I'm The Alpha's Mate

by Sydney Marie

  She stays turned away from both of us.

  “Who are you?”

  “I am Victor,” he tells me calmly.

  “I don’t know you.”

  “Oh, but you do. Just not like this.”

  My heart begins to race in my chest, and I step away from the older man.

  “Just get it over with!” she shouts at the stranger, distressed, making my head spin.

  My eyes shift between the two of them.

  “What’s happening?”

  Abruptly, something heavy and blunt collides with my head, and my body goes limp, falling to the tough ground. My eyes roll up to the sun before thick darkness overcomes me.

  Chapter 18

  With my eyes closed, I can still visualize her beautiful face—the face I grew up gazing at, my mother’s. I saw her standing right in front of me as if the past has suddenly changed and now she was in it.

  My years with grandmother are replaced with figments of my imagination, ones including her and all the pretend things we did. The memory of my abandonment is forgotten and replaced with this new one—the sight of her calling my name, of her reaching out to me, and then of her towering figure as I lay helpless on the patchy grass.

  The sight of her has given me new hope, causing me to forget about the confusing events leading up to my slumber. If my mother is alright, then my father must be too. I have a chance at a real family again. Suddenly, the bad alpha is the least of my worries as my mind drifts to images of the three of us living, growing, and loving.

  They can meet Sebastian, Henry, and Marina. They can join Sebastian’s pack and stay with me forever. Never again will I feel unwanted. She called me and led me away from the attack. She cares for me. My mother loves me as a mother should. At this moment, I am fulfilled. All my dreams are shifting to reality, all with a single glimpse of her face.

  There is softness beneath me and on top of me. I begin to wake as my eyes study the smears of light cast on them. There is a pounding in my skull, shaking me up and bringing my eyes to a quick flutter. My lashes act as wings, shading and exposing me from the harsh light beyond my lids until my eyes are tolerant of the gleam. My hand pulls out from my side so I can rub my knuckles and fingers against my face. As my conscience returns, I find myself searching the room, temporarily limited to the ceiling. My toes curl and flex. My legs stretch and bend. Everything is good but my head. My head throbs.

  My hand reaches up to nurse the bump, but touch does not seem to smooth it. Instead, it makes the pounding worse.

  I am in a bed—not my own, some unknown bed, as my surroundings are frighteningly unfamiliar. In a panic, my body sits up swiftly, which makes my head spin with foggy dizziness. My stomach rises, and I have the urge to vomit. I feel as if my body and my mind have endured a never-ending battle, and my stomach is in protest of any movement.

  After rolling onto my side, I scan my surroundings more thoroughly. Beside the bed is a nightstand, and across the room is a love seat, one with a calm pattern showing deep tones of red and pink. There is a short table in front of the love seat, holding nothing but a vase of dying flowers. The entire set up reminds me of a hotel room, unhomely and nerve-racking.

  In a second attempt, I force my body up again, this time, staying up. I brush my knotted hair from my face as I locate the door. My mother—I have to find her.

  With a surge of determination, I swing my legs off the side of the bed and inch myself forward until my feet meet the cool, hard ground, making my legs wobble like a child learning to walk. My hands grip the bedding. My fists dig down into the mattress, and I steady myself. My eyes circle in on the door, ready to aim for the target and shoot. With a leap of faith, I begin my short yet dizzy journey. I get the feeling people get when they wake up too quickly, a light head and upset stomach.

  My hand grips the door handle tightens, turns, stops, and tugs, then nothing. I try again. Nothing. The door is locked. Someone has locked me in a room.

  Did my mother do this? Why would she do this?

  Leaning against the wall, I struggle to conjure a reasonable explanation. I remember things. Only a few things, but things overall, and I remember coming to the base of the hill, spotting the strange man. He was not my father. He was of high rank. I could feel it. Then what? I cannot remember.

