The Bully Alpha's Fake Alpha Mate (BL) Chapter 87: Go On Date With Me

ASHER

I woke up to Reed’s scent before I woke up to anything else.

It filled the entire room, warm, deep and layered in the particular way it got when he’d been sleeping, when all the controlled, deliberate edges of him softened into sothing that had no audience and wasn’t performing for anyone.

His pheromones wrapped around like sothing physical and for the three seconds between sleep and full consciousness I just lay there and breathed them in and felt sothing in my chest settle into a quiet I hadn’t felt in weeks.

Then I rembered where I was. Reed’s room, Reed’s bed and Reed’s arm wrapped around my waist from behind, heavy and warm, his chest rising and falling steadily against my back.

I lay very still and let the mory of last night co back in pieces. Him pulling away from the sink, the corridor and into this room. The way he’d said I miss you in that rough, unmanaged voice that didn’t sound like the Reed I’d spent a year plus learning to navigate.

The way he’d held without asking for anything, without taking anything, just held until the exhaustion I’d been carrying finally had sowhere to go and I had fallen asleep without deciding to.

He had kept his word, he just held and nothing else. His arms around and the bond warm and quiet between us and for the first ti in two weeks I had slept deeply and completely and woken up feeling like a person instead of a machine running on empty.

I stared at the ceiling and felt his heartbeat against my back and let myself have exactly thirty seconds of it.

His hands were warm, that was the thing I kept coming back to. Reed’s hands were always warm, had always been warm, and lying here with them wrapped around felt less like sothing temporary and more like sothing I recognized. Like a word in a language I’d been pretending I didn’t speak. It felt like ho.

The thought arrived quietly and without warning and I let it sit for a mont before I understood how dangerous it was.

Ho!?

I closed my eyes and in the space behind them a picture assembled itself without my permission. Sothing soft and unhurried. A house sowhere with morning light coming through wide windows. Reed’s voice in another room. The sound of small feet on wooden floors. A life built around sothing permanent and chosen and entirely ours.

Reed ruling his pack with beside him. Both of us building sothing that belonged to both of us. Children who would grow up knowing exactly who they were and where they ca from.

The image was so complete and so vivid that it took several seconds to dismantle it.

What the hell am I thinking?

I pressed the thought down hard.

There is no us. There is no house with morning light. There are no children running anywhere because there is no future being built here, there is only a sester that is still counting down and a father who has not withdrawn his ultimatum and a pack waiting for an Alpha who was never going to choose an Oga over everything he was raised to be.

No Alpha abandons his pack for a mate bond. Not really and not when it cos down to the actual mont of choosing. The bond was strong and what Reed had said last night was real in the way that things said in the dark at the end of exhaustion are real, but real was not the sa as permanent and I had learned that lesson already.

I had learned it watching his face after he returned back to when his father gave him the ultimatum.

I had watched him hesitate.

Three seconds, maybe four but I had watched it and I had counted it and I had filed it sowhere I didn’t let myself forget.

I needed to get up. I needed to go face Voss and whatever additional consequence was waiting for because of last night and I needed to do it alone because that was the other thing I had decided sowhere in the space between falling asleep and waking up.

I was done depending on Reed to catch .

I had been Asher Scott before I walked through the gates of Stone Claw Academy. I had maintained a secret for a year plus that had fooled every trained Alpha in this building including the one currently asleep against my back. I had enrolled alone and survived alone and the fact that I now carried a mate mark and a bond that sang every ti he was near did not change who I was underneath all of that.

I was not weak.

I was an Oga who had outrun an entire academy’s worth of Alpha instinct for a year plus and I was not going to let the warmth of Reed’s hands in the morning make forget that.

I moved carefully, and slowly, trying to slide forward without disturbing the arm around my waist but instead Reed’s arm tightened and I froze.

He pulled back against his chest with a sleepy, unhurried certainty that suggested his body had been monitoring my movents even while the rest of him was still sowhere between sleep and waking. His right leg ca over and settled across mine, pinning with his entire body weight in a way that was so completely, instinctively possessive that I would have been furious about it if it hadn’t felt so warm.

"Give five more minutes." His voice was rough with sleep. Low and unguarded. "Please, let’s stay like this for five more minutes."

