Chapter 188: Never again

Elias’s POV

I watch my playful mate morph from cold and rigid to soft and beautiful the moment we step outside and I snatch him off the floor.

Fuck.

I never want to see him like that again. I never want to see him put on my own skin. I never want to fucking hear him talk without the life in his voice.

"Never again" I hear myself say out loud. My heart is lodged in my throat. The red, worse than before, stains my body and I don’t give a fuck. His safety comes first. "Never again" I repeat.

My body is shaking. My hurting shoulder feels like it’s about to pull out of the socket. Adrenaline and pain mix into one heated rush that warms my icy blood. This is what it feels like to be passionate isn’t it?

I hear someone coming up behind me to help, but without looking at the person, I growl like an animal, warning them off and holding my mate even tighter. I want no one interfering between my mate and I. Not even my mother.

I kick my door open and unceremoniously dump Noah on the bed.

"Ow" the omega complains and I point at him in rage.

"Shut. Up. You shut the fuck up" I snarl and he shrinks into himself. Full of this strange kind of rage, I head to my bathroom and get the first-aid box. Without speaking to him, I pull the sheets off his body, and growl at the wound Aria left.

I’m giving her a head start to hide and that’s only because she has become family.

"You fucking liar. This is a scratch?" I ask and he whimpers but doesn’t move away from me.

This man will be the death of me.

"This is a fucking scratch?!" my voice goes a notch higher and Noah holds up a hand. He looks like he’s about to give me another lie, and I slap the hand away. The cut is not fatal enough to need an ER visit, but it’s deep enough to cause an alarm.

"Elias, it doesn’t hurt that much" he says and I grab the area above the wound, making him scream in pain.

"What the hell?"

"It doesn’t hurt?" I ask bitterly.

"You’re making it hurt, you jerk!" he yells and slaps my hand off his body. He still doesn’t know what this is doing to me. He still hasn’t processed how dangerously close he is to making me lose my mind.

"You sit and you shut up" I snarl and he presses his lips together. He turns his head to the side and my alpha surfaces. He’s about to do that same action I hate, the one he carries out every single time I need him to do something for me. This fucking stubborn omega.

My hands are off him, but my eyes are passing my message.

"Shake your head at me. I dare you" I say calmly and he drops his head to look at his lap instead.

Ignoring him and his irrelevant tantrum, I clean and tend to his wound. Today has been full of activities, too many activities, and he’s all that matters in the midst of it all. Why can’t he understand me. My mate is still naked, still has dried bloodstains with dried cum and slick all over his skin.

My hands tremble as I finish up the treatment. My heart is still beating too fast, still at my throat, and still very scared for Noah’s sake.

"Get up" I order and he gets up.

"To the bathroom" I say coldly and with his head down and ass bare, he walks to the bathroom like he’s doing the walk of shame. Good. He better be fucking ashamed. I follow behind him and run the bath. The bubble bath product I got from Kai is still lying untouched where I dropped it on the floor in panic.

The omega keeps standing there with his head down as I prepare the bubble bath. When I’m done, he gets in the tub and looks at me with sparkling blue eyes. I fucking hate how innocent he looks like now. I despise how precious he is to me and how vulnerable he makes me feel.

Tearing my eyes off his face, I help him wash up with my own loofah. He keeps his bandaged arm out of the bath and I take care of the rest of him. The bubble covers all of him and I still know every part of him. He’s the research field and I am the fucked up scientist.

"What are you so mad at me?" he asks.

"Shut up, Noah. My brain isn’t capable of producing any words that won’t lead to more anger" I say and he stops my hand movement.

"Look at me, Elias. Please" he says and against my own will, I look.

I’m weak. And he’s everything to me. The man I love.

"In the span of one day, I’ve told you I love you, I’ve had to fight for the clan, and I’ve almost had to lose you twice. Do you know what that does to me?" I ask and his face softens further into the Noah I know. The optimistic angel I broke out of the Winslow rock.

"I promise everything is okay" he says.

"It’s not!" I raise my voice and he flinches.

I let my body drop to the floor and bury my fingers in my hair. For the first time, I’m not using my brain, I’m using this inexplicable need to protect what’s mine. Noah is mine to protect as much as he’s mine to possess.

"It’s not okay" I say with exhaustion.

"It didn’t hurt the baby-"

"It hurt you" I argue and Noah repeats what he said at first, the same words that didn’t register at first.

"It didn’t hurt the..."

Baby.

"Baby?" I ask and he nods. He reaches his good arm out and takes my hand. I stay still with bated breath as he presses my hand to his belly under the water.

"It didn’t hurt the baby" he says for the first time while my neurons try to fire up again.

"The...baby" I repeat the last words after him and he nods again.

"It didn’t hurt our baby, Elias. So everything is okay" he says and all the anger leaves me. We have a baby? Noah is...pregnant with my child?