Page 41 of Rejected By the Alpha King

“Yes.” He released me. “I am. You can’t be part of my pack. Parker was the only one I trusted to protect you. I put Danny in charge, and I had to kill him not three weeks in.”

Shock reverberated through me. “You killed Danny?”

“For trying to rape you? Yes.”

“How did you know?”

“Amaya, the wolf who caught you trying to escape, reported it. She knew what was happening. They had a hands-off policy because, despite everything, you are my fucking mate.

When I find out who branded you, they’ll die too,” he said quietly.

I swallowed hard and went back to bandaging his wound.

Hearing Marsh talk made me realize how much of my life has been controlled. How much had been taken away. I’d always known that I’d gotten the short end of the stick, but I’d done some terrible things too.

I’d deserved my punishment, but maybe it was time for me to try and forgive myself. I didn’t even know if that was possible, but if Jax really wanted to know, I would tell him.

“I was thirteen the first time I tried to flee my father. He caught me, hauled me back, tied me up, and left me for three days. When he returned, he had a special blend of wolfsbane. He dipped a blade in it, forced me to shift, and carved into my wolf. The pain was excruciating. It was another six years before I tried to run again. My scars used to really turn on Marsh and some of my father’s other friends. They’d make me shift into a wolf just to see them. Sometimes, they experimented with other ways to see if they could scar her. For years, I was their plaything.

When I turned sixteen, he started kidnapping women. I helped one escape. As a punishment, he ordered me to kill the other. I refused. He carved into her until she begged for death. That night, I smothered her, in human form, with a pillow.”

It was my first kill. It was a long time before I stopped seeing her whenever I closed my eyes.

I kept focusing on cleaning the blood while I talked. Jax had gone so tense that I thought he might shatter.

“What he does to them is unimaginable. He wanted a pack and thought he could create one, but he was impotent, so he’d torture them. The few times he left me alone with them, to help heal them so they wouldn’t die before he was done, some of them would beg for death. I gave it to them. A few times, when I couldn’t kill them or when I thought they could make it on their own, I set them free. He always found them, and we would both be punished. They died screaming.

Saul’s sister was the only one to make it back. I released her knowing damn well she probably wouldn’t live long. I just needed her to live long enough.”

Silence filled the cave, and I finished dressing the wound. “That is not what I meant when I asked if you killed for him,” he said hoarsely.

“Does it matter? Sometimes he asked and sometimes he didn’t. Sometimes I had to kill them because they were still screaming, and he had friends coming over. I’d have their blood on my hands while I served them fucking coffee.”

“Jesus, Anna…”

“I am a killer, Jax. If you don’t trust anything else about me, trust that. You should get some sleep. You’re going to feel sapped of energy.”

“How come the spell didn’t get you?”

He was already drifting off to sleep. “If I told you that,” I said so softly I knew that he couldn’t hear, “you would never let me go.”

19

Anna

It was two days before Jax could walk on his own again. Two days of him swearing up and down that he was fine and collapsing not more than five minutes of trying to leave the cave.

Two days of him demanding to know how I released him from the spell.

Two days of him asking about my father.

I couldn’t tell him about the spell, so I told him about Dirk. Everything he wanted to know. Every answer I could give him. Maybe I felt like it was my last chance at redemption.

After we reached the coven, I would never see Jax again.

I had a plan. If he didn’t tell me what he wanted with the witches, I would leave him there. He’d never get in without me. If he did tell me, maybe the witches would let him in. Either way, we’d go our separate ways.

I’d stop being Dirk’s daughter. Adopt a new name and live my life alone. Lonely but peaceful.

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