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I'm The Alpha's Mate

Page 16

by Sydney Marie


  This seems to touch him in the wrong way, and he orders one of his men from the door to free my mother from her cuff. This makes me nervous. I observe as he unlocks her and as he lifts her up and steadies her like a glass figurine. The man walks her to the center of the room, and Victor takes hold of her, grabbing her arm. She shakes besides him, her eyes staring at the knife in his other hand.

  My father inches forward but is inevitably held by his own cuff.

  “Please,” he says, trying to get Victor’s attention, but he gives him none.

  “Shall I reenact it for you?” Victor says carefully, looking intensely at me with beady eyes.

  My mother lets out a healthy sob, letting us know that we have all crossed over into dangerous territory.

  “Stop,” I say firmly. “That’s enough. Now, what are you doing here? What are you doing with them?”

  He lets go of my mother, but she knows better than to return to her corner. My questions threw him off a tad, and I know I sould stick with it.

  “Don’t you know? I’m the only one that can speak to her.”

  I hear Sebastian struggle against his cuffs.

  “Clearly, my mate and my father have nothing to do with this.” My voice clears. “So does my mother. Didn’t you know that she can’t speak to her?”

  Victor smiles then chuckle. “Is that right?”

  Before anyone can breathe, Victor grips his knife and in one swift motion plunges the blade into my mother’s gut. A loud shriek erupts from deep within me, and my father shouts as if the knife had gone into him instead.

  My mother’s hands flail around the growing splotch of red as she tumbles to the floor and struggles to breathe. Her wheezing clouds my ears as I frantically yank against my cuff, letting the metal slowly burn into my skin.

  “No. No. No. No,” I murmur restlessly as I yank harder and harder.

  My father’s cries take the place of her struggling, and I begin to panic. I shoot back to see Victor nearing my mother’s limp body.

  A sudden noise grabs the room’s attention as Sebastian miraculously breaks the cuff around his wrist and pounces on Victor, in one blur turning from man to wolf. My stomach rises, and I feel as if I am going to faint. My father, still attached to the floor, reaches out to my mother’s body and drags her closer to him. It is all one hallucination, or that is at least what my mind is telling me. Just wake up. Just wake up.

  The man who let my mother free of her chains rushes to defend his alpha, and I fear for my mate. Victor is trapped under Sebastian’s wolf. If that man hurts my mate, I do not know what I will do. I may just…I may just…Well, I will lose it.

  I can feel the heat building up within me like a forest fire spreading. My eyes glare down at the cuff and then to Victor’s guard’s torn-up clothes as he shifts and joins the fight, tackling Sebastian off his alpha. Knowing that the keys are somewhere in the mess, I lie down on my side and reach my leg out. My foot drags the clothes towards me. I take the tattered fabric in my hands, shaking the pieces until the little metal ring falls to the floor. Quickly, I snatch it up and set myself free. I watch for a moment as the guard bites down on Sebastian’s shoulder, and I nearly bite the side of my tongue off.

  He’s drugged! This can’t happen!

  Sebastian snaps back harshly, and in two more fast movements, the guard’s throat is shredded through his teeth. Although the guard is dead, Sebastian struggles to walk. I catch Victor nearing him with the silver knife, and suddenly, everything turns red.

  It only takes two seconds for me to lash out. One to shift and dive, and the other to bring Victor down and tear off his face like a bed sheet. The knife hits the floor, but I cannot stop. The metallic taste of another man’s blood soaks in my mouth as I dig into his neck. It is some dark high. At this moment, I am a prisoner of my addiction. The animal inside of me has been set free, and I cannot control her urges.

  Once the man beneath me looks nothing as such, I shift back and look down on him, remembering the time I saw my first dead body and how it was so terribly mutilated, realizing how I have created something worse. The knife beside me shimmers, and I swipe it up, stabbing into the man’s flesh, no skin to puncture.

  “How dare you!” I cry with each stab. “How dare you! My mother! My mother!”

