Alpha Hell: A Dark Rejected Mates Romance (The Rejected Mate Series Book 1)

by G. Bailey

  “That would’ve been useful to know last time,” I say, sliding Alaric a grin.

  Caspian’s smile fades and I regret bringing up my time with Alaric. Will Caspian ever accept that he won’t be the only man in my life?

  He tosses the fruit across the room. It sails past my ear in a whistle, but before it smacks into one of the filing cabinets, a long, pale hand catches it. A dark figure emerges from the shadows, and sharp, glinting canines pierce the flesh of the grapefruit. A grotesque smile upturns thinly pressed lips, and a trickle of fae grapefruit runs down a dimpled chin.

  “Such a pity.” The demon unveils itself to be a handsome, middle-aged man dressed in a tailored suit. His eyes gleam like ruby shards and my wolf recoils away from him. “I do believe none of you will be my next intern.”

  Dove releases an arrow infused with magic, but the demon counteracts it with a lazy wave of his hand. He finishes the fruit in two bites, throws it over his shoulder, and licks the seam of his lips. His deep onyx eyes travel each of us leisurely. They land on me, and he smiles again.

  “You, however, showed great promise. You’ll be the first to die.”

  Another wave of his hand causes a dark smoky tendril to appear out of nowhere and wrap around my wrist. It binds me like a curled whip and then yanks my arm sideways, forcing me to drop my dagger to the floor.

  The VP scrambles to the side while Alaric shapeshifts into his ginormous dark blue wolf and lunges. Dove disappears behind one of the cabinets while her partner shifts into a raven with huge golden talons. She must have demon blood in her, or she could never do that. Wolves can’t shift into other creatures.

  I reach into my pocket and withdraw a second blade. More demonic tendrils snap out of the darkness and cut through the air. I dive to the side, just narrowly avoiding the demon’s magic, and grip my weapon.

  “Caspian!”

  Fighting the demon alongside Alaric’s wolf and Annastasia’s raven, Caspian follows the sound of my voice. I throw my silver dagger, its use intended to capture the demon, and he catches it with a similar tendril of his own, only it’s the same colour as his eyes. I’ve never seen his succubus side before; it’s utterly breathtaking. The smoky tendrils bursting out from his back, lash around him and collide with the demon’s. One of Caspian’s tendrils catches the demon on the cheek, and dark blood surfaces like tar. With his magic holding everyone else at bay, the demon touches the blood trickling down his face and snarls.

  As if placing his hands on an invisible table before him, the demon’s body contorts. Bones twist and snap. Flesh tears and gone is the human skin the creature has been hiding in. Now an enormous dark creature with several limbs and eyes lunges toward me.

  I pull out my gun and shoot, but the silver bullet ricochets off the creature and dings on the floor. Dove’s arrow catches one of the demon’s arms and it shrieks, the ear-splitting noise almost cracking my skull in half from the frequency. A rush of dizziness washes over me and hundreds of records, filed away in the cabinets, crash onto the floor as the demon jumps on top of the cage and continues shrieking.

  I cover my ears in an attempt to dull the pain, but it doesn’t work. This demon’s scream is all-consuming, affecting every part of my body. The blood in my veins pounds and my heart squeezes under the pressure.

  Darkness seeps into my line of sight and I fall to my knees just like the rest of my team. “S-stop!” I cry out, but the word leaves me in a pathetic whisper. Bile rises from my stomach and I hunch over, seconds from passing out. “Just… stop…”

  My wolf howls deep within me, but it’s not from pain. It’s from rage. It’s as though she’s feeding on the demon’s pain, growing stronger with each second it screams. For whatever reason, this gives me the strength to stand, and the agony in my head fades into nothingness. A resolve spreads through me like fire. I pull my hands away and take a step forward. All around me, even in their shifter forms, my team is crouched over in excruciating agony. My heart breaks for them, but my body is moving as if controlled by another entity.

