Ronan's voice slid in from behind him, quiet and unhurried. The voice of a predator stalking his prey. Alaric did not turn. He kept his face blank and his hands still.
Ronan stepped into view, arms crossed, a smile that wasn't quite a smile plastered to his face.
"A human." He let the word sit. "Two months she has been walking these grounds, then she stumbles and suddenly you are across the room before anyone blinks." He tilted his head. "Have you become so brawny you no longer know the rules?" He paused.
"I stopped what would have been a disaster." Alaric kept his face straight, not staring back at him.
"Super hero bag boy saved the day," Ronan chuckled. "Well, that wasn't what I heard. Want to know what I heard?" Ronan held a hand to his ears.
Alaric's jaw ticked. Ronan's superhearing was the reason Jax made him his Beta. Countless lives had been executed, because he hears even the faintest murmurs. He's often called the living lie detector.
"I heard your heart beat faster than it had ever done. I heard your breathing come out ragged. I even heard you swallow." His smile became more taunting.
"I don't know what you're talking about, Ronan." Alaric's face remained blank, but he struggled to keep his heartbeat steady. He knew Ronan was listening. Prying. And if he lets him, he wouldn't just be a subject of ridicule for him, but a target. He couldn't afford that. For his mum. His family.
"You know what Jax does to wolves who forget the rules." His tone did not sharpen. It did not need to, but his smile became even more sinister. "But perhaps you have forgotten what that looks like up close, your mother has not, I imagine." He paused again, letting that land. "Does she know you have been watching the human coordinator? Saving her when she stumbles? Because I think she would want to know."
Alaric's face stayed blank, but this time his heartbeat did not. It spiked. One sharp furious lurch of his wolf at the threat wrapped in Ronan's easy smile. He caught it. Pulled it back. Forced it back down.
Ronan studied him for a long moment, eyes moving between Alaric's face and his chest. Then his smile widened into something more open, more certain, the look of someone who had found exactly what he came for. He turned and walked back toward the inner circle without another word, a low laugh trailing behind him as he went.
Alaric stayed where he was.Taking deep, slow and calculated breaths. One step. That was all it would have taken if Ronan's voice hadn't pulled him back. One step and he would have given Ronan and anyone who was watching far more than enough to work with. He exhaled slowly, releasing the fist he had been holding tight since Ronan brought up his mother. He had kept himself contained this long and away from anything that would put him in the spotlight. He was not going to lose himself now.
He stepped out of the hall and leaned his back against the corridor wall. The pull had not gone. Her scent was still on his hands. The warmth of the contact still burned in his palm with a persistence that had no reasonable explanation. He did not have a name for what the wolf inside him was doing and he did not want one.
Ronan had not made a threat. He had made a promise, quietly, with a smile. And promises like that had a way of collecting interest the longer they went unpaid.