"I will do."

"So what's your background?"

This is why I preferred the alpha house, less questions about my own past. I get it, I was the visitor, the one everyone wants to get the dirt on.

"I was a bit of a drifter until I started the program...you?" I vaguely respond.

"Born and raised here." He proudly smiles out as he reaches aross the table for the salt and pepper.

I would be wasting my time in trying to find information out from Riley. Not only was he the pack's beta but being born and raised here, his loyalty to the alpha family would be unwavering. As it should be. "How long are you here for?" Riley asks just as one of the guards I was shadowing tonight gives me the sign that he was going back to his post.

"Not long, the new intake will start soon and I'll have to be back for that." I stand up, picking up my tray and placing it on the cleaning trolley.

"Well if I can do anything to help whilst you're here..." Beta Riley offers out before I leave.

"Will do." I call back to him before exiting.

By 2am I decide to call it a night, unlike the guard I was shadowing...I had been up all day and now most of the night. If I had any chance of getting up at 6am for training, I needed to call it a night.

Making my way upstairs in the alpha home, I pause at the top of the sitairs...suddenly increasingly conflicted.

"Check on her." My wolf demands in my mind, his need all day to see her driving me to the point of almost insanity.

It's also one of the reasons I have kept away, knowing how damn desperate he has been to see her. He's growing too attached, he's never been like this with a female.

He's always too keen to throw them away after spending just one night with them. Boring, he finds them boring, not her though. There is something about Red, something in her taste, in her scent that makes him want more. "No." I fight back, my body unmoving as he tries to push forward.

"Go check on her." He growls threateningly.

"She's fine."

"You don't know that."

"There would have been a pack wide panic if their beloved princess was in crisis...so drop it."

"No, not until I see for myself that she is healed."

There was no point arguing him, not when he was like this. Unnegotiable, stubborn...basically a prick. He'll have me pacing the floor in the guest room until training if I don't check on her.

He won't let me get any sleep.novelbin

My hands grip into tiny balls down by my side as I move towards her room, my eyes roaming the dark ill lit hallway.

A soft light glowing through the bottom gap of her door. Opening her door gently, I push it ajar to find the soft glow of the bedside lamp highlighting her red loose hair mixed with a pile of pillows and bedding.

Her room was exactly as I thought it would be...unorganised and chaotic. Her burgundy bed spread should clash against the soft toned walls and beige carpet but she seems to make it work somehow. Gentle...but sexy hot. I take a step in, closing that gap just a little more.

I can hear her deep sleeping breaths, her peaceful moans as she slightly stirs at my midnight intrusion.

As she moves, a thigh escapes from underneath the bedding, her bruised and grazed skin making bile rise to the back of my throat. She hadn't healed at all.

I can smell a new aroma, something different to her usual burnt oranges and spice scent...her signature scent of autumn.

Herbs...her skin glistens slightly under the layer of her own ointment that has been placed across her skin. Did she do it herself, or did another's hand touch her there.

I swallow the monstrous growl that my wolf wants to make, he was a doctor, of course he needs to touch her there.

My hand strokes a few stray red strands of hair from out of her face before I reach for the bedding and place her leg back under it.

"Satisfied?" I groan internally to my wolf who has now backed away, now that I gave him what he wanted.

I leave her, which surprisingly is harder than I thought it would be, even with my wolf back in the recesses of my mind.

Very gently I pull her door to a close, a sigh escaping me as I turn to head in the direction of my room.

When I realise I am not alone. The grey ash eyes of the Dark Phanton Alpha glaring at me from the shadows.