Page 7 of The Alpha's Betrayed Mate

“My kids. Twins,” she said, the soft smile on her face making Venna’s stomach sink. “A boy and a girl—Ash and Emmy.”

“I need to rest,” Venna said, her voice suddenly too loud in her ears, too hoarse. “Leave me. And shut the door.” Too abrupt, she knew that—she was being rude, risking alienating her captor and potential ally. But right now, she couldn’t bring herself to care. Syrra, to her credit, didn’t question the request—just nodded slowly and left the room, clicking the door shut firmly behind her. Venna could hear her calling the children’s names as she moved away down the corridor, and she squeezed her eyes shut hard, furious with how close she was to crying. Why was she surprised that there were children here? That was the whole point of Kurivon, from the conversations she’d eavesdropped on—a settlement, a place for wolves to raise their children and build a communal future together. That was what kept demons at bay.

Venna knew she had to get out of here. She slipped out of bed, moving gingerly at first, testing the limits of her injuries. She was pleasantly surprised by what she found. No major broken bones, aside from the ribs, which were painful but would heal just fine. As for the flesh wounds, she could certainly feel them, but what was a bit of pain, a bit more bleeding? The healers had either overestimated her injuries, or underestimated her ability to deal with them. Either way, she wasn’t going to be paying any more attention to Syrra’s recommendation that she wait until the next day to get out of bed… but that didn’t mean she needed to share her thinking. Carefully, she climbed back into bed, careful to adjust the blankets to hide the fresh bleeding she’d caused, and waited patiently for the lorekeeper to return.

To her credit, Syrra gave her a couple of uninterrupted hours of solitude before she returned, tapping softly on the door and waiting for Venna’s invitation before she let herself in. She’d brought lunch, a fragrant-smelling stew with bread alongside it, but Venna did her best to ignore her growling stomach as she focused on making the most believable apology she could.

“I’ve been through some stuff,” she said, hoping like hell Syrra wouldn’t be inclined to pry any further. “Stuff that makes children—kind of—complicated. I just wasn’t expecting it, so I got overwhelmed. I’m sorry I snapped at you.”

“No harm done. If you want to make it up to me, you could eat something,” she suggested, nodding at the soup. Venna obliged, forcing herself not to eat like a ravenous animal, though it had been a very long time since she’d thought of herself as anything else.

“You said everyone’s healing well?” Venna said once she’d finished the soup. She could tell she’d needed the food badly—she already felt stronger, energy rekindling low in her belly, though she lay back against the pillow as though the effort of eating had drained her. Syrra nodded, though her eyes were dark.

“The injured wolves, yes. They’ll all be back on their feet for the funeral this afternoon.”

Venna froze. Had that been a deliberate slip? “The funeral?”

“Yes. For the wolves who died in the attack.” Syrra was looking right at her, and the apologetic expression on her face made Venna want to scream. “I’m sorry, Venna. The Alpha made it very clear you weren’t to be invited, but I feel uneasy about the prospect of hiding it from you.”

“It’s fine,” Venna said, as neutrally as she could. “I don’t want to be anywhere I’m not welcome. Besides, it’s not like I’m well enough to go, even if I was invited.”

Had she done a good enough job of dissembling? She’d been a good liar, once upon a time, back when she’d actually spent the majority of her time in the company of others, but it had been so long since she’d had any practice. Hopefully her strangeness was enough to cover for her. She couldn’t tell whether Syrra believed her or not, but the lorekeeper did leave her to her own devices after she’d finished her soup. Venna knew she had to move quickly. She waited until Syrra’s footsteps had retreated down the hallway, then slid out of bed and dressed quickly, glad she’d thought to take note of where Syrra had put her clothes. They were ragged, filthy garments that had all but fallen apart in her years in the wild, but they were still hers, and her frail human shape felt even more vulnerable without them. At any rate, she didn’t intend to stay in this body for long.

Just long enough to get out of here.

Venna had spent much of the morning considering the prospect of escaping through the building, but the unnerving encounter with Syrra’s children had confirmed her suspicion—there was too much unknown territory that lay through that door. She couldn’t risk being discovered trying to escape, couldn’t risk running into strangers from Kurivon, or worse, members of her own pack. The window offered a more dangerous way out, true, but it was also the quickest. And if she played it right, there was the added benefit that they might not discover that she’d escaped for several hours.

It was easy enough to get the window open. Syrra had cracked it earlier to let some air in, clearly not expecting her to try to escape through a second storey window. But she clearly hadn’t counted on Venna’s willingness to scale down a drainpipe. There was one positioned perfectly within reach of the window, and it was the work of a moment to perch on the windowsill, brace herself for the pain, then swing herself over to the drainpipe, letting it take her full weight. Once, she might have proved too heavy for the metal—but eight years in the wild, barely scraping by on what she could forage, had lightened her frame considerably. The drainpipe made a few alarming sounds as she scrambled hastily down it, but when she let go to land lightly in the tall grass, it was still intact.

Venna took a moment to catch her breath, waiting for the sharp pain of her protesting injuries to subside a little. Then, without a backwards glance at the imposing building that she’d just escaped from, she slipped into the woods and let her wolf shape take over. The relief of being on four paws again was tempered a little by the intensification of the pain she was in, but Venna took a few deep breaths and let it pass over her. She’d been hurt worse than this before and lived to tell the tale.

