Page 10 of The Alpha's Betrayed Mate

“Thank you, Senior Lorekeeper. I’ll return for her before long.”

And with that, he was gone, stalking off down the pathway that led back to the lights of the main settlement. Venna watched him go, but she could feel herself swaying on her feet, and the lorekeeper clicked her tongue before seizing her by the elbow and steering her through the spacious, mostly empty hall they were standing in. Exhausted, hurting and troubled as she was, Venna still spared a curious glance for the space.

“There’s a lot of room for not a lot of books,” she pointed out. There were a few shelves in one corner of the enormous room, but they only seemed to accentuate how much empty space there was. Syrra pushed her firmly down into a chair, then pulled a pouch from her belt and set about replacing the bandage on her head.

“Most of them were burned,” she said as she worked, her tone clipped.

“Burned? Why?”

“To keep warm while we waited to die.” Syrra tossed the soiled bandage aside and clicked her tongue as she examined the wound beneath. “This was the last building left standing when the demons nearly took Kurivon. And I was the last lorekeeper. Belmont and his fellows saved my life, and I take that debt seriously.” Venna hissed a little as Syrra poured something into her wound that stung, but she didn’t dare interrupt the lorekeeper’s diatribe. “All of that aside—I wouldn’t have stood in your way if you’d told me you wanted to attend that funeral, Venna. Hell, I’d have helped you. Why was something as reckless as jumping out of a second storey window your first resort? With wounds that would immobilize most wolves, I’ll add.”

“I thought you’d stop me. Report me to Belmont.”

Syrra huffed laughter as she eased a new bandage onto Venna’s neck. “Why? He’s not my Alpha.”

“Something else we have in common,” Venna said, fighting the urge to bury her head in her hands. “I think we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot, Lorekeeper.”

“I’d agree. You could make it up to me by telling me what the hell’s going on, how about that?”

Venna hesitated for a moment… but what good had secrecy done her so far? So, as the lorekeeper worked steadily on redressing her wounds, she found herself telling Syrra her story. Not the whole story, of course. There were parts of what had happened she could barely admit to herself, let alone a near stranger. It was a strange, truncated, broken tale that started just after her exile and finished here, eight years later, sitting in an empty library in a brand new world.

“So you’re an exile,” Syrra said thoughtfully in the silence that fell. “And that’s a permanent state of affairs?”

Venna nodded, aware that her wounds were feeling considerably less painful now that Syrra had dressed and cleaned them again. “It’s not an especially common punishment. Exiles don’t come back.”

“Do you think it’s just?” Syrra said simply.

“Yes.” Venna tensed, waiting for the inevitable question. She hadn’t actually told Syrra what the pack had banished her for—only that she’d been a promising young demon hunter, and then she’d been exiled from the pack and proceeded to spend the next eight years using those skills to hunt demons and protect the pack in secret. She knew Syrra would want to know what she’d done to merit her exile, and she wondered if she’d even be able to tell that part of the story at all. Talking about it with Belmont had been awful enough. But to her surprise, the lorekeeper only nodded.

“Then I hope you and the pack can find a resolution,” she said softly. “I like to think redemption and forgiveness are always a possibility.”

“Do you think Belmont’s the forgiving type?” Venna had meant it half as a joke, but as she spoke the words she realized she didn’t really have an answer for them herself. Once, she’d believed she knew Belmont better than she knew herself. She’d been so confident in that belief that she’d put everything she had on the line and confessed her feelings to him. She’d been utterly convinced that he felt the same way about her, but she couldn’t have been more wrong. And if she’d been wrong about that, then how could she say she’d ever known him at all?

“Belmont? It’s hard to say,” Syrra said thoughtfully. “ I’ve never heard him give a word of bad advice in all the time I’ve known him. He’s level-headed to a fault, scrupulously fair and just… but that’s the Alpha. I can’t say I know the man at all. Not with those ten-foot walls of ice he’s built around himself.”

Venna felt a strange, rusty sound bubble out of her chest, and realized to her shock it was laughter. “That’s Belmont, alright.” She sighed. “But when I knew him, the walls were a little easier to climb.”

