Page 55 of Owned By Four Alphas

The flag of the Silverthorn Kingdom. They had been here. They had done this.

Because of her.

Damien had said they would. He had said King Dorian would punish the villagers for giving her up to the forest, for letting her escape from their grasp.

And unable to do anything when his son was killed, unable to avenge him by killingher, Dorian had laid waste to her home.

She glanced back down the hill, her heart leaping.

Not everything had been destroyed. Her home, her rundown little cottage, far away enough from the village that it might have escaped the soldiers’ notice, still stood.

Wiping the soot from her hands, her heart breaking, her fingers cold, she walked slowly towards the cottage.

It was so much smaller than she remembered. The roof sank lower than it had before, many tiles missing, the solitary wooden door creaking slightly on its hinges in the gentle breeze. Her garden was a mess of tangled weeds and bushes, half-hiding the actual building itself.

Her throat ached.

This had been her mother’s home, closer to the border, separated from the village. Her presence only tolerated because of the medicinal herbs and hearth foods she could trade with the villagers. A practice Selena had carried on.

The beehive was empty.

For some reason, strange and unknowable, that empty, abandoned beehive was the thing that broke her.

She sank to the ground, her trembling fingers digging into the earth, a choking sob escaping her as the tears fell freely, wracking her frame, wrenching from her with twisting muscles and gasping breath.

The villagers had never been kind to her. She was a rogue omega, outcast and alone. They called her a fat pig, they accused her of witchcraft, they shunned her at every turn. They sacrificed her to the forest to be killed.

But they didn’t deserve this. Nobody deserved this. There had been children. So many children.

Dorian had massacred them all the same.

As she wailed her grief to the sky, crouched in the ashes of the only human life she had ever known, her baby kicked.

She clutched her stomach, hardly able to breathe. She was the only one. The only one now who had any memory of her mother. The only person that had known her.

Through choking gasps, she realized there might be another.

Her father. Her father, alive and waiting for her.

It gave her the strength she needed to stand, to take one shaking step, then another, towards her cottage.

A shadowy breezy brushed against her ankles, and she turned, a scream in her throat, tears still pouring down her face.

He was standing there, silhouetted by the starry night sky, his pale face unreadable.

Malek.

“Have you c-come to take me b-back?” she sobbed, wiping furiously at her eyes, “B-because I w-won’t go! You c-can’t m-make me!”

His head lifted, his gaze rising above her to the cottage beyond. “Was that your home?”

She looked back over her shoulder, rubbing her arms. “Yes.”

“Show me.”

She swallowed, but nevertheless obeyed, nerves clashing with stubborn resolution. She didn’t care what he did, what he said. He couldn’t make her go. She wouldn’t let him. She would order him away, she would fight, she would escape. She’d done it once, she would do it again.

But Malek was silent as he followed her into the cottage. He had to bow his head, his antlers scraping against the sagging ceiling.

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