CHAPTER 4

19 YEAR LATER

VICTORIA

I was kicked on my stomach so hard that it felt like the air in my lungs was sucked right out. I stumbled back and landed on my butt, which wasn’t the worst of it, my tailbone hurt so badly that I didn’t want to move from where I fell.

“You must think this is the time when you were the princess of the pack, but that time has long past and it’s time to realize that!” Elisa spat; she was once my best friend. We were inseparable she and I.

We did everything together, but things changed very quickly and now she was enemy number one. “I don’t know why don’t you just die? because you are useless. I wonder what made mama Bridgette take you in when she did, but she must be regretting it now.”

Those words cut through me like a hot knife on butter, mama Bridgette, my mother. Or the woman who took me in as I had come to learn, she was everything to me. but she was killed five months after she took me in.

It was in a rogue attack as alpha Jackson told me. He raised me after that or more like gave me to the omegas to raise me. I was treated well even though he didn’t pay that much attention to me, but he did get me everything I needed.

I never lacked anything with him around, he didn’t treat me like a sister though no matter what I did to earn that position. As I grew older I was glad he never did, I liked him more than a brother. He was just too cold and indifferent towards me. he threw money at me to shut me up and get me away from him.

Another kick on my stomach brought me back from my daydream. “Why the hell are you still sitting there for! who you do you think is going to clean that mess, you fucking curse!” I held my breath as I struggled to get up.

I was afraid to even breathe, that was how painful my wounds were. When I finally got to my feet, I walked around Kandra and her minion Lisa, but she stepped on my foot with her hill. I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs.

It was so painful, and I could feel the bone of my toe breaking. But screaming was not going to help, it was just going to earn me more beatings.

“Alpha Jackson!” she removed her foot and that also made the pain worse. Alpha Jackson, the one I once considered my brother didn’t even glance at me. he walked past us followed by his beta Tylor.

His behaviour towards me had always been like that but he would at least nod my way in acknowledgement before. But not anymore. Three years ago, things changed for the worst for me. the pack was rich, and we had gotten the land that Jackson was fighting for.

Well, mama Bridget won against the rogues and their leader alpha Lucien. As I was told. It took her coming out of retirement as an alpha to help her son get to the bottom of the rogue issue. But then alpha Lucien killed her and fled to the alpha King’s mansion.

Being the king’s younger brother helped him as the king plead for him and compensated the pack well. So, the pack lacked nothing and got the land together with the money from the king. But we had a new problem.

“You like being in your head all the time, don’t you see that is what gets you into trouble?” I jumped a little, it was Tylor, thank the Goddess it wasn’t Elisa or Megan. She would have taken the biggest book in that library and hit me with it.

“Victoria, why don’t you learn? Do you like being treated this way?” I lowered my head, one time, I thought he could be my mate. Back then I didn’t know about the issue our kind had, we couldn’t sense our mates anymore and that was why alpha has many concubines now.

Also, we couldn’t have babies anymore. Apparently, I was the last baby the pack has seen or anyone of our kind has seen in nineteen years. That too has been blamed on me.

“Hey, you!” I jumped a little as he knocked on my head with his knuckles. “You are in your head again yet, I am standing right here. No wonder they call you a curse, sometimes you act like the things they say about you.”

That hurt, coming from him it hurt more than anything others had ever said to me. “Were you saying something, beta Tylor.” I couldn’t look him in the eyes, I wasn’t allowed to look anyone in the eyes, they were afraid I would pass the curse on to them.

It was funny because I had lived all my life in that pack, if I were a curse and it was contagious, then I would have given it to them all already.

“You know everyone blames you for everything had has been happening, right?” I could I not know, they reminded me of it every chance they got.

I just nodded without saying a word. “Well, as you might know, alpha and I have been travelling abroad, and we found out that the problem with conception is not only with us. Everyone is experiencing it.”

I still said nothing, I didn’t know why he was telling me that. it was not my fault even though they strongly believed it was. “You also know that you were the last baby to be born, well, that part is yet to be determined.”

He pauses, well, I already knew the story, I was found not born from anyone as they investigated back then. It was like I just fell out of the sky and landed on their doorstep and that was why I was called a curse.

It didn’t help that I hadn’t gotten my wolf yet despite being eighteen turning nineteen in three days. “The bottom line is that alpha wants you in his chambers tonight?”

My eyes widened in shock and my hands shook on the side, ‘please Goddess, don’t let it be what I think it is’ I prayed in my head, but it was useless, and I knew that. The Goddess, Selene.

Had not answered any prayers in nineteen years. Rituals had been performed many times, but it was all futile. It was like our Goddess was deaf and dumb.

“Don’t be late, you know how he is.” He walked away leaving me in a turmoil. I knew the Goddess didn’t answer prayers, but I still prayed that whole afternoon for it not to be what I thought it was. For him to be calling me for anything, other than that.

Night came and it was time to go to his chambers, I didn’t bath as I wanted him to be disgusted with me if he was thinking of that and let me go. I got to the alpha’s office looking like a slave and smelling like one.

Before I could knock, his voice sounded. “Come in.” if I didn’t know better, I would say he could smell my scent, but it was not possible as I didn’t have a wolf. I was more human than wolf.

I twisted the doorknob and walked in. three of his concubines were already there adorned in the most beautiful and sexy lingerie. It didn’t matter, no one was getting pregnant, and the alphas were getting old.

“Strip and get into the shower.” Shit!