Page 43 of My Possessive Alpha

Mom’s brows furrowed as she stepped closer, voice sickeningly soft. “Lie to you? Honey, we’d never do that to you. We told you the truth about that awful family.”

“Don’t call me that,” I growled, swathed with deep sadness and anger.

“Lydia—”

Prepared to run back to Sebastian and the others then, I turned and pulled in a breath.

But the moment I saw his face—the one I had been dreading seeing for weeks—all the oxygen was pushed from my lungs.

Jack’s lips curled into a cruel smile as he looked down at me, looking far too pleased with himself. “Trying to run again, Little Finch?”

It felt as if an icy hand gripped the back of my neck. That nickname—the one he called me since I was just a girl—brought an even more sinister edge to it all.

I wanted to run as fast as I could, but seeing him froze me to the spot. Those cold, icy blue eyes pierced right through me, and I was at a complete loss.

I was cornered with him in front of me and my parents behind me. There was no way for me to escape.

Especially not as headlights streamed through the trees while a vehicle raced through the clearing, following a path I hadn’t noticed. I didn’t realize how close we were to a road until it was too late.

Jack chuckled darkly. “Nowhere to run now, Lydia. It’s about time you realized your fate.”

But that couldn’t be true. That couldn’t have been my fate. Not when I had come so close to reaching a good place in life. When I finally had people around me who genuinely cared and didn’t want to use me for their gain.

My breath caught in my throat as Jack moved in, easily grabbing me and hoisting me over his shoulder.

As the adrenaline roared in my ears and the shock of it passed, I struggled, fighting against him.

“Put me down!”

But my voice might as well have been a noise passing in the wind. He didn’t care, not as he hauled me to the black SUV in time with the door popping open.

“Stop!” I screeched, heaving in panicked breaths as everything I hoped to achieve in my future seemed to flash before my eyes.

The solidified bond with Sebastian and the life we hoped to have together; the child in my belly and the light they would inevitably bring us every day; the close-knit community of the pack he built from the ground up and was more than willing to share with me; and my mended friendship with Zoe.

All of it mattered so much to me, yet those things didn’t matter to Jack or my parents. I was not considered—not even for a moment.

Realizing that my voice was the last thing I had, I pulled in a deep breath and prepared a scream, but sensing it first, Jack put me down and clasped a hand over my mouth. His eyes nearly burned into mine.

“Don’t even think about it.”

My entire body clenched as I fell back into that old fear again—the perpetual state of not wanting to disobey or risk facing the consequences.

Without missing a beat, he motioned toward one of his betas, and Will stepped forward with a smug grin as he handed Jack a roll of thick tape.

I swallowed hard, eyes wide with panic, as he slapped some over my mouth and handed me off to Will.

“That should do the trick.”

The syrupy triumph in his voice made me wish I was close enough to strike him, but as Will pinned my arms back and dragged me closer to the vehicle, my wish was far from granted.

“Please, be careful with her,” I heard Mom say through my struggle. “Please, Jack. She’s our daughter—”

A loud crack echoed through the space, and my eyes widened as I barely managed to catch the scene as it unfolded while Will shoved me into the SUV.

Mom staggered back, holding her cheek as fear and disbelief filled her eyes, all while Jack held a finger in her face.

“Don’t make demands of me, Iris!” He growled, tone as sharp as a blade. “You’re lucky I even followed through with this after your bitch of a daughter made me chase her around the countryside.”

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