  My aching head is a clue. I scrunch my face as I think, coming up with two reasonable explanations. One, I fell and hit my head on a rock or something else equally as rigid. Two, someone attacked me from behind, likely threw something at me. Then again, since when did I trust strangers?

  My mother spoke to him. I cannot recall what she said, but she said something. Maybe she knew him well. Maybe I do not have a reason to doubt him. Or maybe he hurt us both. Maybe my mother is trapped away in some other room, just like me.

  Where am I exactly? How did I get here? Where is my mother? Where did she take me? Did she take me here? Why am I so alone? Where is my wolf? Why won’t you answer, Moon Goddess?

  By now I should have a clearer mind. I woke maybe ten minutes ago. Why do I still feel this dreadful tiredness? There are too many answers being kept from me, and I cannot uncover them on my own in this room.

  My body slides down against the wall, my legs already overwhelmed by standing. I abruptly hit the floor, not strong enough to lift myself back up, not without time. I feel weak. I feel exhausted. I feel disoriented.

  Again, I attempt to move, needing more than one try. I place my hands on the floor, scoot forward away from the wall, lift up onto my knees, and crawl as far as I can towards the tacky love seat until I need to stop. My strength and energy is getting depleted by the minute.

  I feel drugged.

  Confusion engulfs me as my eyes wearily open again, this time, on the bed. Though there is a difference. There is proof of a presence. The bed is made, and I am merely lying on top of the bedding than underneath like the first time. This is all a bizarre dream, is it not? I know plenty about night terrors, and this feels like one but slightly more alive.

  The real question is: Where did the dream begin? When I saw my mother? When I arrived at Alpha Kenn’s? When I had my first nightmare? When I met my mate? Or, the most frightening, when I crossed the stream?

  Somewhere in some other universe, a girl is lying in a stream, dreaming.

  I am allowed no concept of time, no clock, no window—only the artificial light hanging above my head, casting a yellow film across the room.

  In however long it has been, all I have accomplished is an attempt to leave and fail. Though I do not have many options when it comes to acts of heroism. Maybe instead of me saving my mother, she will be the one saving me.

  Any second now, she will burst through the door and explain everything sloppily as we attempt an escape. We may run into trouble two or three times before we defeat the final boss, but the bad alpha will soon lay helplessly at our feet. Mother and daughter, saving the day.

  I am drugged. Something surges through my veins that leaves me helplessly and unconsciously idiotic. A child placed in a crib. All I can do is grow and imagine scenarios of nothingness.

  Alpha Kenn. The thought hits me hard as I stare at the ceiling once again. Alpha Kenn. I remember him and his plan to capture the bad alpha, and suddenly I am here.

  My mother’s face is the image burned into my brain, but now I see more. I see myself running towards her. She called me during the surprise attack. The bad alpha did not fall for our trick, but instead, he brought his own men to defend himself. And my mother, she was there, at the opposite end, standing with a man I had never seen before.

  Thinking this critically makes my head spin, making it difficult to hold onto the newly regained thoughts. I squeeze my eyes shut to focus.

  My mother was standing with the man. Could it have been…No, it could not have. Was my mother standing with the bad alpha himself? Then I was right. He did capture her along with me. She called for me to run away with her, but the alpha caught us both before we could escape. That mea
ns my mother is trapped somewhere here also.

  The door taunts me, shaking in joy as it traps me here. Then the handle turns, and I realize that I am not just imagining this. The door is opening.

  It glides across as I struggle to focus on it, my head still tampered with. My heart squeezes. The man from before walks confidently into the room, and I still feel dizzy. I cannot move, and he is going to attack me. I wearily push myself up on the bed as my eyes shift in and out of focus on his face.

  “You,” I mutter. My throat is itchy. “My mother…”

  He shushes me as if he is worried about my health.

  “There is no need for you to talk, Evangeline.” The stranger drifts into the room, closing the door behind him, making my heart thump heavily like the beast who once haunted my dreams. “I’m sure you understand what is happening here. Why are you here? You’ve been a detective recently.” He takes a seat on the love seat.

