Page 21 of Alpha's Bullied Mate
My persona shifted again, and I gave her that sardonic grin. “I love when you talk to me like that.”
“Go fuck yourself, Aidan,” she hissed.
“How about—”
“Enough!” she shouted. Then, in a quieter voice, “Enough. Fenrys met Thalia through the Mating Games. He has eight in his pack, not including himself. His mother lives alone, but rumor is she might be looking to move on with the town’s head counselor. Conall secretly wishes he was alpha but respects his best friend too much. There. Happy? Now release my other hand.”
I smiled at her, bemused. She thought she was revealing secrets but all of that was either assumable or public knowledge. Word traveled in small towns. Silverlake Valley, Oak Hill, itdidn’t matter. The towns were neighbors, and people crossed the lines between towns often enough.
“Tell me more,” I said, wanting to see how much she thought I didn’t know.
And she did. She told me about the pack’s training but not the important part:why. Why had they amped it up? She told me surface things but never explained them. There were hidden meanings in each thing she told me, but I couldn’t figure them out.
The night passed into dawn, and the sun broke the trees over the field that backed onto my house. Footsteps and shuffled footsteps finally had me moving to stretch my legs.
“Are you finished?” I asked. “That’s everything for now?”
“Yes.”
“Good girl,” I said, just to watch her squirm. Her reaction was a vision. Her thighs pressed together, and her eyes glazed just for a brief second, enough to know she might like being called that in other situations. But then she composed herself, and the reaction melted away before I had time to truly enjoy it. Just to show, to make her think I trusted her word—because if I made her believe the trust was blooming, she would tell me more—I freed her other wrist. With her ankles still tied, she couldn’t go anywhere, but she’d at least be able to use her hands.
As my pack woke up and coming downstairs, I got up, stretched, and backed away. “Don’t get off too hastily; someone might see you. Then again, all that built-up tension might just beburstingto get out.” I walked away, laughing. She was reeling, likely from my rant earlier and the freedom I’d given her hands. I noticed that the taunts, the teasing, all of it left her stunned.
But when I walked back to my bedroom, I paused. Shouts were coming from outside. Thuds and yells caught my attention, and I sprinted to the back door.
“Shit,” I hissed and burst through the door, leaping down to the field that led into the forest. The lake glimmered, threatening to catch the five figures backed up toward it by five of my pack. I swept my eyes over them. Two I recognized. Lyna, the girl I’d thought of last night, and Theo, a man who stood at her side protectively. And a third—oh, this was a gift! Conall faced off with Jason, their shoulders heaving from a fight that had Jason’s lip bleeding and a bruise forming over Conall’s eye.
“We’re here for Dakota.” Conall spat blood in my direction. “Hand her over, and we’ll leave quietly.”
“Like hell, you will,” I muttered. “Let’s not pretend you don’t love a fight, Conall. I’ll give you one if you’re lookin’.”
“I’m not,” Conall said. “You have a member of my pack—”
“Fenrys’s pack,” I corrected. “If I remember that particular shitbag well.”
“You have her, and you’re breaking respect by taking her. We have never interfered with your pack. Give her back, and we’ll leave quietly, like I said.”
“What respect has been broken? Dakota wanted to leave,” I lied. “She found us, not the other way around.”
“Bullshit,” Lyna spat. “Give her back, Aidan.”
“Ask her yourself if you’re brave enough to go into my house.”
“Not anymore, if I’m not mistaken,” Conall drawled. “How long has it been since your father betrayed Fenrys’s father?”
That had me seeing red. Conall knewfull wellmy father had done nothing wrong. He’d been one of the people who’d told me he believed my dad and then hadn’t spoken up. I launched at him, landing a punch to his face. I didn’t care where I hit, only that I did. I took out my tension and anger on him, until Jason and Declan had to drag me off him.
“Let me kill him!” I yelled. “Let me—”
“Kill him, and we’ll have a pack war on our hands,” Jason hissed.
“It’s already a damn war!”
“Leave it, A,” Declan said. Then he raised his voice as Theo helped Conall off the ground. “Dakota has chosen us to remain with. Tell your alpha that. Tell him he must come to us if he wishes to talk with her.”
“It’s a trap,” Conall snapped. “Just bring her out.”
I shrugged. “She won’t talk to anyone except Fenrys. He got her into the pack, didn’t he? Only he can get her to come back. It’s Fenrys, or she stays with us. Don’t the pack treaties demand that that is to be respected?”
