CHAPTER FIVE: IT GOTTA BE A PRANK

It's clearly a rhetorical question, one that sends my heart shooting to the pit of my stomach. Did he just say what I think he did? My pulse skyrockets, and I clench my hands underneath the table. For the first time since entering the dining room, my mother isn’t looking at me. It’s as if she can’t bring herself to. I’ve never seen my mum as anything but the beautiful and graceful wolf with long white hair I wish I had. I can’t ever remember seeing my mum scared or weak. I know her expression scares me far more than the alpha behind her and calling me his mate could ever do.

“I’m here to collect what’s mine.” The alpha pours himself a glass of wine and sniffs the contents before taking a sip. His eyes cut over the glass to me. “That would be you.”

A nervous laugh bubbles in my chest and quickly escapes my lips.

“What? You can’t be serious?” I glance at my mum, my chest rising unevenly. “Mum, what the hell is going on?”

But she doesn’t say a word. The colour has completely drained from her face. She seems like she’s about to be sick.

“One thing you should know about me, little mate,” the alpha says in a dangerously low voice, dragging my attention back to him, “is that I am only ever serious. You belong to me and you are my fated mate. The Crescent Mother wills it.”

The glimmer of anxiety that had gripped me a moment ago vanishes, replaced with more searing-hot anger.

“I don’t belong to anyone,” I spit back at him. “Especially not a wolf who came here uninvited and raised his own hands to my mother!”

He picks up my mum’s favourite cutlery and begins cutting his meat.

“Who says I came here uninvited?”

My dad shifts nervously, and my mum’s face turns a violent shade of red. This doesn’t make any sense. If they invited him, why would he threaten to hurt my mum? There’s no way my mum would invite the alpha of another pack to our home. It’s unheard of unless it’s to the house of another alpha. And as much as my dad likes to pretend he’s an alpha behind closed doors, he’s nothing of the sort.

I straighten.

“I don’t know how things work in your pack, Alpha, but shackling your host to a table isn’t something we do in Caeli.”

He chuckles and shoves a slice of meat into his mouth.

“You’ve got fire in you, little mate. Good. You’ll need it when I take you home.”

“This is my home,” I snarl at him.

The alpha dismisses my retort and continues eating.

“I see your mother failed to inform you of your situation. Allow me to explain.” He wipes his mouth with a silk handkerchief and then tosses it on his near-empty plate. “Eighteen years ago, your mother and I came to an agreement. In exchange for helping her flee a rather complicated situation, your mother promised me a mate worthy of the Stormfire alpha. I’ve come to see just how worthy of a mate you truly are.”

The air clamps in my chest. It’s like the alpha has thrust a paw into my chest and is squeezing my heart with his razor-sharp claws. Through the tears blurring my vision, I glare venomously at my dad. He used to say there would come a day when my past would catch up with me. Until this very moment, I never understood what he meant. But it was that I’d been promised to an alpha who would one day come to collect me. And he knew.

My mum knew.

I wonder if my brother and Aurelia were aware, too.

The thought twists my stomach into a pile of knots, and a rush of anxiety trickles down my spine. This can’t really be happening. It’s like I’ve fallen through a portal to an alternative universe where my own family would betray me. I glance at my mum, searching for something, anything, that will tell me the alpha is lying. But she only looks away as her lower lip trembles. She really did do it.

My mum promised me to an alpha when I was just a baby.

I snap my head to the alpha in question and glare at him. He just fucking smirks at me like this is an amusing game to him. But then something changes. His lips thin, and he sniffs the air. His prior amusement melts from his countenance like wet snow, and he rises from the table. Slowly, he comes towards me, and I struggle to hold his gaze this time.

There’s something darker about it, something primal and deadly. Power radiates off him like an all-encompassing shadow. His presence alone swallows up everything in the room, and despite my best efforts, I shrink a little in my chair.

He stops beside me and picks up a strand of my long, auburn hair. A muscle ticks in his jaw, and a crease forms between his brows when he lifts the strand to smell it. His eyes darken into a deeper onyx. Faster than I can blink, he leans forward and brushes his fangs along my neck.

I grip my thighs and close my eyes. I know what he’s doing. He’s taking in my scent to see whether or not I’m ‘worthy’ of him. From the way my palms turn sweaty and my heart convulses, he can no doubt smell the whirlwind of emotions wreaking havoc within me.

“You smell of weakness,” he breathes, the tip of his fangs sweeping over the pulse in the side of my throat. “Weak wolves do not belong in my pack.”

“My daughter is a lot of things, Victor. A half-breed and nuisance, sure, but no wolf of my line has ever been weak,” my dad says.

In my shock, I opened my eyes to gawk at him. I’ve never heard him defend me like this before. Even when our own pack ridiculed me, he said nothing.

Did nothing.

A foolish part of me actually hopes to find compassion when I face him, but there’s only that same old, familiar coldness. I wish I knew what I did to make him despise me so much. The fact that he just said I’m part of ‘his’ line means he does see me as part of the Valerio family, so it can’t be that I’m not his biological kid.

“Your line is also descended from cowards and liars,” Victor growls, moving behind me.

Again he sniffs my hair, and I dig my fingernails into my jeans. My mother holds my gaze, but ever so quickly, she glances at the front door.

“That I could ignore. But weakness? That is disgusting and cannot be tolerated. You should not be allowed to exist.”