Back and Stronger: Alpha's Daughter
Chapter 42

As Sophia slowly awoke, she refused to open her eyes just yet, as there was a feeling of protectiveness and a blissful sort of warmth surrounding her, accompanied by a smell she could only describe as entrancing.

Did it rain last night? She wondered absentmindedly as she took a deep lungful of the smell, and let it out again with a satisfied sigh. Dew fresh and like another long while in bed is what it smelled like to her, so she nuzzled deeper into the warmth, and somehow it pulled her deeper into it in response.

Unwilling to question it, the exquisiteness of it, for the fear of it releasing her if she did, she let herself be immersed within it and wished she could remain there forever and ever.

Sophia realized vaguely then that by some miracle she had been able to fall asleep last night. Even while her heart had been pounding harder than it had sounded like Scott had, she had still been able to drift off into a dreamless sleep.

Thank goodness for that, she thought, because she wasn’t sure she could have handled another awful nightmare.

Why had she struggled to fall asleep again?

Not being able to answer that question right away, made Sophia restless and made her want to turn over to her other side, but she found she was unable to move. As she weakly wriggled her body in another attempt, too groggy to really force it too much, she only felt that warmth enveloping her more, and pulling her ever-tighter against it.

Against it? Against him!

Sophia’s eyes instantly flew open. She looked straight into Neil’s Adam’s Apple there, and realized her face had been pressed into his throat the whole time. His chin was resting on top of her head and she felt that her whole body was completely pressed up against the full length of his. His strong arms were also wrapped around her as he was tightly holding her to him. She even had her freaking leg wrapped around his!

Shit! What should I do?

How could she possibly get out of his hold without waking him?

Wait, did she really want to even? That protectiveness she’d felt, and that irresistible smell of fresh morning air after it had rained, it had all been Neil all along. It was the very feeling and smell she practically craved twenty-four-seven, so of course, she didn’t want it to end!

As though Neil had felt her stiffening, he started waking up as well.

For a moment, he tightened his arms around her again, but froze the minute he must also have realized that he was holding Sophia while lying in bed. She could hear his breath hitching and his heart suddenly beating faster, and she felt him starting to pull away slowly, probably thinking that she was still asleep and doing exactly what she thought of doing earlier – getting out of bed before the other one noticed what had happened, that they’d ended up within each other’s arms during the night somehow.

“Don’t,” Sophia surprised herself by saying, made brave by being drunk on his smell most likely, and she felt him halt questioningly. “You don’t have to worry that I will be scared. I feel safe with you. This is nice.”

“Hmmm… Nice,” Neil breathed out contemplatively in a low and sleepy voice as she felt him relax again. “Not the word I would have used, but I can’t argue with you there either.”

He then gave her a tight squeeze and breathed her in with his nose pressed against her hair at the top of her head. When he let out a muffled sound of absolute pleasure there, Sophia felt her toes curl inside her fluffy socks in response.

“As nice as this is, Soph,” Neil said after a while of just enjoying the feel of each other in silence. “My arm is kind of dying. Do you mind if we just shift over onto my back?”

Sophia, completely overreacting to hearing that she was cutting off the blood supply to his arm, pulled herself away from him, but in her uncoordinated haste, she bumped her head against his jaw from underneath so hard that she heard his bottom teeth hitting his top ones noisily.

“Ouch! Sophia, what are you–”

Neil never got to finish his question, as he was brought up short by the look on her face, and then realizing what had just happened.

In her attempt to get herself off him, her leg that had been draped over his legs had come up his groin by accident, but the hardness of him there was unmistakable…

At first, she had felt an ardent heat within her own loins in response to him, but it was quickly replaced with that irrational cold fear she thought she had mostly mastered in the past few months.

Neil understood that look instantly as she saw horror fill his own eyes when he looked down at himself and fully came to terms with what had just happened. A blend of emotions like shame, anger, and disgust seemed to blend with his horror at that instant.

“I’m so sorry, Sophia,” he blurted as he jumped out of bed.

For a moment it looked like he still wanted to turn back to her to try and say something, or comfort her, but clearly thought better of turning back to her where she would be able to view what had scared her in the first place.

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck,” Neil said repeatedly as he awkwardly exited the room in a rush. “You fucking idiot.”

Staring at the door for a while after he’d left and closed it, Sophia felt the fear dissipate, but only to be replaced by things equally cringe-worthy; mortified and embarrassed as hell, not knowing whether she wanted to go and hide her face in a hole in the ground like an ostrich or if she just wanted to hide in the room forever.

Instead, she settled for covering her face with a pillow as she fell back to the bed, taking a breath to let out a cry into its feathers, but as she did she realized she’d taken Neil’s pillow that was filled with the smell of him, and she just silently remained like that instead, trying to think everything through.

Sophia let out a groan of frustration. She could just tell that things were going to be awkward between them again, and she had no idea how she was supposed to handle it. She knew that she wouldn’t be able to begin talking to him about it, so instead, she decided that she was going to ignore it ever happening.

Yes, that’s what I’ll do, she told herself and thought she had her mind made up about it, but the moment she entered the kitchen, that particular conviction fell away instantly when she saw him there making coffee with his wet hair still dripping. She realized he must have taken a shower after he left the room. The moment their eyes met again, he seemed as mortified as she felt.

“I was just about to bring you some coffee, and– explain,” he said.

“Please don’t,” Sophia said as she awkwardly moved to the bar counter to sit there on one of the bar stools, for her legs felt dangerously weak at that moment. “It’s all okay – really,” she said the last word more loudly at the look of him not believing her that she was fine with what happened.

