Defying the Rogue Alpha
Chapter 184: Stars

Chapter 184: Stars

Nelly gave him a flat look. "Oh, thank the goddess. That’ll really help me sleep tonight."

"But," Kade added, his grin widening as he stepped into the room, "I don’t promise not to tell Alpha Lucas how well you’re spending his money."

"Meeeh, he won’t mind," Nelly shrugged. "It’s going to a good cause. And by good cause, I mean me, shaking a leg at the strip club tonight. Mama needs to get some excitement." She wiggled her eyebrows.

Kade pinched the bridge of his nose. "You’re going to spend Alpha Lucas’s money at a strip club?"

"Correction. My stipend. That man owes me more than enough for all the chaos he brought into my life." She tossed her curls over one shoulder dramatically. "Besides, it’s girls’ night. I need glitter, noise, and one over-oiled man in a cowboy hat. Don’t judge me."

Kade sighed and quietly closed the door behind him as she sauntered off.

He walked to the window and slid it open. A cool breeze greeted him. Above, the stars blinked lazily in the dark, and the moon hung low.

Kade rested his forearms on the windowsill. "Moon Goddess, you’re being funny, aren’t you?"

As if answering him, the wind shifted, and May was out in the yard, standing barefoot in the grass and completely unaware that she was wrecking his inner peace just by existing. She was picking up laundry from the line, humming a tune he couldn’t hear but somehow knew would be sweet. Every time she reached for a clothespin, her shirt would rise, revealing a sliver of skin above the waistband of her jeans. Her waist was delicate, her movements unhurried, and her hair swayed gently with the breeze like it had a mind of its own.

And Kade stood, watching her like a man in a trance. His wolf stirred, unhelpfully.

She couldn’t be older than twenty, maybe twenty-one if the Moon Goddess was feeling generous. Pretty? Sure. Fragile? Definitely. The latter being a problem when you were a werewolf who could break bones with a poorly timed sneeze.

His mind went into overdrive. What the hell was he supposed to do with her?

She was Nelly’s maid. Human. Sweet as honey, soft-spoken, and clueless about the supernatural chaos bubbling just beneath the surface of this sleepy little neighborhood. She probably thought he was just some tired, slightly feral-looking cousin passing through.

And the worst part? He was going to be seeing her a lot. Nelly had agreed to take care of Sarah’s child, which meant Kade would be visiting frequently. Human territory would no longer be the occasional day trip. It was about to become routine.

His wolf growled in the back of his mind in recognition.

Kade groaned. "I’m doomed."

Even if he was going to reject her and Moon help him, he probably should; how would he do it without completely shattering her or worse, jeopardizing Nelly’s carefully woven disguise as a human among humans? The last thing they needed was a wide-eyed twenty-year-old running through town screaming about werewolves and fated mates while holding a laundry basket.

And the mate pull? It sank into his bones, tugging at him, whispering: Go to her. Touch her. Claim her.

He growled and yanked himself away from the window before he did something stupid.

He pulled his shirt over his head with more aggression than necessary, muscles straining.

"I’m out of here first thing tomorrow," he muttered, like saying it aloud would make it true. "Before sunrise. Before she’s even up."

He threw himself onto the mattress, determined to sleep. That lasted about... twelve minutes. Three hours later, after enough tossing and turning to create a cyclone, he accepted that sleep was a myth made up by humans with no mates living just across the hallway.

He dragged himself out of bed, grumbling like a grandpa with a bad hip. There was a half-full bottle of whiskey in Nelly’s mini bar and it was calling his name like a long-lost friend.

The house was pitch black, but Kade moved through it with ease. He didn’t need light to find his way. His bare feet padded silently across the cool tiles as he slipped into the kitchen.

He heard the faucet dripping.

’May must have left it running,’ he thought, sighing as he walked toward the sink. He reached for the handle...

.Out of nowhere, something screamed.

It was high-pitched and chaotic, like a dying cat and a car alarm had made a horrible child together. And that something came flying at him, flailing, with a weapon in her hand.

Kade’s life did not flash before his eyes.

Instead, his only thought was: This is the dumbest way to die in werewolf history.

She came at him with arms raised, a kitchen knife in her hand.

He caught her wrists mid-air, startled by how light she felt. She was all fire and fury but so incredibly soft underneath it.

It was almost too easy to disarm her. One fluid movement and he had her wrist twisted gently behind her back, her small frame pinned against his bare chest. Kade blinked, momentarily thrown off by the contact. Soft. Warm. Which was absolutely not helpful, considering she had just tried to stab him with a kitchen knife.

Her back was pressed to him, heart thumping like a jackhammer. He wasn’t sure whether to be pissed that she had actually tried to stab him... or amused at the painfully comic way she’d gone about it; screaming and flailing.

"What," he growled into her ear incredulously, "was that?"

May was panting from the chaos. She turned her head slightly, eyes darting toward him, the confusion on her face softening into panic when she finally processed who was holding her. "Mr. Kade?" she whispered, wide-eyed and breathless.

"That’s not the answer to my question," he said, not loosening his hold just yet. His bare skin brushed hers as he spoke, and he silently cursed the Moon for making this situation weirdly... electric.