  I croak again, “My mother.”

  “Your mother is fine for now. Your father too. We’re just waiting for that last guest.” His eyes stare into mine, and all I can think is how crazy he is. “She’s gone to fetch him. They should be back any hour now. I thought I’d come to see you since you’re up now.”

  There is so much my body and my mind are fighting to do, yet it hurts to move.

  “No,” I murmur. “No. Not him.” I slide back down against the headboard like a dying person.

  I want to ask where I am, where my mother is, and what is happening, but my eyes betray me and begin to shut once again, opening and closing like curtains, and I power through the urge to sleep.

  “I’ll have to thank my nephew for the recipe, but I’m sure they’d given you too much. He’s not so smart, that little boy. I could smell that mixture once we arrived. I’d forgotten about it, but it’s working quite well in your case. Too much could kill you, but you seem to be fine,” Victor says, blinded. “I’ve been watching you, but you already knew that. It was stupid of your mother to lead me to you, but mothers just get so desperate to see their children sometimes. I suppose. Now tell me, you don’t have any children, do you? I’m not much to kill little ones.”

  My jaw clenches as he continues to throw logs into my fire. “Why?”

  “Why?” He mimics me. “Why what? Why everything? You know the story, Evangeline. You’ve heard it, and you’ve shared it. Daughters of the Moon Goddess, you, your mother, your grandmother, and everyone before her!”

  I flinch at his sudden burst.

  “You’re monsters. All of you. You’re killers hidden behind the innocence of women. Witches, demons, all of you. Power drunk and willing to take all for yourselves. Things like you need to be exterminated. You’re dangerous to our entire kind.”

  I watch him, mesmerized. “Lies.”

  The man’s eyes flood with hatred. It is something that can never be healed. He can never be convinced to see the truth even if he is sat down and brainwashed. His own beliefs have become his own addiction, and he is a prisoner to it. These truths passed down from his father, read to him from a book, shall rule his life forever. His truths against my family and me have become his god.

  There is a short, cold moment of silence between us before he stands up and leaves the room, leaving me alone once again. I realize that Alpha Kenn was right. That killing someone may be the only solution. The animalistic side of me, her, the dark part that lurks in the shadows of my mind like the beast she is, creeps forward due to this.

  She feeds off this. She grows excited knowing that his fate will come, and it will come delivered through her own hands.

  Chapter 19

  The door to the room opens again, and a man I do not recognize comes to collect me. That man, Victor, said that we were waiting for our last guest, and all I can do now is believe that my love has arrived. He had toyed with my heart by telling me my mother and my father are in the building, and after he left my room about three hours ago, which is a panicky guess, they were all I could think about.

  Somewhere in here, somewhere trapped in these same walls, my parents sit, alive. Once the first year had passed at Grandmother’s, I had given up waiting for them to come knocking on her door. Part of me always thinks they had died somewhere, somehow and I will never discover why or how they did. It will be a mystery embedded in my mind for the rest of my life, one whose importance won’t die over time and one that will always be there.

  Again, my future has been flipped. It all started to change once I hopped over that stream and once I crossed his land. He was the key to a different path, and I took it, obliviously not thinking about where this would leave me. Even if I did think about it, I would have never imagined myself here.

  The bulky man holds me tightly as we walk down a dim hallway, one that is plain and concerning. My legs have begun to work again while I waited for the last guest, and I assumed the mixture had worn off. Victor’s words about too much of a dose frightens me, but my mind reminds itself that he was not gathering my parents and my love for kicks. There is something he is pulling together, and I need to be alive for it.

  The hallway is silent besides the maddening thud of our footsteps running over and over again in my mind, and when we come to a halt, I still hear them. My head lifts up to see a door in front of us, and the man behind me leans forward, keeping his grip on my arm, he turns the knob, dragging the door open.

