Fated To the Alpha by Jessica Hall
Chapter 240: Marabella POV
We were partway through a conversation when Jonah got this glazed over look like his mind went somewhere else when suddenly he was bleeding all over the sofa.
I freaked instantly and gripped his shoulders, shaking him but got no response, physically he was here, but his wide-open vacant eyes told me he was also elsewhere.
“Jonah!” I shrieked in a panic. Looking around, I ran toward the kitchen and grabbed some teatowels from the bottom drawer before racing back to Jonah, whose blood was running onto the tiled floor as it dripped off the sofa.
“Jonah?”
“Try to slow the bleeding. Why isn’t he healing?” Kora shrieked when pain radiated up my arms. When Kyan’s father’s voice whispered behind my ear, red marks burned into my skin.
“Calm down. Jonah is fine. Kyan is channeling him to remain in this world. Kaif won’t let him d*e, Marabella.” My arms stung, yet it made no sense. What he said made no sense when I felt my mouth pooling with my venom.
“Shift if you want to heal him,” I tell her, trying to f0rce it, yet my body remained; I didn’t want to start licking him like some freak.
“You can’t. Kyan is blocking you from feeling him, blocking you completely,”
“Dominic, right?” I asked just to ensure it was his father.
“Yes, bout time you figured it out, princess” I s*cked in a breath, and a tear slipped down my cheek. I swallowed the emotion back, knowing he d*ied for me. Yet he was always with me, drowning in my hopelessness with me, always bringing me back from ending it.
Keeping me going, I understood what my father meant when he said Dominic was a better man than he gave him credit for, that he couldn’t repay what he gave for him, and neither could I.
His voice was sometimes the only thing that kept me alive and breathing until Kora came along. The voice that would talk to me while I hid away from the world, from myself.
“You can still heal him,” Dominic tells me. I looked down at Jonah’s bleeding wrists. Ah, gross, I thought but snatched his arm up before running my tongue over the deep cuts. My tongue tingled as I ran my tongue from his wrist to the crook of his elbow.
Dominic’s voice laughed in my head at my reaction. “Well, you would s**k being a vampire,”
academy “Surprisingly, it doesn’t taste too bad, just the thought is what is making me cringe,” I tell him, and I felt my energy diminishing more as my body grew heavier. He laughs again when I move on to the next one, four lines marking up each arm, and by the time I was done, his blood coated my lips and face. I wiped my face on the teatowel and shivered, but the wounds remained closed, yet he was still stuck in this trance-like state.
“Now what?” I ask Kora and Dominic as I leaned heavily back on the sofa, suddenly exhausted like I just had my energy zapped out of me.
“We wait,” Dominic says, and I sit my head back on the sofa, Kora paced in my head, worried about Kyan.
“Can I ask you something?” I ask Dominic; now I can pinpoint him. It was just like having Kora in my head but not also not. Like he was a fleeting ent*ity that could be conjured up at will.
“Anything,” He says.
“You’re not always in my head, right? You don’t like, see everything I do?”‘ I ask. Gosh, that would be awkward, especially around bathroom breaks and showers. Oh g*d, please tell me he hasn’t seen me shave.
He laughs. “No, Marabella, only when strong emotion pulls me toward you, kind of like Kyan and Jonah, when Kaif gets out he draws on his energy, and Jonah knows he needs help, panic, fear, your sadness, any heightened emotion can drag me near, let me come forward to help, giving you a friend,”
“So you are like Jonah,”
“In a sense, I am your guardian, but I like to think you are much more than that.”
“More?”
“Yes, I have watched you grow. You are as much my daughter as Kyan is my son, much more than a friend Marabella,” His words shouldn’t have made me more emotional, but they did. For years I believed he was just an imaginary friend that I was alone in this world, but knowing he was by my side all this time made me suddenly not feel so lonely.
“Do you regret it, regret leaving Kyan, I mean?”
“No, I don’t regret taking your place, Marabella, if that is what you are asking,”
“No, I meant leaving Kyan. Maybe he would have been better off with you instead of me,” I tell him.
