Page 35 of The Alpha Wolf Defying Fate

A sob betrayed me as I covered my mouth and turned away from him. I couldn’t look at him. Not when he was so right.

Had the roles been reversed, I absolutely would have thought that he was the devil in disguise. I had suspected him to be the evil in my life for years now. A decade since the graduation when I had that prophecy.

Yet now, the roles were reversed. And worst of all, I had already begun to fear exactly what he was accusing me of.

Still, I couldn’t deny it all. Even as I feared it myself, I could never admit that the thought had never crossed my mind.

“What if the reason the darkness left my body is because I’m the opposite of darkness,” I argued, the thought coming from the back of my mind. A thought I hadn’t had yet. A brilliant thought. “What if it just couldn’t exist inside me?”

“If you were the opposite of darkness then you would have never been able to conjure the power to use it at all,” he argued, his back straightened, making him stand taller with the claim. “There is a little darkness in everyone, I agree. The call of dark magic always tempting everyone, even the strongest of witches, but no one can withstand it’s call once it’s touched your core. And that darkness was deep inside you, Rigel. I have no doubts that it’s not still somewhere inside you even now.”

It felt as if the entire world had crumbled beneath my feet. His eyes dimmed with disappointment as he looked back at me. The mate who would be his enemy in the fight against darkness.

It was bullshit.

He was presuming without giving me any room for doubt. Just believing that I was the evil he would have to face down instead of the girl he had grown up with. The girl he had gone to school with. How could he be so willing to just believe that about me?

‘You believed it about him, though,’my wolf reminded me.‘For years.’

Tears fell from my eyes as her words echoed in my head.

She was right. I had done exactly this to him long ago. I hadn’t changed my mind until recently during this journey. And now, the tables had turned on me.

‘How poetic,’I thought bitterly.‘Just when I open myself to the possibility of love, I lose it before ever truly knowing it.’

I wiped my eyes and rushed away from him. Ayden didn’t move. He didn’t even attempt to chase after me. He didn’t even watch me run towards the tree line. He showed no care at all.

“Sasha?” Rory called as she appeared in front of me. Both she and Baer seemed to be returning from their little disappearance, their clothes ruffled and leaves stuck to their hair.

I ran past them as the tears began to flow. My cousin’s eyes widened as she saw them running down my cheeks.

“Sasha! What’s wrong?” she called after me.

I didn’t stop to explain. Didn’t stop to listen to the echoes of her voice as she began to interrogate Ayden. I just ran until I couldn’t run anymore, and then I sat against a boulder and let my tears fall.

‘His wolf doesn’t believe it,’my wolf whispered to me.‘He is fighting Ayden on his suspicions. He will make sure that Ayden knows the truth. Don’t worry.’

I shook my head. “I can’t blame him for thinking like this. I would do the same. I have done the same. Even you said it. I deserve it.”

‘No,’she barked.‘No one deserves it. Not him or you. The past is the past, you both had agreed to move forward the night you lay beside each other at that river. Now, you both must choose to move past this as well. It’s only a bump in the road. He is our mate. He will see the truth in due time.’

I couldn’t understand where her confidence in Ayden came from, but I couldn’t deny that it made me feel better. At least a little.

Still, the fears had returned. The voice in the back of my mind beckoning for me to listen to him once more.

I sat still, focusing on my wolf’s voice as she helped me drown out the stranger’s voice in our mind as he fed the fears of Ayden’s words with his presence.

It had been the voice who beckoned me to use the dark magic. The voice who told me exactly what to do each time I was in danger.

It couldn’t be a coincidence, and it couldn’t have come at a worst time.

“Sasha?” I jolted at the sound of my cousin’s voice; my tear-stained face turned towards her as she stepped out from between two large trees. “What’s wrong?”

I bit my lip as I tried to decide what to tell her. If I could even lie to her at all. To the one person who had always been there for me. The one person who truly knew me better than I knew myself.

‘She’ll know you’re lying if you try,’my wolf said with a gentle nudge.‘She can help us as well. After all, she understands the mate bond as well as any other mated pair.’

I looked back at Rory, sniffling my nose as I wiped the tears from my cheek.

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