“Did you think I would let you die?” He laughed, the sound low and guttural. “If you wanted to kill yourself, you should have done it before I found out we were mates.” I smiled as he continued to hound me.
“Do I make you feel inferior, Noah?” I asked with a broad smile. The cruel look on his face faded to a blank one. Then his face went red and his body stiffened.
“Who are you to make me feel inferior?” He snarled, a bit of his wolf pushing into his words.
“That’s what I’ve been thinking.” I wore a pensive expression, gritting my teeth against the pinpricks of pain turning to sharp stabs. “Does my pride upset you, Noah?” He wanted me to beg on the floor to be his mate.
He wanted to savour the sight of me broken and humiliated in public because of him but I didn’t give him that satisfaction. The wolves of Red Lake told me several times that I needed to know my place and over the years, I learnt my place. My place was not beside the Alpha. It was the reason I let him go so easily despite my heart breaking that day. I knew on instinct that I would never be Noah’s mate whether I licked the ground he walked on while crawling on my hands and knees.
“Yes,” he answered with a casual shrug. “Your pride upsets me.”
It wasn’t as if I was proud – I just retained a bit of my self-respect in the face of bullies who wanted me to crawl on my belly and kiss their feet. They hated me because they could not crush me into fine powders and mould a perfectly submissive slave and now, Noah had taken it upon himself to break me.
I didn’t want to admit it out loud but I was scared. My insides shivered as cold spread through me. I was deathly terrified that he would succeed. For the twenty years of my life, Red Lake tried to knock me down permanently but I always found a way to stand. Now, Noah Howard may find a way to break me forever.
“It’s upsetting to see a nobody like you go about like you have the world at your feet.” His eyes blazed with malice. “I’ve hated you since I set eyes on you and now, after you so calmly accepted my rejection, I hate you even more. Garbage should act like garbage, not like the queen.”
“This garbage could be the queen one day,” I muttered, tired of this sickening conversation. He burst into laughter.
I just woke up from a near-death experience and the first person to enter my room was this devil. It wasn’t my fault that Noah had such a big ego that would not be assuaged unless he trampled on everyone in his pack, including the one already trampled upon. He had issues, more issues than I knew or cared to know of. His issues sent him to the Alpha Academy to learn some sense of responsibility but he came back as a sadistic bully instead.
“Yes, you’re totally the Alpha Prince’s type.” He snorted. “An ugly, wolfless wench like you will make a good queen,” he added with a derisive chuckle. “Tell me, Carrot, do you have a crush on the prince? Is that why you calmly accepted my rejection? Do you have a stupid dream of meeting him by chance and falling in love?” His eyes sparkled like he’d never heard a bigger joke than this before.
“I accepted your rejection because I don’t want you.” The words felt like a partial lie as I spoke.
“But you can’t help but want me.” His eyes and tone softened. “We are mates, after all, so when I’m with another woman, it’s going to tear into you and you’re going to feel miserable.”
I opened my mouth to cuss at him but the door banged open. The Alpha and Luna walked in with scary expressions on their faces.
“You lowly hussy.” The Luna was the first to speak and the first to strike me.
I’d fallen from the balcony of her room and almost died but to show her thankfulness that I didn’t die, she hit me as hard as she could, and then her hands wrapped around my neck.
“Mum!” Noah grabbed her hands wrapped around my throat. “What the hell are you doing!?” He bellowed, trying to wrestle her off me. The more he fought her off, the tighter she choked me.
I couldn’t say anything. My shoulders tightened and my stomach became rock hard. My heart raced, almost exploding in my chest, and everything felt as if it was going to end in a second. My Luna, the mother of my pack, squeezed the air out of my lungs with cold malice in her eyes.
“She wants to die so I should kill her!” She shouted in a shrill voice, her eyes dark and fixated on me. “This little hussy! Who are you to cause so much trouble!?” She squeezed harder.
“Grace,” Noah called his mother by her first name, his tone sending chills down my cold body. “Let her go.” He wasn’t the Alpha yet but her hands loosened their grip on my throat. She was the Luna, higher than him in status, but when he added, “Before I get pissed off,” her hands fell from my throat and tears stained her eyes.
“Noah, why are you defending this whore!” The Luna cried like her son’s girlfriend. “She has caused so much trouble for us! Alpha Norman is withdrawing all his support for our pack because of this insult.”
Ha.
If I lived, they cussed at me but if I died, they also cussed at me. Tears stung my eyes and I rubbed my reddened throat. The Luna’s strong grip crushed my windpipes and I hacked for breath on my hospital bed while the family held a discussion, ignoring my existence.
“I didn’t save her life to have you kill her,” Noah growled. “Don’t be stupid now!” He snapped.
“Don’t talk to your mother like that!” Alpha Howard growled.
“If she wasn’t so stupid –“ He started with a snarl but then stopped when his eyes caught mine. “If you kill her then the deal with Alpha Norman is gone forever.”
“It’s gone already!” Luna Grace screeched. “He has asked us to send back the gifts he sent the other day.” She swerved on her heels to glare at me and I cowered, shielding my face. “You’re not even pretty so how can you object to having a rich mate?” She hissed.
Did she say a rich mate?
Alpha Norman had lost half his fortune in a legal battle after having adult relations with a twelve-year-old. His mate who just died turned eighteen on the day he married her. I would be the oldest of the three mates he had taken in his lifetime and he was already fifty-two. They were selling me off to a disgusting, perverted old man and they acted like I should be grateful to them. If audacity had a face, it would look a lot like Luna Grace, the crazy pretentious woman.
“It’s not gone.” Noah’s eyes had a twinkle in them. “She’s alive so she can get married.” His words stunned the room.
“But she tried to kill herself rather than marry him. It’s not a good look for him to mate with her after that,” Luna Grace pointed out. The Alpha stood at the sideline listening to his family make plans. It was no secret that Luna Grace ran this pack with her son while the Alpha stood as a ceremonial head.
“Let him worry about his reputation,” Noah said with a shrug. “Don’t you think it would be good for them to be mated? That way he can decide her punishment for smearing his name.” He showed an evil grin that exposed all his teeth.
“That’s a good idea,” the Alpha butted in and his son’s grin widened. “But the lunatic can try to kill herself again.”
“The mating would have originally taken place in three weeks,” Noah pointed out. I lay there with pain making my body ache while they planned how to trade me like a piece of meat. “Lock her in the dungeons until then. There’s no way for a prisoner to commit suicide.”
“Ah, you’re a genius!” The Alpha laughed, smacking his son’s shoulder jovially. Noah only gave a small and irritating smile. “Doctor!” The Alpha bellowed.
Thus, I woke up in the hospital from a near death experience and then I was shipped off to the dungeons in my hospital gown. They put handcuffs on me like a prisoner and threw me into a cell, my shoulder scraping against the wall and my skin tearing open.
The guard locked the gate and Noah stood outside, a smirk on his lip and a twinkling in his eyes. At that moment, he looked like a devil sending me to hell.
“You’re a fun toy,” he whispered.
Then, something inside me snapped and a dam exploded. My heart pounded in my ears as I gnashed my teeth. Red covered my vision as I watched his retreating back.
‘For the evil you have sown, I will be sure you reap ten times of it.’ I vowed in my heart. ‘Even if it takes my last breath, I will do everything in my power to make you suffer, Noah Howard. And your pack will be reduced to rubble.’
Red Lake had drained my will to live over the years but it was renewed at that moment. I cannot die until I ruin this pack.
