Page 15 of The Alpha's Betrayed Mate

Memories gave way to dreams as sleep crept up on her, and after a restless night spent running through the familiar forests of home, she dragged herself out of bed just after dawn. She was exhausted, but at least she’d found a curious kind of peace in her dreams. She’d slipped up for a moment, there. She’d let herself believe that maybe she was seeing a little of the true Belmont through the cracks. She’d been a fool, but that was alright. Now she knew for certain that he was a cold, unfeeling monster—and now, she could dedicate herself to taking care of his son. Yes, it rankled that she’d been ordered to do so after being publicly humiliated. But she was strong enough to put those feelings aside when it came to Rylan. It was what his parents would have wanted.

And after how badly she’d let them down, she was going to take any opportunity she could to do some good to balance it out.

The days began to pass. She’d been worried Rylan would resent her sudden appearance in his life—he’d been at the meeting, after all, he knew that he’d been assigned to her care as a punishment. But to her surprise, the boy seemed to accept her as his nanny without any resistance at all. She’d earned more of his favor than she’d thought that night on the beach, she suspected. The beach remained his favorite place to spend time, and they quickly established a routine in which they spent long afternoons on the beach, Rylan down among the rocks working away on his boat, Venna keeping watch on the sand nearby—or, more accurately, dozing in the sun while the boy kept himself busy. Still, whenever he emerged to check in with her she’d respond like a soldier who’d been assigned the most important duty in the land. Making herself indispensable as a guard meant he wouldn’t ask her to help build the boat—and the longer he took to build the boat, the longer she’d have to come up with a new way of delaying his demon revenge plan.

And to her relief, after that disastrous first night, Belmont made himself scarce. She’d worried that living in the same house would be unbearable, but after that first night, she saw even less of him than she had when she’d been staying in the old library. No matter how early she rose in the morning, Belmont was always gone already, his bed neatly made—she began to take it as a personal insult. And after a long day keeping Rylan occupied, she rarely had the energy to wait up for him. There were still traces of him, of course, every single one annoying her to her core. A cup in the sink, the door to his bedroom ajar, a jacket tossed over the back of a chair that she’d throw vengefully into his room as hard as she could, hoping it would land awkwardly and crumple. Very occasionally, she’d hear the front door open when she was drifting off to sleep, or stirring awake in the morning… and then she’d growl under her breath and bury her head deeper in the pillow. She was furious, each time, at the reminder that he still existed—that even out of sight he still exercised such control over her.

“I have to ask you something,” Rylan said one day. They’d just finished lunch, and she was packing away the last of their plates, already looking forward to a long afternoon in the sun—but something in the boy’s serious tone made her turn, frowning.

“Everything okay?”

“You have to promise not to talk to my dad about it.”

“Rylan, the last time I talked to your dad was a week ago,” she said drily. “You know how busy he is. I couldn’t talk to him about anything if I wanted to.”

“Still,” he insisted. “Promise?”

She hesitated, not liking the idea of keeping an eight-year-old’s secrets. But then again, it wasn’t like Belmont was doing much to earn her loyalty at the moment. “Sure. I promise. What’s up?”

“I’m worried about the plan.”

She did her best to hide the relief that washed through her. “Why’s that? I thought the boat was going well.” A recent test run had been less than promising—the strange little craft had filled with water after only a few seconds afloat on the waves—but Rylan had seemed thrilled with it, and Venna had been happy to celebrate with him.

“The boat’s fine. It’s what happens when I get over to the island and find the demon. I don’t really know how to fight yet.”

Venna nodded. In their pack, kids as young as Rylan were rarely taught to fight unless they expressed keen interest, the way Venna had. He was still a few years from the standard sword fighting training young wolves went through in their adolescence. “I figured you were going to fight the demon wolf-shaped. Bite its throat out.”

“Sure, but I should be able to fight in both bodies. And besides, my wolf’s still as little as me. I can probably do more damage with a human weapon.” He took a breath, clearly working his way to the main point of his argument. “You’re a demon hunter, right? That’s why you have all those scars and all those knives. Can you teach me?”