“No parent should bury their child. That’s not how it is supposed to be. Even if you weren’t Kyan’s mate, I still would have taken a bullet for you. As a parent, I couldn’t fathom the thought of losing a child, and you are as much my child now as you are your parents,”
“How can you speak to me though if your d**d,”
“Nothing ever really d*ies, Marabella; there is more to d**h, we are told early on to fear d***h, but sometimes we just need to embrace it,” He says. I was about to ask more when Jonah lurched forward. He coughs, and I grip his arms.
“Are you alright? Is Kyan?”
“I’m fine, and so is Kyan, at least I think he is,”
“What do you mean?”
“He just learned some home truths he should have faced years ago; he is alive though Mara,” he says when a shudder runs through him, and he gr0@ns.
“Oh, for frig sake, can I not catch a break tonight.” He growls when I see his eyes glaze over again, but it was a mindlink. That much I could tell.
When his eyes return back to normal, he stands and scrubs a hand down his face and stood. He glances at the sofa that was drenched in his blood.
“You were bleeding, Kyan,”
“Yeah,” He says, looking at his wrists.
“You cleaned me?”
“No, not exactly,” my face heats.
“You healed me,” he smiled before reaching down and gripping my hands, and tugging me to my feet to stand before him.
“That would explain why you look so pale and tired,” Jonah says, cupping my face with both his hands. His thumbs rub gently across my cheeks, and I lean into his touch when he tilts my face up to kiss me. I reached my arms up, which felt like they weighed a tonne, and wrapped them around his neck before I kissed him back.
My tongue traced over the seam of his lips, and he gr0@ns, gripping my thighs and lifting me higher, and I wrapped my legs around his waist, pressing closer to him as his tongue played with mine when I remembered Kyan and ripped myself away.
“It’s fine, Marabella. Kyan can block us out, and he has,”
“But it’s still wrong,”
“Nothing wrong with me loving you, Kyan knows that, or he wouldn’t have let you stay here,” he says, pecking my lips before turning.
“But I have to go,”
“Go?”
“Yeah, Casen and Rose got into an argument, and he finally told her he was her mate. She has taken off; I shouldn’t be too long. Hopefully,” he growls before walking toward the bedroom. He places me on the bed before leaning over the top of me and kissing me again.
“I will be back soon, sleep,” He says, and I yawn, and Jonah walks to the wardrobe and pulls out some shorts before tugging his shirt off. Kora, the d***y wolf, comes forward to gawk at him licking her chops like she wanted to devour him whole. I try to shove her back, and Jonah glances over his shoulder at me and raises an eyebrow at me.
“Settle Kora,”‘ He laughs softly, and I touch my flaming cheeks, realizing she was purring like a hussy.
“Sorry,” I blurted out, but Jonah shrugs before coming over to me in just a pair of black shorts.
He pecks my forehead. “I gotta go, so sleep. I will wake you when I get home,” he says before turning on his heel and leaving the room.
It was early morning when I woke up to the sound of my phone alerting me I had a text message. Rolling over, I reach for my phone when I realize Jonah still wasn’t back. Grabbing my phone, I thought it might be Jonah, but it was Kyan.
Kyan: A car is waiting downstairs to pick you up.
Me: And where am I going?
Kyan: You are coming to stay at the manor.
Me: Jonah?
Kyan; Busy, you will stay with me and I am sure he will come over when he gets back.
I thought the message was odd; Kyan usually stays as far away from me as possible but suddenly wants me under the same roof. I stare at the messages again before dialing his number, but the phone rings out only to receive a text message straight away.
Kyan: In meetings, Blake my Uncle’s friend is waiting in the foyer for you. See you tonight.
Ok then? I thought, forcing myself out of bed; I go to Jonah’s cupboard and tug on one of his hood*ies over my blood-stained top. Kora excitedly bounced in my head, knowing we were going to see our mate.
“See, see. He does want us,” She bounces, and I chuckle, shaking my head at her before trying to ring Jonah, but he had no cell service. With a sigh, I shrug and grab my shoes and wallet before pocketing my phone to find this person called Blake.