  Ignoring my nakedness, I drop the knife and look up as if to the heavens. Maybe to the Moon.

  “Look what you’ve made me do! Look at what I’ve done!”

  Sebastian’s hands grab me off the mess and pull me back. He presses my face into his chest, blocking me from what I had done. My hands, dripping with blood, fall against his warm skin.

  “He was coming at you,” I mumble. “He had the knife.”

  Sebastian covers my body with his while I struggle to come down from the high.

  I know after this I will never be the same person. There are two sides to me, and today I had met the second. I fear myself. I fear this unknown person inside of me because I know that Victor was right. There is more to my ability than speaking to the Goddess. There has always been more. She is dark. She is unforgiving, and she is ruthless.

  And I am scared of her.

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  01

  Scarlett

  “—Shift.”

  I was jolted out of my daydreaming by the sound of a loud voice ringing in my ear. I turned around with raised brows to find Darlene, the shift manager of the small family-owned diner, staring at me expectantly with a tray of dirty dishes in one hand. I had clearly missed the important parts of whatever she had been saying to me.

  A sheepish grin worked its way up my face. “What was that?”

  She rolled her eyes and blew a stray hair out of her face. “I said, do you mind covering the end of my shift for me? My babysitter called. Apparently, Graham is running a pretty high fever.”

  I nodded my head. “Sure, no problem.” It wasn’t like I had any plans for the evening anyway, other than obsessively checking the mail. There were only two weeks left before graduation, and I was yet to hear from any of the colleges I had applied to.

  Darlene let out a small sigh. “Thanks, Scarlett. I owe you.”

  I waved my hand. “Don’t worry about it. I know how hard it is on you being left to take care of Graham while Troy is away. I’m happy to help lighten the load.” Her husband had to travel a lot for his job, and that left Darlene with extra parenting duties.

  She gave me a grateful smile as she turned away with the tray of dishes. “You’re truly an angel, Scarlett.”

  I snorted at her comment. “I already agreed to cover you. You don’t need to kiss my butt anymore, Darlene.”

  She gave me a playful wink before turning away, disappearing through the kitchen door. I slowly turned back around with a sigh. This was going to be a long night of nothing but the virtual emptiness of the diner.

  I was happy when a familiar face shuffled through the front door of the diner, setting off the little bell that hung above the door. He lifted his hand to his head, ruffling his dark hair which was starting to look shaggy around the edges. This boy would look like a mountain man if it weren’t for my constant influence in his life. He met my gaze briefly as he reached out and grabbed one of the cheaply made menus from an empty table. He flipped through the pages quickly before setting it back down.

  I pulled the pen and pad from the front pocket of my stained apron. “What can I get you, Wyatt?”

  He shrugged as he moved closer toward me. “I think a cup of coffee will be fine. It’s been a long day.”

  “It’s going to be a bit longer. Darlene asked me to cover the end of her shift,” I commented with an apologetic smile. Wyatt had promised to pick me up after my shift ended wh
ile I was running out the door this morning.

  He let out a sigh, running his hand through his hair. “Of course, she did. Well, there is a meeting tonight. Guess it’s going to be extra long for both of us, sweetheart,” he replied with a sarcastic grin as I poured him a cup of coffee and placed it on the counter in front of me.

  Darlene approached us carrying her purse, her jacket slung over her arm. “You know the coffee here is shit, Wyatt. I don’t know why you keep ordering it when you only ever have a sip and leave the rest.”

  Wyatt ignored her comment. The two of them were always at each other’s throats for reasons unknown to me. He pressed his hands to the counter, breathing in deeply. His nose scrunched up a bit, and he looked over at me. “You smell.” I frowned at my cousins greeting as he sat himself down on a stool at the breakfast counter, grabbing the coffee.

  “Gee, you really know how to compliment a girl,” I grumbled, my voice dripping with sarcasm. My cousin and I had a very close relationship, considering that my parents had taken him in after his father ran off and his mother got sick. He returned the favor when my parents died, taking me into his home and raising me like I was his kid sister.

