Page 10 of Alpha's Bullied Mate
And neither did the man that walked towards me, cocking his head.
“Slept well?” he asked without an inch of genuine care.
I bit my tongue and ground my teeth, refusing to say anything to him. I had given him too much satisfaction with my responses that morning.
“Ah, this reminds me of the old days,” he drawled. “I talk to you, you ignore me. Kind of makes this nostalgic, doesn’t it?”
When I still didn’t answer, only fixing him with a glare, not trusting myself to say something that would truly have contained anger snapping, Aidan folded his arms over his chest.
“Fine. Be stubborn. We’ll get you to talk soon enough over time.”
Over time? What in the hell did that mean? I looked at him, unable to tamper down the questions that rose up my throat.
“Oh, you thought we’d take you right back and plead with honesty so that we might get excused?” Aidan scoffed. He came right up to my face, gripping the armchairs on either side of me, bracketing me in, forcing me to meet his gaze. “News flash, Wolfie: that’s not how Fenrys’s pack works. They lie and cheat their way into shit, too. I can be just as good as them… Or I can be worse. It’s your call. Cooperate, give us what we want, and you’ll be free to go soon. Or don’t, and see that Conall was not the only asshole to walk all over you.”
Conall’s name registered with a flinch, and Aidan likely knew he had hit a nerve, as if he’d gotten it right on the mark that Conall did do that. He grinned slowly. “So heisstill a piece of shit.”
I still kept my silence as my only weapon for now.
“Information, Dakota. I want information about Fenrys pack from you. I’ve told the pack to keep their hands off you, to bring you no harm while I’m gone.”
Gone? He had kidnapped me, but now he was leaving?
“Some of us aren’t privileged with Daddy’s money to buy our way through life,” he sneered when he saw my face. “It’scalled ajob. Fuck, how did you even survive in Fenrys’s pack with no foundation of working? Do you even know what a wage slip looks like? Isn’t he still allgive back to the communityor some crap?”
Still?
That could be nothing, but there was something familiar in the way he sneered it.
While my father hadn’t been Randon-family rich, he had been well off enough that Ihadn’tneeded to work, nor had I wanted to. My mother had primed me for the Mating Games, of the chance of a bigger and better life than Oak Hill, so I’d focused all my energy into that.
Into toning up, changing how I looked, and becoming someone worthy of being an alpha’s Luna. I’d grieved that life and dream silently and privately last year, and had wanted to focus on becoming who I could be in the pack. Aidan had ruined yet another thing for me.
“Don’t cause too much trouble while I’m gone,” Aidan said before disappearing into his room. Little did he know he might have enforced a hands-off rule, but I was more threatened by him than his pack. When he came back out, he wore blue coveralls unbuttoned a little to expose a white t-shirt underneath, showing his muscular chest. The sleeves were short, and his arms looked like they’d tear the seams apart. I looked away.
Aidan gave me a one-fingered salute as he walked out the door.
All the while, I worked at the knots binding my wrists.
***
After Thalia was captured last year, Fenrys wrote out an intense program for us all to train in defense, offense, and escape methods, no matter what. He had Conall put us through the whole grueling process, pairing Lyna and me at first so we could grapple each other. Then he’d had more members of the pack come barreling at me, catching me off-guard, so I could work on fighting back no matter the size of our opponent.
It had been a hard few weeks both in wolf and human form.
But now, working at the knots, I was so thankful for every rope burn, every sprained wrist and ankle I’d suffered to get myself free, every bruise and tear and bite. We’d all fought hard through the program.
The knot on my right wrist was loose now, and I grasped the ends of the rope so it wouldn’t fall off, and began on the left side. I didn’t know how much had time had passed since Aidan had left, drifting in and out of a shaky consciousness. A shadow falling over the doorway to my den had me sitting upright. I looked up at a younger boy in a hoodie, his dark hair falling over his forehead. His eyes were wide, curious, so different from the rest of the wolves I’d met. He looked only early twenties.
“I’m not a circus monkey,” I snapped. “I won’t perform a trick if you stare at me long enough.”
“Sorry,” he said. “Aidan left us with instructions to leave you alone, but… Well, do you want some water? It’s been a while since you last had anything to drink, right?”
I cocked my head at him. What game was he playing? Or was he simply being kind? “I’ll have it if you drink from the same glass.”
“Why?”
Oh, this boy wasnew. I laughed. “I arrived here drugged. So… You know. Expectations and all.”
