Riiing… Riiing… Riiing…
Suddenly, the sound of a phone ringing would startle the Belion, who would reflexively draw her claws and look around.
Riiing… Riiing… Riiing…
Listening more closely this time, the little alpha could only sigh as her claws turned back into fingernails on her hands, and she felt a little embarrassed when she realized the sound was coming from her sister's cell phone.
Frowning slightly, she scanned the dark room until she saw Erika's coat lying where she had left it when she began helping her sister undress.
She saw that the sound was coming from one of the pockets, vibrating against the fabric like an anxious heart. She approached at a leisurely pace and began to rummage through the folds until she extracted the cell phone.
When she did, the screen lit up, projecting a blue flash across her face.
Alison
She felt a chill run down her spine.
She hesitated. The weight of what answering entailed overwhelmed the little alpha for a moment.
Alison and Emma knew her too well. All it took was one misspoken word, an out-of-place silence, a tense breath… and they'd know something was wrong. That something fundamental inside her had changed.
And she wasn't ready to give answers, she didn't even want to face it yet.
But Erika was asleep in the room, completely exhausted, and those two deserved an answer about how she was feeling… that, and she had her own question she wanted answered.
So she took a deep breath and swiped to answer.
"Hello?"
"Melina!"
"Mel-Mel!"
The voices exploded like fireworks in her ear, high-pitched and urgent. She had to pull her phone away slightly, wincing.
(Perfect. Just what I needed right now…)
In her chest, something shifted, causing a faint pulse. Her alpha side, still agitated by the recent chaos, was pushing from deep within, wanting to come out again.
Melina closed her eyes for a second, forcing herself to control herself.
(No. Downstairs. They're not a threat. They helped Eri. Everything's okay…)
"I'm sorry, Mel," Emma spoke up, unwittingly pulling the little alpha out of her thoughts. "Some people still don't understand what it means to speak carefully."
"Hey," Alison mumbled from deep within, "it's not like I'd screamed…"
"Is Erika okay?" Emma asked, interrupting her partner, her voice more serious.
Melina turned her head toward the hallway, where the closed bedroom door kept the silence.
"She's asleep," she finally answered. "She arrived so exhausted she could barely stand."
"We figured," Emma said after a pause. "We stayed at a nearby hotel... We didn't know how she'd react if she saw us following her, entering a space where she lives with the cubs she protects like gold..."
"Yeah... if that didn't trigger a territorial reaction, then I don't know what would," Alison commented, with her usual sarcasm, although less biting.
"Alison...!"
"Okay, okay, I'll shut up..."
Melina gritted her teeth. She felt the tremor return with force, generating from the base of her spine and feeling something raw and wild taking shape in her throat.
Something that rumbled in her essence that was alarmingly liberating.
It wasn't a moan, not a groan... it was an alpha growl. Low, deep, undeniable. It erupted from her throat like suppressed thunder and traveled through her cell phone.
Generating immediate silence.
"...That was an alpha growl." Emma whispered, barely audible on the other end of the call, as if the air was escaping her lungs.
"Yes. And it wasn't weak," Alison's voice immediately tensed. Her usual sarcasm evaporated, taking its place with a dense seriousness.
The two of them sat still in the hotel room they rented. Emma, wide-eyed, kept staring at her phone as if she could see right through it. And Alison stood beside her, frowning.
"So, little Mel..."
"Preliminary introduction," Alison interrupted, without a trace of judgment, automatically taking the phone from the beta's hands and moving a little closer. "Melina... I'm not going to ask anything. It's not our place, nor our right, to interfere in this. I just want you to promise me that what I'm about to tell you now... you'll take it easy."
Melina clenched her jaw. She knew the eldest alpha spoke not only from respect but from the experience of having been there when Erika's world fell apart. When the stage became a cage, when her sister screamed voicelessly, bled without wounds, and fled without understanding why.
"I promise," she whispered.
"We don't know for sure what happened," Alison said firmly. "But in short... Erika's heat... was released suddenly; it wasn't natural at all; it was as if something was pushing it from within and expelling it. Like a command she couldn't resist... I've never seen anything like it."
"When we took her offstage, she was like out of it," Emma added, a little recovered from her previous surprise. "It seemed like she was on at times and then off at times."
"And before you ask... the blood under her nails... yes, it's mine," Alison said. "It seems my pheromones destabilized her even more than she already was and caused her to attack me when she saw me as a threat..."
"Then she somehow managed to be coherent enough to get into her car and drive without crashing... all the way home," Emma concluded.
Melina swallowed, slowly lowering her gaze, her cell phone shaking in her hand. A wave of rage and helplessness stabbed at her chest.
Erika, her invincible sister, her rock... had broken. And she did it in the middle of a place that terrified her. In such an unstable state that she didn't even recognize two of the people she trusted most.
"...I owe you one," she finally murmured, her voice hoarse. "I really do. You have no idea how grateful I am for what you did."
"We would never let anything happen to her," Emma replied sweetly. "She's our friend. Our pack, we would do it again and again, without a second thought."
"Thank you..."
"You're welcome, Mel-Mel... Take care, all three of you," Alison replied softly before ending the call.
The final tone dissolved into the air, but the silence that remained was thick, as if even time needed a moment to process it. Melina lowered her phone, watched the screen slowly fade, still holding it tightly. As if it were a rope keeping her steady.
And then she knew.
Sooner or later, she would have to tell Erika. That her body was no longer that of a child. That something new, powerful, had awakened in her. That she was no longer just her little sister.
But not now.
Now, she just had to make sure the world didn't fall apart for the woman who had always taken care of hers.
That, and getting back to bed before Rose realized she was missing and went out looking for her, potentially inadvertently stumbling upon Erika's unstable state.