Page 29 of Marked By the Alphas

“It’s not a joke Rowan. Where were you anyway? And where’s Smith?” I asked. Rowan was about to respond when the door was pushed open once more to reveal a flushed Smith.

“Sorry I’m late. I got caught up in market gossip…” He trailed off when he noticed the somber looks around the table and instead moved to take a seat. I rolled my eyes at them both before plucking up a piece of paper from in front of me.

“Any new topics to be discussed before we go into reports?” I asked as my eyes ran over the paper in my hand.

“Well, an Omega was sighted at the market today, and like I said, the gossip is going around the pack like wildfire. It was enough to make me lose track of the time,” Smith said with a laugh, but my heart dropped into my stomach at his words. I raised my eyes to meet his.

“When you say an Omega was sighted, you mean Elara right?” For some reason, my voice was shaky when I spoke, and it caused Smith to frown.

“Yeah, of course I mean Elara. What other Omega do you know? But she was safe, and no one tried to harm her or anything. The women were mostly curious and amazed at the sight of her. You know her presence here has mostly been a rumor and…” Smith was saying but I cut him off.

“Safe? The moment she steps out of the pack house she’s no longer safe! Where were the guards at the gate when she left? I gave specific orders to make sure she never left the house unsupervised. How did she even get to the market? Wh…”

“She was safe because she was with me,” Rowan interrupted and I snapped my head in his direction, my anger brewing beneath my skin.

“You took her out of the house?” I asked, my voice calm but cold.

“She wanted to go to the market with Rose.”

“Rowan, do you realize how dangerous that was? Do you even understand how delicate this situation is? Have you forgotten Daniel’s reaction and that there may be several others who might impulsively react like that to her presence?”

“Yes Kai, yes. I understand how delicate this situation is, and that is why I took her to the market and got her back home safely. She wanted to go to the market, Kai, not the training grounds filled with raging testosterone or the council meeting. The women there were mostly curious about her, and none thought to even ask any questions. Plus, even if there happened to be an attack, I was there, was I not? Except of course, you’re insinuating that you don’t think that I’m fit to protect her.”

I could hear the hint of anger in Rowan’s voice and it prevented me from responding immediately. Because he was right. Elara wasn’t a prisoner in this pack and she was free to go wherever she pleased, but I worried about her safety. I had a strong desire to protect her. But I should also realize that it was the same for Rowan and Rhys. They were both very capable of taking care of her.

I slumped back in my chair, sighing heavily before picking back up the piece of paper I had dropped. This past week had been the toughest one I’d had in a long time and that was saying something, considering that my responsibilities usually were stressful.

It had been a week since her heat and a week since the last time we both encountered each other, and even as I sat here in the conference room, the memory of her raw vulnerability, the way she had clung to me, was a brand seared into my mind, leaving me craving so much more. Yet, since then, she had retreated further into her shell and it made frustration gnaw at me.

Rhys cleared his throat. “I’ll start with the reports. I organized some communal activities to make up for the pack hunt that didn’t happen last week. The full moon is already past, we can’t hold the hunt anymore, and there has been some…unrest concerning that issue as expected, but with the upcoming activities, there’s plenty to plan and look forward to. Things seem calmer and everybody seems to be in happier spirits.”

“Which brings us to the Harvest Feast. It’s still months away, but if we shift the planning to start earlier, we might be able to appease the council. Some of them really did not take well to the cancellation of the hunt, and I think we might need more than some communal activities to get them to settle. These men are blood-thirsty Alphas, and the hunt provides that thrill. Now that it has been taken away, they need something worthwhile to satisfy that craving,” Smith said, and a hum of approval went up in the air.

Although I nodded, my mind was distracted and the drone of voices in the conference room as they gave report after report on each segment of our business barely registered in my brain. My mind whirled with thoughts of my mate, just like it had been all week.

Now it wasn’t just the unanswered questions about her past, or the unsettling whispers about her origins that had begun to circulate through the pack. Now it felt like it was more thanthat, and it was evident in the way she had looked at me, Rhys, and Rowan. She acted like we had hung the very moon during her heat, but almost immediately after her heat ended, she had almost disappeared. All that I had to go on was just glimpses of her shadow as she flitted through the halls, determined to avoid us.

I had spent the entire week trying to figure out what must have gone wrong. Did she regret what had transpired between us? Did the idea of a bond with all three of us terrify her enough to push her away?

I’d had to resist the urge to seek her out and force her to tell me what the problem was. I knew that I couldn’t afford to scare her even more. So, I tempered my actions and played along with her needs, but it was getting more difficult to conceal the storm raging within me, especially after hearing about her little escapade with Rowan. Maybe that’s why I had been so angry about it. It wasn’t because I didn’t think he couldn’t protect her as well as I could. It was because I had felt a pang of jealousy go through me just hearing that he had spent the day with her.

Suddenly, Rowan’s voice cut through the haze that had surrounded me. “There’s been some…unrest in the neighboring pack. My men reported some unusual activities close to our borders,” he said and a prickle of irritation rose in my spine.

“We need to focus on solidifying our defenses across each of our borders to make sure that they don’t come into our territory,” I said and a tense silence followed.

Finally, Rhys spoke again, his voice low. “I understand your desire to maintain order and I support you a hundred percent, but perhaps we ourselves have to delve deeper into everything.Especially into the mark. It might hold a clue about her true origins. Elara doesn’t remember where she’s from, so she can’t give us what we need. Maybe it’s time we find it ourselves on her behalf and for all our safety. If we don’t know yet what we’re dealing with then I think it’s wise we treat it like a threat.”

I wanted to argue, to tell him to drop it, but a traitorous part of me acknowledged their concern. What if there was more to Elara than even she could remember? What if, beyond the prophecy, there was something else to her mark? What if the bond we shared had some other kind of significance?

“Fine,” I conceded grudgingly. “But we do it discreetly. No need to cause unnecessary panic.” I could feel a headache start to form behind my eyelids, and I wanted nothing more than to dismiss this meeting and head home.

“If that’s all, I think we can…” I began saying, but Rowan interrupted me before I could get the rest of the words out.

“The mate bond, Kai. It’s been almost a month now. Sooner or later, we’ll have to address it,” he began.

“We can’t keep having these meetings where we discuss everything in detail but skirt around the topic and eventually ignore it like it doesn’t exist,” Rhys added and every muscle in my body tensed.

“There’s nothing to address,” I said, my voice clipped. Rowan leaned forward in his seat to look at me.

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