Page 17 of The Alpha's Reclaimed Mate

The sting of his palm left my cheek throbbing. I stared in shock up at Oswald as everyone else in the common room fell silent. The sound of the slap still resonated in my ears, the feeling numb across my skin.

All the while, Mara stood behind Oswald with her hand covering her mouth. But even as my head reeled, I could see the creases in her cheeks from the wide grin she hid behind her palm.

Chapter 7: Aria

“I won’t stand for such disrespect toward my mate,” Oswald growled through his teeth. “Aria, you have no right to take out your anger on Mara! She’s been nothing but kind and generous toward this pack! But you? You’re a bitter, venomous brat!”

My thoughts were a mess. I couldn’t even form a sentence, caught between the reflex to apologize or deny and defend my honor. Mara was so obviously lying, but Oswald wasn’t going to listen to reason. I stammered, my cheeks red hot as my insides twisted up and my throat closed, indignant anger preventing me from saying anything at all.

“A rude piece of shit like you doesn’t deserve to live in the Lodge. I don’t want to see your face in there ever again. From now on, you return to the Omegas’ quarters,” he spat, then threw me to the ground.

The impact knocked the breath out of my lungs. I watched Oswald slide his arm around Mara’s shoulders, kissing her temple and guiding her away from the trauma I’d caused. “And don’t dare show your face before Mara,” added Oswald. “I don’t want her reminded of the role you played in my past.”

Mara tossed me a side glance, wiping away the tears from her eyes that I knew couldn’t be real; I saw how she’d grinned like she did it all to make me suffer! Yet there was nothing I could do but sit there on the ground, fuming and watching them walk away together, my ego battered. My cheek stung where Oswald slapped me. That pain resonated through my entire body. I only came here to read a book, and it ended up with Mara humiliating me in front of the entire pack—again. And now, I didn’t even have my room in the visitor lodgings. She took that away from me too.

My body withered in defeat. Bystanders walked around me, murmuring to one another while I picked myself up, brushing off my pants. I didn’t want anybody to look at me. I avoided their eyes, gathering my books as I fled the common room.

Word traveled fast in the Lodge. By the time I made it to my room in the visitor lodgings, a security guard was already packing my things for me. “Wait!” I shouted, begging my tears not to fall yet.

The security guard ignored me, carelessly throwing my belongings in a cardboard box. My clothes, my pillow, and blanket, the framed photo of my family that cracked when he threw my water bottle on top of it. I ran into the room and grabbed the box from his hands as tears swelled past the floodgates, trickling down my cheeks.

“Let’s go.” The security guard pointed down the hallway, locking the room behind me. They didn’t even trust me to leave on my own.

I carried my box past the common room with the greatest shame I’d ever known. My heart was so heavy it made my feet drag, and I could barely see out of the blur of tears in my eyes. All around me, my packmates watched. I even glimpsed my parents standing beside the common room, my father with his hand on my mother’s shoulder, looking coldly at their disappointment of a daughter. My sisters jeered behind their hands and pointed at me.

“I knew she wouldn’t cut it,” said Emma.

“Hopefully, we’ll be able to forget she even exists,” said Cassie. “Then our family can be perfect like it was supposed to be, without one too many baby sisters hanging around.”

“Look at her; she’s crying!” Emma sneered. “Boohoo, poor Aria. That’s what you get for throwing a temper tantrum! Mara’s always going to be better than you!”

Nobody said anything in my defense. My sisters’ words rang cruelly inside my head until the security guard reached the front doors and pushed me toward them. “If you’re seen around the Lodge’s living quarters again, Alpha Moore has instructed security to take physical measures to remove you. I’d suggest staying away from the Lodge entirely if you want to avoid any blood loss.”

So I couldn’t even go visit my family without getting beaten and forcibly removed by security as if my family would even want me to visit them. I slunk out the front doors, clutching my box close as my heart shattered into pieces at my feet.

How could everything in my life unravel so quickly?

On the other side of the courtyard was the apartment-style building where the lower- status families lived. It had been years since I’d set foot inside, but a reminder of the stark difference between this building and the Lodge hit me as soon as I walked through the door. The smell was old and musty with sweat, saturated with a dozen families all packed together. The higher floors had their own apartment suites, but I wasn’t even given one of those. I was directed to the basement floor, where the lowest members of our pack were forced to live in a large, shared room made of cold concrete, our only personal space allotted to a cot against the wall. I set my cardboard box on the cot and looked at my new roommates. They were the dregs of the Grey Creek Pack: the lazy and unmotivated, the criminals, the ones who had disrespected Alpha Moore enough to be condemned. Now, I was no better than them.

And even they didn’t accept me here.

“Look who it is, Miss Alpha Reject!”

“Must’ve failed all your Alpha training for Alpha Moore to stick you down here with us!”

“No, I heard it was because she couldn’t even pretend to be nice to Mara.”

“Stupid kid! She probably thought she was going to have the whole world served to her on a platter. That’s what she gets for being so entitled!”

They didn’t know me at all. They didn’t know how hard I’d worked to prepare for my future or how deeply I cared about the pack. I had wanted each and every member of the Grey Creek Pack to thrive under my leadership! I would have done everything to give everyone a loving home and a place to belong! But all they saw was a failure, a depressing, embarrassing ghost of a teenager with broken dreams. They saw the jealous monster that Mara made me out to be. In reality, I was heartbroken, lonely, and hopeless.

I crawled onto my cot and wrapped my arms around my legs, burying my face in my knees, ignoring everyone while my tears soaked into my pants.

Exhaustion nagged at me, but as tired as I was, I knew I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep in the cold Omegas’ quarters. I didn’t have a lamp, and so after the lights were shut off, I used the light of my smartphone to illuminate the pages of the book I was still trying to read. The ache in my heart kept me from enjoying it. I just wanted something to keep my mind busy.

“Hey!” somebody snarled a few cots away. A balled-up paper napkin was flung at my head. “Turn off the fuckin’ light!”

“Yeah, you selfish bitch! Some of us are trying to sleep!”

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