by Raven Willow
No. Don’t think of it.
To his relief, no other scent but hers was still left behind. No sign of an assault. Alistair almost felt worse. He could find no clues or answers to where his mate was. It left him with nothing.
Defeated, he fell on his knees, still clutching the sheets as he finally let his tears fall. For his fallen pack members or his own pain, he didn’t know. But he had no more energy. No more fight in him. He had allowed this to happen. He wasn’t careful enough.
He should have moved them all when he had the chance. When he first brought his mate home. He feared they would be vulnerable on foot. Instead he made them more vulnerable by having them remain. And now his mate and his pups were missing. They were out there somewhere in the cold, unprotected. And in the grasp of his beta, who had just shown his true colors.
None of this made sense. Ceardach was Alistair’s best friend. He had stood by his uncle when Cinead issued the challenge. He stood by Alistair when he was selected to become alpha in Lysander’s name. Those happy memories began to fade with the blood of his pack members being washed away. The blood that not only was on Ceardach’s hands, but what Alistair couldn’t help but feel was on his own as well.
Alistair punched the floor, taking his rage out on the wood and ripping through it, howling in pain. Ceardach’s wrongdoing reflected his own, as the leader. If the beta could no longer be trusted, why should he?
Suddenly, a glint of light appeared in the corner of his eye. It came from a corner of the room near his mate’s vanity, which still housed the silver combs he had given her. He stepped down to investigate, and picked up the jewel. It had been clearly ripped from the wearer, as the chain was snapped. The clear quartz glimmered in the light until Alistair’s bloody fist closed around it.
Ceardach’s crystal.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Riona remembered a flash before everything went dark. A bright light that seemed to fly across the field that she could see in her window just before the dizziness took hold. Screaming soon followed the crying of the little ones. On cue, her own children moved inside her as if frightened as well. Smoke began to cloud the sky as men she didn’t recognize ran like brutes, hollering and hooting as they hurt her family.
The cup that had been given to her slipped from her shaking hand, shattering all over the floor. All she had asked was for her tea on her night table. The illness had overcome her for most of the afternoon, and Elspeth’s herbals did wonders. Except Elspeth was out there now, shifted into her large white wolf seeming to fight off the strange men.
Her red-haired beta had brought her tea instead, painting on a kind smile as he helped her up.
“That’s it, drink it down. You will feel better very... very soon.” His syrupy voice was slightly uncomfortable, but when her eyes began to grow heavy, she attempted to stave his advances of picking her up out of bed.
“Shhh, quiet, dear. Mustn’t alert anyone of where we are going. Just let those eyes fall. You will wake soon enough.”
“Nuuhhh... don’t... let me g—” Riona struggled pitifully in his arms. He was stronger than he looked. Ceardach didn’t break a sweat, even smiled as he heard a blast coming from the clearing, shaking the ground.
“Relax, mate. We will be safe. It will all be alright.”
Mate? Why would he call me that?
The world turned black around her, but not before she took hold of his crystal bouncing on his chest, ripping it from his neck.
“Don’t be feisty now.” He adjusted his hold on her, forcing her to rest her head on his shoulder. The uncomfortable closeness made her want to vomit even more, but her body betrayed her as she went limp. She let her hand relax and dropped the crystal on the floor with a small clank as he carried her away.
Please, mate, please find me...
* * *
Now she felt cold. And what felt so hard beneath her? Riona instinctively brought a heavy hand to her womb. Seconds later, her babies kicked and she felt calm.
Safe... they are safe. For now.
Slowly, she sat up, but her body felt weighed down, like she was carrying bricks on top of her shoulders. Eventually she made it, but retched to the side when the world around her swayed. The damned drug she was given.
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand when her body was done, but she realized she was lying on a cold stone floor. There were cobwebs strewn all over and armies of bats flew overhead. This place didn’t smell like home. It smelled like fire and brimstone. Riona wrinkled her nose as she realized rats had made their homes here. A few of them were scampering mere feet away.
“Awake at last? I must say you had me a little worried. I did not intend on giving you so much, but it did keep that mouth quiet while I smuggled you off.”
She whipped her head a little too quickly behind her to find him.
Ceardach, smugly sitting upon the ruins of what looked like a stone chair with one leg hanging over the side. He bounced the other leg while he chewed on some dried meat and smirked when Riona brought her hand to her forehead.
“Easy, silly girl, I wouldn’t move so fast. You will be needing your strength.” He tossed her a piece of dried meat, which Riona didn’t give him the pleasure of catching.
“Deprive our children of food? Fine, have it your way. I can always tie you down and force feed you.” He shrugged, but Riona balked at his comment.
“Our children?” Riona defensively backed away, growing more fearful as she registered her surroundings. They were in what appeared to be a worn-down old castle from many centuries ago. The structure looked as if it would collapse any minute.
“Yes, because when your mate comes here to claim you, I am going to kill him.” His matter of fact statement made Riona want to retch again. He chuckled as he sipped wine.
