Page 2 of The Alpha's Betrayed Mate

Belmont rested his focus fully on his breathing for a moment as he processed the enormity of what his advisor was telling him. The old man shifted his weight a little, and he could tell from the wince he didn’t quite hide that Raske numbered among the injured, too. Belmont was aware of the other Alphas standing behind him, waiting to greet his pack and to celebrate their safe arrival on Kurivon. Almost half of his pack lost… it was unthinkable. He hated the wild, desperate part of him that wanted it to be a terrible joke his advisor was playing on him. Denial was an irrational response to tragedy, and one he’d hoped he had risen above.

“I wish I had been there,” Belmont said finally, his voice low as he sought the eyes of each of his remaining packmates. “An Alpha’s place is between his pack and any danger that threatens them. I let each of you down.”

“You couldn’t have known.” That was Yara, one of Tetra’s closest friends, her dark hair partly obscured by bandages. Her voice was ragged and her face still streaked with tears, and Belmont felt his heartbeat picking up. “We were within sight of the city walls—that kind of demonic presence simply doesn’t appear without warning, unless someone—“

“Yara,” Raske said sharply. “I have warned you to leave such conjecture to the Alpha.”

“It’s her fault,” the woman hissed, her face twisted with grief. “It’s her fault, Alpha Belmont, it must be—she came back—she came back just to—” She took a shuddering breath. “Tetra’s dead,” she spat suddenly, as if the words were poison she was expelling.

Belmont felt his heart freeze in his chest. “Rylan?” he said, feeling like he wouldn’t be able to breathe until the question was answered. Raske stepped forward quickly.

“Safe, safe,” he was saying, and Belmont felt faint with relief for a moment—with guilt hot on its heels. “His mother died protecting him. I did what I could for her wounds, but…” He could see the resignation on Raske’s face, see the old man struggling to resolve his responsibility for what had happened. But he could also see that Raske had more to say.

“Continue,” he said, forcing his voice to remain steady. “There’s more to report.”

“Yes. What Yara alluded to,” Raske said, shooting the woman a sidelong look—but Yara was on her knees now, the comforting arm of her soulmate around her shoulders, and Belmont could tell she had nothing further to say right now. “During the attack, we discovered… well, I suppose you’d better see for yourself.”

At the back of the group were a handful of wolves who were taking charge of the group’s belongings, which had also been brought through the portal with them. But as Raske led Belmont forward through the group, he realized with an uneasy jolt that there weren’t only boxes and suitcases back here. Among the pack’s haphazardly packed belongings, he could see a couple of stretchers, too, bearing the unconscious forms of wolves too badly injured to make the journey on foot. One stretcher was a little smaller than the others, and Belmont froze as he saw the familiar face of his son.

“He’s unhurt,” Raske repeated quickly, putting a hand on his arm to stop him rushing to the boy’s side. “But the Council healers and I agreed that sleep would be a mercy right now.”

Raske had always had a particular knack for the kind of magic that knocked people out. Belmont allowed himself another few seconds observing the steady rise and fall of Rylan’s chest before he returned his gaze to Raske. An Alpha couldn’t be seen to be overwhelmed, even by a situation as awful as this one.Especiallyin a situation as awful as this one, he corrected himself, hearing the words in his father’s voice. When did a pack most need their Alpha’s strength? When was it most important that he be solid as a rock, an unswayable anchor to hold them all steady?

“This way, Alpha,” Raske said gently. Curious. There was another stretcher bearing form so still that for a moment he was convinced the lorekeeper had brought through one of the bodies of the dead. “She’s alive,” the lorekeeper clarified—he’d always been skilled at following Belmont’s train of thought like that. “But more badly wounded than any of the survivors.” There was an odd lack of compassion in Raske’s voice, and Belmont frowned as they approached this last stretcher, so strangely isolated from the rest of the wounded wolves. The blanket that covered the figure’s body had also fallen across her face, leaving only a little of her jet-black hair visible—though it didn’t resemble hair at first glance, so matted was the mass with a mixture of leaves, dirt and what must have been blood.

“Who is this?” he said slowly. “Why haven’t their wounds been tended?”

“She’s been tended enough,” Raske said, that odd bite of anger in his voice again. The lorekeeper reached out not with his hand, but with the end of his staff, as if reluctant even to touch the blanket that covered the wolf’s face. With a jerky motion, the blanket was flicked back by the tip of the staff, revealing the face of the woman who lay beneath it. For a moment, Belmont looked down into the face of a stranger. Beneath the grime and dried blood on her skin, he could tell she was a relatively young woman, though from the looks of her she’d been living rough for quite some time. There were scars beneath the dirt, further marring her pale skin, and the ends of her black hair were jagged and rough, as though it had been hacked short by a dagger just below her ears.

“You don’t recognize her,” Raske observed softly, his tone not quite disguising his revulsion for the unconscious woman before them. “Neither did I, at first. The years have not been kind—but it’s her.”

It hit him all at once, like a great wave. It was only the knowledge that the eyes of his entire pack were on him that stopped him from dropping to his knees beside the stretcher right then and there. Instead, Belmont froze with the realization of who he was looking at, his heart pounding so loudly in his chest that it drowned out even the distant roar of the waves.

