Her Savior Alpha

Reily

Bit by bit, the pieces were coming together. I was so close to getting Vera into the palm of my hands. Most of the pack was already enraptured by the enemies to fated lovers narrative I was putting on. Making it seem like the tables had turned between Vera and I; now she was the bad guy for not accepting my apology and continued attempted to woo her. Everyone believed this was the romantic drama of the century: the bully who finds out his victim is his mate and turns his ways around for the better, changing to be worthy of her, but she can’t accept his love. They couldn’t help but be on my side. It was almost too easy to manipulate them. Now, when I walked past people, all I could hear were whispers of “poor Reily” and “it’s horrible how she’s neither accepting nor rejecting him, stringing him along like that” and “if it were me, I’d forgive Reily in a heartbeat.”

No one seemed to care that I had a girlfriend before I felt the lure of the mating bond, nor did anyone ask. All were on my side, but the people who I needed to convince most, namely Vera, her friends, and my brother, couldn’t let go of the girlfriend thing. I needed a way to show them that I meant it.

“Gina,” I called out to my girlfriend, who was painting something on the floor of my messy bedroom. I had fixed up all the rips and spillage that occurred after I shifted for the first time, but now it was just normal messy. “I have an idea.”

Not stopping her hand from swirling designs on the canvas, she said, “Mmhmm?”

I needed her full attention on me. She had become a bit distant after finding out that Vera was my mate and that we had kissed in the woods. I told her everything so she knew that my act was just that; an act. Yet, her pride couldn’t let her take the news so easily, and since then, she had been less talkative, less affectionate. Getting up from my desk, I crouched down behind her, winding my arms around her shoulders. Her hair was in a high bun and it tickled my nose. She stilled slightly in my grasp.

“What do you say we break up?” I murmured into her ear, pressed my cheek along hers.

“What?” she hissed, dropping her paintbrush in shock.

“Shh,” I soothed, stroking her bare shoulder. “You know how I’m faking this whole Vera thing, right? It’s a part of my plan, to get her to trust me and then break her, better than I’d ever tried before. I still need a little something to make that final push, to get her and her friends to believe this whole thing.”

“Go on,” she said, turning to the side to see me better.

“Wouldn’t our public breakup be the very thing that will make her trust me? We’ve been together for so long, and the main thing making them think I’m planning something is that we’re still together. Let’s break up in front of everyone.”

Gina turned around, putting her painting tools aside. “So you break up with me, and I do what exactly?”

“Just look really torn and run away crying or something,” I said casually, shrugging. “Plays up the tears and the sadness, you know?”

An expression of dubiousness was on her heart-shaped face. “But...we’re still like secretly together though, right?”

I laughed a little. “Gina! Of course,” I pulled her to my chest. “Don’t worry, this show won’t be for long. If all goes to plan, you and I will be happy together again after a few days, and Vera will be out of our lives…perhaps forever.”

Vera

The dining hall was full that morning. I hadn’t eaten at home, my stomach still in knots from the past few days. After finishing my morning chores at break-neck speed, more because of my automatic zoning out and body going through the movement of cleaning the house and doing the dishes. I found the dishes, I found Thelma, who had just finished a meeting with her commander. “Let’s go eat, Vera. I’m starving,” she moaned, tugging me from the office building where I had met her, and pulled me on her way to the main center. Entering the hall, I found Clive and Archer, who had been gone on a weird, top-secret solo mission for about a day. I supposed he was back already.

“It looks like you two sure have gotten a lot more chummy these days,” Thelma said, pointing at the two who sat across each other, a teasing smile on her face.

Clive laughed awkwardly. “Just coincidence.” Archer simply rolled his eyes as Thelma sat next to him, looking a bit rigid and formal for some reason. I sat beside Clive.

“Aren’t you guys eating?” I asked, trying to snap out of my conflicted thoughts. Reily still couldn’t leave me mind, and not in a completely good way. Part of it was the mate bond, urging me to go to my other half, and the other part was overthinking about the right choice if I even had one. I’d realized these past few days how nice it would be to have someone romantically devoted to me, even f our past had been rocky, to say the least.

“We were waiting for you,” Clive grinned as he looked at me, the sun streaming from the windows glowing up his hair and face like an angel.

“Let’s go then!” Thelma jumped up, whizzing to the food at the front of the room, with the three of us following behind her.

Before we could make it there though, Reily strolled purposefully into the hall through the large entryway adjacent to the tables loaded with food. Behind him, Gina was running, looking distraught. She grabbed his hand, stopping him in the front of the hallway, and screeched, “Reily, you can’t be doing this to me!”

They were in perfect view of everyone in the hall, and certainly heads turned.

Sighing heavily, Reily turned to her, and I could only see his side profile. His expression was grim and apologetic.

“I’m sorry, Gina, but I have to do this. I’m breaking up with you, and that’s final.”

Everyone seemed to collectively hold their breath at the scene.

“But Rei…after all we’ve been through? You’d really do this for that…that stupid girl!”

“She’s not a stupid girl. She’s my mate, and I cannot be with you while my heart yearns for someone else. I have to do this. Thank you for what you brought into my life. But…it’s over.”

Stricken, Gina stared in horror at her boyfriend of four years, soon-to-be ex. As if waiting for him to say “Just kidding!” or take back his words. He never did. “Reily, Reily, you can’t do this. What am I supposed to do without you?”

