Filed to story: The Alpha’s Pen Pal Book
“No. That was all him. I didn’t know you ended things until you joined us for tea that day. And then I tried—I tried so very hard—to manipulate him to keep you out of the warriors and to fight to win you back, but it was too much for me as a mere hybrid, and I had to make a choice. You being with him was more instrumental to my plan than you not being a warrior, so I focused everything I had on getting him to win you back. When that didn’t work, I resorted to desperate measures.”
I lift a brow. “Such as?”
“The alpha command and the rogues. They were supposed to attack you and Dominic—so your powers would appear—and scare the pack, not destroy it. I underestimated their bloodthirstiness and ruthlessness, and I underestimated my son’s need to play the hero and send you running instead of having you stay and fight with him.”
My jaw clenches. How dare she. How dare she take away my free will by compelling her son to use his alpha command on me in the most demeaning way possible?
Reid’s anger slams into me. Before, it had been small, inconsistent flashes making their way towards me through the bond. But now it hits me full force and commingles with mine.
Haven sends her starlight aura into me, and I take a breath, blocking out the anger—both mine and my mate’s—so I can focus on the task at hand. We’re not finished.
“Just a little longer, Reid,”
I tell him through the mindlink.
“I’m going to kill her,”
he says, snarling and growling.
“Not yet,”
I say, sending a trickle of peace through the bond.
“We still need more information.”
He growls again but I turn my attention back to Merina. “But why do all this? Why poison the pack and manipulate your son? What did you stand to gain from it all?”
“A healer, of course,” she says. “A healer I could control and get to do my bidding. I’d control Dominic, and he could alpha command you to do whatever I needed you to do.”
“But how did you know I would be a healer? And why did you need me so badly?”
“I’ve studied the family trees of healers for almost thirty years, waiting for one of the current healers to pass away so the next healer in the bloodline would be born. When your father’s very distant cousin passed away, you were the next child born, and then I spent years figuring out how to get your family back to Silver Ridge. I had to be careful and time it as close to your twenty-first birthday as possible so you wouldn’t meet your mate before coming to the pack, if he wasn’t Dominic. Which, obviously, he wasn’t.”
“But why?” I ask, leaning forward, my voice insistent. “Why did you need me? Why did you want to control me?!”
“Because I needed you to fix me!” she says, her fist slamming into the table, her finger stabbing at her chest. “I’ve spent decades like this, and I couldn’t do it anymore!”
“What? What are you talking about? Why do you need to be fixed? Healed?”
She shakes her head, her lip trembling and her eyes flooding with liquid and vitriol. “You have no idea what it’s like to be as broken as I am, as I have been since the day I met Julian!” She laughs, but it’s a cold, mirthless sound. “Julian Rivers. Alpha of Silver Ridge. Handsome and suave—and cruel. He had an image to maintain, and that image didn’t include sharing his hybrid luna with his beta.”
Everyone at the table freezes. Haven flinches back, brow furrowed, and Maya’s eyes flicker with pain and sadness.
“Share you?” Haven asks.
“Hybrids often have two mates,” Maya says, her voice tight, looking straight at Merina. “And if they only complete the bond with one, if they’re forced to be apart from their other mate with no mark from them and no rejection either, it can…” She trails off, turning to stare out the windows of the packhouse. “It’s not good for them. They end up broken. Incomplete. It’s hard to explain, but it messes with their souls.”
“Yes,” Merina says with another humorless laugh. “It does. But Julian didn’t care. He sent Paul away, commanded him to stay away from me, to never contact me, and chose a new beta, someone from another pack.”
“Why not reject Julian, then?” I ask. “Why put up with that treatment?”
“He told me he’d have Paul killed if I even thought of rejecting him.”
“But why not go to the council? The king?”
“Don’t you think I would have thought of all those options? I did, and so did Julian, and all resulted in the same ending—my other mate dead, by his hand. So, I stuck it out. I stayed by his side for the sake of the unborn pup I carried, and I succumbed to the darkness caused by the distance of my second mate, all the while waiting and searching for a healer who could fix what Julian broke. And I hit the mother lode with you.”
“I can’t fix you, Merina,” I say, pressing my lips together. “No healer can.”
“You can, though! You pushed me out of Dominic even though I’d had hold of him for years. Your powers are enough to heal me.”
I sigh and shake my head at her. “I didn’t push you out on my own. I had help. Help from two witches, the same witches who helped me track the spell to you, and who provided the truth potion to compel you to spill all your secrets to us.”
Her face pales and she looks around the table, then down at the teacup in front of her. She lifts her eyes, fire burning behind them, and she tries to stand, but she can’t, held in place by Haven’s earlier command. Her nostrils flare and she fights against it, but it’s no use.
“It doesn’t matter!” she declares, glaring at Haven and me, and the rest of us. “It will be your word against mine when this potion wears off. And I’ll be long gone by the time—“
“Oh, you sweet thing,” Haven says, patting her hand again. “I almost feel sorry for you. Almost. But choosing darkness solves nothing. You had other options, other paths you could have taken.” Haven sighs and glances towards the doors to the kitchen. “And did you really think we’d ask you all of this, get this entire confession from you without some sort of plan in place?”
Merina follows her eyes to the double doors, and she fights harder against Haven’s hold on her King Malachi stalks towards her, flanked by Alpha Wesley and my mate, all three of them releasing the full strength of their alpha and beta auras on her. Her shoulders slump and her hands cover her face, her body collapsing over the table, submitting to their combined power. My wolf pushes forward, intrigued and drawn to our mate and his strength, to the aura he so rarely uses.
“Merina Rivers,” King Malachi says, his voice filling the entire room and drawing the attention of everyone in attendance. “You are under arrest for the murders of Julian Rivers and Terrence and Lauryn Campbell, for collaborating with rogue werewolves, and for the use of unmonitored and illegal witchcraft against both your son and your pack.”
He and Wesley grab her by the arms as a murmur of surprise ripples through the gathered females. They slap silver cuffs on her wrists and drape a magic stifling amulet over her neck, yanking her from her seat to take her to the Crescent Lake cells.
REIDAs soon as we secure Merina to the chair in the cell, I turn around and leave, heading back the way we came in. King Malachi is questioning Merina, getting more details from her about her confession. Even with my distaste for torture, I’d love to watch her squirm, love to watch him get every piece of information out of her by whatever means necessary. She deserves it for everything she did.
But the ache in my soul pulls me out of the room and back towards the packhouse, back towards my distressed mate. Her pain is mine, growing stronger by the second, clawing up my insides, impossible to ignore.
I shove the door to the building open, and Taryn flings herself at me, her high heels in her hand. She buries her face in my shoulder as she clings to my neck and her tears soak my T-shirt, silent sobs wracking her body. My arms wrap around her on instinct and I take her back inside, out of the cold and away from prying eyes.
“I’m here,” I say, my lips against her ear and my hand cupping the back of her head. “I’ve got you.” She nods, her eyes clenched shut, her body trembling in my arms, shaken and exhausted from pushing her emotions aside while questioning Merina. “You were so strong and so brave—the perfect beta female. But you can break now. You can let me be strong for both of us.”
New Book: Veiled Desires of the Alpha King Novel
Dayson was the alpha of the largest pack in North America. Powerful figures from other packs sought to offer gorgeous girls as potential mates for Dayson. He steadfastly rejected these advances, he was not a pawn to be manipulated. But eventually there came a mysterious girl he could hardly say No. Who was she?