“You were clever in leaving a clue for him, ripping my necklace away. He will use it to track us here. Never mind that it has been at least a whole day and I still see no sight of him. Perhaps he has abandoned you.” He feigned concern as he looked over his shoulders, pursing his thin lips.
“But you were hurt... the day Cinead found us, you had been hurt.” Riona recalled when the battered beta hobbled into the clearing.
“Yes, yes. Bloody well hurt too. I had him deliver a few good blows. Some I inflicted on my own. After all, it had to look real. All he needed to do was follow me home. You, my dear, took care of the rest by killing him yourself.” Ceardach shrugged.
Riona hung her head. Everyone had fallen for the ruse.
“It was my mother’s, you know. That crystal. She gave it to me when I made my first shift. So proud she was of her only child. Pity though, I never had a father to share in my accomplishments. Becoming beta, remaining loyal to this pack for centuries while Alistair...” His face drifted off, shoulders drooping slightly. The icy blue of his eyes flashed silver, and his features began to change. “While he was too blind to see what was right in front of him!”
Riona hugged the barrier of her legs closer to her children. Something was wrong here. “What are you talking about?”
“I am talking about your mate having what I rightfully deserved. Being alpha, command over this territory and a family with a loving mate and beautiful pups to raise and groom to become future alphas.”
The way Ceardach looked longingly at her womb did not go unnoticed. He licked his lips as he studied her.
“What are you saying...” Riona clutched her locket, internally begging for Alistair to just come bursting through these stone walls and take her back home. She would not be able to shift, not now.
“I am saying that everything that your mate has should belong to me, and it is going to belong to me.”
Riona stood, trying to fight a premature shift. An anger-fueled change could be detrimental.
“You will not have my children!”
“Yes, I will. I will have you, those pups, and the entirety of this land at my disposal.” He drank down the rest of his wine then threw the cup to
the side, discarding it much like Riona imagined he would do to her. She swallowed the lump in her throat.
“What makes you think I would submit to you?”
“I do not need your submission, female. I only need that cunt of yours to give me a brood of sons to begin my legacy. The other males will come around to my plans for the pack. But for now, all I need is you clamped down on my cock.”
Riona stumbled against the wall, unable to believe what she was being told. Who the hell was this man, because this was not her mate’s dear friend.
“When I kill Alistair, I will be rightful heir. I will paint a story of a tragic madness, a sickness of the mind at having lost his pack mates. Unable to cope with his failures, he wandered into the darkness, never to return.” Ceardach waved his hand as he spun his ridiculous tale.
“You do not expect me to actually go through with this madness, do you?” Riona took a step toward him, her anger bubbling.
“Oh, I very much do. Because you see, my dear, when the lives of your children are on the line, I believe you will have no choice but to surrender to my will. In fact, you will be one of the lucky ones.” He took out his hunting blade, toying with it and testing the sharpness by sliding it across his fingers.
“You see, you will reside with me here. Tending to our progeny, partaking in your mately duties while I keep you barefoot and bred. I am sure you will come to enjoy it, because compared to the other females, you will have it easy.”
“What are you talking about? No! You will not hurt them!” Riona frantically searched with her eyes for an escape route. But stepping away and looking down through an opening in the structure, she saw that they were several stories up. Jumping at this height would prove fatal. She ran to the other side, cradling her stomach. There was a staircase, but it was damaged and stopped about halfway down to the first floor. He must have scaled the walls carrying her.
Riona heard him chuckle at her pitiful search.
“I will if I must, but to keep your compliance, I will raise them up as my own, and they will know me as their father. The name Alistair shall never cross your lips, or anyone else’s in this pack. He will be erased from our history. Once you are well enough, I will fuck my own young into you, and like the other females, you will smile and obey.” He threw his knife, making a perfect target against the already crumbling wall.
“What will you do to them?” Riona gasped. Elspeth, Ailith, what would become of them?
“I will form alliances with the other alphas in the packs of this land. Once they see it my way, they will take multiple females and use them to bring more alphas into the world. We will need them to show the humans what their place is. That we are not so easily subdued.”
“But this is not the way! You cannot enslave us and trade us like cattle!” Riona screamed, the tears stinging her eyes. This couldn’t be happening. Where in the gods’ names was her mate?
“It is the way. You females were bred and brought up for it, and it is what you will teach your children, and what they will teach their children. I will have successfully brought about a new age of the wolf. By the time the new generation rises, we will be so large, so powerful that we will only grow further from there. And it will all be thanks to me.” He grinned like a lunatic as he looked up to the stars, as if he were a boy gazing up at his parents asking if they were proud.
“My father did not see. He refused to see. He instead chose Alistair to follow in his path, the strongest wolf, and the most intelligent. When he refused to acknowledge his own son.” He stood up, leaning against a pile of rubble.
Riona heard his breathing quicken, and knew a shift would be coming.
Appease him, just listen to him and buy time.
Then it hit her.
“Your father... he was the alpha?” It couldn’t be.
