Page 139 of Rejected By the Alpha King

It locked from the outside.

Five weeks. Not even a stir from the mating bond. Magic couldn’t touch me, so it wasn’t Emerson’s doing.

It had to be Jax’s. He wasn’t coming for me.

63

Anna

The regiment was always the same. After my shift ended, I had three hours to relax, shower, and prepare for dinner. As always, there was a dress laid out on the chair. Not the bed, as if that was somehow supposed to make me feel better.

I wasn’t an idiot. I knew the suite was searched every day while I was gone. There were little things I would note before I left and saw that they’d been moved. Sometimes it was a lampshade turned just a little. Once, I’d tucked the edge of some thread under the rug and found it in the corner when I got home. My bedsheet was tucked differently. Emerson told me that he would have the maid come in every day, but I’d asked to keep my own suite clean. He’d relented, but it hadn’t stopped him from searching the rooms.

Tonight’s dress was red. Most of the dresses were red. That seemed to be Emerson’s favorite color. The dresses were never the same. Either the pack’s seamstress was very busy or Emerson was spending an enormous amount of money clothing me for the two hours he required my attendance at dinner.

They were always the worst part of the day. Otherwise, Emerson left me alone, but I had to have dinner with him. Forced pleasantries. He’d tell me about his plans. He’d ask about my day.

Every night, I asked if he would let me leave yet. Every night, he would tell me that I made a choice, and I needed to honor it.

Without touching the dress, I headed to the shower and turned the water on. So far, I only had one mapped out route. My best chance of getting out of here was getting to the human settlement at the bottom of the mountain. They traded freely with Emerson’s pack, not realizing that it was a shifter settlement, and it was an enormous town. It meant going down to go up, but once I was in the human settlement, Emerson couldn’t touch me. He wouldn’t dare expose the wolves by taking me by brute force.

Getting back up to Jax was a different story. I didn’t have a plan for that. I didn’t even know if Jax wanted me back.

Hell, I wasn’t even sure why I wanted to go back.

There was only one weak spot I could easily identify from my limited knowledge of the layout, and that spot wasn’t as weak as I would like. To get that close to the boundary, I’d have to get to the infirmary. Unfortunately, every accident that I’d had (slicing my finger open at the bar, slipping on one of the longer dresses and falling down the stairs, the horrid cramps I’d fabricated on my last period) had only resulted in the healer visiting me and not the other way around.

If I was going to get to the infirmary, I was going to have to seriously hurt myself, and I feared I would have to do it twice. Once to take stock of the area and figure out how to escape from the infirmary. And once to actually make the escape.

The question wasn’t how badly I needed to hurt myself but when would I ever get the opportunity to do it. I’d happily throw myself out the window and plummet the four stories below if there weren’t bars on them.

Grabbing the dress, I gathered the rest of the things I needed and headed to the shower. I locked the door behind me and turned on the shower. As steam rose up, I stared in the mirror at my reflection.

In captivity, I’d turned into the healthiest version of myself. Ironic. I ate better. I exercised when I could. I got plenty of sleep. As much as I wanted to do a hunger strike, I knew Emerson would just call my bluff, and I’d waste away until I was too weak to fight.

And one day, I would need to fight. I needed to be ready for when that happened.

Stripping, I stepped into the shower and let the hot water run over me. As always, I thought about the last time Jax touched me. I closed my eyes and tried to remember what it had been like when his arms were around me. When his lips were on me. When my body melted against his.

Pathetic? Maybe. Especially knowing that Jax had probably moved on. Now that I wasn’t there fucking with his head and his mating bond, he believed what I’d been telling him all along.

That he was better off without me.

Wasn’t that a bitch to live with?

After my shower, I toweled off, dressed, and wound my wet hair up into a pin. Emerson had once made a comment about how he loved my hair down. I hadn’t worn it down for him since. When he asked, I told him that I didn’t want to ruin the pretty dresses with my wet hair, and I wasn’t the kind of woman to do a whole blow out. He offered to send someone up to help me get ready.

I hadn’t bothered to respond.

Stepping out of the bathroom, I pulled myself up short with a gasp.

There was a dining cart in my living room and a disgusting excuse for an alpha on my sofa.

What the fuck?

Belatedly, I realized I said those words out loud. Emerson looked me up and down with a strange manic light in his eyes. “Forgive me. I thought we might have dinner in your suite tonight, where you might be more comfortable.”

“Dinner is still an hour away.”

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