Alpha’s Strength(41)

“It’s time, Cyrus. Take your place or get out of the way and let someone else do it.”

Betsy sighed in her sleep, and he opened his eyes to look at her. She had asked him how he’d decided to be an Alpha, to take over the position. Well, he hadn’t wanted to get out of the way. It wasn’t in his nature. And he’d been stronger. On that one day, he’d won, and it hadn’t been his blood left on the ground.





Chapter Ten





Betsy opened her eyes and knew two things instantly. First, it was still the middle of the night. There was no light anywhere in the room. The curtains were even closed. And she didn’t think they had been when she’d conked out. She rolled over and checked the clock, confirming that it was three a.m.

The second thing she knew was that she was alone in the room. Cyrus was gone. Not even the bathroom held more than a shadow of his scent. She got up and walked to his closet. Having no idea where her clothes had been discarded, she was going to have to wear something of his since she wasn’t going to go traipsing around the apartment in her birthday suit.

She tugged on a T-shirt that said Columbia on the front. It fell to her knees, and she supposed it would have to do. It smelled like Cyrus, and she grinned. It was hard to imagine him in a T-shirt. Naked? No problem. Wearing a designer suit? No problem. T-shirt? Maybe if he was lounging around, but did he even do that?

Betsy padded out into the living room. She stopped in the archway and took in the scene in front of her. Cyrus was passed out at his desk, his head down on top of something he’d been reading. She approached slowly and stared down at what he’d been doing when he fell asleep. A bunch of spreadsheets and numbers looked up at her. She’d never been able to make sense of them before and didn’t want to try at that moment. What concerned her was the man head down on top of them. He couldn’t be comfortable like that.

She smoothed his hair off his forehead, and he jolted backward as though he’d been stabbed. He jumped to his feet before she could even say anything.

“Are you okay?” He turned left and right.

“I was going to ask you the same thing.” She walked around the desk toward him. Did he always awaken like he had to fight something off? “I’m sorry I woke you like that. You didn’t look comfortable head down on your papers.”

Cyrus grinned a big smile. “Wouldn’t look good to drool on the spreadsheets in front of my new mate.”

“Amazing, you still use spreadsheets. Don’t you high-powered people all do everything digitally? You actually printed paper?” She still had no idea exactly what his company did except serve as a front for werewolves and cage humans in the basement.

“Sometimes I have to have things printed out to really see them. I’m missing something in the marketing department. There’s a problem with their budget.”

She took his hand in hers. He was such a mixture of contradictions. The tough Alpha, the focused business man, the lover who didn’t want to bite her for fear of hurting her, the playful guy who told her to run. The twenty-year-old kid sent to kill an Alpha by a man who should have been powerful enough to figure out a way to handle that Alpha himself. She pushed that thought away. What happened years before she was here couldn’t be the focus of her time.

“Is it standard for the CEO to go over budgets?”

“It needed doing, so I figured I might as well get it done.” He cleared his throat. “Why aren’t you sleeping?”

“I could ask you the same thing.” He’d dressed himself in a white undershirt and a pair of boxers. Cyrus was far too clothed for her taste. He should be naked. All the time. “Was I snoring?”

“What?” He shook his head. “No, of course not. I can’t sleep. It’s nothing to do with you. I have insomnia problems. I can’t sleep, and then when it gets quiet enough at night, I kind of nod off for a few hours here or there.”

Her mate needed to relax, and he needed caring for. Whatever her parents’ issues were—and she clearly had a lot of them—her mother and father had taken care of each other. Cyrus required some tending, and she was glad she was here to do it.

“I can’t imagine that even a werewolf should be running a company and a pack on a few hours of sleep, here and there.”

“Not much I can do about that. We don’t respond well to traditional medicine. Lake has gifts that can heal us, but it’s not like I can go take a sleeping pill. It’s likely to have the opposite effect, and I’ll be jogging the streets of New York for two days straight.” He shrugged. “Come on, let’s get you back to sleep.”