The room we were ushered into wasn’t anything like a ‘room’ this was more like a King’s suite. I stood, my body still panicked from the occurrences, looking ahead at empty space.
“Dinner would be ready in three minutes, my King. I wi-”
“Our dinner should be served here, I’m not interested to dine with you, Callus. Tomorrow morning I would be having a private meeting with you, it seems your lieges are going rogue!” Alonso ordered at the sturdy man whose hands were entwined in front of him and his head bowed to the floor in subservience.
“I’m sorry, my king, about everything. I will make certain to wait in the conference room. Enjoy your stay… I’m sorry… Luna Queen,” he said, nodding towards me.
Everything was hazy to me. I needed the man out to start my query about everything I just witnessed from Alonso.
Immediately after the door closed, I rapidly swung around at Alonso. “Tell me everything! And if you think because you just called me mate in front of him I will forget everything and follow you home, then you must think me a fool. I’m leaving, come what may!”
“Relax, Danika. We will talk about everything,” he cajoled, grabbing me before I would flinch away, the touch sending shock waves of pleasure ricocheting through my body. “I’m sorry about everything, especially the pregnancy. I don’t believe it’s mine, I swear. I haven’t touched any woman since you came into my – since we came back to the pack.”
I saw the sincerity in his words, albeit, my mind was clouded with contempt for all his reluctance this far. Did he make up his mind now because he is on the verge of losing me? This man! What does he take me for? He knows the importance of keeping me close and now he wants to continue playing with my emotions to get me to change my mind and resume acting as a slave to his solidity.
“What was that about?” I broke eye contact with him to look down at my hands as tears neared. “That wasn’t your wolf, I know the difference. I have never seen you like that, you-you-”
“I know what you saw, Danika! Damn it! I know how repulsed you are when it comes to killing, but I’m not like that. I have killed thousands of men in my lifetime particularly when it comes to protecting what’s mine… he crossed the line!”
“That doesn’t answer my question! What was… that?” I stressed.
He huffed out frigid air of indecision, bunched his fist, and left me, going to one of the windows letting in afternoon light into the room. “If I tell you I’m not sure you will see me in the same light ever again.”
“You brought me to your pack and flaunted another woman before me as your chosen mate, what more could shock me?” My hands found my waist, lifting my chin up at him to try me.
“This is different. I’m never like this un-unless when I’m with you, Danika. When it comes to you I lose my mind around me… I have never told that to any woman since I lost Hilda.”
“Hilda? Was that her name?” My cold heart softened, my arms itching to go around him in comfort. I dug my toes into the tiled white floor, maintaining my last restraint. He is doing well in his acting, I have to show him I was not moved. “Forget I asked.” I looked away icily.
He surged on, neglecting my display of disinterest. “That was her name. You remind me so much about her and more, Danika. You are kind and sweet and beneath this sweetness lays a certain resilience that floors me.”
“What was that, Alonso?” I insisted, not going to allow him digress from the question I had asked him.
“You already know I’m a Hybrid… apart from my wolf abilities, I also have vampire blood.” I gasped, my hand diving to cover my mouth as I drilled holes into him.
“That’s-that’s unbelievable!”
“I told you you will not be able to handle it. I have never told anyone because I kept leaving in denial of it, burying it within me, never to surface. Then, since you came. Whenever I’m around you, I can’t help but desire to have my fangs on your neck claiming you in every aspect of the word. Each time my ears catch your heartbeat, and my nose perceives the blood running through your veins, it drives me crazy and makes me have dark obsessions. Why do you think I keep coming to your room every night despite knowing the consequences if we are caught? Apart from the mate bond… I can’t help myself, Danika, you have to believe me.”
I shook my head, confusion mixed with sentiments I want to be buried, drowning me. “You don’t want me.”
“I always wanted you from the first day I set my eyes on you, Danika, regardless of denying it and fighting it, I knew that was the beginning of my torture. Do you think if I wanted to, I wouldn’t have left you behind in your former pack or asked for you to be sent to another pack away from me?… Yeah, I would have suffered for a long time, yet, I would have eventually healed.”
“Yet, you haven’t accepted me till now,” I persisted, still skeptical about his sudden turnaround. “Oh, you suddenly want me now because I am no longer available to use, huh?”
“I never used you!” His voice grew, full of desperation. “I was and is still caught in-between a fix! Do you know how many times I keep wishing I can turn around the hand of time and go back to when I made a deal with Paisley’s father? Why do you think I’m often in the study drowning myself in alcohol?”
“Because you want to forget your first mate! Not because of me!” Tears poured down my face. “I told you everything, Alonso. Without even telling you you saw it for yourself. My people rejected me. They hated me with passion more than anything in the world. I didn’t do anything to deserve that! Then on my eighteenth birthday, the day everyone is happy to transform and meet their wolf as well as their better half, I was beaten blue and black by my father and to cup it all, my former mate, slept with my sister and rejected me!… You didn’t think about that and … you hurt me.” I staggered back, the memories distorting my stability. It seemed like it was yesterday everything occurred.
The betrayal!
The rejection!
Everything!
“I’m sorry, Danika.”
“No,” I muttered, shaking my head. “I have planned for this for too long for you to think you can now cook up some romantic abject bullshit and have me reneging on it! This is my life. I now sail my ship in the direction I want and not even you or anyone can stop me. Thanks for coming to my rescue and thanks for telling me about your other self, but I’m sorry I can’t stay with you anymore. I want out and the sooner you accept my rejection the better for us both.”
“Danika-”
“I’m serious, Alonso! I gave you so much time to have me. I gave you myself, everything and tried to understand your predicament but you never gave a sliced fuck about me. You made her pregnant!”
“We are not even certain the baby is mine!”
“Whose is it then?” I inched my shoulder blades up, thrusting it at him with my hands splayed in question, my eyebrows to the top of my head. “Whose?”
“I don’t know… And even if it’s my child probably from our past tryst, we can work things out. I promise I will tell everyone the truth.”
I let out a spree of sardonic chuckles. “You are insane, my king. So what happens next? They hate me and then turn against me, all the love I have garnered so far turned to resentment, and then what? What exactly?” I searched his eyes, the tears falling from my eyes having gone dry. “Thanks, I pass. That time is gone.” I can’t believe I’m standing up to him like this.
He didn’t say anything at first, I almost gave thanks he finally understood. Nonetheless, before I would comprehend, he came at me and grabbed me around the shoulder to whisk me around to him, his soft eyes now looking feral. “If you think I’m going to let you go, Danika, then you must be out of your damn mind. I understand what you saw back there is messing with your head and making you have irrational thoughts, which is why I will try to reason with you, but by morning, we leave for home and I mean it!”
“You will not dare! I reject you!”
His face contorted, then he broke into a rumble of laughter. For once, I was lost in a daze staring at this man I have never seen laugh before, his eyes crinkling at the corners, with his head tilted backward. When he came back he said. “You amuse me so much, specifically when you give empty threats. However, cupcake, I’m the Alpha King and my word is law unless you want me to declare all the territories beneath me and the others to see you as an outlaw… don’t forget I don’t like being tested!” He took a forceful sniff of my hair.
I couldn’t believe the words sprouting from him as our eyes remained and clashed in the battle for dominance, his steel and craving my subservience and mine of incredulity.
When I manage to look down, I crash my skimpy fist at his chest with a harsh stud. “You cruel man!”
…