The Cursed Alpha’s Mate by Moon Flood
Chapter 68 (AYSEL)
I waited till we got back to the penthouse before I said anything about my parents. Throughout the car ride, he kept shooting me questioning looks as I’d gone completely silent after my declaration.
I went into another room in the penthouse when we got there. I didn’t have anything in this room. In fact, I could count the number of times I’d had anything to do with a room in the penthouse that wasn’t Valens’.
My eyes closed the minute I fell into bed but not because I was sleepy. I closed my eyes in a bid to block out a bit of what I was feeling which I knew wasn’t possible. If I could close my eyes to my problems, if not seeing them meant they weren’t there, I would have gorged out my eyes at this point.
‘Tell him. Tell him now,’ Artemis urged me.
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There was very little Valens did not already know about me but what he didn’t know about me was more significant than what he knew. My discovery earlier in the day exhausted me. It turned out that I hadn’t known myself either.
I got out of bed, smoothed down my dress and went to the door. I pulled the door open to see Valens about to knock.
“I’m willing to give you everything but space,” he said once he saw me standing at the door. “I understand that you need it. I want to give you space but the last thing I can bear at this point, after everything that has happened, is to let you out of my sight,” he declared. His words were firm and his eyes were hard.
“I said I would tell you about my parents.” I stepped out of the room, walking past him. “Let me tell you now.”
“There is nothing you would say to me that would make me hate you,” he said, following behind me.
If he knew who my mother was he would not say all these things. He would not declare in such a confident tone that he would never hate me when he already hated me. He just didn’t know I was the one he hated.
“When I was eight years old, my parents betrayed Alpha Zavier and his Luna.” I turned to face him as I uttered those words. The shock on his face would have been comical if it wasn’t already expected. I waited for the anger I knew would come after the shock but his expression blanked.
I continued walking to the living room and then I took a seat. “You may want to seat for what I’m about to tell you.” I motioned to the couch facing me. He settled into it without once taking his eyes from me.
“Alpha Zavier was born the leader of this pack. His forefathers found this land, established it, and secured it.” I took a deep breath. “This land became his the day he was born but my father wanted it.”
My mind went back to the days of my childhood, of the random strangers that would be in our home when I came back from school, of the days before I realized what had happened. My parents never involved me. The people that were present were always introduced to me as uncles and aunties who were working on my father’s latest project. My father had been an engineer and he was always working on one project or another. Nothing suspicious there.
“My dad was – Alpha Zavier and my father were born to siblings.” I just had all round bad blood. “My paternal grandmother was older than Alpha Zavier’s father but despite being an Alpha, she could not succeed her father.” This was a problem that Skylar too faced.
Now, a few packs had women as their Alphas but it was a completely new situation and some packs still could not accept it. Like mine. Redville had never seen a female Alpha and although we all knew Skylar was better suited to leadersh*ip than Bethel, we weren’t surprised when Zavier announced Bethel as his successor.
“If women could be Alphas, then my father would have been the Alpha after his mother, rather than Zavier. He felt his birthright had been stolen and he wanted it back.” I looked at Valens to gauge his reaction but he remained impassive.
“Your father was a traitor,” he said but with little to no emotion in his voice. What little emotion that managed to leak out of him was unidentifiable.
“My father was a traitor. My mother too, and by extension, me.” I took a deep breath while I waited for him to say something but he didn’t. “He got a few people that didn’t like Alpha Zavier to support his cause. One of them was his best friend who was going to be his Beta.”
I’d called that man ‘uncle.’ He was good to me but he ultimately did not have the guts to follow through with his initial plans and b*ragging and he also lacked the guts to step back from them.
“His best friend chickened out at the last minute and went to Alpha Zavier but he never told my father he had switched camps. He never told my father he no longer supported the movement because he started to sell the Alpha information. What my father imagined would be a glorious takeover lasted a few hours during which he realized he would not succeed.”
Much of this story hadn’t clicked in my head as a child. I never understood what my parents were planning even though I heard bits and pieces of the plans by accident while my parents discussed them. It wasn’t as if they carried me along and told me they would be taking over the pack.
It wasn’t until that day came. I’d been in school when they launched their attack. When I returned from school, it was to see our home ransacked and people pointing and glaring at me. Alpha Zavier had been in our house. The look he gave to me when I called him ‘uncle’ like I usually did would never fade from my memory.
They did not let me see when my parents were executed but they let me know they had been beheaded in front of everyone. Even my father’s best friend who leaked the plans could not be spared. He too was k*lled for conniving against the Alpha. I was outside my home when they set it ablaze, Zavier’s Beta holding me in place to watch what became of traitors.
Everything I owned, every memory I’d made in that home, everything. They’d all been destroyed while I watched. It was the cruellest thing to do to an eight-year-old but no one spared me.
“They beheaded my parents and I watched them burn down our home,” I told Valens. I still walked by my childhood home sometimes. It was marked off from the public: a ground that had bred traitors.
My life got worse from there. Without a home to stay in, I had to move into the pack house but the Alpha would not allocate me a room. I stayed in the living room most times but with time, I realized people didn’t want me to be in the living room with them. I started to wander a lot during the day, and then I would return to the pack house at night. One day, I discovered the basement and it became my home from then on.
The kids in school didn’t want to be seen with me. Celeste and Lucien no longer became as accessible as they were before because I could no longer go to their house to play and they could not come to mine. They now had to sneak out to see me.
I told him everything, cutting down on all the bad experiences which would have taken me hours and a bucket of tears to recount. When I was done, I took a breath and watched him. He’d been silent throughout. Every time it felt as if he was about to say something, I didn’t give him the chance. I wanted to get everything off my chest at once and I feared if he said anything, I would not be able to continue.
“I wondered how your father would like me if I ever got the chance to meet him,” he said after a long pause. “I would not have liked him.” He didn’t hide the truth, didn’t mince it. “But you are not your father so I don’t see why you would think I would hate you.”
If I was someone else, if I wasn’t his mate, and he heard of what my parents had done, he would look down on me. He had suffered a horrible fate from people like my parents.
“Your parents were betrayed. My parents are like the people that betrayed your parents. I’m sure I disgust you now.” I looked away after speaking, feeling my skin heat.
“I hate to lie.” He paused. “I never met your parents but I do not pity them. I cannot lie, I hate traitors. Your parents disgust me but you did nothing wrong. They made you suffer for their crimes,” he spat and I saw his eyes darken.
“Don’t you see? My father k*lled Zavier’s Luna. That’s why his family hate me. They were quick to behead my parents after which they didn’t gain any satisfaction so they continued their punishment by targeting me.”
“You were innocent. They were cruel to target you,” he said.
“How about you?” I asked, gingered. “You have promised to visit vengeance on even the third generation of those that hurt you even though they are innocent.” I tested the waters. I wanted to know if it was safe to tell him about what the goddess said. “Doesn’t that make you a cruel man?”
He laughed without joy at my question. “I am a cruel man,” he admitted. “I lost my family, my friends, my life. Everything. I am a cruel man and I must get my vengeance.”