Neil nodded in acceptance at the look of desperation she gave him. Even as he walked over to her a little while later to give her a cup of coffee he’d made her, he looked like he wanted to say something to her then, but was interrupted by Scott and Victoria strolling out of his room snickering.

Sophia saw an internal turmoil going on behind Neil’s eyes and she hated seeing it there. Before she knew what she was doing, she reached out for the cup he placed in front of her, but she also captured his hand still on the ear of the cup before he was able to release it.

Astonishment and wonder shone in his eyes as he looked at her hand there holding onto him. He gave her a shy and reluctant smile as she gave him a small one back. He must have known that by her being willing to touch him after what happened between them, this was a way to reassure him that no damage had been done and that she was okay.

“Neil, you’re a lifesaver,” Victoria said as she walked straight to the pot of coffee that he’d just finished brewing. “I’m going to need my energy back after this animal drained me of all of it.” She’d said ‘animal’ very suggestively as she shot Scott a wink.

At that, there was silence as looks were exchanged between everyone, remembering their loud activities from last night, and as if they remembered it at the same time all of them burst out laughing.

“Make some for me too,” they heard from the couch. “You owe me as much after keeping me up for most of the night.”

The morning passed by in a blur after that. After Scott and Victoria made them brunch, all of them sat at the dining table and chatted away about so many different things that Sophia found it hard to recall, as she was too busy watching how completely happy all of them were, being together and sharing stories and making jokes.

She found she envied the bond all of them seemed to share. Each and every one of them would give up their lives for one another. It was something Sophia could just see. It was something she could just pick up on intuitively by just observing how they looked at each other as they spoke and jested.

It was just so beautiful to watch, that she wasn’t entirely able to listen to what they were saying. She’d noticed Neil stealing glances at her too, still a bit of that bashful uncertainty within his eyes, but she saw them suddenly darken as he looked between his visiting friends now.

“What?” he said angrily. “The fucking Resistance? Are you guys out of your bloody minds?”

“We know the last time you probably heard of it, it mostly consisted of vigilantes, and criminal types of riff-raff with no order to their attacks, but things are very different now, Neil.” Connor tried to convince his friend. “More and more of the deserted combat-trained elites like us have joined in the last two years. We have become a much more coordinated and formidable force to be reckoned with now … and we’ve come to ask you to join us and help make a difference.”

Neil looked like he was about to go off and explode like a bomb, but it was Scott who spoke up. “You can’t be fucking serious. How could you even suggest it if you two know better than anyone else what happened?”

Sophia felt confused about what seemed to be going on, but mostly felt scared and had a terrible sense of foreboding about it all. Whatever Connor was telling them about and wanted them to rejoin them as a team, she had a really bad feeling about the whole thing.

“They’re right,” Victoria said to Connor. “We have no right to even ask something like this of you two, especially you Neil.”

This made Sophia’s head spin with questions. What did she mean with ‘especially’ Neil? What the hell had happened in their past to talk like this?

“We are planning an attack tonight on an outpost of Thorin’s worst soldiers, camped just outside the western border,” Connor pressed, despite Victoria telling him that they had no right to involve Neil and Scott. “Cain is in charge there, and they’ve been raping, pillaging, and doing unspeakable things to the people in the surrounding towns. We need to put a stop to this. No one else is willing or able to stand up against them. That leaves us.”

Fury was evident in Neil’s eyes as he spoke. “Fucking Cain? Are you insane? Attacking his camp would be suicide!”

“It will be,” Connor admitted with not an ounce of humor nor fear in his eyes. “And I will happily go down if only I was able to do something small to make a difference to this madness. But it won’t be suicide if we could have you two on the team tonight. We need the Hurricane to go in with us…”

At him calling Neil ‘Hurricane’, Sophia had thought that she’d seen him angry before, but he turned absolutely livid. She realized that she’d never asked him about it, but this was clearly hardly the time to bring it up. Sᴇaʀᴄh thᴇ FindNøvᴇl.nᴇt website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

She saw that Neil was about to either say something really nasty, or jump on Connor and strangle him, but Scott put his hand on his chest and she saw him relax slightly.

“We can’t tell you what to do,” Scott said calmly to both Victoria and Connor. “If you want to risk your lives for the Resistance, that is your choice, but I’m going to ask you to not try and involve us again.”

Victoria looked ashamed and seemed to be ready to accept their refusal, but Connor was still adamant.

“Are you two seriously willing to just allow Thorin to completely turn this pack into a dictatorship, and keep letting his lawlessness run rampant? Lives are lost and ruined every single day because of him!” Connor jumped up from the table at that, anger and disappointment in his eyes. “I’m sorry we asked, we just thought that the Neil and Scott we knew would also like to put a stop to all this and save thousands of innocent lives. But guess I was wrong.” He then looked at Victoria as he said, “Come on, let’s go. We need to prepare for tonight.”

Neil and Scott shared a guilty look, but Neil was still mostly indignant as his gaze swept over Sophia for a moment as if he wanted to gauge her reaction to what she’d just heard, and honestly, she had no idea what to think or tell him. All she knew was that the horrible sense of foreboding she’d started to feel earlier had just worsened tenfold, making it hard for her to breathe.

“I’m sorry, Connor,” Neil said after taking a few breaths to calm himself. “I know whatever I say won’t change your minds about this, but know that we won’t either. We just can’t take this big of a risk that you’re asking of us…”

Sophia could see that not being able to help his friends shook him to the core, as he looked like he was fighting back physical pain with every word he spoke, but she couldn’t help but feel grateful and relieved that he’d said no.

Clearly, all that Connor had told them about all the horrible things that were going on in the pack, and with her father being the cause of all it, it was serious stuff, and she herself felt inclined to volunteer even, but still, she was glad they weren’t going into that type of danger tonight…

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