Total pages in book: 59
Estimated words: 56786 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 284(@200wpm)___ 227(@250wpm)___ 189(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 56786 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 284(@200wpm)___ 227(@250wpm)___ 189(@300wpm)
“Hey, that’s enough,” Lucien said gently, laying a hand on his shoulder.
Breathing hard, Aksel straightened up and looked at the bloody, groaning boys on the ground.
He glared at them one last time before allowing Lucien to lead him away, toward the rocky beach behind the house.
“Are you okay?” Lucien said, pushing Aksel down to sit on a boulder as he examined Aksel’s knuckles. “You might need medical treatment.”
Aksel shook his head. “They’ll heal on their own. They always do.” He smiled proudly and boasted, “They badly bruised my ribs last month, but it stopped hurting the next day!”
The look Lucien gave him was tight, his pretty eyes infinitely sad. “It’s not right that a child has such extensive experience with injuries.”
“I’m not a child!” Aksel said with a scoff. “I’m almost five.”
Chuckling harshly, Lucien sat down next to him.
They were silent for a while, watching the angry sea.
“What were you doing out there alone?” Lucien said at last. His voice was gentle and melodic. So soothing. Aksel liked it very much. He didn’t know anyone else who spoke like that. He also liked that Lucien’s eyes didn’t linger on the tufts of fur on his cheeks—everyone else’s did, and their scents inevitably tinged with disgust and wariness. He liked that Lucien’s eyes remained firmly on his. He didn’t seem to care that Aksel was a Xeus.
“I’m almost five, not a baby!” Aksel said again. “I can go anywhere I want!”
Lucien’s lips twitched, and Aksel felt inordinately pleased. He wanted to make him smile more.
“Your name is Aksel, right?” he said.
Nodding, Aksel shifted closer to him, and after a moment’s thought, climbed into the boy’s lap.
The boy tensed up a little, and then relaxed again, looking at him softly with his wide green eyes.
“You smell sad,” Aksel said, reaching up and touching the boy’s smooth cheek. “Thoros upset you. I saw—I smelled it.”
Lucien’s throat moved. “He didn’t upset me. I don’t care what people say about me.”
Aksel frowned. He could smell the lie in Lucien’s scent, but maybe Lucien wanted to believe it. Aksel understood. He always said that he didn’t care what people said about him, but... but it still made him angry. Sometimes, it still hurt.
“I don’t care neither,” he said.
“I don’t care either,” Lucien corrected him gently.
Aksel wrinkled his nose in distaste, and Lucien laughed a little, his eyes sparkling.
Aksel couldn’t look away from him. The boy really was the prettiest thing ever, but when he laughed, he was ethereal. It was like he shone with light from the inside, exuding warmth and wholesomeness and everything nice and good.
He couldn’t imagine anyone hurting that.
But he could imagine people wanting to possess that.
“We can ‘not care’ together,” Aksel declared.
Lucien laughed again, but this time his laugh lacked genuine amusement. It wasn’t fake. Just sad. Aksel hated it.
“Do you want a hug?” Aksel said. “The baby—my baby sister—stops crying when I give her a hug.” The baby really did. Aksel’s father had explained that it was the pack bond calming her down, but Aksel hoped it would work on Lucien too, even though they obviously didn’t share a family bond.
Lucien blinked a few times, his eyes a little shiny. “I’m not exactly a baby,” he said with a fragile, strained smile. “And I’m not sad.”
Liar.
“I’ll hug you anyway,” Aksel said with a scoff, wrapping his arms around Lucien’s chest.
Lucien stiffened. But after a long few moments, tentatively, he hugged back.
And little by little, the sour undertones receded from his scent. It became sweeter. Like flowers or something. Not the nauseatingly sweet kind, but the kind that made Aksel think of the sun on his face in the early summer. Aksel breathed it in greedily, rubbing his face against the scent gland on the boy’s slim neck. He was only vaguely aware of the low sound coming from somewhere until Lucien suddenly chuckled.
“Are you growling?” he said.
Blinking, Aksel lifted his head and looked him in the face. “I’m an alpha,” he said, puffing up his chest. “I’m comforting you. You’re an omega of our pack. Alphas take care of omegas.”
A sad smile curled Lucien’s lips. “They do,” he whispered, some unidentifiable emotion flickering over his face before his smile became more genuine. “You’re adorable, sweetheart.”
Aksel frowned, deeply unimpressed. “I’m not! I’m an alpha. Alphas aren’t adorable.”
Lucien giggled. It was the prettiest sound Aksel had ever heard. He wanted to bottle it up and listen to it forever. He wanted to make Lucien laugh again. Force him to laugh all the time.
The feeling—the greed he was feeling—was too much. Aksel growled in frustration and buried his face against Lucien’s scent gland, scent-marking him aggressively. He knew his alpha pheromones weren’t strong yet—that would happen only when he was old enough to present—but he was a Xeus. Everyone knew Xeus alphas were very stinky from birth. For the first time, Aksel was glad that he was stinky.