  I pick up Dove’s bow off the floor and knock a steel arrow while looking the demon dead in the eye. “You. Will. Stop!”

  The demon clamps its mouth and silence befalls the room as the magic he was using drains away. In the seconds before I release the arrow, it stares at me as if cast under a spell. But the spell breaks when the arrow cuts through the air toward him, and the demon lunges onto one of the cabinets. I release another arrow, thankful the prince taught me archery during one of our training sessions. However, once again I miss the demon, but at least my team is slowly recovering around me.

  “Song…songbird.” Caspian shakily gets to his feet, his suit stained in blood. “You need to get out of here.”

  Alaric’s wolf limps over to me, his body trembling from exertion. He looks wounded too, he’s barely using his front paw, but he drags himself all the same. Like nothing will stop him coming for me.

  The demon shrieks again and splits up into several miniature versions of itself that crawl over the floor like ants. Before I can even shoot another arrow, they pile on top of my guys.

  Dove grabs me by the shoulders and shoves me backward into a crimson light.

  Chapter 23

  Lilith Thornblood

  “We have to go back!” I whisper, my blood running cold. I crawl off my knees and turn to Dove, who straightens up. Ash, dust, and blood coat her ripped clothes, and she brushes some of it off her cheeks like she has all the time in the world. How the fuck did she open a portal? How could she just leave them there? “Caspian is hurt! We have to help them!”

  Her expression drains of all the light and kindness I’ve always seen there, morphing her into someone else that I’ve never seen. It’s like a lightbulb going off, and she bows her head, looking over my shoulder. I don’t need to turn around to know who is there, to know she has betrayed me. I can see it in her cold eyes, and I was an idiot.

  “My alpha, I have found your runaway mate like you ordered.”

  I slowly turn around, every second more tense than the next. My boots scratch across the stone ground as my heartbeat fills my ears, and I can smell nothing but fire. The Stormfire alpha is standing in the middle of the courtyard, dressed in black leather, and he smiles. A triumphant and deadly smile.

  The alpha I’ve been hiding from this entire time has caught his prey. I have to push my worry about the others to the back of my mind. Caspian and Alaric are outstanding fighters, the best I know, and if anyone can survive what just happened, it’s them. I need to focus on somehow surviving this.

  Dove tries to walk around me, her stupid heels clicking on the stone, but I catch her arm. Not giving her a second, I pull her to me and make sure she looks into my eyes.

  “You’re going to regret this,” I warn her and I tighten my fist.

  She opens her lips to say something, but I smack her as hard as I can, not wanting to hear it. The badass demon hunter in training I once respected and cared for cries out before collapsing.

  “Seems you’ve learnt some tricks,” Rizer drily comments as I step over Dove and try to put her betrayal to the back of my mind for now. My knuckles throb and at the same time I realise I have no weapons on me, thanks to the mission. I can’t even shoot the alpha fucker.

  “A few, but evading you in your own pack has been my best trick yet,” I spit out.

  His eyes burn with fury as he watches me like a wolf watching a sheep.

  “How long did it take you to figure it out, oh powerful alpha?”

  “No trick is going to save you now, little wolf who should have died as a pup. My only mistake was ever letting you live.”

  He jumps across the courtyard in an inhuman way, knocking me straight to the ground, and then his power hits me like a brick a second later. I can’t see the power coming out of him, but it feels like a thousand bricks are weighing me down, plastering me to the floor, and I can’t move. My wolf whines, trying to shift, but the alpha is too powerful. I expect t
he hit when he punches me hard in my ribs, a cracking sound filling the quiet courtyard, but the pain makes me gasp, and tears prick my ears. And he doesn’t stop there. Rizer hits me again and again, destroying my body until I’m begging for him to stop and he doesn’t.

  I’m sure I black out for a moment because when I open my sore eyes, I see nothing but the burning leaves falling from the trees above me. The world is spinning; the pain is unbearable, and I want to die. I want him to kill me because I can’t see a way out of this.

