Page 20 of Alpha's Hated Mate

Her face flushes a little, and she spits out, “No! Of course not. Look, I think that us being around each other might have something to do with the visions I’ve been having lately.”

I raise an eyebrow at her. “What do I have to do with your visions?”

“That’s what I want to figure out. Since you got to Moonhelm, they’ve been worse . . . and way more intense. I’ve been running hot too since we . . . you know. Not to mention, there must be some reason why we can be together that way.”

I don’t see how one has to do with the other, but I’m game, I guess. Better than reading these old, moldy books. “Okay. What’s the vision about?”

She starts telling me about it. A pregnant wolf with dark hair being tortured by an older male wolf . . . Saffron running through the woods from some unseen horror . . . a raven flying toward a cabin. I stop her midway through.

“And where am I in these visions?”

“You’re not in any of them.”

“So what does this have to do with me?”

She huffs in frustration. “You know what? Maybe this was a mistake. Sorry to bother you.”

She stands up, and I grab her arm to stop her. “Wait, hold on. Don’t be that way. I’m just trying to make sense of it, all right?”

Saffron looks at me with skepticism, her blue eyes glinting like jewels in the dim light around us. She pulls her arm out of my grasp and sits back down. “I don’t know what the connection is, Aydan. I just . . . you’re not like anybody I’ve ever known. I pick up your scent from just about anywhere on campus and, and . . .” She stops herself, her lips tightening into a thin line. She doesn’t have to say anymore. I know exactly what she means.

“Let’s not kid ourselves,” she says, “Something happened between us that night. Good or bad, I think it’s worth investigating.”

I guess I can’t argue with that. “Okay. Maybe we can start with the visions. What doyouthink they mean?”

She shakes her head, her eyes drifting down to the pages of my book. “I don’t . . .” Her face changes as her eyes focus on the page. “Who is that?”

I follow her gaze to the page with the photo of the Alpha King and his brother. “It’s Alpha King Leon.”

Saffron rolls her eyes. “I knowthat. I mean her.” She taps her finger on the portrait of a woman further down the page. We both look down at the tiny print under the photo.

“Natasha of Hino,” she reads out loud.

“Yeah, she conspired with the prince to overthrow Alpha King Leon.”

She looks up at me, then back down at the page. “That’s the woman in my vision.” A deep frown settles over her face as she studies the picture. “It’s her. I’m sure of it.”

“Natasha of Hino has been dead for over twenty years. And she was never pregnant.”

“Are you sure about that?”

I sigh, flipping through a few pages. “Well, if she was, I think there would be some record of it, right? She and Prince Raphael tried to overthrow the Alpha King, and they were both killed in the failed coup. End of story.”

She looks at me, then back at the photo. “It’s her, Aydan. She was in my vision. And she wasdefinitelypregnant.”

Saffron has this look in her eyes. Determination, I think, or conviction. “Okay, so . . . maybe the woman you saw is symbolic of somebody else.”

“It’s not like a dream,” she says, her voice raised slightly. “There’s no hidden meaning usually. It’s more like . . . like a movie. Sometimes I’m in it playing somebody else, and sometimes I’m watching it. But the people in my visions are who they really are.”

“What about the bird, though? That’s got to be symbolic, right?”

She opens her mouth, then closes it, her lips tightening again, then she shakes her head. “I don’t know.”

I take a deep breath, thinking about that. “And you’ve never seen this woman before now?”

She shakes her head. Her eyes are suddenly big and watery. “I don’t get it. If she’s dead, then whatever I saw can’t be the future. Why would I see her past?”

I look back down at the photo. Natasha’s involvement in the coup is a small footnote in everything I’ve read so far. In fact,there’s hardly anything written about her from what I’ve seen so far.

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