Venna hesitated for a moment, thinking of how Belmont would react if he learned she was teaching his son to fight with knives. One of the few clear instructions he’d actually given her about Rylan was to keep an eye on his obsession with revenge—a few of the other pack members had heard him swearing to find the demon who’d killed his mother, and as much as they sympathized with his grief, there were too many demons close at hand to encourage that kind of interest. But Rylan was looking up at her with a desperate hope in those huge silver eyes. Could she really bring herself to join the chorus of people who were telling him he was too young to learn how to fight?

“Maybe I can start teaching you some things,” she said slowly, gritting her teeth a little as the boy rocketed to his feet with an ear-splitting whoop of triumph. “Just the basics, though, okay? The same things you’ll be taught when you’re older, just—a little earlier.” Rylan was still capering with delight, and she tried to hide the smile that was spreading across her face. “I’m serious, okay? These aren’t demon fighting lessons. These are boring old self defense.”

“Boring self defense, yep, yes,” Rylan said breathlessly. “Super boring. Can we start today? Right now?”

At least it was keeping him away from the boat, she thought as they traipsed out into the stretch of grass behind the cottage. The plan had originally been for this area to be dedicated to a community garden, easing Kurivon’s reliance on shipments of food from the mainland—one of many projects that had fallen to the bottom of the list after the attack.

Rylan had clearly been looking forward to holding a knife, but she dashed that hope quickly, thinking of her old swordmaster as she put him through a grueling afternoon of footwork training. It had always been her least favorite part of fighting, and she’d hoped it might discourage Rylan. To her dismay but his credit, the boy didn’t complain, and he committed himself to learning what she was teaching him with a focus and intensity that would have put a lot of adults to shame. After he’d gone to bed that night, she stayed up late, whittling down a couple of pieces of driftwood so that the next day she had a weapon to hand him.

“You get a sharp one when you’ve mastered the wooden one,” she told him firmly. “And I’m the one who says when you’ve mastered it, not you, alright?”

He nodded, and she breathed a quiet sigh of relief. That ought to keep him out of trouble for at least a few months. Her own instructor hadn’t let her graduate past wooden knives for over a year—mostly because she kept breaking into the weapons cache to practice with the real thing in secret. But Rylan wouldn’t do that. He had too much of his mother’s sense of honor and justice in him. It would keep him busy, this training—burn up all that excess energy every day, help him sleep at night, maybe turn the volume down a little on the nightmares. It would give him purpose and focus, the way it had always given her purpose and focus. Even when her whole world had fallen apart. The day after Belmont had broken her heart and sent her away, she had risen at dawn and trained with her blades. What else was there?

She watched the boy working carefully through the basic drills she’d shown him, sitting on the porch in the late afternoon sunshine and smiling faintly to herself. For the first time in the long weeks since Belmont had forced her to be his domestic servant, she felt almost peaceful. She should have known to take that as a warning sign. The door slammed open behind her. She saw Rylan whirling around, already hiding the wooden knife behind his back—but it was too late.

Belmont was standing in the doorway. And the look on his face scared her more than any demon ever could.

Chapter 9 - Belmont

“Get to the community center.” Belmont’s own voice reached his ears on a delay, as though it belonged to someone else. “Now.”

“Dad, I—”

“Now,” he repeated. Strange, how Rylan cowered, how even the indomitable Venna flinched away from his voice. Had he really spoken so loudly? He could hardly hear himself over the sound of his own pulse in his ears, the roaring of his blood. He knew the anger was going to catch up with him—that the dam had burst, and he was standing right in the path of the torrent that had been trapped for years and building in power. It was too late to stop it—he just had to get his son out of here before the water reached them.

Venna was at Rylan’s side, her arm around his shoulder, whispering comforts in his ear. She took the wooden thing he was holding from his hand and the two of them shared a nod that made him feel sick to his stomach, and then the boy was gone, running through the grass in the direction of the community center, where the pack would take care of him. Later, he’d deal with how he felt about the fact that he needed his pack to keep his own son safe from him.

Right now, his only concern was Venna.

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