The alpha before Alistair; his uncle, the wolf Lysander. She didn’t recall Alistair telling her of his family. If he even had a family.
Unless...
“He was the alpha for hundreds of years before he met my mother. The story she told was that I was born of love. Of unbridled passion. That my father did love me, but my parentage had to be a secret for fear his enemies would use me against him.” He scoffed and pulled his knife from the wall.
“When the truth was that I was just a bastard. My mother pined for him, and one night of drunken foolishness led to my birth. But he refused to acknowledge me. Tried as I did, he would never admit his fault. I was the secret he chose to exclude.
“So my mother raised me, alone and unmated. The heartbreak eventually grew too much to bear, and it killed her.”
He brought a hand to where his crystal would have been.
“And so Alistair took me under his wing, but he always held the favor of Lysander. Even when I was his true and natural born son! He still chose him as his successor.” His nostrils flared and his eyes flashed in anger.
Riona couldn’t help but pity him, knowing too well what it was like to have a father who never treated her as his own. Thinking of her as more of a burden than his blood.
“I am sorry.”
Ceardach looked up, confused.
“What?”
“I said I am sorry.”
He snorted.
“For what, you know nothing!”
“I know enough. I know you have been hurt. I know you feel neglected. You feel discarded. And that is why you want to do this.”
“What do you think you know of my plans?” He walked toward his makeshift ‘throne,’ becoming agitated.
Riona pressed a little further.
“You hurt, and that is why you want to hurt.” She bravely walked toward him, holding her head high.
“Stop.”
“You want revenge on those who have wronged you. But this is not the way. You believe the only way you can end up on top of the world is to stomp on those you deem lesser than you.”
“I will not tell you again!”
But Riona wouldn’t stop, not now, not ever. All she needed was just a few more moments...
She would not let it be known the howling of her mate that she could hear in her head. How close he sounded. He had closed off the bond to Ceardach. As long as Riona kept him distracted.
“But you see, do you know what this makes you?” She took one last step, not afraid now to expose her vulnerability to him.
“It makes you a coward.”
“I said enough!” Ceardach shot up, striking Riona across the face and sending her reeling on the cold floor.
“You think you can tell me what to do, female! I will show you how a man puts a bitch like you in her place!”
She looked up through teary eyes to see him unlacing his breeches.
“No...”
Mate... I need you now... hurry...
“Please don’t.”
“Too late, little female, he will not come to save you.”
Ceardach leaned over her, grabbing her ankles and roughly pulling her toward him and using the weight of his body to expose her.
“Get off me!”
“Steady, feisty girl, or they may get hurt.” He brandished his knife, holding it against her tummy now.
“Don’t harm them...”
“I won’t.” He grabbed her face and forced her to look at him when she turned away, crying.
“It’s you I am going to hurt.”
He laughed as Riona struggled against the weight of him. She tried to kick, but it was useless. She was trapped beneath him.
“That’s it, cry for me. No one to hear you.” He ripped the top of her gown, exposing her burgeoning cleavage. But before he could reach between them and grab hold of himself, he stilled on top of her, his eyes going wide as Riona heard the clank of what sounded like a blade. She panicked, bringing a hand to her stomach, but no such wound was there.
Something warm began dripping on her arm. Upon looking, she saw the handle of Alistair’s own knife penetrated deep into Ceardach’s ribs. Her shifted mate was now vis
ible, standing over them as he bent down to grab Ceardach off of her.
“I believe what my mate told you was to get off.” Alistair slammed him down on the stone, when Riona felt warm hands under her arms pulling her up. Elspeth’s blonde hair tickled her face as she helped her up.
“It’s alright, you’re alright. Are you hurt, love?” Elspeth did a quick visual inspection of her alpha’s mate while Riona caught her breath. She brought a hand to her womb, closing her eyes to connect with her pups. They kicked and moved in response.
“They’re alright.”
Ceardach staggered up, sputtering blood and wheezing as he began to laugh.
“So you survived the ruffians I sent after you after all.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and promptly pulled the dagger from his body.
“You disgrace the title you hold, Ceardach.” Alistair circled him but kept an eye on Riona.
“He harmed you.”
Riona shook her head, but couldn’t hide the mark on her face.
“Yes, he did! He will pay.”
Alistair turned his attention to his beta, who now no longer deserved the privilege.
“You will provide an explanation to your alpha and the alpha mate. You will relinquish any and all rights to be a member of this pack and my family. You will atone for your actions here or home where you will face your charges there.” He looked to his mate.
Riona silently gave permission, his confidence and composure rubbing off on her as Elspeth held her close.
“And what? I am to be executed? Will it be the sword or the axe? Forgive me, the idea seems so primitive considering it has not been done in centuries, Alpha,” Ceardach smugly stated.
“A beta has never betrayed his pack, his alpha, or his family. Crimes I deem appropriate to see your head roll.” Alistair stood to his full height, challenging his beta to strike.
“Oh, Alistair, you surprise me! You would really murder your own cousin?”