Page 1 of Alpha's Bullied Mate
Chapter 1 - Aiden
My father had taught me hard and had taught me wise. One of his best pieces of advice had been to listen to a whisper more than a shout. There was more worth in words said in hushed voices, more buried secrets. Of course, that lesson had taught me to eavesdrop on them, to learn the truth in whispers through walls rather than the loud announcement that had ousted my family from our hometown, Silverlake Valley, twelve years ago.
Oak Hill had since become my home, a small town I had stubbornly made my own. An alpha of the pack to mirror the one in the town across the lake and highway. Silverlake Valley wasn’t my present, but itwasmy past, and I intended to make it my future.
I settled onto a tree log, listening to the snap and crackle of the campfire. Five other logs served as benches, and I looked out at my pack, who looked back at me, waiting. Around us, the evening pressed in, threatening with a dark, long autumn night. I let the quiet settle for a second. I’d interrupted my pack’s conversation but had been listening to them for at least five minutes before I’d sat down. Hearing what they decided when I wasn’t, there was something I enjoyed.
“Well?” I asked, directing my gaze to my second, Jason. “Continue what you were saying.”
“You have an agenda for us tonight. Let’s—”
“Isaid, continue what you were saying.”
Silence dropped around the campfire.
“Your plan to settle us all in Silverlake Valley. That’swhat we were talking about,” Jason said. Around him, the rest of mypack nodded. There were eight of us, including me. I didn’t trust them sometimes. I had difficulty trusting anyone, but my pack were marginally closer to my trust. I still figured one day I’d overhear how none of them actually liked me. It was stupid; I knew that.
“Fenrys is so blinded by his damn Luna and the birth of his daughter that he won’t even see us coming. That part is good.Butour sights are set on the very thing he’s occupied with. If he’s with the Luna, how do we draw her out alone?”
“Simple,” I answered. I dug out a pack of cigarettes from the back pocket of my jeans, and lit one. I took a deep drag, closed my eyes as I let out a cloud of smoke, and then opened my eyes again. “We’ve watched them. We know when Fenrys leaves with his cub. Thalia will know they’re gone, then we trick her. We draw her out, wait in the shadows, and then we take her. Once Fenrys realizes hisbelovedLuna is missing, he’ll come after her with his pack. We get him; take down the pack.” I grinned at them in the light of the fire. “Silverlake Valley will be ours.”
The shadows were a place to lurk, but they weren’t a place to live. Fenrys and his family had pushed mine into the shadows for too long. Why should he live a good life when my family had suffered becausehishad no mercy?
I took another drag, exhaled smoke, and laughed humorlessly, thinking of when we arrived in Oak Hill after Fenrys’s father had branded my father as a traitor. He wasn’t, and I would show Silverlake Valley that by bringing the attack right to Fenrys Randon’s doorstep.
Jason, with his head of tight curls and face often in a scowl, usually at me, nodded. “When do we move out?”
“Tonight.”
“Tonight? Aidan…”
“No time like the present.” I stood up, flicking the cigarette into the campfire. “I’ve wasted enough time here. I like Oak Hill, but Silverlake Valley is my home. If I can’t win it back immediately, I’ll get Fenrys here andmakehim give me my home back.”
“What about his kid?”
“What about her?”
“Do we—”
“We don’t hurt the kid,” I snapped. “We don’t even need to hurt Thalia. Save all that for Fenrys and his pack. Anticipate his second, Conall. He’s vicious and, honestly, a shitbag.” At that, Jason sat up straighter, his chest expanding as if posturing to show his own status.
“I’ll handle him.”
I’d grown up with all of them through elementary and middle school—Fenrys, Conall, Lyna—and I’d been a dumb kid back then. A nerd with too much time for books and studying. While Fenrys had never bullied me outright, Conall had, and the rest had simply watched, never stopped it. Between the bullying and being ousted from town, I had grown into an angry teenager in Oak Hill High School who hadn’t known how to handle his feelings, and now had grown into an angrier man that could at least spar it out with one of my pack brothers in the back yard.
He was an angry man who knew exactly how to get the life he should have always had.
“Jason, focus on Conall, if he’s there. The rest of you keep an out for Fenrys’s pack interfering with the capture. If we can keep this as least physical as possible, that’ll be ideal. We need tosave our force for when Fenrys comes. Focus on Thalia. Get her in the car, and I’ll sort out where we go from there.”
They all nodded their acknowledgment as they rose from the campfire. Jason gave me a one-fingered salute. He would be riding with me in my car, while the rest would go in another to a house I’d already given the address for. We’d disperse among traffic driving there to draw less attention. It was barely eight in the evening. At nine, Fenrys’s pack would do their first night patrol. They split up at different points and then covered different parts of the perimeter that Fenrys’s territory covered in the woods. They would all lap each other, finally meeting at one point. I needed Thalia in the break between any patrols crossing nearest to where my pack would enter the forest.
This was it.
I’d spent a long time searching for Fenrys’s undoing, but he’d held himself above any vulnerabilities. But now, without the might of the council in his ear, because he wasn’t yet Mayor of Silverlake Valley, and with his Luna and baby keeping his direct attention off pack activities while he had his paternity time with his new family, he finally had weaknesses I could exploit to get to him.
Thalia might be able to fight her own battles—she wouldn’t be the Luna otherwise—but she would be considerably weakened, and if we threatened her child and alpha, she would be more susceptible to come with us.
“We leave in twenty. Pack your things quickly and quietly,” I ordered them. They all stood immediately, branching out towards the house. It was a project we’d all worked on to make the pack homeoursafter my parents had moved out of it, leaving it to me and the guys. I was strict with my pack sometimes, but the Oak Hill pack of wolves was a place for thosewithout a home. I had a soft spot for the sharp-edged people to whom the world didn’t like giving more chances, men who thought with fists before their brains but wanted to be better people, and men who were angry and wanted todosomething with that anger.
