Mated To The Crippled Alpha
Chapter 479: HIS DARKEST SECRET
I had no idea what was really waiting for me on the other side of Vito’s promise. All I knew was that he said I could go home once I felt better, so I threw everything I had into getting well. I drank the bitter medicine. I ate the food. I rested when he told me to rest.
I couldn’t fully understand what was happening around me, but I could feel things , the way you feel weather before it arrives. And what I felt from Vito and Yael wasn’t danger. It was something steadier than that. Something that made me want to stay close instead of run. So I did.
It didn’t take long before Yael and I were best friends.
Vito looked away for barely a minute, and when he turned back, we were buried in a mountain of snack wrappers, chip bags, and popcorn, crunching away like two small animals who had found a secret stash. That wasn’t even the worst of it. I had found my watercolor pens. Yael had been very still and very willing, which I took as permission. By the time Vito noticed, Yael’s entire face was painted , antennae, stripes, the whole thing. He looked exactly like a bee, which I thought was an improvement.
Yael turned his head slowly to look at Vito, very serious about the whole thing.
Vito stared at both of us for a long moment, then pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose.
I had always had people looking after me , someone to tidy the room, brush my hair, lay out my clothes. So when I pulled on my pink dress and ran toward Vito with my hair half down and a tuft sticking up at the back, I didn’t think anything of it. I wrapped my arms around his waist and smiled up at him.
"Vito."
Whatever tension had been building behind his eyes went quiet the moment I did that. He looked down at me and just , settled. His hand came to rest on my head, gentle and automatic. "Why did you draw all over Yael?"
"It makes him cuter."
He leaned down to get a proper look at Yael’s face. He was quiet for a second. "Very cute," he agreed.
Then he noticed my hair. "Can’t you brush it yourself?"
"No. At home, Mrs. Lambert does it, or Elena, or Mommy. If they’re all busy, even Jake helps, and he’s terrible at it. Vito, can you do it?"
"Me?"
He had never braided a girl’s hair in his life. I could tell by the way he looked at my head like it was a problem he needed to solve. But I looked up at him with my most hopeful eyes, and he couldn’t say no. Something about him made it hard to say no to things that mattered, even small things.
"Alright. I’ll try."
He’d seen it done before. He thought it looked straightforward. It was not straightforward. The first braid sat too high. The second one tilted. Pieces kept slipping free no matter how many times he smoothed them back. He worked quietly and carefully for nearly half an hour, his full attention on something as small as my hair, and something about that made my chest feel warm in a way I didn’t have words for yet.
When he finally finished, I looked in the mirror at my very uneven pigtails and smiled at him. "Vito, don’t worry. For your first time, it’s amazing. You’ll get better with practice."
He looked a little embarrassed, which made it even better.
But then I remembered. "Vito , my cold is almost gone. Can I go home tomorrow?"
His face changed. It didn’t fall all at once , it was more like a door closing slowly, one inch at a time. I reached out and took his hand, swinging it a little. "Come visit my house when I leave, okay? I have three brothers and a sister. They’d love you."
"You can’t leave just yet," he said quietly.
My chest pulled tight. "Why?"
He was quiet for a moment, choosing his words the way someone picks their footing across wet ground. "Your family wants you to be more independent. They arranged for you to stay away for a while , to grow."
"They wouldn’t just... leave me here, would they?"
"No," he said, and the certainty in his voice was the kind that came from somewhere deep. "They wouldn’t."
"Then when can I leave?"
"When you’re truly independent."
I turned that over in my mind. I thought about the things I’d seen since arriving , the tension that moved through the air sometimes like a current, the way certain people around Vito went quiet and careful in his presence, the way he carried something invisible on his shoulders that no one else seemed able to lift. I thought about the moments that had frightened me.
"Those scary things I saw," I said slowly. "They were just... practice, right? Like acting?"
He looked at me for a moment, and then he nodded.
I had already worked it out for myself, really. If Vito were dangerous , truly dangerous , I wouldn’t still be here eating popcorn and painting his brother’s face. This was like the summer camp I’d gone to once, the one with the strict schedule and the difficult tasks. You did the work, you grew, and then you went home with something you didn’t have before.
"Vito," I announced, "I’ll become independent. Starting today , I’ll dress myself."
"Good," he said, and almost smiled.
He scooped up Yael, who buzzed along very seriously in his bee face, and I marched myself off to get dressed. I was very proud of myself.
From the bathroom came a series of dramatic sounds , splashing, wailing, Yael’s voice going up and down like a siren. I knocked on the door, and Vito poked his head out, completely soaked.
"Is he okay? Can the paint not come off?"
I felt the guilt hit me all at once. I twisted my hands in my dress. "I’m sorry. I thought it washed off easily , like the ones at home. I really didn’t mean to hurt him."
"He’s fine." Vito’s voice was warm despite the water dripping off his chin. "He just likes to yell. It doesn’t actually hurt." He reached out and patted my head. "You’re a good artist, Anna. We both loved it."
I beamed. He sent me off to brush my teeth and go to bed, and I skipped down the hall feeling light.
The moment the door shut behind me, I heard his voice drop back to business.
It took him two hours to get Yael clean. I know because I was still awake, listening.
By the time Vito finally finished, he’d been running on nothing but quiet determination for hours , managing Yael, watching over me, keeping up with everything else he carried that I still didn’t fully understand. He was only a few years older than me, but the weight on him belonged to someone much older. The pack deferred to him without being told to. The air around him held still when he was calm and pulled tight when he wasn’t. He didn’t act like a boy. He acted like someone who had taken responsibility for everything and everyone around him and decided, somewhere along the way, to stop complaining about it.
He came out of the bathroom, towel around his neck, finally ready to rest.
I was standing in the hallway.
I was holding my biggest pillow. My feet were bare on the carpet. I had his shirt clutched in one hand and tears running quietly down my face.
"Vito," I whispered. "I had a nightmare. I’m so scared. Can you sleep with me?"