Page 9 of The Alpha's Forced Bride

There was something for me to find there. She was who I was supposed to find.

I started to walk back to my cabin, listening to the woods around me just to make sure that nothing was following me. I wondered why I would dream of a woman that I would never have met without doing a ritual to find her. Was that what mates did? Why had I seen her face in a random folder that Clancy had brought in? In a picture with people that I didn't recognize? Yet, her face stood out. Looking at her, I felt a familiarity that I couldn’t understand. It could be fate.

No, that didn't make any sense. I was cursed until the day that I could exorcise my demon, and I could only choose a woman in the hopes that she would provide what I needed. That was all I could do. If I couldn't find a cure, I would find more members for my pack. I would expand. I would embrace the demon inside of me and make myself whole.

If you can’t beat ‘em, eat ‘em.

I would become the demonic wolf king of the underground shifter world. If I could never escape this thing, if I truly could never exercise my demon, then I had every intention of embracing it.

***

Nights lasted so long with my demon, although I still didn’t know his name. I didn't know what name to give it, how to address it, or how to even ignore it. There was no ignoring a thing like that constantly whispered in my mind. I couldn’t get away from it. I could barely get away from myself. I had no choice but to acknowledge it while trying to resist at the same time.

I found myself thinking about the woman, trying to figure out how to find her and understand why I was drawn to find her. Again, I thought about being fated to meet her and how that didn't make sense to me—it was almost laughable. I was just mulling over her picture when a series of knocks came from the backdoor, interrupting my thoughts. I abruptly stood up and opened the door, watching with silent curiosity as Clancy and Kirk dragged an unconscious woman into my cabin.

This wasn't exactly my idea of searching the woods for unknown dangers. She didn’t look dangerous to me. In fact, she looked tiny. But I guess this worked. She was slim and short, with long, dark hair that seemed to coil around her shoulders and across her face. She was unconscious, which was probably Kirk's doing. Knocking people out was his thing.

He glanced at me with an expectant look on his face. I studied him, trying to figure out if he was okay or not. The way he looked at me—with his red eyes that matched his red hair, making his tan-brown skin look all the more golden—was like he was waiting for me to acknowledge that he had done something great. Sometimes, he just looked like a puppy who had caught a rabbit and brought it happily back to his owner. I was tempted to praise him for being a good boy but thought better of it. Especially since we had company, albeit unconscious company.

Clancy stepped toward me, his hunch making him stoop lower than usual. He shrugged the shoulder on which the hunch sat, which seemed to make him uncomfortable. “We found her lurking around in the woods.”

Kirk nodded in ferociously excited agreement. I sighed. Goddamn puppy.

Clancy took a deep breath. “I don't know why she was just wandering around out there.” He shrugged again and then gestured to the basement door, which was just a few paces behind me, right next to the desk. “We should really take her down there and contain her.”

“Where are Demarcus and Shiloh?”

Kirk flinched at the demanding tone of my voice while Clancy met my gaze head-on. Clancy was the only one who could respond to that tone without any emotion. “They're back in the woods making sure that whatever was chasing this woman isn't coming for us.”

I hummed curiously. It seemed like a strange night for that sort of thing—or a strange morning, rather, because the sun was now peeking through the window and starting to give me a headache. I wanted to retreat to the shadows; I wanted to go to my room where the blinds were drawn, the curtains were closed, and I could crawl into my bed, acting like it was a cave instead of a room.

Another sigh escaped me. “Basement it is.” I reached down to scoop her into my arms, watching the hair slide away from her face to reveal the sepia freckles that I knew belonged to someone else, someone familiar to me. I paused at the doorway. There was no way it was her. There was no possible way that Clancy and Kirk had found the woman of my dreams, the woman who had been revealed as my mate in a blood ritual. The very same woman I was supposed to be with had been caught wandering around in the woods behind my cabin.

Fate didn't work like that. It just wasn't realistic. Right?

Her lips widened with a little bit of a yawn—or something like a yawn mixed with a silent wail. Her eyes remained closed as her jaw slacked. I thought she was going to wake up, but she remained asleep. I started to carry her to the basement door. Clancy ran forward to open the door for me and turned on the light so I could see the stairs.

Down in the basement, things were darker, softer, earthier. Everything felt calmer down here, and I often thought about moving my bedroom to this area so I could be closer to the earth. Or at least buried underneath it, where I belonged. To the left was a small door located at the top of a set of stone steps that led to the woods outside. I made a mental note to keep the woman far away from it.

She stirred once again, but she didn't wake. I placed her on the cot inside the cage in the corner of the basement, which wasn't any bigger than the cabin above her head. Then, I smelled her. I inhaled the delicious combination of azaleas and sweet water, like petals soaked in sea salt. It was so sweet and so tangy at the same time that I couldn't help nuzzling my nose right into the skin beneath her earlobe.

The softest sigh came from her. I took my time noticing her flesh, and the rough texture of goosebumps that erupted as I traced her neck with the tip of my nose. What was I doing? I released her and took a step back. I tried to control the urge in my body to drop to my knees and take her into my arms. It had to be her, right? If she had really come to me, had really appeared to me, if she was really here now, then that meant…

That meant that this was supposed to happen. Everything had aligned and come together to make this moment happen. Clancy was standing behind me, waiting for my next order. I turned to him and told him to head back upstairs, where Kirk was undoubtedly wagging his tail obediently.

I stepped out of the cage and shut it behind me, pushing the lock into place. It was at that moment that she lifted her head. Her eyes snapped open, and she looked directly at me. Just as her cheeks flushed with a luscious scarlet, she whispered, “It's you—you’re my mate.”

Chapter 4 - Kiara

My eyes snapped wide open. “It's you—you’re my mate.”

A ghastly feeling came over me as I stared at the man who was now holding me captive. Why did I have to say it like that? It’s not as if it was true. It was just an announcement made during the ritual, one that I was just repeating.

There I was: cold, tired, and hungry. I'd been snatched from the woods and manhandled. I wasn't even sure how I ended up there after the ritual. Everything past midnight was a blur. Until now, of course—until the moment I was sitting on top of a rickety cot in a dimly lit basement, staring at a man who was honestly too handsome for me to believe he could be evil. There was no way this man was possessed by a demon. If he was, I didn't want it to be true, and I definitely didn't want him to be standing here outside of the door of my cage, staring at me with his mouth partially slit open and his plush tongue dancing just on the other side of his teeth, almost like he wanted to press his lips to my throat.

I touched the right side of my neck. It felt warm, like someone had breathed on the skin. Had he been brushing his lips against my neck while I was sleeping? Disgust possessed me much like the demon possessed him. Gross. I didn't want to be anywhere near him if he was going to do something like that while I was sleeping.

I had to guess that I was in better circumstances than others would be, but I had just been in a meeting with my alphas about a pack of demon wolves in the area, who were allegedly running an underground human trafficking ring. That was all I could think about—that I had been picked up and taken into custody by people who were going to sell me. They had already put me in a cage., and now they were going to train me to do things. I'd heard the stories before, and I knew what was ahead of me if it was true.

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