Chapter 3-ZARA

“What are you talking about?” I asked as I took steps backward. I shook my head in denial, even though it was obvious that they had found out about me from the way they all glared at me and walked in my direction. “I’m not a rogue.”

“Why do you smell like one then?” the guard asked back, taking thedagger out of where he had kept it and pointing it in my direction. “Who are you and where did you come from?”

Running would do me no good. It didn’t take too good of a head on my neck to figure out that I couldn’t outrun these guards. But they were now starting to stand around me as if forming a circle around me as if to stop me from running away.

“I just need to talk to the Alpha,” I voiced again. “There’s no need for you to make this complicated. You don’t want to have to do something you’ll regret. We don’t have to make this harder than it already is.”

The guard with the dagger lunged at me, pressing the blade of the dagger against my neck as he grabbed me by the hair.

“What do you really want?” he snapped at me. “What is your mission? And what’s in that bag? Did you bring something to harm the Alpha with? Are you alone? Is there an informant working with you from the inside?”

He reached for my bag, taking a hold of it and pulling it. I grabbed it back, tugging it toward me. I was thankful for the fact that I had slung it over my shoulders in a cross method, which made it hard for him to get a full hold of it.

“And what are you idiots doing just looking at me? Get the bag from her!” he yelled at the other men, who quickly jumped to action and started to grab the bag. Two of them dragged my hands away from the bag so that I would lose my hold on it.

“No! Let go of me!” I knew that making a ruckus and creating so much noise was something that I didn’t want in that situation since I knew that everyone in that pack would not hesitate to pick the guards over the rogue.

“Argh!” one of them yelped when I resorted to stepping on his foot aggressively. I bent over to bite another. In response, the third one slapped me on the face. I was thrown off balance, causing me to fall to the ground with the bag being cut off my shoulders with so muchforce that I was convinced my shoulder was dislocated.

“It’s a knife!” the guard who caught a hold of the bag announced as he grabbed the knife from the bag.

I crawled backward as they all started to approach me with blazing looks of rage in their eyes. If I could do something in that moment, I would turn back the hands of time and reject every single attempt to get me to be the one to kill the alpha. It didn’t matter how many words Gray would say to convince me.

“What did you come here for?” the first guard started to drill me. “You better start talking right now before we start to use this knife on you. Why did you insist on seeing the alpha? Did you come here to kill him? Are you here alone, or are there other dirty rogues waiting around for you? Open your mouth and speak right now as we have no patience or will to keep you alive!”

“I didn’t come here to harm anyone. That’s my defence weapon. I am not a rogue,” I answered, the words sounding tingly and fully in my mouth. I was staring death straight in the face, and I still made the choice to tell an obvious lie which seemed to fuel his anger.

As the guard rushed for me in an attempt to attack, something whizzed right past me and made a plunging sound as it struck his throat—a knife. I didn’t get the chance to react when the other guards fell to the ground as knives came out of nowhere and hit them either in lethal points in the neck or chest until they were all dead.

I froze for a moment as I stared at them all in disbelief before finally finding the strength to stand up. “Is anyone out there?” I asked, my voice breaking and mending on its own from mixed feelings.

I looked around to see my fellow rogues—Aera included—hiding behind trees and bushes. “Go in. We’re right behind you,” Aera encouraged me with a smile that was enough to replenish my lost resolve.

I smiled at them before I grabbed the knife to put it back in the bag. I ran into the house and made my way up the stairs as soon as I set my eyes on them.

I stood in the hall, bag clutched in my hands, as I wondered which of the doors down the hall belonged to the alpha.

I couldn’t possibly open each and every door, walking in to check out who was in each of the rooms. I would get caught easily that way. Plus, I didn’t even have the slightest idea what the Alpha looked like.

I decided that it was a mistake, shaking my head as I started to turn around when the hairs on my body rose to reach out for the empty air.

A sweet scent hit me straight in the nostrils, filling my senses and paralyzing me. The scent reminded me of rare, dry wood found on a rainy day, bathed in sweet wild berries.

I turned my head in the direction where the scent was coming from, and I walked toward the door without giving it much of a thought. I grabbed onto the doorknob and pushed the door open.

“Oh…” I breathed. There was simply a man laying in a huge bed, his eyes closed peacefully in sleep.

I stepped into the room, walking over to the bed with my face in a frown. Now standing by the man on the bed, I stared down at the smooth and fine lines of his face. I didn’t know how long I stood there, my mission thrown back into the recesses of my mind as I took note of his features.

I bent over to take an even closer look. I hadn’t noticed the shirt on the ground that I had stepped on, which slid on the ground and threw me forward.

“Whoa!” I gasped and yelped as the man on the bed woke up and grabbed me by both arms, turning to pin me down on the bed with an alarmed look on his face.

“Who are…” he trailed off as we made eye contact, and I immediately felt the knot form in my stomach. “…you?”

I couldn’t testify to how long we stayed there, staring at each other in shock as we let the Moon Goddess write our fates. I was suddenly aware of everything about the man on top of me—the fast rate of his heart, the way his eyes studied mine with equal curiosity.

This was my mate.

“You’re…” I said, my voice nowhere to be found as it was as silent as the air in the room.

Someone soon barged into the room with his eyes wide open in alarm.

“Alpha Darius, we’re under a rogue attack!”

I looked from the man who stood in the doorway to the man on top of me who he had referred to as Alpha Darius, and then it clicked.

The Alpha that I had the duty of killing was my mate.