Chapter 164: Her Alpha

"I’m not going to run away from you. Do you hear me?" I whispered, my voice breaking betrayingly on the final word as my eyes burned so sharply it felt like scalding water had been splashed into them.

Pressing myself even tighter against him, I wanted only one thing: for every last barrier between us to crumble entirely. Everything. Forever.

With a ragged intake of breath, his arms locked around me, crushing me against his chest so fiercely that the remaining air was forced right out of my lungs.

We stood there for a minute, or perhaps an eternity—time among these roses and their suffocating perfume simply ceased to exist.

I trembled, crying softly against his chest, while he stroked my back and whispered into my ear—quiet, gentle words that felt completely impossible coming from the Magnus Rainn I had known before.

The tenderness of his touch dismantled my remaining defenses one by one, each whispered word echoing deep within my soul. If anyone had ever told me that Magnus himself would stand here, gently rubbing my back and murmuring soft endearments, I would have laughed right in their face. I would have called them crazy and walked away without a second thought.

"I think you exaggerated my beauty when you commissioned the sculptor," I whispered into his neck, letting out a nervous, wet giggle through my tears and feeling annoyed with myself for crying.

"No," he answered without missing a beat. "He made it strictly from a photograph."

I pulled back that very instant, glancing back at the statue before turning my gaze back to Magnus.

"What photograph?"

The corner of his lips twitched in a barely perceptible smirk. Reaching into his inner pocket, he pulled out his phone and turned the screen toward me without a word. My heart froze in my chest before plummeting into an abyss.

On the screen was a room I recognized instantly with every cell in my body—the room where we had spent his rut. I was asleep in the picture, sprawled across the rumpled sheets, my hair scattered wildly across the pillow, my face relaxed and completely vulnerable.

It was identical in every detail to the marble figure lying atop the white stone pedestal. I hadn’t even known when that picture was taken, and the realization sent a strange, tingling shiver down my spine.

"You kept it all this time..." I breathed out. "I’m completely naked here... how embarrassing..."

His low, affectionate laugh vibrated against my chest like a warm, comforting tickle, bringing a light, almost weightless feeling—like butterfly wings—fluttering through my heart.

"You are breathtaking," he murmured, putting the phone away. "And it isn’t embarrassing. Your body is so gorgeous that I constantly crave you."

"You never deleted it..." I locked my eyes with his, refusing to let go because I needed to know. "Not even when you thought I was deceiving you?"

He went silent for a second, a heavy weight hanging in the pause.

"I tried to, but I stopped myself every single time. I looked at it every day, Jane. Every single damned day I looked at you sleeping, and I could never get enough."

Hugging him tighter and burying my face into his chest, I finally understood why he had needed Madam Arden. If she had cultivated such a living, breathing masterpiece of flowers meant solely for me—created as a tribute to me—I wasn’t going to overthink or invent ghost stories in my head. She was in the past now, and this glass dome could stay.

"I think we should remove the stone pedestal from here," I said quietly.

"Should I tear down the dome too?" he asked.

I shook my head, wiping my cheek with the back of my hand. "No. We’ll put a bench and a table here. It will be the most wonderful garden to warm my heart, because every time I come in here, I’ll remember that you built all of this for me."

His arms tightened around me even further, pressing me against him almost to the breaking point, as if he needed to physically reassure himself that I was real—that I wouldn’t vanish into thin air again.

"You are incredible," he exhaled into my hair. "My mate."

"Your mate wants something..." I murmured softly, tracing my fingers across his powerful chest and casually catching a button on his shirt. Unbuttoning it. And then the next one.

I felt his breathing deepen instantly. His large palms slid down to my hips, gripping them firmly through the fabric of my clothes as the tension between us condensed into something almost tactile.

"And what does my mate want?" his rumbling baritone rasped, scorching through my senses.

"Her Alpha..."

***

"A massive swarm of vultures with cameras has gathered near the airport building," Sayan sighed heavily, leaning his hip against the cool metal hood of the car.

Magnus cast a glance full of utter contempt toward them. The journalists were squirming behind the barricades, resembling a swarm of hungry insects.

"Poor bastards. They haven’t even properly processed the last sensation yet. Before they could digest it, another one got dumped on them, making the air around them practically vibrate with nervous tension."

Taking out a cigarette and flicking his lighter, Sayan inhaled greedily. It was four in the morning. Pitch-black, bone-chilling dark. The cold seeped beneath their clothes, scratching at their skin like tiny needles of ice, as if the night itself were trying to freeze what little warmth they had left out of them. And then this flight.

"Couldn’t the fucking bastard have flown in earlier? Fucking freak."

"Are you talking about Illai Keiner’s arrival?" Magnus clarified.

Sayan rolled his eyes. A study he had seen recently immediately popped into his head—it said that when you ask a man three questions, he usually only answers one. Right now, he was hinting as hard as he could to get some clarity on these convoluted schemes, but Magnus showed no intention of lifting the veil on his secrets and cunning moves.