Page 26 of Bound By My Alpha Mate

“You can prove your loyalty to Dalesbloom and to me by making a decision and acting on it,” David announced.

“What kind of decision?”

“We have no use for Billie or Aislin. Much as I would like to keep Billie, given my fondness for the stupid girl, she’ll serve no purpose to me once I’m Lycan. As for Aislin, that mouthy tart—it annoys me just to breathe her stench. They have both become our enemies regardless of your feelings for them. You need to prove your loyalty, Colt. You’ll kill one of them and leave the other to me.”

I felt sick. I couldn’t believe what my father was asking of me. “What?”

“You heard me.”

I had, and it devastated me. Being forced to choose between taking the life of my sister or the girl I’d had a crush on for most of my life—as if that were the only way to prove I was worthy of leading Dalesbloom—made me want to vomit. “You can’t be serious.”

“I am. Put that damned child down, Colt. You’re not some housewife. I’ll give you an hour to make your decision, understand? And if you aren’t here in this room telling me which one you’ll slaughter for Dalesbloom, I will track you down myself, and I can assure you I will not be happy about it.” David bared his teeth at me, stressing the seriousness of his threat.

I wanted to argue with him and openly accuse him of the mounting madness I’d witnessed these past couple of months. But I knew that refusing him at that moment would reward me with the same treatment as the girls. He would reject me, tear me down, and then chain me up with them. So, I backed away.

“Don’t disappoint me, Colt,” he warned as I left the room.

How could he expect me to kill either one of them?

I retreated to my corner of the mine, but even there, I couldn’t hide from the gravity of my newest dilemma. It seemed my only out of this was to flee the mine, with the infant in my arms, to run and never look back—but that would mean abandoning Billie and Aislin to certain death. It would mean betraying and abandoning my fated mate, too, and even though Kiara hated me, I still wanted her. I was realizing now how badly I wished to throw myself at all of their feet and ask for forgiveness. How badly I wished to find a way to save them from the fate they had sealed for themselves.

But it wasn’t their fault. They were only trying to save Muriel. This was all because of my father.

More than anything, I wanted to save them from him.

I sat with my back against the wall, frantically searching for the answer. I hushed the baby, who had woken up and started to cry again.

Then, once more, a storm erupted from somewhere in the tunnel. The sound of chaos was growing familiar to me—and this time, it was accompanied by masculine voices instead of feminine ones.

They were the war cries of two Alphas who had come searching for their mates.

Chapter 17

Kiara

Colt was a wretched pig of a man. He may not have looked it, with his cunning good looks and playful smirk, but I knew now that deep inside him was an irredeemable monster that wanted only to see his father succeed. I hated it so much that I had ever let him get close to me.

Seeing him again had nauseated me. All he did was stand there, watching, letting it all happen as his father pelted my companions and me with kicks and locked us all up! And then, he had the nerve to come to us while we were all chained up and make comments about how I’d find him irresistible—as if our lives weren’t at stake and my mother wasn’t crumpled on the floor, dying. I couldn’t believe him. He had no empathy, no heart. Why would he even pretend to care so deeply for that baby girl, as if she were his own, if not to manipulate us?

He didn’t truly care about her, did he?

The cold, stone floor left pebbled impressions on my arms and legs as I lay there, watching the guards like a cobra waiting to strike. If David and Colt thought I would just sit here quietly until they were ready to sacrifice me, they were wrong. The instant the guards looked away, I was scouring the cables around my wrists or the metal hooks driven into the rock, searching for some weakness. Aislin, Billie, and I had developed an unspoken system of communication with subtle glances, nods, frowns, and tilts of our heads; we were working out a plan to distract the guards, but we wouldn’t act on it until I had figured out how to get out of the bindings. We were going to escape, no matter what. I stared at my mother—out cold, near me but just out of reach—every shallow breath of hers motivating me more.

The sad truth was that, despite our determination, hours after sitting here and tricking ourselves into thinking we were onto something, none of us had a solid idea of what to do next.

Our first real chance arrived when a cacophony of noise blew up further down the tunnel. We all straightened up, looking past the guards toward the lantern light flickering in the tunnel. The guards turned, and one of them set out to investigate. Voices rose up in angry shouts. The sound of gunshots bounced through the cavern. I looked at Aislin and Billie, relieved to find their faces illuminated with hope.

“That’s Gavin!” said Aislin, standing up.

“Hey!” snapped the remaining guard. “Get back down!”

“Fuck you!” Aislin barked back.

She immediately went for the cables tied around the hook planted in the wall. The guard lunged for her, but as soon as he was within reach of me, I stuck out my foot and tripped him. He stumbled into the wall, sliding onto his butt, and I grabbed a rock that had been sitting nearby. Flooded with wild courage, I straddled the guard and slammed the rock into his temple. His hazel eyes widened as the rock cut deeply across his left eyebrow. Blood began to pour from beneath his dark hair. “Bitch!” he hissed, throwing me off of him before I could strike again.

By then, Aislin had started slamming the padlock securing the cables against the rock wall until she’d smashed it open. Billie was on her feet, hurling stones at the downed guard. I threw the rock in my hand at his head. He raised a tattooed arm to defend himself against the onslaught, reaching for Aislin’s wrist with his other hand. But she had already unwound the cables and set us all loose; though our wrists were still bound, we now had the freedom of movement to gang up on him. Aislin pushed him away as I jumped on his back, wrapping my arms around his neck. He choked and staggered backward, pinning me against the wall. I kept my grip tight, choking him with the shackles on my wrists until he toppled over. In the meantime, Billie had roused my mother and pulled her to her feet.

“Mom,” I cried, rushing toward her. She was barely conscious and couldn’t even hold herself upright. Her silver hair hung loosely around her face, and her eyes looked emptily at me, through me, as if she didn’t recognize me.

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