The Alpha's Guardian

*Wade

POV*

I look over Ali's face as she sleeps so peacefully with her head on the side of her bed. Her right eye is black, but noticeably fading. Her black hair is sprawled across her face, obstructing my full view of her face. I reach out and gently wipe the hair from her face taking in all of her. My eyes drop to the nape of her neck where I see my mark and I can't help but reach out to touch it.

I run my fingers along the pink scars of my mate's mark and smile at the electricity that dances across my fingertips. She stirs slightly and I quickly retract my hand. She wiggles around a little bit then she opens her eyes looking right at me. "You're up," She says smiling "How do you feel?"

"Not too bad. So what happened?"

"Jumping right to it huh?"

"I've been staring at you for the past 10 minutes trying to make you wake up and tell me what happened."

"Oh yeah? Well ask away" she says yawning.

"Well, I assume we are at Alpha Nick's pack currently?"

"You are correct"

"He is hosting us until we can get our pack at least liveable?"

"Yes, Francis has already contracted a crew to work on it day and night to get us back as soon as possible."

"How is he?" I ask, my stomach churns at the memory of how beat up he was.

"He is good. He wants to see you when you feel up to it."

"Good, good. And Samuel is?"

"Dead." She says simply.

"And Liam?"

She pauses, then sighs heavily.

"He is missing."

"I stabbed him in the face," I say, a little confused. I know we are werewolves, but I would have thought a dagger to the face might be deadly.

"I know, but we couldn't find his body."

An awkward silence falls between us while I contemplate how to ask her the question I need to know. I look away from her and clear my throat.

“Uh. He, Liam, said something interesting when we were fighting." I say feeling shy.

"Men will say anything to get a rise out of you when you are fighting." She chuckles.

"No, I know that, but this was different. This made sense." I look back at her and she smiles softly at me.

"Ok, then what was it?"

"He said you and I are second chance mates..."

"Ah that... Well, we will never know with 100% certainty but yes, I believe that Liam was my original mate." She looks a little sad at the revelation.

"But how could you have a second chance mate if you two never rejected each other."

"Samuel thought that since the Guardian bond mirrors the mate bond, that when we broke out guardian bond at the end of my time guarding him that the mate bond took it as a mutual rejection. At the ceremony for ending each mate bond, we slice the spot where we were bonded with the same knife that was used during the initiating ceremony. It's not supposed to be painful, but Liam and I were both in excruciating pain for days."

"Huh. That's a lot." I say. My head is suddenly aching.

"I know that it's hard to believe anything that Samuel said, but it does make sense."

"It explains why Liam helped break you out of prison," I add.

"He did?" She asks, taken aback.

I keep forgetting that we haven't been able to talk since her escape.

"Yeah. He didn't want anything to happen to you. It also explains why he didn't kill me, even though he had the opportunity. He didn't want you to die, because he still cares about you..."

"Liam is an a*****e, but he was working with Samuel because he wanted something. I'm sure he was promised some type of position in return for helping him. They never got along when I guarded him, they tolerated each other because Liam liked knowing someone on the committee."

"I'm curious, why wasn't the bond break painful for us?"

"Because we didn't break our bond." She says as if the answer is so simple.

"But you..." I start.

"My oath was broken. The Guardian oath and the bond are different. The oath is my promise to the guardians, and it provides me with protection from finding my mate, and kind of gives me other perks to make my job easier." She pauses to make sure I'm following. "Samuel burned my oath and because you and I were connected you felt the loss of my powers that I shared with you through our bond. But my Guardian bond to you remained intact because only the person who makes the bond can break it." "So that means you are still my guardian?"

"Well no, Because we accepted the mate bond, it replaced the guardian bond, because it is stronger."

"So if we hadn't accepted the mate bond, and we broke the guardian bond, then we both would have died..." I ask her.

Perhaps all of this information would make a? little more sense if my head wasn't pounding against my skull. "Yes."All text © NôvelD(r)a'ma.Org.

I stop and ponder for a moment. I wonder if Samuel knew that I was Ali's, second chance mate when he got here and he was trying to convince her that Liam was her mate so she would reject me and then he wouldn't have had to kill me. I have no doubt that Samuel would have eventually tried to kill me, but was he smart enough to pick up on what Ali I had when he was here? He constantly was alluding to her being someone who sleeps around, even when he knew that she didn't.

I look at Ali and I'm smacked in the face with the reality that this woman has saved me in so many ways. And that even though she is stronger than steel, her heart must be breaking with the knowledge that the man that raised her was really a villain. "Come here," I say to her grabbing her hand and pulling her up into my lap.

She gingerly crawls into my lap, watching me carefully to make sure she doesn't cause me any pain. I'm so elated at her closeness that I'm not sure i would feel any pain if she caused it.

"How are you?" I ask her, dropping a kiss on top of her head.

"I'm fine," she says very unconvincingly.

"No, you're not." I say "It's ok to not be, Ali."

She says nothing as she snuggles in closer, nuzzling her head in the crook of my neck. I can see her strangling her hands in my peripheral vision, sighing heavily. I say nothing, I know she will share when she is ready.

"He killed my parents," she says, sounding so small. "He shot them, and then followed me through the woods, and then he kidnapped me and raised me. Like I was his sick reminder of his murders."

"Ali..." the words stick in my throat.

Holy shit, how do you even respond to something like that?

"Why do I still hate that he is dead?" She says finally breaking into a sob. "He was a murderer and a traitor, and I loathe him. But it still hurts"

"Ali, did he treat you well when he helped raise you?"

"Yeah..."

"You hate that he is dead because he made you feel loved when you had no one else. It was sick and perverse of him, but it speaks volumes about who you are as a person." I pull my head back so she can see me, and tilt her chin up so she is looking into my eyes. "You are an amazing woman, you were raised by a psychopath. We all have our problems" I wink at her and she laughs, slapping me, then wipes her eyes.

"We will work through all these emotions."

"We?" She asks, looking surprised.

"You don't think I'm letting you leave my side ever again do you?" I say, leaning in and covering her lips with mine.