  “God, Wyatt…” Darlene remarked as she threw her arms into the sleeves of her jacket, pulling up the collar. “Even if a woman does stink, you shouldn’t comment on it. And you wonder why you’re still single.”

  Her words brought a smile to my face, and I gave him a sharp look. I snickered as I turned away from my cousin who was pouting at the blunt reprimand he had received. I could see Winston, our cook, slaving away over the grill through the small hole, singing along to some garbage being gurgled out of the old boom box he kept in the kitchen. The diner was my home away from home, and its motley crew was my self-created wolf pack even if they were only humans.

  “Wyatt,” she said his name in a flat tone. Darlene had never cared much for my cousin. Maybe it’s because he had a knack for putting his foot in his mouth… or maybe because they had gone “grown-up” together and he’d been quite the fool back in his younger years.

  “See you tomorrow, Scarlett. Thanks again,” she called.

  I turned around to give her a quick wave. “See ya, Darlene. Tell Graham I said hello and hope he feels better,” I called back as she exited the front door, the bell ringing again.

  Wyatt lifted his gaze to mine, staring at me expectantly with wide eyes as if he was waiting for something. I stared back at him, shifting my hands to my hips. “Why are you looking at me like that? Do I have something on my face?” I reached up with a hand and wiped it across my cheek, checking to see if there was any food splatter. It was a hazard of the job.

  “Can’t you feel it, Scarlett?” he asked me in a soft voice so that no one else could hear. Hell, if it weren't for my extra-sensitive senses I probably wouldn’t have heard him either.

  I narrowed my eyes in confusion at his question. “What are talking about? Are you feeling okay, Wyatt?” I reached out and placed my hand on his forehead. He pulled back with a furrowed brow and looked at me as if I had two heads.

  “After all the complaining and whining I had to listen to from you… are you seriously telling me that you don’t feel even the slightest bit different?” he asked a little louder in an exasperated tone, waving his hand in the air dramatically. I had no idea what he was going on about or why he seemed so upset.

  I looked around the small room at the other patrons who seemed content to ignore his outburst. I leaned forward, stuffing my notepad back into the pocket of my apron. “I don’t know why you think I should feel different, but I feel the same as I always do. Unless you want to count the fact that my feet feel like I’ve been walking barefoot on hot coals. These ten-hour shifts have been killing me,” I whined at him.

  He gave me a slow blink, shaking his head. “Seriously, Scarlett?”

  “What?” I questioned with a tired tone.

  “Your scent—”

  I held up a hand, cutting off his thought mid-sentence.

  “I know. I know. I smell, but in my defense, you would smell too if you worked with greasy food all day,” I snapped at him, growing tired of the conversation he was having with me. If I wanted to be insulted, I’m sure I could easily find one of my peers to satisfy that need without a problem. Human or shifter, they were all eager to tear someone else down to elevate themselves.

  He shook his head at me. “No, your scent has changed, Scarlett. Your wolf has matured. I can smell her on you now.”

  I stared at him blankly as I digested his words. Had my wolf finally reached maturity without me noticing? I searched my mind for a sign of my wolf’s presence. I had been waiting for this moment since I hit puberty. Most of my peers had already matured, leaving me like an outsider when it came to the pack.

  All shifters had to go through two stages of puberty: the natural human one and the beast underneath. It could happen at any time, but basically, it meant that the connection between human and wolf was fully formed. It wasn’t until this happens that we were allowed to attend actual pack events. Most of my friends had already matured. I had been left in the group of late bloomers. Sometimes, it happened that a wolf never matured. These people were seen as Omegas. They were still a part of the pack, but they would never be considered true wolves.

  I shifted back and forth on my feet, concentrating hard. “I don’t feel any different.”

  Wyatt took a sip of his coffee. “You will trust me.” He pulled the mug away from himself, peering down into the cup with a small look of disgust before setting it down. “But you know what this means?”

  “What?” I questioned with a raised brow.

