Page 112 of Alpha Awakened

Royce grinned. “Maybe.”

“I don’t believe you,” Dylan grumbled as he laid back down. “Tell me about the alpha tradition.”

“We get symbols that are important to us in bands, starting at the wrist and rising all the way up to our shoulders or until we want to stop.”

“Like life rings on a tree,” Dylan said. “Then why the blank space? What’s that for?”

“That space is reserved for our mate. When we take a mate, not only do we exchange mating bites, but alphas get inked with whatever our mates want to see in our skin. Many mates choose something like the couple’s names or the date they met. But it can be anything.”

Again, Dylan brushed his thumb over the blank space on his arm. “That’s a wonderful tradition. Leaving space for your mate on your body just as you do in your heart.”

“Hmm.”

They both went quiet for a moment. Ice had never planned to take a mate. Actually, he’d never planned to get the tattoos either. He was so divorced from nearly everything that made him a wolf and hadn’t had any contact with his home pack in so long that he’d thought that he didn’t care about the tradition. But one day he’d had the urge to go and get a tattoo. He had, and after that first ink he’d continued on, his arms slowly but steadily filling with symbols that represented his life.

Major milestones were all permanently etched into his skin. Graduating from military school with honors. Then graduation from basic training. Each promotion in the Legion. His first kill. The first time he’d been shot. Since it felt nice to talk about his personal life with Dylan, he decided to share a little more.

“I never planned to have anything in that space,” he admitted.

“Why not?”

“Once I moved into covert and tactical ops I assumed I would die out in the field. But I left the empty space out of respect for my pack’s tradition.”

“Hmm,” Dylan quietly hummed. “You won’t die out there in some battle.”

“I won’t?”

“Nope.”

“You sound certain of that.”

Dylan twisted to look up at him. “I am. I can see you retired, maybe with a bad shoulder from all the knife throws, at home in a renovated farm house on acres of land.”

Royce frowned. “You don’t have the Sight.”

“Don’t need it. I can feel it in here,” Dylan said with a fist pressed to his chest. “I know you’ll survive this job. This life.”

“If you say it, it must be true.”

Dylan smiled and dropped a kiss on his chin. “So, what are your first tattoos?” he asked as he traced his fingers over the band closest to his wrist. “Tell me the story of baby Ice’s first ink.”

“Those are for my family,” he said stiffly. He wasn’t ready to talk about that yet.

Dylan instantly got the hint. He moved up to the next band without missing a beat. “What’s this one?”

Royce relaxed again. “That’s when I graduated from military school.”

“Why the broken pencil?”

“I chose it because I thought I was done with writing and my life would be nothing but action from there on out. Little did I know about post mission reports.”

Dylan huffed a quiet laugh. “What a sweet, naive child you were.”

Dylan continued on, picking out the tattoos that interested him the most. For each one, Royce shared the history behind it. Dylan listened, laughing at the funny stories, squeezing his arm in sympathy at the rough ones.

By the time Dylan sated his curiosity, Royce realized he hadn’t talked about himself that much in... well, ever. Somehow, Dylan made it easy for him to open up and share.

“They’re beautiful and they’re a part of your culture. But I’ve never seen you in anything but long sleeves. Why don’t you ever show them off?”