  “Enough, Father!” Eziel growls from nearby.

  In a haze, I manage to sit up and crawl to my feet. Every tiny movement hurts so bad as I look at Eziel and Rizer in front of me. Rizer’s hands and chest are smothered with my blood, and he is shaking from head to toe in anger.

  “Get out of my way, son. You do not want to protect her,” Rizer warns. “Or I will rip you apart alongside her.”

  Eziel never once glances back at me. “No.”

  “What did you just say?”

  “I said, fuck no. Fuck no am I letting you kill her,” he growls out.

  “Then your head will be buried next to hers when I’m done with you both!”

  Eziel moves slightly more in front of me. “Why the fuck is she so important to you? Why do you need her dead? Explain it to me!”

  “Every ten thousand years a new alpha is born. An alpha baby who belongs to no pack and can create their own. I was the last child, and this was the pack the Crescent Mother gave to me in her wisdom,” he states and turns his gaze on me. “When this…wolf…was born to a normal wolf, and her mother asked for help. She had no clue what her little sweet baby was and was told Hell was the place for those answers. I was told of the baby when she was trying to leave Hell and I was very shocked to realise she was a female.”

  “A female alpha?” Eziel questions, his eyes drifting back to me.

  Shock makes every word Rizor says next seem slow. “I wanted to claim the baby as my mate when she turned eighteen but when I came for her, I found nothing but weakness. The pup who was destined to be an alpha female, the first alpha female of any pack, is weak. Killing her is a mercy, as I won’t have weakness bearing my children. Your mother was the last mistake in that department.”

  “My mother was the last bit of good left in your soul,” Eziel snaps. “Now you’re nothing but evil and alone. She would have never been yours.”

  “I would have made it so!” Rizor roars.

  “So you’re not my fated mate?” I ask. My voice seems small compared to their shouting, but powerful enough to draw both of their attention.

  “Alpha wolves do not have fated mates,” Eziel fills in for me, shock coating his tone. “The Crescent Mother lets you choose who you mate with.”

  “Then you could have never controlled me,” I say, looking at Rizor, and then I laugh, even when it hurts my chest and likely broken ribs. Even when blood fills my mouth, I keep laughing. “And killing me is the only way to make sure I never rival you!”

  Rizor’s anger seems to build, and I expect him to attack me but then I gasp in pain. Something sharp goes right through my stomach, and I look down, seeing a sword tip just before it’s pulled back through me. Oddly, the pain doesn’t last even as I fall to my knees, pressing my hands against my stomach like I can stop the blood pouring out from me.

  “NO!” Eziel roars, his clothes ripping to pieces off his body, and he shifts. A massive red wolf bursts into the courtyard, and a low, possessive growl vibrates the surrounding air.

  “You’re the reason my mate is dead, and you will pay for it,” a voice I never expected to hear again claims. My dad walks around from behind me, dragging his blood-coated sword across the ground. “You’re finally dead, just like you should have been from the—”

  My dad’s head is cut off with a swing of a sharp paw, and his body drops as Eziel’s wolf lands on top of it. His red eyes burn into mine, and I try to smile.

  “Thank you for everything. Don’t let your father tell you you’re not amazing, Con, because you are. You always have been,” I whisper, knowing my time is fading.

  He howls in the air, and the pain in his howl hurts my chest. Another red wolf, Rizor no doubt, bites down hard on Eziel’s shoulder, and his roar echoes around the courtyard. The two of them fill the quietness with growls and roars. I fall on my side, unable to stop myself.

  “Not yet,” a voice whispers into my ears when big arms pick me up and press me against a warm chest.

  I instantly feel safe, even as I know I’m close to dying. At least I won’t die alone. In a daze, I look at the man holding me, his face a blur. I struggle to hold my head up. He seems familiar.

  “Alpha Lyulf of Rivermare, the portal is ready for you.”

  Eventually, the alpha of Rivermare’s face comes into focus as he smiles down at me, carrying me through a portal. “Alaric?”

