Page 52 of Alpha's Bullied Mate
Jason hesitated. “Yes.”
“Fuckinggreat,” I snapped. Then I got out of the car, began to walk away, and then went back to him, leaning into the open door. “Did I honestly never belong with you all?”
Jason looked at me, his face weary. “We all asked him not to send you back. We all voted to send you back originally, yes, when we realized you weren’t the pack Luna. But then, this morning, when he told us his plan to send you back, we asked him not to. We’ve liked having you, Dakota. You… Belonged.”
I nodded through my tears, slammed the door shut, and then walked away. Anger and fury turmoiled in my head as I picked my way back to where I’d been patrolling that night they’d taken me. How different everything was now. I kicked at a bundle of underbrush, screamed into the cold morning, then crouched beside a tree and let myself cry until my tears ran dry.
Then I stood up, wiped my face, and picked my way back home.
Home, I reminded myself.
Home.
It felt like a lie I told myself to feel better because I didn’t want to think about the fact I may have found a home with Aidan’s pack and I’d left it behind. Where these woods once felt like home, likefreedom, they now felt wrong. Like I was out ofplace in them. How strange that I’d tried to escape from Aidan to get back here. Now that Iwas, all I wanted was to go back to Conall’s car and demand that he take me back to Aidan.
I needed answers, but I wasn’t getting them.
Despite the jumper I wore, I shivered. How had we gone from last night’s function tothis? Was this really the end? The fact hit me hard. Would I ever see Aidan again? He’d not even said goodbye to me properly.
And yet I was sure he was my mate…
How could he have done that to me? Yes, I’d told him about how Fenrys’s pack had given me a place to call my own, but I hadn’t been brave enough to talk about how home was starting to feel more like his place in Oak Hill than here, and I couldn’t untangle those thoughts.
Not on my own. Not without knowing his thoughts as well. His true ones.
Chapter 27 - Aidan
Once a coward, always a coward.
Dakota was right. She was goddamn right, and I hated it. Because that was exactly what I was. I couldn’t bare myself to her, present as her mate, and then ask her to stay with me. But I couldn’t keep her from herhomein Silverlake Valley, either. I couldn’t go back there, and she couldn’t stay here.
A small voice in my head asked me,But you didn’t even ask her to stay.
And I hadn’t. Because Iwasa coward and I wasn’t ready to hear her say ‘no.’
It was easier to fuck her than to hold her, easier to kiss her than talk to her. Because everything else meant so much. I felt like getting too close to the truth, which neither of us could go back from.
My pack had tried to fight me on my decision that morning but I’d just held up a hand to quieten them down, walked out, and found clothes to give Dakota. Being shut off from her had broken my heart. Lying to her had broken me, but I needed her to hate me enough to go without a fight. I owed her that much, at least. Once, I’d only ever known how to taunt her, be cruel. Now, the cruelty felt like too much of an act that I didn’t know how to do anymore.
As soon as Jason drove off with her, I sprinted off into the trees, hammering the thickest tree I could find. My knuckles fell upon the bark, chipping it off, my skin splitting open each time I pounded it. Using it as a punch bag feltgood, especially when I didn’t have the patience to do this properly, safely. My blood smeared over the tree bark and I didn’t stop, a scream building in my throat but I swallowed it down. I deserved this. I’d hurther, broken her heart too, and sent her back. I told myself it was what she’d asked for this whole time, but I knew she hadn’t wanted to go on my own orders.
Somethinghadchanged between us. That might have been enough for her to want to stay but I wasn’t brave enough to risk it.
I pummeled the tree, grunts punching out of me as I tore off my shirt, kept going, and when I couldn’t anymore, when the punches slowed down my racing thoughts, I shifted without preserving all my clothes and tore off through the woods. If I sped up, I’d beat Jason’s car. I needed to keep an eye on her. I needed to know how she was. If she was okay. If she made it Fenrys’s pack, okay. At the very least, I needed to know she would make it to where my boys captured her.
There was an overhang that looked over the forest, a ravine below, and a small mountain range to the right that backed onto a desert. As a wolf, I stood on the overhang and watched Dakota storm into the forest, walking, wiping her eyes furiously, until she crouched down by a tree. Her sniffles drifted to me on the wind, her emotions spilling out darkly. All I wanted to do was go to her. Every muscle in my body screamed for me to do it. To get her on my back and carry her back to Oak Hill.
But I couldn’t. Her parents had expectations that she wanted to follow, or escape, and if she wasn’t ready to go back to her hometown and face them, I could never ask that of her. She had stayed in Silverlake Valley for a reason, and I didn’t think whatever she felt for me was enough to give that up.
I watched Dakota as she found her way through the woods, picking her careful route back.
Once she was safe across the border, I relaxed. But then I noticed a hulking brown wolf slightly smaller than me. Hewatched me across the length of woods between us. His muzzle pulled back to bare his canines at me. I recognized the color of his fur enough to know it was Conall. He’d always been smaller than Fenrys and I but no less imposing.
He took one step towards me, and I retreated. It wasn’t that I was backing down from a fight but this washisterritory and I didn’t want to make one step out of place. But ever since that day Conall had turned up at the Silverlake Valley compound I’d kept Dakota in, I’d been begging for a fight.
Conall stalked towards me, higher than Dakota, who didn’t notice either of us facing each other off as she disappeared beyond the thicket of trees. Soon, I had gotten down from the overhang and met him halfway. We paced around each other, snarling, baring teeth. I was an alpha, so, naturally, I should have been guaranteed the upper hand, but Conall was as angry as I was sometimes. He’d been fighting all his life; I’d only ever fought since being banished to Oak Hill.
When he lunged for me, I met him with a snap of jaws, aiming for his throat. I couldn’t kill him without inviting a war onto my hands, but I could rough him up. I ducked my head and barreled into him, knocking him to the floor. He growled at me but I snapped at him, forcing him to submit. He kicked his back legs, trying to knock me off. Soon, he succeeded, and we tumbled over each other, crashing and snarling through the woods, spit flying. Conall swiped for my flank, and I yelped when his claws caught. They came away red and I threw myself at him, digging my teeth around his shoulder, not letting go. He swiped at me with his paws, flicking his tail. When he snarled again, it vibrated from deep within him. His body tensed and sprung, bucking me off. I tumbled through the underbrush, skidding onto my side but I got back up immediately, lunging for him again.