The distant sound of voices broke into the comfortable quiet that lay between them, and both women looked up towards the windows at the front of the building. Wary of her questionable status as a captive, Venna stayed in her seat, but Syrra was already moving towards the front door, nothing but curiosity in her body language. Venna was listening hard. The voices didn’t sound alarmed or actively frightened, and she quickly dismissed the possibility that the packs were rallying to fight off a demon attack, but something was clearly wrong. And when Syrra opened the door, there were two worried-looking wolves on the porch, torches in hand. Venna listened to the conversation, heard them apologizing for disturbing the Lorekeeper’s work and asking if she’d seen a child in the last hour or so.

Rylan was missing. Venna felt an uneasy weight settle in her stomach as she remembered the boy who’d walked into Belmont’s cottage like a ghost made of flesh and blood. The curious way he’d looked at her, the stubbornness in his face when he’d defied Belmont’s increasingly frustrated instructions… she took a breath that shuddered a little to banish the tears that were threatening to spring to her eyes. It had been a long time since she’d thought about her older brother. Marroc had been her hero for as long as she could remember, even when she was barely old enough to walk. Her protector, her confidant, one of her three best friends in all the world. Even though his death was such a big part of the story of her exile from the pack, she still rarely let herself think about it. But seeing his son in the flesh like that, staring at her with eyes that could have been her brother’s when they were children… it had stirred that loss up all over again.

And now the boy was missing. Syrra promised to let the search party know if either of them saw the boy, then returned to sit at the table with Venna, who was already shifting restlessly in her seat.

“Belmont’s son is missing,” the lorekeeper said, but the careful way she was looking at Venna told her she knew the conversation had been overheard.

“He can’t have gone far, right?” Venna was frowning. “The island’s not that big. Not like Halforst.” A missing child back home could be just about anywhere… she felt a shudder run down her spine, reminded herself forcefully to keep that particular door shut and locked. Syrra was looking at her closely, and she remembered with an uneasy thrill that she’d told the lorekeeper something about her feelings about children earlier that day. “Should we go and help?”

Syrra shook her head. “Wolves from both packs are combing the island. They’ve no shortage of volunteers.”

Venna fought for a moment with her usual instinct for secrecy. Syrra was proving, again and again, that she was an ally who could be trusted. And as much as she wanted to sneak out of the library right there and then, she knew she couldn’t betray the lorekeeper like that again. “I feel like it’s my fault,” she said in a rush, feeling a strange urge to close her eyes. As if that would make this part of the story less vulnerable, somehow.

“Why’s that?”

“Rylan was born after I left the pack,” she said, feeling like she was fighting to get the words out. “So I hadn’t met him before. I knew he existed—I’d eavesdrop, sometimes, if patrols got close enough, or I could sneak into the village—but I hadn’t… seen him, until tonight. He walked into the cottage when Belmont and I were talking and I just—“ She took a deep breath, wondering if she was betraying anyone else’s secrecy right now. “Did Belmont tell you, about Rylan? About his parentage?”

Syrra nodded. “Just before the pack came through the portal. He said Rylan’s mother was his friend but not his soulmate—that Rylan’s father died a few weeks before the boy was born, and Belmont stepped up to be his father.” Venna waited for Syrra to add to the story, but the lorekeeper didn’t—and suddenly, she found herself fighting the wild urge to laugh. It must have shown on her face, because Syrra raised an eyebrow. “What’s funny?”

“Nothing at all,” she said, rubbing her forehead. “Just—the way Belmont tells stories. As little information as he can get away with, at the absolute latest date possible. Just the facts. He didn’t tell you Rylan’s father Marroc was his best friend? Did he even tell you how he died?” Syrra shook her head, and Venna felt the urge to laugh growing. “One of the worst tragedies ever to strike the pack. It happened the day he was officially appointed Alpha, too. Just after the ceremony, everyone realized one of the children was missing—the youngest member of the pack, a toddler. Marroc went searching for him and the wolf who’d been taking care of him. They found them both dead an hour later. Demons.”

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