A pin could drop in the hall and be heard in the still silence, as even chewing ceased. Reily’s following words rang loud and clear: “Please, Gina. Don’t make this harder than it already is. We’re done.”

Gina simply stood there, body tense, shoulders hunched up to her ears as if protecting herself from the onslaught o his words. She looked heartbroken. For the first time, I saw Gina with an emotion the showed she was human in side, showed her exposed side. For the most part, she looked like a vicious, snarky party girl. Her eyes looked down as if trying to hold back tears, her curls were in disarray, falling to shade her face from the crowds. I couldn’t believe Reily was making such a public breakup like this, she looked humiliated. Her hands tensed into fists, and her eyes flickered up, first at Reily, tears swimming in her big eyes that looked doll-like and young at that moment. Then, her gaze searched the crowd, stopping on me. I tensed, wondering what she would do. She simply bored her eyes into, not in anger or malice, but simply with a broken, broken look that made it heard to hold it. Why did I feel responsible for her emotional pain? I mean, Reily did make it explicitly clear that it was because of me, his newly found mate, that he had to break up with Gina, but nothing of this was my decision. I certainly never authorized Reily to break up with her. Regardless, she looked at me, the source of her relationship trouble.

Finally, Gina spoke, her voice wobbly. “I understand, Reily. I’m glad…you found your mate…” he voice broke at the end, and crumbling into a sobbing mess, Gina walked away, approaching the hall entryway, passing me along the way. I thought she would at least bump shoulders or send me a whispered threat, but she simply hurried her pace into a jog and passed by me like I was as insignificant as a dust particle.

At her disappearance, the entire hall broke out into hushed mutters of people discussing the unusual events that had just unfolded. I stood there in shock, and it dawned on me the gravity of what just happened. Reily just broke up with his girlfriend of four years for me. If nothing else that had tried blew me away, this one really took the cake.

I looked to beside me, to see if I was going crazy or not. Clive next to me seemed to be mouthing, “No way…” Even Archer kept blinking in surprise, his normally suspicious sharp eyes thrown off by Reily’s display. Thelma looked up at me, confusion shining in her cerulean eyes. “Did he just do that?” she whispered. “And did Gina just accept that without jumping at you in revenge?” I shook my head at a loss for words.

I was just as stumped as they were. It also struck me as unusual that Gina didn’t try anything. Usually, she wouldn’t shy away from make a public retaliation, no matter who it was. If I was to imagine how an actual break-up would have gone, I would have thought that Reily would cruse her out by the end, since she wouldn’t accept his words so easily. After they blew up, she would ran right up to me and slapped me, saying something like, “That’s for stealing my man,” and then slap me again and say, “and that’s for being the pathetic bitch you are!” It was weird that it didn’t go like that. .But after what Reily has been doing that past week, I couldn’t lie; his unswaying dedication to proving to me that he’d changed was starting to shift something in me.

Now, as I looked up at him from a distance, I found him already looking at me, with an expression of conviction and submission. I read the message as, “See? I would do anything for you, and I won’t stop until you trust me.”

I bit my lip, staring at him, trying to ignore the thud of my heart against my ribcage and the deep passion in my core for this man who used to despise me. His break-up certainly made my wolf leap with pride and happiness inside me.

Making a decision in that instant, I jutted my chin out the entrance, indicating for him to meet me out in the hall. He got the message.

***

We stood in an empty corridor, facing each other in utter quiet. He waited for me to gather my thought, his hands shoved deep in his black jean pockets. I took a deep breath, running a hand through my ebony waves, which I’d left to curtain around my shoulders today.

“Reily, I wanted to talk about what happened back there. Did you actually break up with Gina for…for….”

“For you?”

“Well, no, for the mate bond, is what I was going to say.”

“To answer your question, yes I did. It was a long time coming, honestly, my feelings for her were fading,” he looked up in the distance, thinking about something. “The day after I shifted, it was like I realized our relationship would never develop further. I also didn’t feel any of the passion that one would expect with a mate. I would’ve broken up with her anyway, but yes, Vera, you prompted me to do that.”

I was silent for a moment as I tried to form words. “I have to admit, it was a bit convincing. But the truth is, I still can’t trust you. Within me, and you probably feel it too, there’s the indescribably pull to stay by your side. But I’m….afraid.” It took effort to let those vulnerable words out in front of who used to be my biggest enemy.

Reily nodded with an unreadable expression. “Afraid of what?”

“What if I trust you and you hurt me? What if you grow bored of me? What if the feelings of the mate bond don’t completely overpower your hatred of me? What if you go back to how you were and beat me daily?” I stared him straight in the eye, baring my soul to the one I claimed not to trust.

“What can I do to make you trust me?” he asked desperately, seemingly ready to do whatever it took.

“Promise me, no, swear on the moon goddess that you’ll never go back to the way things were.”

He nodded resolutely. “Vera, my mate, I swear upon the Moon Goddess that we will never return to the way things were. I will make you the happiest you’ve ever been. I promise to be the best mate and protector. If you will give me the chance, I will give you the world.”

Hearing him make such a serious oath struck another cord within me, perhaps the last cord. Hope filled me and I dared to step forward into a new future. My wolf screamed with joy, and I had to stop myself from letting out tears of relief.

I let out a shaky laugh. “Well, then Reily. I’m down for completing our mate bond if you are.”