Chapter 206: My Fated Mate Didn’t Know She Was Mine

Nova woke up comfortable. That should have been the first warning. Nothing comfortable had happened to her in weeks without something devastating following it.

"Breathe," Alpha Thunderfang said, the word landing low and warm against her ear. "I’ve got you. Just breathe."

She forced one breath into her lungs. It came out broken, but it came.

Then she glanced down at herself. They were under a blanket in his study. She had on a silk chemise and bralette that she had no memory of putting on.

Her face went hot.

She became aware of her own body in pieces. Her arm had been wrapped. Ice sat against her shoulder, the cold settled deep into it.

Without a word, he reached past her and twisted open a water bottle, bringing it to her lips. "Drink some water."

She didn’t need telling twice. The dehydration hit her the second the water touched her tongue, and she guzzled it down. He held the bottle while she drank, but her hands went over his on instinct.

Mid-sip, she caught a glimpse of a mark on the inside of his forearm. A Thunderfang lightning bolt, the same shape as Dante’s. Except Dante’s had glowed blue, and this one was gold.

She filed it away for a question she was too tired to ask.

"We’re in my study. My chambers are being cleaned," he explained, like her waking up on top of him was the most normal thing in the world, which was fair. At this point, it was. Alpha Thunderfang icing her shoulder while she was unconscious was a daily occurrence.

"Were you having a bad dream?" he asked after a moment.

"Yes," she whispered.

"Was it at the Moonfire arena?"

She turned her head to look at him, startled by how precisely he’d landed on it, but he drew her back against his chest before she could get a read on his face. He cracked open a second bottle, tilting it to her mouth.

"Yes," she managed, after another long pull of water.

"I’m not going to let anything happen to you, Nova."

The statement caught her off guard. She believed him. This man was very good at making people feel safe.

The fire popped in the hearth. His arms were tight and his chest was warm against her back and he was extremely comfortable to lie on. Nothing about this situation should have been comfortable. She was in a man’s arms in a study wearing clothes she didn’t put on with ice she didn’t request and the comfort was total and the confusion was equally total and the two were coexisting without resolution.

His voice broke her out of her train of thought again.

"Do you remember what happened, Nova?"

She racked her brain and got fog for her trouble. There had been gifts from Alpha Thunderfang, the gold gown, the diamonds. Then pack initiation. The dagger that glowed in his hand. His blood and hers in the flame. Then the gold had come, and it had hurt, knives on her insides, and then nothing. A black edge she couldn’t see past.

And somewhere, loose and unmoored, Derek’s voice. Had he been awake, or had she dreamed that too? That was fog as thick as the rest of it, impossible to tell memory from wishful invention.

Her mind raced through all of it and came up with nothing she could stand on. What came out of her mouth was none of it.

"Did I pass out?" She kept her voice flat, empty of anything, the way she’d trained it over years.

"Yes," Alpha Thunderfang answered.

"D-did the fire—" Her throat closed around what she was trying to ask. Was I rejected?

He cut her off before she could finish it. "No. You’re a pack member now. There was never a question in my mind that you would be."

He brought the water back up against her lips and she drank it.

"You absorbed my aura, Nova. Do you remember that? It hurt."

If that was the gold, she did remember it hurting. But aura was not something she quite understood. In Starborne, the only ones who had an aura were the Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and their sons. The Alpha’s was the strongest. It was the thing that made people bow and Alpha commands work.

She wasn’t sure if that was what he meant or something else. She had never heard of it being absorbed.

"I’m not sure I understand," she admitted.

His chest rose against her back as he gathered the words. "The pressure that makes an entire pack bow and Alpha commands work. It was something I was born with. You pulled mine into you in front of every elder and officer in that hall."

She turned that over and arrived nowhere.

"If I absorbed it, Alpha, then I don’t know how I did it. But I’ll give it back to you." She meant it, down to the floor. She also understood how stupid it sounded but that was after it came out of her mouth.

A laugh broke out of him against her spine, low and warm, and it pulled a smile out of her before she decided to let it.

"First." He was still half-laughing. "You call me Landon. That is long overdue."

Her face went hot, for reasons she chose not to inspect. She tried to turn and look at him, and his arms drew in a fraction, keeping her exactly where she was.

"Sierra absorbed Sebastian’s aura." He laid it out slow, letting her catch up. "Maria absorbed Tavian’s. And you absorbed mine, unprompted. Theirs was expected. Yours wasn’t, because only fated mates can absorb an aura, and even then, only when the priestess ordains it. You pulled mine in without any of that."

Her lips parted. She tried to make something of it and found her thoughts moving at half their usual speed.

"There’s something I need to tell you, Nova. There’s a reason you’re here. Why you’re in my arms right now." His arms shifted, drawing her a fraction closer. His heart was hammering against her back. Alpha Thunderfang’s resting heart rate was steady enough to calibrate instruments to. This was not his resting heart rate. Something was coming. "The truth is, the last few weeks have been absolute hell for me because my brother was paired with my fated mate and she didn’t even know she was mine."