She headed deep into the trees, surprised by the unfamiliar plants she kept passing, wary of every strange sound that caught her hearing. Strange, how different these trees were from the forest back home. There was going to be something of an adjustment phase if she intended to return to her old habits. But she was beginning to worry that that wasn’t going to be possible here on Kurivon. The island was tiny, for a start. Back home, the country that surrounded her pack’s little village had been vast, easy for a single wolf to hide in. If she’d been forced to restrict herself to an area this size, she would likely have been discovered a few short months into her exile.

Well, she was just going to have to make it work. Exiled as she was, there was no version of reality in which her pack would allow her to live among them. But there was no way she was leaving them, either. Not when they might need her. She’d let herself hope that Kurivon might be the answer, that the pack might be free if they could just make it to this new world… but the calamitous attack had proved that that was wishful thinking, and almost half the pack had paid the price. Well, Venna wasn’t going to let that happen again.

She could almost taste the demonic taint in the air. It was subtle, like a piece of fruit that had just begun to rot—the first wolves to settle Kurivon had clearly done good work in turning back the demonic tide—but she could feel the lingering presence. Another complicating factor to keep in mind, when she was living wild out here. No doubt there’d be patrols to avoid, too. That, at least, she had plenty of experience with. How many hundreds of patrols had the pack sent out over the years, each one swearing that there was nothing but wildlife and wind in the trees around the pack’s village? When she needed to be, Venna was a gust of wind. A ghost, haunting the pack she still loved.

Her steps slowed as some instinct told her she was getting close. She’d honed that instinct over the last eight years, the knack of knowing where her family were without being able to see or hear them… it was like a unique kind of gravity, orienting her in space according to where the pack was. And sure enough, as she crept through the woods, her sharp ears began to pick out the low sound of voices, just audible over the background roar of the ocean. One careful paw at a time, she crept closer to where the treeline thinned. Sunset was approaching, and she knew she could get closer once there was more gloom to cover her, but for now, she needed to tread carefully.

It was Raske, she realized, straining with all her might to make out what was being said. His distinctive, clipped voice managed to carry over the waves, and she realized he was conducting burial rites for the pack. Burning with curiosity, Venna crept forward a few more paces. She could just make out the gathering, standing two-legged with their backs to the treeline, their attention on Raske who was raised above them somehow, speaking from a platform that made him taller. He was speaking about loss, about tragedy, about the senselessness of death, but Venna found herself tuning out his words. She was scanning the crowd, furiously trying to establish who was there—or more to the point, whowasn’tthere.

The service wore on, and the sun sank lower and lower in the sky. Slowly, Venna crept forward, irritated by the gathering dark making it harder to make out the wolves who were at the funeral. It was heartening at least to see so many wolves standing there—the demonic attack hadn’t managed to take the whole pack after she’d lost consciousness. But then the group parted for the next part of the ceremony, and for the first time, Venna lay eyes on the dead.

She’d known that the losses would be terrible. But knowing it had done nothing to prepare her for seeing it—for counting, with her breath frozen in her throat, the carefully wrapped bodies of the wolves she’d once sworn to spend her life protecting. It couldn’t possibly be so many as that, she thought, holding back the urge to throw back her head and howl a mournful dirge to the gathering darkness. She counted twenty bodies—twenty wolves, carefully and lovingly prepared for the graves that had been dug for them here on this foreign island that had once held the promise of a new life.

One by one, the remaining wolves were moving among the dead, pausing by each to acknowledge and grieve. Venna watched from the treeline, aware she was risking discovery by standing so close, unable to force herself to turn away. Her chest ached with the longing to be with them, to reach out to touch and hold them in comfort and in shared grief. And when the pain of her wounds began to trouble her, she shifted back, reasoning that her human shape would be easier to conceal among the trees. The other benefit to this shape, of course, was the ability to let tears roll unheeded down her cheeks, dripping from her chin onto her tattered clothing.

By the time the bodies had been laid in their graves, darkness had fallen, and Venna felt utterly empty. Maybe that was why she was unwary when the flicker of torchlight reached her—or maybe she simply didn’t care, when she heard the first shout of recognition, that she’d been discovered. Let them discover her. Let them put her to death, if that was what they wanted.

Maybe she belonged better with the dead than with the living.

Chapter 5 - Belmont

Belmont had never run as fast as he did across the uneven ground of the clifftop cemetery that night. Some instinct warned him that if any other member of his pack was the first to reach Venna that they’d tear her apart—and while the woman he’d known eight years ago would have put up a hell of a fight, he knew the battered, scarred creature he’d visited in the library was quite a different story. He was shocked, looking at her, that she’d even managed to make it this far from the library without collapsing. Her cheeks were pale, her body emaciated, and even in the firelight he could see fresh blood oozing through her bandages.

If it wasn’t for the defiance that burned undaunted in those bright silver eyes, he’d have wondered whether he was looking at the same woman. But this was Venna, alright. He’d know that look anywhere.

“Stay back,” he said as he felt his pack catching up behind him. He could feel their anger and he knew he had to be its conduit. “You,” he boomed, lifting the torch high as he returned his gaze to the crumpled form of Venna. “Exile. What are you doing here?”

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