Chapter 87 The first man

Viola woke up the next morning with a light headache and the strong urge to roll herself deeper into the warm blanket and continue sleeping, but having disciplined herself for the past years by waking at the first light of dawn before the deltas would wake her up brutally in the Hollow Quarter, her body had learned to arise early even before her brain fully did, no matter how tired or drained she felt.

Actually, she still felt body aches in different angles and corners of her body, soreness settling into her muscles, however she knew she shouldn’t be sleeping.

Viola opened her eyes, instinctively reaching for her glasses on the nightstand and putting them on, biting back a yawn and stretching the back of her neck as she moved her legs away from the bed to the floor. That was when she paused in her actions, her eyes narrowing slightly as they slowly took in her surroundings before she looked down at the bed beneath her.

Wait, how did she get here? Viola questioned internally, rising from her bed in a jerky, abrupt movement. Yes, this was her room. She was inside it, and it was absolutely normal that she would be in it in the morning, but what stunned and confused her was how she had gotten there in the first place. She didn’t remember herself coming back the previous night at all.

In fact, she was still wearing her torn maroon suit with bloodstains marking the fabric, which meant she hadn’t walked herself back here, because if she had, she would have taken a long shower and changed into one of the many pajamas she kept neatly arranged in her enormous walk-in closet.

The last thing Viola recalled was stepping into the Alpha’s car without arguing with him, because she had been so tired that even talking caused her headaches.

Hence, she had not argued with him in any way and had simply let him drive her. While inside the car, her eyes had been watering and itching, so she had taken off those dreadful lenses and then put her head against the window. She had felt so drained and overwhelmingly sleepy that she couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer.

When was the last time she had felt that kind of sleepiness, and that too without any nightmares chasing her into the dark? Viola thought, and then realized it had only been on the day Zoe’s dog had snuggled beside her and licked her neck. But that wasn’t the point now. The point now was how the hell she had gotten back here, and she quickly realized it could only mean that he had brought her back and personally put her to bed.

That meant he had unlocked her door and come into her house without her awareness. How the hell did he know her—Viola paused her thought there. She had been about to wonder how he knew her passcode, but then she remembered it was embarrassingly easy to guess because it was simply her name.

A deep frown creased her brows together in displeasure as she realized it was absolutely time to change her door passcode and perhaps even the passwords on her phone, for it seemed someone did not understand the concept of personal space or how not to enter a place without explicit permission.

She didn’t even want to think about the Alpha first thing in the morning after waking up, for he only baffled her and made her want to avoid him as much as possible, until it became inevitable because of the fact that she would be his Luna, hopefully.

The thought of what he had done yesterday was still as fresh and vivid as if it had just happened seconds ago, where his shameless mouth had been roaming across her skin and his warm, wet tongue had glided over her nipple in a way that had stolen her breath.

The memory sent a hot wave curling into her stomach, and she gritted her teeth in irritation, forcefully pushing the feeling away and commanding herself not to think about the Alpha and the undeniable fact that he was the first man to put his mouth anywhere close to her skin like that.

In the past, Viola had given no man a place or even a chance to date her, for her eyes had been set on only one man, Evan. He had been her savior and her lover, her savior because being with him had made her adoptive parents adore her more and give her all the attention one would normally give a real daughter.

Her father would praise her openly and tell her she was his princess, all because they believed she would one day become their Luna.

She had taken Evan as her savior and had done her absolute best to please him, to give him everything he ever asked of her, her time, her energy, her sleepless nights spent awake going through piles of pack documents and solving complicated matters for him while he slept peacefully in his bed. She had worked herself into exhaustion and deep insomnia, becoming someone who could no longer sleep without pills.

She had loved him because she believed he was her entire world, the man she would marry, bear children for, and then rule beside as his equal.

She had given him her mind, her heart, and her soul, but never her body. And now that she thought about it, Evan had never seemed all that interested in her body either. Not once had he gone beyond kissing her softly on the mouth or hugging her with gentle restraint.

Viola had never thought too deeply about why he didn’t go beyond soft kisses, because she had simply believed he was a gentleman who was reserving sex for the time when she would awaken her wolf. Many believed that moment made intimacy even more meaningful and intense, and she had accepted that as the unquestioned truth.

The most intimate moment they had ever come to, beyond simple kisses, was the day he had climbed into her room through her window with an assignment that was required to be submitted in the morning. She had worked tirelessly on solving his assignment until almost dawn at her desk while he slept comfortably on her bed.

It was only when she was done that he had coaxed her to come to bed and sleep for a while next to him so she wouldn’t exhaust herself too much.

Viola had been so happy that he cared about her and her health that she had melted into his side when he held her on the bed after placing a soft kiss on her lips. They had slept together until the rest of the morning, when her adoptive mother had come to wake her up and found her in bed with the Alpha heir.

Rather than scolding her for bringing a boy into her bed, her adoptive parents had praised her and even gifted her another car as a reward.

Viola had suspected that she was receiving all that affection and generosity because of Evan, but she had never truly cared, for she had believed she and Evan were destined to be a pair forever and ever, bound by love, ambition, and a future she had once thought unbreakable.