The Alpha King Call Boy
Chapter 256

Alexander

I did not want Fiona to feel what I was feeling.

To let an empath touch me and share my internal world with her right now? That would be akin to t*****e.

I wouldn't wish this pain, this misery I was feeling on anyone. Least of all my beautiful, perfect wife or my innocent daughter, both of whom were afflicted with the preternatural curse of absorbing the feelings of those they touched. Sometimes even those who only neared or looked at them.

Overnight, my drug-addled mind had conjured up an unusually vivid dream. A dream in which I watched first Alexis and then Fiona slide down away from me into a pit. The sensation of Fi's slender fingertips slipping through my own as something pulled and wrenched her away from me, and the hopeless look in her eyes as she disappeared down into the abyss... it felt so horribly, devastatingly real.

Id woken up with tears rolling down my face. And a deep, deep feeling of absolutely hating myself.

It was so fucking stupid of me to ever have thought that Iris was an innocent little lamb I had to take care of. No. She was a wolf, after all, and a f*****g grown woman and she was a threat to my woman and had been from the start.

Fiona had shrewdly picked up on that early. And I knew she was right. I knew that Iris had a crush on me, but I simply brushed it off, thinking it wasn't important. Like I always did with women. Like Fi told me she hated, like Fi told me wasn't right. I should have fucking listened to her when she warned me about Iris!

Yeah, the more I thought about what Iris had done when I left her alone with Fiona, the more and more I hated myself.

I'd started thinking some really hateful, violent things about myself, actually.

Horrible, horrific images had been flooding my mind all day. Thoughts I was ashamed of thinking. I'd be mortified if Fiona could see, could feel, could know anything about these thoughts in any way.

No, I did not want either of my girls to feel this. My physical pain? Not that either. But the deep, inescapable self-loathing I was spiraling deeper and deeper into every minute today - that was what I feared sharing with them the most. They didn't deserve ever to know what such a feeling felt like.

God, that thought terrified me like nothing else. The thought of touching my helpless child and making her feel this kind of self-hatred, this despair and emotional anguish. This wretched helplessness and regret.

The medical staff installed me in the room that Fiona had recently set up to be a hospital suite for her Grandfather. When I was settled enough in the admittedly spacious and comfortable bed, I shooed the nurses away and they left. I only had time enough for a single breath, though, before the door swung back open and in walked Fiona.

Alone, this time.

"Alex," she breathed, taking a single, hesitant step forward. Her beautiful pink lips hovered ajar, like she wanted to say more. But she just let the door fall closed behind her and looked at me, waiting for a reply.

I didn't know what to say.

God, she looked so beautiful. Dressed in a long, lovely silk dress in a deep shade of navy blue. Her shiny silver hair was pulled to the side in a low, long ponytail. Her expression was somber.

She started walking over to the bed.

I wanted to touch Fiona so badly. My eyes welled with emotion at the thought of what relief, what comfort my wonderful Luna's touch would bring me. But it would be selfish to touch her when I was hurt like this. It would bring her pain.

And it'd be humiliating, too. I couldn't... I did not want her to know that I could get this low. That deep down, I was so weak I could not even control my own mind...

I clamped my eyes closed. "Fiona, stop. You need to stay away from me."

She scoffed loudly, but she did stop walking. "Alex, no.

Stop it with that. I am your wife and I am going to touch you-" She took another step.

"NO!" I roared in a strange, unfamiliar voice. "I don't want you to fucking touch me, Fiona! Just f*****g leave me alone right now, please!"

She froze.

And stared at me with wounded shock in her beautiful blue eyes.

I hated myself even more for yelling at her like that.

But an ugly, unthinking part of me was in control right now. A part of myself I hated. A part of myself I thought I'd buried long ago.

I didn't want to hurt Fiona. I wanted to spare her pain, that's what I wanted. But here I was screaming at her.

She didn't deserve to be treated like this.

She didn't understand, though. It wasn't just my body that came out of that cave in pieces. There was something wrong with my mind. It was packed too full of horrible thoughts. I couldn't be expected to hold any kind of rational conversation while my mind was doing what it was doing. I couldn't even figure out the words to explain it to her.

It was overwhelming. The guilt. The regret. The pain.

The hatred. The desire for violence. The depression.

The rage.

And each time my anxiety spiked anew, my mind's eye opened and started flipping the pages of that horrible flipbook I still had stored somewhere in my damaged brain. The highlight reel of all the most terrible sights and experiences in my life, the one that intruded into reality of its own accord sometimes.

The flipbook had started up in earnest this morning, after I woke from that awful dream. And now it was there in my vision almost nonstop, providing me with quick, painful memories of bloodbaths and t*****e and heart-wrenching grief... "I'm sorry," I said to Fiona, closing my eyes against a sudden vision of Caius's severed head lying atop my broken legs in this bed.

The visual simply arrived in my mind at that moment for absolutely no reason at all. The mouth drenched in my blood. The bit of white fur stuck on the fang. The blunted horn I'd chopped off with a scythe a decade, ago, when the demon looked up at me, unblinking, smiling evilly, and said, licking his lips, "Children are my favorite... their blood is so sweet, like candy..."I'm sorry, Fi. I'm f****d up right now. I just... I can't-"

A sudden, stabbing pain struck the base of my spine out of nowhere. My body - the few bits of it that were physically capable of movement - jerked in reaction.

Fiona remained where she was and tried to act stoic, but I heard a very faint whimper escape her lips.

I hated that.

I didn't want Fiona to touch me and feel what was happening inside my damaged mind right now. But I also didn't want her to even see me like this.

I didn't want her to pity me. And that's what was happening.

I was her Alpha. I was her rock. I wasn't supposed to be... this. I was supposed to be strong. I was supposed to have protected her. And our baby.

I fucked everything up. I fucked everything up already and I couldn't stop myself from just continuing to make it worse.

"I can't have you near me when I'm like this, Fiona.

Please, just leave. I just need some time before I can be close to you again."

Fiona stared me down, boring into me with that icy,. Penetrating gaze her crystal blue eyes are uniquely capable of. After a long, tense silence, she finally said, her voice calm and emotionless, 'Fine. I'll give you time."

She turned and retreated to the door, opened it and crossed the threshold into the hall.

Before she pulled the door closed behind her, though, she looked back and quietly added, "Welcome home, Alex."