  “We all have our secrets, love. Turns out mine were always there to protect you,” he says, his eyes gleaming the brightest shade of blue I’ve ever seen. “Welcome to Rivermare. You’ll be safe here. You always were.”

  The End For Now… Click here for Book Two.

  Scarlett Snow comes from a big family in a small Scottish town and has always strived to prove that if you are passionate about something, no one can stop you from chasing your dreams.

  Books by this author:

  Shadowborn Academy 1-3

  Shadowborn Prison 1-3

  Everafter Academy 1-3

  Beauty’s Wolves

  Grimm

  Saphyre

  Alpha Hell

  The Queen’s Protectors

  Ghouls

  Villainous Hearts

  Consequence

  Other Pen Names:

  Katze Snow. Kyra Snow. Nora Winters.

  G. Bailey is a USA Today and International Bestselling Author of fantasy and paranormal romance.

  She lives in England with her cheeky children, her gorgeous (and slightly mad) golden retrievers and her teenage sweetheart turned husband.

  She loves cups of tea.

  Chocolate and Harry Potter marathons are her jam and she owns way too many notebooks and random pens.

  Books by this author:

  Her Guardians Series

  Her Fate Series

  Protected By Dragons Series

  Lost Time Academy Series

  The Demon Academy Series

  Dark Angel Academy Series

  Shadowborn Academy Series

  Fall Mountain Shifters Series

  The Rejected Mate Series

  The Everlasting Curse Series

  Royal Reaper Academy Series

  Dark Fae Paranormal Prison Series

  Saved By Pirates Series

  The Marked Series

  The Alpha Brothers Series

  A Demon’s Fall Series

  The Familiar Empire Series

  From The Stars Series

  The Forest Pack Series

  The Secret Gods Prison Series

  Consequence.

  Other Pen names:

  Louise Rose & Vivian Star.

  My fate is in the dark,

  And my shadow there is real…

  The darkness likes to play in this world.

  It also likes to deceive.

  In the Enchanted Forest, secrets thrive and one girl desperately needs to find answers before it’s too late.

  That girl is Corvina Charles, a powerful Shadowborn—a human who touched dark magic and became something else.

  Something dangerous.

  At the age of eighteen, Corvina and her best friend are swept away to the Shadowborn Academy, the one place where magic and darkness coincide.

  It’s also where pupils go missing, teachers don’t play by any rules, the therapist is hot, and boys with dark magic love to seduce your soul.

  With death becoming a game at the academy that not even the Dark or Light Fae seem capable of winning, Corvina’s love life should really be the last thing on her m
ind…especially when one of the boys just so happens to be her teacher!

  Shadowborn Academy is a Dark Reverse Harem Paranormal Fae Romance for 18+. In this world, not even the shadows can be trusted…

  Chapter One

  The moonlight bleeding through the trees create flickering shadows that dance around me. I should be afraid of them like all the other children are, but I’m not. These shadows are safe. They’re not like the ones watching me from the treetops, waiting to snatch me off the ground.

  No, these shadows are different.

  They’re my friends.

  The faeries hiding in them follow me like they always do when I come into the Enchanted Forest. I can’t see them but I can hear them giggling and whispering in my ear. They flick my dark curly hair over my shoulders and play with the ribbons on my light blue dress, then the frills of my white socks with the little bunny rabbits on them. It’s their way of saying hello and it makes me giggle as I skip through the forest, humming to the song Mama always sings to me before I go to sleep.

  Mama and Papa warned me not to follow these faeries. They said they’re not like the rest and I’ll be in deep trouble if I ever go out to play after dark. That’s when the faeries come out. They sing to children like me and promise us things beyond our wildest dreams, but nobody ever sees them again once they follow the faeries into the forest. Mama said it’s because they gobble them up for supper. I don’t believe her. I mean, how horrible would that be? I don’t think we taste very nice.

  Pitch said the real reason the children don’t come back is magical.