I stared at the wall in front of .

’Please.’

There it was again, that word in his mouth that kept doing things to my chest that I had no defense against. I rolled my eyes at the wall where he couldn’t see it.

"I can’t," I said. "I have to resu my punishnt. Thanks to you I broke the rules last night and I don’t know what Headmaster Voss has waiting for when he finds out I abandoned my duties because you decided you missed ."

"I told you I would handle Voss."

"And I told you—"

"Stay with ."

"No." The word ca out sharper than I planned and I felt him go still behind . "Reed, I don’t need you to handle it. I don’t need you to handle anything. Stop all of this please, just stop it. Stop getting so confused and stop ssing with please,"

A beat of silence.

"Stop what?" His voice had lost its sleepiness. Alert now. Careful. "Asher what’s going on. Did I do sothing wrong? You have to tell because I don’t understand why you want to stop"

I pulled out of his arms and sat up and put my feet on the floor and gripped the edge of the mattress with both hands. The room was full of his scent and the morning light was coming through the curtains exactly the way it had in that image behind my eyes and I needed to say this before the warmth of it talked out of it.

"Just please don’t, Reed. Don’t make attached to you," I said.

The words ca out quieter than I intended but steadier.

"Don’t make feel like you are going to be here for all the ti. Don’t make feel like you will choose above everything else." I stared at the floor. "Don’t toy with my heart, Reed. Don’t confuse . Don’t do these small things that make forget what’s actually waiting at the end of this sester because we both know what’s waiting." I gripped the sheet tighter. "Go back to the Reed I knew before. That Reed I could navigate. This Reed you are being right now, pulling away from kitchens and holding all night and saying please like it costs you sothing, this Reed is getting inside my head and I am tired. I am so tired of trying to figure out what cos next."

The room was very quiet. I heard him sit up behind but I kept my eyes on the floor.

’Say sothing dismissive,’ I thought. ’Say sothing cold. Give sothing I can push against.’

"Asher."

His voice was soft and I hated how soft it was.

"Don’t say that. You don’t know what will happen"

"We both know what’s going to happen, Reed." I turned to look at him then because I needed him to see that I ant it. "At the end of all of this you will choose your pack. You will choose your title. You will go ho and you will beco what your father built you to be and I am left with a mate mark that ans nothing to anyone and a bond that slowly tears apart from the inside." My jaw was tight. "So please. Stop confusing ."

Reed looked at . He was still in last night’s clothes, his hair uncharacteristically undone, and he looked younger than I was used to seeing him. Less armored. More present.

Stop noticing things like that, I told myself.

"You are not in my head," he said quietly. "So you don’t actually know what I’ll choose."

I opened my mouth to speak.

"I know everything is confusing right now." He cut through what I was going to say, not loudly, just steadily. "And I won’t pretend it isn’t. But one thing I know with absolute certainty—" He paused. "I have never wanted to protect anyone the way I want to protect you. I have not yearn for anyone the way I yearn for you. Never and not once in my entire life. I have never wanted soone in my personal space, in my personal life, the way I want you there. You are not a complication to anymore." Sothing shifted in his expression. "You are what I want. You are what I need. And right now, everything else be damned, all I want is you beside ."

I looked at him but I didn’t let it land, I thought. Don’t let it find anywhere to go but it landed anyway. It always landed with him.

I could feel it settling in my chest despite everything I was doing to stop it, warm and stubborn, finding the cracks in every wall I had left standing and sitting down in them like it had every right.

He ans it, so part of said. He always ans it in the mont, another part answered. That’s the problem.

"Words aren’t enough," I said. My voice ca out rougher than I intended. "They were never enough."

"I know." He held my gaze. "Give a chance to prove it." Reed said and there was a short silence between us and I was not saying anything.

I looked at him and he looked at and the bond humd between us in the morning quiet of his room and I didn’t say yes and I didn’t say no and the mont stretched between us like sothing holding its breath.

Then I looked away and I stood up.

"Five," I said. "Four." I reached for my shoes. "Three." I walked toward the door. "Two." My hand found the handle. "One." I pulled it open. "Your five minutes are up. I’ll see myself out." I was about walking out when Reed called out to .

"Go on a date with tomorrow, Asher Scott."