My Alphas' Dark Desires novel Chapter 72

Chapter 72: In Her Space

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Chapter 72

~Valerie’s POV~

Wide-eyed. Pale. Like he’d just caught himself mid-fall and realised the ground was a lot closer than Erik had thought.

His mouth opened and closed once. Then again. "Val—Valerie."

I raised an eyebrow. "Practising for a drama audition I didn’t know about?"

His cheeks flushed instantly, and he rubbed the back of his neck like it might help disappear into the floor. "I, uh... no. Just... walking. Thinking. Not rehearsing anything."

I pushed off the wall and took a few steps toward him. "Sounded like you were. You even had your own little monologue going."

He groaned softly and dropped his head back for a second. "You weren’t supposed to hear any of that."

"Well, I did. Especially the part where I ’literally dragged you out of that mess.’ Which, for the record, was a team effort."

Erik’s gaze dropped to the floor, then back up to me, and when he met my eyes this time, he didn’t look away.

"Still. I wanted to say... thank you. For getting us out of there alive. I don’t think I even knew how close it got until afterwards."

There was something different in his voice. No deflection. No cocky mask. Just sincerity—raw and unpolished.

"I wasn’t exactly graceful in there," he continued, quieter now. "I panicked. I messed up. And you didn’t. You stepped up, and I—" He paused, frowning at himself. "I don’t want to pretend like I did anything helpful. I just... I’m sorry. For being more deadweight than backup."

I studied him for a moment. His fingers kept twitching at his sides like he wasn’t sure what to do with them.

His brows were furrowed, and for all his usual smooth confidence, he looked like he was standing under a spotlight with nowhere to hide.

And that-that made me smile for real.

"It’s fine," I said, gentler now. "We all freeze sometimes. You didn’t run. That counts for something."

He blinked, startled. "It does?"

I shrugged. "Well, it does to me."

The corners of his mouth curved up, slowly. "You’re being nice. That’s kind of terrifying."

"I can be nice," I said, mock-offended. "Under certain rare planetary alignments."

Erik laughed, the tension finally starting to ease from his shoulders. He looked like he wanted to say something else, but a bell rang somewhere down the corridor, announcing either the end of lunch or the beginning of more chaos.

He glanced toward the hallway, then back at me. "Are you okay, though? After everything?"

I hesitated.

I wanted to lie. I wanted to say yes, everything was peachy. That I’d just had a run-in with masked assassins, magical sabotage, and a principal who practically admitted I was bait in some twisted political game—and I was handling it fine.

But Erik had earned the truth. Or at least a piece of it.

"I don’t know," I admitted. "But I’m still standing."

He nodded. "Then that’s something too."

We stood there for another beat, the silence not quite awkward but not entirely easy either. Then I tilted my head toward the hallway. "Walk with me?"

Erik fell into step beside me as we started down the corridor. He didn’t say much, and I didn’t push it. Sometimes silence spoke louder than all the right words.

And right now, it said: I’m here. I’ve got your back.

Even if it had taken him a few bruises and a crisis to mean it.

Just the thought of returning made my shoulders weak. "Fuck it!"

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