The Obsession

Chapter Four

The Obsession

Aveline Meadows.

I found out I was pregnant six weeks after I had fled from home. I knew no one would come looking for me because Angel was now the center of attention, and being chosen by the Alpha meant my parent's status in the pack was going to rise with it.

The healer at the border of the pack had been the first to notice before I confirmed it from a pack doctor in another pack. She pressed her cold fingers to my stomach and told me what I already knew in my bones.

"You're with a child. Two months alone, I'd say."

I thanked her and offered to pay her for her services, but she hadn't accepted it, saying I needed it more than anyone else. I thanked her before running towards the border of the pack to the next pack. I wanted to keep myself as far away as possible from my home pack.

I traveled through the cold with my hand pressed flat against my stomach. I traded work for shelter. I scrubbed floors in exchange for food, and I slept in barns when no one would take me in. I didn't tell anyone about the baby.

By spring I had found a small settlement outside pack territory. A cluster of cabins near a river with wolves who had no alpha or pack. A woman named Sera took me in when I was too heavy to keep working.

"You're too young to be this alone," she said.

"I don't have anyone else." I hated that it was the truth. I hated that I was alone.

"You have that baby, sweetheart." She said nicely. "That's someone you should live for. Someone who should give you hope to stay alive and strive for a better life with."

But was a better life going to come for a wolfless female like me?

When the labour came, I screamed until my throat bled and Sera held my hand and told me to push. All I could think of was Alpha Ash Caden, the man responsible for this pain even though I walked in willingly to his arms. When the baby finally came, I was covered in sweat, and she didn't cry.

"Come on," I whispered amidst my tiredness with fresh tears pouring from my eyes as Sera tapped her skin hard. "Come on, baby. Please."

When her cries filled my ears, it was the most beautiful sound I had ever heard. My heart was healed once more and I stretched out my hands to hold her.

She was tiny, smaller than she should have been. Her eyes were closed and her fingers were curled into fists and her hair was dark and thick like mine.

"Hello," I breathed before pressing a kiss to her head. "Hello, Lumi."

When she opened her eyes, I felt the lump in my throat grow bigger because she had his silver eyes. I cried that night until I couldn't breathe.

*

For three years, we were safe.

I worked in the settlement by washing clothes and mending dresses, even helping Sera with her garden while Lumi grew as the days went by. Slowly at first because she was small for her age, and the healer said it was because I had gone into a premature labour due to stress. But she was healthier now, very bright and started talking really early. What made my heart love her more and more each day was when her silver eyes looked at me like I was the whole world, and it made me wonder if that was what my mother saw in Angel all these years.

I didn't tell Lumi about her father. What would I say? He's the Alpha King? He's married to your aunt? He doesn't know you exist?

I always avoided such questions, until a rogue Alpha came into my life. He was the first to propose marriage with me, promising that Lumi would have someone to call a father. He promised me the heavens, but I already saw what he wanted in his eyes. A woman who would warm his bed.

"You are wolfless, my love." He said sweetly in the tone that often irritated me. "Allow me to protect you and provide everything for you and the child..." Then, his eyes would unconsciously move towards Lumi. "I want to build a pack, and I need a strong and smart woman by my side. You fit that category, but my people won't accept me adopting a child that isn't mine."

But he just said he was going to take care of her.

"She can be with Sera..." He said quietly. "I will pay for everything that would make her life comfortable forever, you needn't worry about it."

"There are other women, Mr. Kael." I stood to my full height from the clothes I was washing. "I'm not interested in binding myself to any man."

His ego was bruised and he started hurling insults my way. Calling me a whore who got pregnant for some scum and was refusing a real protector. I thought that would be the end of it, but he still pushed. He got worse and began to make it his personal agenda to make me his mate, first by kidnapping Lumi and almost drowning her in the river.

I screamed and kicked and swore to the moon goddess, and I was lucky that the men quickly got to action and saved her. I knew I couldn't continue to stay here, but everywhere else I went with my daughter, he followed me.

"Running won't change anything," he said the last time I saw him. "I always find what I'm looking for, and I will always get what I'm looking for. And that includes you."

I looked at Lumi as she was sleeping in the corner of the room, thinkingbkf everything she had been through at a really young age, I wasn't comfortable with her living this way. She deserved better, and I was going to give it to her.

I had only one place left to go. The one place a rogue Alpha couldn't easily follow because it would mean his immediate execution.