Page 20 of Kidnapped By the Alpha

“Your mother?” I asked in surprise.

“I wasn’t born in the Moonstone Pack,” Jasper began. “My mother wasn’t a wolf. She worked in a brothel and fell pregnant—by a shifter, it turns out. He may have left me behind, but at least he also left me with his power and abilities.”

Jasper had struggled to begin his story, but now the words poured out of him.

“By the time I was six, my mother had made her way up in the hierarchy of the house to become the owner of the brothel. I was already used to the daily torture she and the other women put me through, but I had naively hoped that once she achieved some version of success, she would stop holding my birth over my head. She had been disappointed to have given birth to a boy, and she made sure I knew it. As if it wasmyfault I had been born.

“Turns out I was wrong. The more power she got, the worse things got for me. She continued to beat me and force me to work so that I could earn my keep.

“I didn’t meet Killian until I was ten, when his mother got a job working for mine. She wasn’t quite as bad as my mother was. She was neglectful but not outright cruel. When my mothertold Killian he needed to work as well, he worked alongside me—cleaning, cooking, anything the women of the house demanded. Anything we had to do to survive my mother’s wrath. She nearly killed both of us on more than one occasion.

“Killian and I had our first shift on the same night about a year later. If he hadn’t been with me, I would have thought I had finally gone insane, but together, we figured out what had happened. We ran away that same night, traveling from place to place until we found a wolf pack that would take us in.”

His eyes were unfocused, looking off into the distance as he paused his story. He had clearly traveled back in time as he spoke, remembering all that he had experienced.

“And that’s when you found the Moonstone Pack?” I asked quietly.

Jasper nodded, still looking away from me. “They helped me get revenge on my mother,” he said coldly.

I paused, unsure of whether I wanted to hear the answer, before asking, “Did you kill her?”

“She deserved it,” Jasper said coldly, and I had my answer.

“I feel like there’s more to the story than you’re telling me,” I said.

I knew I was prying, but I also had a feeling that Jasper would never speak to me about this topic again. This was my only chance to understand this part of him.

Jasper took the tip of his finger and drew it down the scar that lined his face. “This is the first thing people notice when they look at me. What they don’t know is that it was given to me by one of my mother’s clients. You see, he had a thing aboutinflicting pain on people, and my mother had a thing about getting paid,” he said bitterly.

My mouth dropped open in horror as I understood what he meant. “Your mother allowed someone to cut your face? For money?”

“Allowed? That makes it sound like she was unwilling, which is far from the truth,” he said. “She watched the whole thing. She was there while he held me down and dragged a dull blade across the length of my face. She laughed while I screamed for her to help me.”

“Goddess,” I cursed. I couldn’t imagine a mother who could do such a thing. I was beginning to understand why Jasper had killed her.

“That woman we saw today is exactly like my mother. All women are the same,” he spat. “Your kind doesn’t have the ability to love or care for others. There is only power and pain. And when women are allowed control, like in Sparkle Hollow, all that pain gets spread to the whole community. I’ve seen it time and time again, and I won’t stand for it.”

Somehow, Jasper had managed to conflate the idea of his mother’s evil with all women. While I sympathized with his trauma, I couldn’t condone the belief system that had stemmed from it.

“I’m sure that after experiencing so much, it would be hard to trust a woman again,” I said diplomatically.

“Impossible,” he said. “All women betray the people around them. It’s who they are.”

He said it with such finality that I wasn’t sure what else could be said.

“Jasper, I’m so sorr—”

“Don’t,” he interrupted, cutting me off. “Don’t you dare say you’re sorry for what happened to me, or any other platitude you feel like throwing out there.”

I was unnerved by the venom in his voice. After hearing his story and everything he had endured, I understood why he viewed women as such terrible creatures. The abuse he’d suffered at the hands of his mother, the sex workers at the brothel, and their clientele was abhorrent. It was a miracle he had managed to survive, let alone be even partially well-adjusted.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” I explained. “I’m not offering platitudes. You didn’t deserve to go through any of that, and it breaks my heart that you did.”

“Keep your pity,” he spat at me.

I stepped toward him, wanting to comfort him, but he pushed me back in disgust. All I wanted was for him to know he wasn’t alone anymore, but he was having none of it.

“I don’t pity you,” I assured him. “I have sympathy for you. You may not be ready to accept that or know what to do with it, but that’s okay.”

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