Page 127 of The Alpha's Protective Mate

Aim to kill.

Robert’s words are at the forefront of my mind. This man has to die. He’s a threat to me and to the people I love.

“None of your fucking business,” I hiss.

My father’s lips purse in disapproval. “This doesn’t change anything. You are not going to be welcome in our clan. I have put in a lot of effort for Terrence and Arabella to get engaged. For the future of the clan, you cannot be allowed to live.”

“Be welcome? I wouldn’t go back to that pathetic hellhole if you begged me!” My words are a vicious snarl, my body thrumming with this burning energy.

“If it were only the abilities that made you lacking, it would have been different. But you were unwanted from birth.” My father snorts. “I would have killed you, but your mother begged for your life. Unremarkable. You were born unremarkable. No child of mine should have been born a healer. Weak! A disgrace! It doesn’t matter if you’ve grown powerful over the years. You are still a healer, like the woman who birthed you!”

I stare at him, stunned.

A healer?

I’ve only ever met one vampire healer, an elderly woman in our clan. She was always kind to me but made it a point to avoid me as much as possible. Vampire healers aren’t very strong. Like wolf shifters who are healers, vampires born as healers are empathetic. They lack the cruel edge that our kind usually have. Therefore, they are looked down upon. But I never thought about why there were so few healers in our clan.

An ugly thought intrudes in my mind, and I look at the man who is supposed to be my father. “You wanted to kill me because I was born a healer? How many other children like me have been sentenced to death?”

My father’s jaw hardens. “Weakness is a sin among our kind!”

I have my answer. Disgust and anger rage within me. “You’re a monster. I should be grateful you threw me out. No wonder Arabella is as twisted as she is. With a father like you, what else would she be?”

Beruth rushes forward, and I punch him in the neck. He easily deflects my blow, and the fact that I am anticipating his attacks is making him frustrated. But my father has always been sly.

I see movement behind him. Jazz is trembling like a leaf. She is holding Zeno now, my bag in her other hand. My father darts toward her.

“No!” I shout, trying to intercept him, but he suddenly turns around, piercing my stomach with his hand. I make a choked sound, white heat exploding within me. We stay like that for a second: Beruth’s hand impaling me, a rushing sound filling my ears, Jazz’s voice screaming my name in terror reaching me as if I’m underwater.

And then he withdraws it, and my body crumples to the ground.

There is a big, gaping hole in my stomach. I can feel it. What I can also feel is the instant healing kicking in.

My father looks down at me, revulsion in his eyes. “That alone won’t kill you, but this will.”

He removes a silver stake from his coat’s inner pocket.

A silver stake to my heart will freeze it and stop any sort of healing, forcing me to die an agonizing death. It makes sense that my father would choose the most painful way to kill me. I’ve never been hated by someone as much as by this man.

He lifts the stake over his head, but before he can stab me with it, someone rushes at him, shoving him backward. I see raven black hair in a familiar braid.

My father hisses as Angie throws something in his eyes.

She’s chanting something, and his cries of pain grow louder. Jazz stumbles over to me, half sobbing, half shaking, clutching a frantic Zeno and my bag. “Charlotte…I have to…The police…”

“R—Robert,” I gurgle at her.

“The vet—The vet called him.” Her head moves in jerky shakes.

“G—Gun.”

Despite the pain, I move, reaching for the bag. Zeno suddenly goes wild, and as Jazz tries to hold on to him, my hand wraps around the gun, and I lift my head.

Only to see my father decapitate Angie.

Her head flies to the side, her body crumpling to the ground. I feel a hollow numbness in my chest. The woman who found me in the street that night, who bought me my first meal, listened to me, hugged me, let me sleep in her bed…The woman I considered an older sister in every sense of the word is gone.

I draw out the gun. My body is cold, the grief a hard ball in my chest, robbing me of my ability to breathe.

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