  It is brighter inside the room as artificial lights in every corner flare up against the walls. Then some sad small real sound comes to me from one of the corners, and I see my mother there, crouched down, hidden away like a ghost of herself. Her eyes peer up at me, and she breaks down even more.

  I do not know what to say if I am allowed to say anything.

  “Evangeline,” a masculine voice calls to me from the other side of the empty room, and in the opposite corner of my mother, I see my father.

  He too is jammed in the corner like dust kicked to the side.

  “My baby,” he whispers to himself, but there is nothing to block his voice from making it to me.

  He looks different like a stranger but familiar in odd ways.

  Just before I scratch up a word, the guard who walked me here pushes me down into my corner and takes a pair of heavy cuffs from the loop in his pants. He roughly fastens them around my wrist, brings my hand behind my back, and locks the other cuff to a metal half-circle in the ground.

  The entire act seems quite bizarre, and my clearing mind cannot help but focus on the fact that this maniac bolted such things to the floor all to hold people down. This must be some sort of prison room.

  My head recklessly hits the wall as I realize the cuffs have been dashed with silver, painfully burning my skin and returning me to such times in a cell back at the Tate pack. With a winced expression, I gaze over at my two parents, and they do not seem affected by it anymore. I wonder how long they have been chained down.

  My father watches me like a man observing something extinct while my mother cannot bear to look at me. In that strange moment, I hear more footsteps from the hall, this time, being on the inside. The louder they get, the more my body starts to wake up. It is like small electric shocks to my heart.

  The door opens into the white room, and through it comes two large men holding my mate. It only takes me one good look to come to terms with the fact that I love him. My mind lingered back to our times in his bed, innocent and bothered, to times of truth and acceptance, and to moments where I knew that my future would be alive with him.

  I know now that no matter what happens in this room, no matter who makes it out if any of us do, that the only future I need is with him.

  Sebastian’s eyes find mine, and I know they have injected whatever mixture was inside me, into him. He too is brought to the floor and cuffed down.

  “Evangeline,” he calls out dimly as if he is saying my name into the vast trees, still trying to find me.

  Everything feels like a dream. Hazy dizziness still clinging to my head. Even surrounded
by people I love, I feel alone, bare. The Moon Goddess has disappeared, and my wolf has been shoved into the darkest corner of my mind by the poison and silver.

  Part of me is expecting the monstrous beast from my nightmares to come bursting through the door, its knotted coat and wretched stench contaminating the room before it tears us all to pieces. But instead of the beast, Victor comes—the alpha, the stalker, the stranger. I realize it is all the same. He enters with pride and strides to the center of the blank chamber, scanning over all he has collected in the past few days.

  “Perfect,” he says to himself.

  He pulls a sleek, silver knife from his waistband and runs the blade between his thumb and pointer finger.

  “I wanted this to be personal,” he says. “Intimate.”

  We all watch him, but Sebastian’s eyes stray to me and mine to him. I wish I could tell him that I am sorry. I wish I never agreed to go through with Alpha Kenn’s plan. I should have been with him, lying in his bed, wrapped in his arms as he stole kisses from me like happy people do. It should have ended with me like that.

  Now I know it is going to end like this. I wish I could have stayed sweet for him—like a summer peach, ripe and innocent, full of color. I must look as if I am dying because of the expression on his face. It seems that I am. He mouths something to me, but my brain cannot decipher it. I grow desperate to hear his voice.

  “I killed your grandmother just as she killed my father. The same way. The same struggle.”

  My mother’s eyes squeeze shut, and my teeth grind against each other. My wrist yanks against the cuff, the metal searing me.

  “Liar,” I call out, regaining myself.

  Victor turns to me, pressing the tip of the blade into his finger.

  “Liar? You don’t believe that I killed your grandmother with this very blade?” He holds it up for me to see.

  I swallow. “I can see it on your face.”

  My grandmother is too smart to be killed by such a man. I know that she is alive. I know that she made it, and this brings me some hope. She was not scared when she killed his father. She was wild.