  He met my gaze with a knowing look. “You don’t have to wait in the car like the other pups during the meeting tonight. You’re a true wolf now,” he teased as he gave me a wolfish grin. I rolled my eyes at his comment, but on the inside, I felt a bubble of excitement.

  * * *

  I had only ever seen the pack house from the outside, having never been allowed to enter it before. I found myself getting anxious as I followed Wyatt down the dirt driveway and around the side of the house. In the back, there was another building, about the size of a guest house.

  I could hear the sound of happy voices carried on the gentle evening breeze. My palms felt sweaty in the pockets of my sweatshirt as my nerves got the better of me. Wyatt gave me a grin as he opened the door. “So it begins.”

  I rolled my eyes at him as I walked past him into the large open room. The smells of other pack members overwhelmed me for a moment. My eyes scanned the crowd warily, looking for familiar faces. I found my gaze gravitating towards the front of the room where the stream of bodies seemed to be moving.

  That was the first time I saw him.

  He stood near the front, greeting people with a friendly smile. My heart hammered in my chest as I watched him from where I stood at the back of the room. I had no idea who he was, but I knew he was perfect. His dark hair was shaved close to his head as if it had been shaved bare at some point and was finally being allowed to grow out. My eyes followed the length of his body, taking in every part of him. He had a lean body that spoke of endurance-honed muscles.

  Wyatt elbowed my side. “Don’t just stand there, Scarlett. People are starting to look at us.” He urged me to move forward. I had to force my feet to move from where I had been anchored. My whole world seemed to be shifting on its axis, and I couldn’t be sure I was standing on solid ground anymore.

  My heart was in my throat as I approached my mate—at least that was what my wolf was telling me. This perfect male specimen was our mate, the one that the Goddess had ordained for us at birth. But what if he hated me? What if I wasn’t what he was expecting? Insecurities that I had never felt before began to flood my brain.

  I dug my heels into the floor. “I can’t do this. Let’s go home.”

  Wyatt grabbed onto my elbow and led me on. “You’re being ridiculous. We all had to go through this, Scarlett. Consider it
your official initiation into the pack.” I gritted my teeth as every step brought me closer to the finality of my situation.

  The Alpha and his mate were standing together, greeting the other pack members as they filed into the room, grabbing seats for the meeting. I remembered them from the times they had visited my home when I was much younger, way back when my mother was still alive, and my father held a prominent position in the pack. They looked older and a little more worn down, but that had to be expected of people in their positions.

  “Alpha Aaron,” Wyatt spoke formally as he reached out a hand, a standard human greeting. I danced on the balls of my feet, wishing that I hadn’t accepted Wyatt’s offer to join him. I was still in my work uniform, smelling like grease and probably looking unkempt from the busy workday… not the way I wanted to make my first impression on the pack.

  “Wyatt,” he replied, shaking the hand that had been offered to him with a firm grip, “it is good to see you again.”

  Wyatt beamed at the acknowledgment, turning his eyes toward the female beside the Alpha, bowing his head. “Luna Victoria.”

  She gave him a kind smile. “Wyatt.”

  Alpha Aaron’s dark gaze shifted in my direction, a smile still on his lips. “And who is this beauty?” he questioned, lifting a brow as he examined me further. My cheeks rushed with heat, and I felt the sudden urge to hide behind my cousin like I did back in my younger years where I would cling to my mother’s leg.

  Wyatt wrapped his arm around my shoulder, pulling me in protectively to his side, and that only made me feel more embarrassed. “This is my cousin, Scarlett.”

  Luna Victoria gave me a knowing glance as she leaned into her mate’s side. “Sweetheart, it’s Conrad and Elizabeth’s daughter.”

  “Of course, she is,” he replied as if he had already known. My lips twitched with the urge to smile when she looked at me with a playful eye roll at his expense. Alpha Aaron crossed his arms over his wide chest, leaning forward toward me. “I can see it now that I’ve gotten a closer look. You’ve got Conrad’s eyes.”

 

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