Page 47 of Alpha's Runaway Mate

“You should eat,” Hecate said. “You’ll need your strength for tomorrow night.”

I scoffed, bitterness lacing my words. “Why bother? You’re just going to kill me.”

There was a brief silence before I heard footsteps, followed by the grating sound of metal legs dragging across the floor. Hecate pulled a steel chair close to the cage and settled in it.

“I’ve come to talk to you, Lyra,” she said, her voice smooth and, under different circumstances, perhaps even pleasant. “Aren’t you the least bit curious about how you ended up in this situation?

“Not really. It’s clear as day: my best friend betrayed me.”

“No,” she replied, a hint of amusement in her tone. “I meant how you are the key ingredient to breaking a curse you know nothing about.”

She must have seen my brows lift in curiosity, for she chuckled to herself. “Just as I suspected.” Leaning forward, she continued,“Well, Lyra, I have a long story to share, along with a proposal for you.”

I turned to face her, a mix of skepticism and intrigue washing over me. “Proposal?”

She nodded. “Just between you and me.”

Despite my better judgment, my interest was piqued. I shouldn’t trust the woman who had held me captive for eight months, and I didn’t, not entirely. A part of me expected whatever she had to say to be a web of lies, a ploy to manipulate me into breaking the curse. But then I considered my position: she didn’t need to deceive me anymore. They had already captured me, so whatever proposal she was talking about, I was uncertain of it…but I was interested anyway.

I straightened, turning my back against the wall. “I’m listening.”

In turn, she leaned back in her seat and began. “Twenty-six years ago, a prophecy foretold that the Blackwoods would meet their doom at the hands of a witch—no ordinary witch, but an abomination, a hybrid. Your mother was a witch, and your father was a powerful Beta in the Blackwood pack. At that time, witches were slaves, no more than tools to serve the interest of the Blackwoods, and your father was entangled in a secret affair with one of them.”

Hecate paused, studying my expression, as if gauging my reaction to her revelations. My expression stayed neutral as I listened, curiosity sparking about where her story was leading.

After a moment, she continued. “You see, creatures like you and your son threaten the delicate balance of the supernatural world. There are werewolves, there are witches, but never both in one.Hybrids hold immense power, enough to dismantle even the strongest pack or coven. They’ve always been seen as a threat and are usually killed at birth to preserve balance in the world. Your mother did well to hide you, she never told your father that their affair had resulted in a child,” she scoffed. “Beta Tristan would have been the first to try to kill you if he’d known he had created an abomination.”

“But it wasn’t the abomination that drove Thane Blackwood to hunt down all the witches and their children,” she continued, her tone darkening. “It was the prophecy—it drove him crazy,” she halted, pursing her lips before reiterating, “Mad—it drove him mad. He slaughtered every witch and child in Red Rock, save for me—I’m a barren woman. Your mother managed to escape long enough for you to get out of the town, but somehow, she was caught. Alongside the other witches, she was executed at the tomb. I had never seen a woman with more pain and fury in her eyes. I remember her final words—a curse to wipe out the Blackwood bloodline, just as they had destroyed the witches. And since it was sealed by her blood, by her death, it was only natural that it could only be broken by a newborn from her bloodline.”

My throat tightened as her words sank in. My real mother was a witch, my father a ruthless murderer just like Thane. And Thane Blackwood—he had robbed me of the chance to know her. Anger twisted in me, dark and seething, filling me with vivid thoughts of what I would do to him if I ever got my hands on him. Hecate’s next words shattered my fury, forcing me out of those thoughts with a sickening jolt.

“It was never going to be you, Lyra,” she continued with a sardonic laugh. “You could never be the one to break the curse because you were born before it was made.”

The rage in me dissolved, replaced by a cold realization.

“Besides, you’ve been…compromised by that dumb witch, Salome.”

I raised a brow. “How do you know Salome?”

“When I heard the hybrid child had survived, I started searching for you—moving from town to town, with Crescent Valley as one of my stops. I knew I’d need someone in town to find you, and who better than a witch? But I couldn’t exactly stroll up to her and ask without raising suspicion, so I possessed her ailing sister instead. Poor Salome…she let her guard down, and in a moment of weakness, she let slip the details of a spell that drained her magic, so much that she couldn’t even save her own sister from death.”

Hecate shook her head in disappointment. “For such a ‘brilliant’ witch, Salome was as naive and stupid as Meredith—easy to fool, believing in the lofty idea that there’s a greater good in the world. That single spell, the one that bound your witch side to your fated mate, cost her everything. She couldn’t even tell that her sister had been possessed—something that’s basic Witch 101. The possession spell was too much for her frail sister, and once I withdrew, she died.”

She paused, her gaze narrowing. “By the time I’d traced you, though, it was too late. You had already met him.”

Kaine.His name echoed in my head as I recalled that day—the day we met. It had been a sparring session, one that I begged my father to take me along to. He’d warned me to behave since he was going to be sparing with the Alpha himself.

The moment I entered the sparring grounds, I felt it—a surge of energy, like gravity pulling me toward something…someone. When I looked around, my eyes found him, watching me with a knowing smile. I didn’t know what it meant at the time, but eventually, I understood. It was the mate bond.

Hecate’s voice cut through my memory. “You see, Lyra, you could never fully be who you’re meant to be, not with Kaine Thornfield binding you. Severing that bond between you two—that’s the only way, and it’s what I’ve been working toward all these years.”

I moved closer to the bars of the cage, my curiosity surging as I hung on to every word she spoke.

“I thought a rejection would be enough, but it wasn’t.”

Her words left me reeling, a sense of clarity beneath the confusion. But I had to hear her say it. “What do you mean?”

She gave a cold, satisfied smile. “I orchestrated everything—Kaine’s betrayal, his rejection of you, the plan to mate him with someone else. It was all me.”

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