Page 116 of The Alpha's Protective Mate

“I didn’t do this.” I look at the couple in the portrait. The whole room is covered in dust, but there is no mistaking the faces of the couple. “They do look like us.”

There are shelves in the corner with books on them, boxes, weapons, utensils.

“I’ve been having dreams for a very long time,” I admit. “Of walking through these woods, a man by my side. That was why the idea of leaving Portland was so hard. Every time I considered it, it felt like something was tying me here, and I realized it was the constant dreams. I didn’t recognize the path in the dream, but it was always the same place, the same woods. When you brought me to the waterfall, it was slightly familiar, but I didn’t think much of it.” I run my fingers through my hair, agitated. “But tonight…It was tonight when I woke up that I suddenly knew where this place was. And my mind sort of went hazy. I couldn’t control my actions. It was almost like somebody was forcing me to walk here. I knew about a key, and about the place behind the waterfall, but I didn’t know what was inside. I swear it.”

Robert looks around, and then he lets out a sigh. “You don’t have to swear. I believe you. But what is this place? And who are those people?”

The woman in the portrait is sitting on a chair, her wild, red hair flowing like mine, her expression soft and relaxed. The man with Robert’s face has his hand on her shoulder as he stands behind her, his eyes alert.

“There’s a plaque at the bottom,” Robert suddenly murmurs, moving forward. He wipes the dust off the iron plate with his sleeve and reads, “Jean and Lucian Whitlock.” His body tenses noticeably. “Whitlock. I know that name. In fact, I’m pretty sure I know who this man was.”

“Who?” I come to stand beside him, curious.

“He was the Alpha of the Whitlock Pack. He was prominent in ending the war with the vampires, but the Whitlock Pack was erased from history after a couple of centuries. There’s very little mention of the end of the war, you see, and a lot of the packs involved integrated with each other either for the sake of numbers or because they wanted new starts. As time went by, most of our archives disappeared along with the packs fading away. But Lucian Whitlock is a legend. I never knew he looked like me.”

“What about the woman next to him?” I lean forward to read her name. “Jean?”

“She can’t be his mate,” Robert says, staring at the couple. “I’ve never heard of Lucian ever taking one. A very basic biography of him still exists, and there’s no mention of a mate.” He squints up at the portrait. “But that’s a mating mark on her neck.”

I follow his gaze and see something on the woman’s neck in the picture. Weird for the painter to be so specific.

“Maybe he did take a mate.” I shrug. However, I can’t help but stare at the woman.

Jean.

The only Jean I know of is Jean Sanguinite, an ancestor of mine who lived, coincidentally, at the same time as Lucian. Jean was a strategist and the leader of the Nelo Clan. There is no portrait of her in the clan’s archives. In fact, it seems like someone deliberately wiped out all evidence of her existence. But stories cannot be erased. Jean is considered nothing short of a saint in vampire culture. She swooped in and outsmarted the wolves, securing a favorable outcome for our kind and preventing more blood from being shed. Even the most arrogant of vampires respect her name. It never made any sense to me why there is no portrait of her.

This woman…She has to be Jean Sanguinite. Why else would she look so much like me?

But mated to a wolf Alpha, the enemy at that time? And not just any enemy, but the one she would have been facing head-on? It doesn’t make sense.

“I must be wrong,” I mumble to myself. “It can’t be her.”

I force my eyes away from her face and look around the room. I don’t understand what this place is. Maybe some kind of medieval storage unit?

It’s evident that nobody has been here for a very long time. Everything is covered in a thick layer of dust. I make my way over to the boxes and open one of them.

Jewelry, trinkets, hair pins.

I reach for an emerald necklace, but as soon as my fingers make contact with it, I feel a rush of emotion, and I immediately retract my hand, my heart beating wildly. I don’t try touching it again.

Closing the box, I approach the shelves. I take out the book closest to me. Brushing off the dust, I realize it’s a strategy book, written in delicate penmanship. The paper is fragile, but the tome is bound with great care. The other side of the shelf seems to have hard-bound journals. It’s like an entire couple’s life secured in one small room.

I hear a scraping sound, and I turn my head to see Robert picking up a stack of small portraits from one of the iron boxes in the corner.

“What are those?” I ask. He’s staring at one of the pictures, and when I go peek over his shoulder, my face instantly feels hot, and I look away. “That’s porn! The medieval version of it, anyway.”

The red-haired woman is posing in a rather sultry manner, scantily clad. The painting is amateurish in nature.

“Will you stop gawking at it?!” I blurt at Robert. “She looks like me!”

“I know,” Robert replies, his voice strange. “There are more.”

I pick up a few of them. They’re rather small, the size of my forearm.

“They had children,” I breathe, looking at the crudely painted kids with bright, beaming smiles. The girl looks older; she’s laughing, and my eyes focus on her mouth. What I see there has my hands trembling.

It’s not possible. There is no way.

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