Page 117 of The Alpha's Cursed Queen

I tremble at his words, and Mary immediately leaps to my defense. “You’re acting as if he simply snubbed her. The ripples of that night have followed Alice through her entire life.”

“As they have for Darian!” Jimmy roars. “But he wasn’t responsible. It was Willow. That bitch got what she wanted then, and you’re still giving her what she wants now. She didn’t want you to be queen, and she manipulated everything when she discovered the dark witch mark. She admitted it to me.” His rage is raw. “She called the witches into the ballroom. She told them to act like Darian had summoned them. She told them to inflict the worst kind of sealing spell on you. She wanted you to suffer and be humiliated. You think you saw everything, but you didn’t notice how Darian kept trying to intervene and how Willow kept stopping him. She has dangled your life and your safety in front of him for these past seven years. He’s been living in hell. He didn’t have to do it, Alice. He didn’t have to live every day like that, but he did, for your sake. So, don’t say he didn’t suffer. The ripples of that night followed him, too. He still has nightmares. He can’t sleep. He works himself into the ground. Have you even seen how haggard he looks? But what does it matter to you? As long as you can get your revenge on him.”

I sit down heavily on the couch, his words having pierced me.

“That’s not fair,” Mary begins fiercely. “You didn’t see the mess she was in—”

“Mary…” I stop her, my voice quiet.

“How can you listen to him blame you for—”

“He’s not blaming me.” I rub my hands over my face. “I just—I need to go look for Darian.”

I get up and grab my coat, but Jimmy steps in my way, his face hard. “I’ll go. God knows what you’ll say to him next. I can’t see his heart break any more.”

“I appreciate your loyalty to him, Jimmy”—my eyes flash at him—“but he’s my mate now, and thus my responsibility. So, get out of my way.”

He hesitates for a moment before stepping aside and letting me leave.

I rush out, pulling on my coat.

It’s eleven p.m., and since my building is in a residential area, the streets are empty, everyone tucked into their beds for the night. I look around in the darkness, thinking. Jimmy and Mary went out to dinner, and Jimmy took the car he drove Darian in, so Darian must have walked. But where?

His phone was left on the kitchen table, so calling him would be pointless. Darian’s scent is imprinted within me, I realize, and I try to follow it. It’s been a few years since I’ve been able to shift, and aside from Mary, there’s been no one to teach me how to embrace my wolf. I’ve never had the opportunity to run wild in the woods, learning how to track, hunt, and do all the thingsyoung shifters are taught from an early age. But there’s always a first time.

Once or twice, I get his scent mixed up with other smells, but I keep at it. I don’t know what I’m going to say to him, but Jimmy’s angry words keep coming back to me, as does Darian’s weary voice.

When I do find him, he’s sitting on a park bench, alone. There’s a coffee shop across the street that is still open, and I get two cups before approaching him.

Sitting down beside him, I hold out one of the coffees. He stares at me. “You left Mira all alone?”

“Jimmy and Mary are with her.”

“Right.” He accepts the cup but doesn’t drink from it, using it to warm his hands. “Why’re you here? Is there anything left to say?”

When I look at his face, the guilt overwhelms me, and suddenly, I know exactly what to say. “I’m sorry.”

He glances at me, taken aback. “Excuse me?”

I wrap my hands around my cup, studying the plastic lid on it. “I know you didn’t give me the mating mark on purpose. I shouldn’t have implied that you did.”

After a prolonged silence, he says heavily, “It doesn’t matter though, does it? You didn’t want my mark to begin with. I was presumptuous when I thought I could fix things. Some injuries simply can’t be healed.”

“That’s not true,” I sigh. “You’ve apologized several times. You’ve shown me the proof that none of what happened was on you. I just—I needed to be angry with someone, and despite everything I now know, you were still the easiest target.”

Darian is quiet, sipping his coffee. When he sets it down, he looks away. “I often wonder how I could have handled things back then, and several solutions come to mind. I could have done more. I could have prevented it all had I simply gotten you away from there. I never thought Willow would do what she did.”

“Because you didn’t know her.” I realize as I say it that this is very much the truth. “You never could have estimated the depth of her viciousness and cruelty. To have the girl she always looked down on and belittled as the queen of the Wolf Kingdom?” I chuckle humorlessly. “It would have killed her. It would have eaten away at her from the inside. She couldn’t stand the thought, and if she hadn’t seen the dark witch mark and been able to use that against me, she would have done something else to show me that my place would always be beneath her, beneath everyone.”

I hear the soft growl escape Darian’s lips, and I feel a tinge of dark amusement.

“She won, Darian. She got what she wanted.” I take a gulp of coffee, letting it burn my mouth. The next part of what I have to say is harder, because it means putting aside my injured pride and accepting reality. “There is no one aside from Willow who holds the blame for what happened that night. Perhaps you could have done more, but I now see that you were just as terrified as I was, Darian. You were young. And you feared what the white witches would do to me. I understand that. I guess Iunderstood it when I saw everything on your flash drive, but the hurt wouldn’t go away. The humiliation, the manner in which I was so utterly dehumanized that night—it still haunts me.”

His body is stiff. “If I could go back in time—”

“But you can’t,” I say simply. “Neither one of us can go back and change things, and that’s the truth of the matter.” I sip my coffee again, struggling with my emotions. “It’s hard to let go of seven years of anger and hurt, Darian. But I want another chance at a happy ending. With you. And with Mira. And I don’t want Willow to get in the way of that again.”

Darian jerks, and when I look at him, his eyes are filled with emotion. “You mean it?”

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