clothes for her.

She’d experimented with a few products already, like only putting on the CC cream one, darkening her lashes or her eyebrows the next, and testing out the lip gloss most of the time, as she liked how good the color looked on her lips and the way it smelled of peppermint.

No, you like to put it on so much because Neil seems to like it, Sophia raised her eyebrow at herself in the mirror as she was putting it on at that very moment.

It was true. She’d caught him looking at her lips more often than usual when she wore it.

Scott had even got her an ink eye-liner, eyeshadow, and a blush, but she didn’t need a blush so much anymore, as her natural rosy color had returned to her now-fuller cheeks that she was healthier.

Before Sophia knew what she was doing she had all those products, which she had only singularly experimented with before, all together on her face at that moment. She’d done it all very lightly to not make it look too obvious, or that she was trying to look better for him, but…

Damn, she thought as she stared at the stunning girl in the mirror. Is that really me?

She wondered if her own brother would even recognize her if she walked down the street right past him. Even her white-blond hair had a silvery shine to it now as it hung sleek and straight down just past her shoulders.

There was a soft knock on the door then, and Sophia felt her heart jump in excitement. “You ready to leave?” she heard Neil ask from behind the closed door there.

Taking a deep breath in an attempt to calm herself, she glanced at herself in the mirror one last time. “You got this,” she said to herself as she let the breath out again.

She’d taken long enough for Neil to want to knock again when she opened the door when he was just about to bring his knuckles down on it again, but paused them mid-air when Sophia stood there in front of him instead of the door.

He seemed to be frozen in time as his body remained rigid like that. His bronze eyes moving from her eyes to her hair, back to her eyes and then to her mouth, was the only indication that he wasn’t a statue.

Sophia felt herself blush as her blood boiled within her under his clearly appreciative gaze, but quickly lifted her chin and brushed past him, saying with more confidence than she felt, “Are you coming, or what?”