“I recognize her,” he said, forcing the words out despite what it cost him to keep his voice level. “This is Venna. Exiled these last eight years.”

A murmur of agreement went up among the wolves behind him, but Belmont couldn’t focus on anything but the way Venna’s eyelids had fluttered, just slightly, at the sound of her name. He was surprised he’d been able to say it, if he was honest. Hadn’t he spent the last eight years of his life doing everything in his power to forget that name, that face, the way those bright eyes would flash at him in firelight…?

“It’s her,” Raske said heavily. “She’s responsible for the attack, for our losses. Who else could have led the demons to us?”

Chapter 2 - Venna

Venna had long since learned to emerge from sleep with care. It was a lesson that had saved her life more than a few times in the woods, where curious animals were easily startled into attacking a sleeping figure if it made sudden movements upon awakening—and she had no doubt that it had saved her from an awful confrontation this time, too. This wasn’t how she’d wanted to play this. This wasn’t how she’d wanted to play any of this. But she’d well and truly learned her lesson when it came to wallowing in regret. There would be time later to wish things were other than what they were. Right now, she had to cope with reality… and the reality was that she was in no fit state to handle this conversation. Not with half the blood in her body still soaking into the soil back on Halforst. Not clinging onto consciousness and life itself with the very edges of her ragged fingernails.

But despite all of that, when she heard Belmont’s voice she nearly wavered. She kept her breathing level at least, hoping like hell that they hadn’t noticed her nearly opening her eyes when she heard him breathe her name. How long had it been since she’d heard him speak her name? Years, in reality. In her imagination, of course, in her dreams—that was a different story. But dreams were a luxury she could ill afford. She returned to doing her best impression of a corpse as quickly as she could. Thankfully, her wounded body was more than happy to oblige her, and she felt the world blur and shift around her as she moved in and out of consciousness.

The attack, the attack. That was what kept bringing her out of sleep, more so than even the jostling of the stretcher, the murmuring of unfamiliar voices as the wounded were carried away with the help of the wolves of Kurivon. She’d done everything in her power to keep the pack safe on the road to the portal, but it hadn’t been enough. Demons were crafty, and these ones had outsmarted even Venna, avoiding her patrols, striking the pack when they and she least expected it. It was frozen in her memory even now, that first howl of anger and fright that had split through the peaceful Halforst night like a siren. The rest of what she remembered was chaos, adrenalin-drenched flashes in the dark—sprinting into the fight as fast as her paws would carry her, tearing into the demons she found with a disregard for her own safety that bordered on suicidal. The confusion among the wolves she still thought of as her packmates, even now. Half of them hadn’t even recognized her, the stranger who’d come barrelling into the fight. That made sense. Venna had a feeling she wouldn’t even recognize herself. Years spent living alone took their toll on a wolf. It didn’t hurt her, to hear Raske remark that he’d assumed that she was dead. Once he’d been as close to her as her own father. But those memories belonged to another life, a life she no longer thought about—at least, not while she was awake.

Still, as the untalliable hours passed and she felt the tell-tale signs of fever wash through her body as infection took hold, the memories of the battle began to blur into dreams. And dreams, unfortunately, paid little attention to the division she had tried to make between her old life and her new one. As her fever worsened, she stirred and twisted in the grips of much older memories. The four of them, running together through dappled sunlight. The brush of Belmont’s mind against hers, warm as a fire on a winter’s night. The secret she’d held back from him as long as she’d held it back from herself—

“Easy now. You’re safe, you’re safe—”

Venna felt her best friend’s name leave her lips before she could stop it. But the voice she’d heard wasn’t Tetra’s, and the worried face above her was the face of a stranger. She blinked her eyes blurrily, wondering if she was hallucinating, but the woman’s eyes remained stubbornly and strangely blue. A white room, too-bright light through the window. Venna’s eyes flicked from wall to wall, her body tensing itself to flee before a jab of pain warned her to be still.

“You’re safe,” the stranger said again. Venna looked back at her, noting the robes she wore, the equipment laid out before her, the rune-engraved handle of a knife at her belt. Lorekeeper—and a senior one, at that. Relief that her wounds were being tended was quickly chased by the grim realization that it wasn’t Raske who was taking care of her. Left in the hands of a stranger. Well, that was probably what she deserved.

Venna cleared her throat and swallowed with difficulty, her tongue feeling strange and thick in her mouth. How long had it been since she’d spoken? How long had it been since she’d spent more than a few hours in this body, even? The two-legged form healed faster than its counterpart, and human hands were useful to build and gather, but she always felt uneasy spending too much time in such a soft, vulnerable state. But shifting was out of the question right now. The wolf’s wounds were more severe than the human’s, that was the equation every young fighter learned early. Even in this body, she was severely injured. Wolf-shaped, it was unlikely she’d survive.

“My name is Syrra,” the lorekeeper was saying, her voice low and soft. “I’m senior Lorekeeper here, on Kurivon. You’re in the infirmary. You were badly injured in the attack, but we’ve cleaned and bandaged your wounds.”

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