Page 15 of The Alpha's Reclaimed Mate

My mother recoiled, and my father protectively stood in front of her. “Don’t raise your voice at your mother. You don’t understand the hoops we’ve been jumping through just to keep our home in the Lodge. To keep our rank in the pack!”

“I don’t care about our rank! I just want someone to listen to me!”

“Of course, you don’t care! You take everything for granted!” my mother screamed. “All you had to do was prove yourself worthy to Alpha Moore, and you couldn’t even do that!”

“He never wanted me!”

“He could have!”

“Why aren’t you listening to me?” I strained desperately.

They didn’t get it! There was nothing I could have done to change Oswald’s mind. I could have completed my training early, done all my projects perfectly, taken on extra work, and tried to seduce him—but none of it would have ever worked. The moment he realized I was his fated mate he knew he didn’t want me. I would never have been good enough!

My blood was boiling, but I didn’t know how else to prove to them that I’d done all I could. “Why won’t you just believe me?” I asked, looking up at them with tears threatening to spill down my cheeks.

My father shook his head. “We can’t risk losing everything we’ve worked so hard for. Our family started with nothing. We all paid our dues to be respected by the pack. All of us except for you.”

My anger flared. “Nobody would have even looked twice at our family if I wasn’t Oswald’s fated mate!”

“You arrogant girl,” gasped my mother.

“It’s not personal,” said my father, trying to mediate the electric tension between us. “You just have to prove yourself worthy of being listened to.”

The embers of my anger fizzled out in disbelief. “I’m your daughter.”

“That means nothing to us,” said my mother.

I stared at her, the embers cold. My heart shattered further. “What…?”

“Perhaps it’s best that you stay in the visitor lodgings for now,” my father suggested.

I couldn’t believe it. My own parents weren’t willing to stand up for me. “You… You want me to leave?”

My mother pursed her lips, looking down at me in hard contempt while my father sighed. I could tell he hated being the mouthpiece, but if my mother were to do the talking, she would only insult and degrade me further. “It’s what’s best for our family,” he said.

All my life, all I cared about was serving my pack, but more than that, serving my family. I wanted what was best for them. And now they were telling me what was best for them was if I was gone.

“Fine.” My voice trembled. I wanted to say more, but grief suffocated me, and my eyes burned too much for me to keep eye contact. Ripping away from the conversation, I shut myself in my room and packed a bag, my hands shaking and tears dripping down my chin. I never would have imagined that I’d be kicked out by my own family, left to fend for myself as the consequence of my mistakes. I always thought they would support me. But this proved once and for all that I meant nothing to them!

I didn’t even say goodbye as I hauled my duffle bag into the hallway, unable to look in my parents’ direction, knowing they wouldn’t spare me any sympathy. It was just my luck that Lacey turned the corner ahead of me. She peered at the bag in my hands and didn’t have to guess what had happened.

“Good luck, dearest little sister,” Lacey snickered as she walked past me.

I resisted the urge to shove my shoulder against her. Chances were it would spiral out of control into another rumor about me being uncontrollably violent. I just kept my head low and kept walking, my jaw tight.

Thankfully, nobody passed me on my way to the visitor lodgings. They were hardly up to the same standard as the suite my family lived in. But, for visitors to the Lodge, they were sufficient enough. I had to report to the front desk in the common room in order to get my key, then was assigned to a small room with a single bed, a nightstand, a dresser, and a kitchenette—a sink, a counter, and a microwave. I had a small bathroom with a toilet and a standing shower too. The plain white walls were suffocating, like a jail cell. I sat on the edge of the bed and immersed myself in the silence. The loneliness was unfamiliar, but in a way, I supposed I had been lonely for a long time. My sisters were never really my friends, were they? At least this room was better than being homeless.

Unpacking my duffle bag, I filled the dresser with my clothes and then set a framed photograph on my nightstand. When I crawled into bed, my parents were smiling back at me from the photo. It hurt too much knowing they couldn’t bring themselves to smile at me in real life. I tipped the photo down and rolled over.

The loneliness yawned over me like a void. Nobody would hear me crying all night in my room. It was better that way.

“Do you have any books on nursing? Or food sciences?” I asked the Lodge librarian.

He regarded me skeptically, clearly trying to figure out why I cared about these subjects now that my studies were over, but the stigma attached to me kept him from asking. I wanted to justify myself, but I felt he wouldn’t really care. “This way,” he said, leading me through the aisles. We paused a few times for him to grab books off the shelves, then at the desk, he pushed the books toward me and adjusted his glasses. “They’ll be due back in a week.”

“Thanks.” My voice was still hoarse from all the crying. My eyes flicked up at him, then back down. It was hard for me to produce anything stronger than the ghost of what my smile used to be, especially when I could feel the disdain burning off of everyone I spoke to.

Gathering the books, I quickly left the library and headed for the common room. There wasn’t enough surface area for me to study efficiently in my own room, and I thought at least it could defeat my isolating loneliness by sitting somewhere public, but I quickly regretted it after staking my claim at a table and catching the stares of my packmates. I tried to ignore them, burying my nose in the books.

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