Chapter 5

Zayn Pov 

I slammed the door hard enough to crack the frame and tore through the room like something in my chest needed a target more than it needed sense. A table went over. Glass shattered against the far wall. I don't remember picking anything up. Just the sound of things breaking, and some small, distant part of me thinking it still wasn't enough.

"What the hell was that, Zayn?" Raphael, right behind me, breathless from keeping pace.

I didn't answer. My hands were shaking. I put one through the wooden frame of a chair just to feel something give under me for once.

"You made her your damn personal slave," Raphael said, louder, angrier, like he had any right to be. "You were supposed to execute her, or ship her off to the vampires like the others."

"I can't deal with you right now." My voice came out lower than I meant it, dangerous, Leo clawing at the inside of my skull, restless in a way I didn't have energy for yet.

"Why's your wolf trying to surface?" Tristan asked. He was the only one in the room still using his head instead of his mouth.

"Because he wants to be with his mate." The word left me before I'd decided to say it out loud to anyone, before I'd even fully let myself think it.

Tristan went very still. "What. What do you mean, mate. Don't tell me she's your mate."

"Yes."

"Whose mate?" Raphael, still not catching up, still standing there useless.

"The slave, dummy," Tristan said to him, and I don't remember choosing to move.

Leo got there before I did. My hand closed around Tristan's throat and lifted him half off the floor. My beta. My oldest friend. I didn't care.

"Don't you dare call her a slave." My voice wasn't fully mine, something older riding underneath it. "She is MINE. My mate."

"Let him go, Zayn," Raphael said, somewhere far off, the words taking too long to reach me.

"It's ALPHA," I snarled, and dropped the full weight of it over him, and he folded, one knee hitting the floor, head bowed before he'd decided to bow it.

"I'm sorry, Alpha," he said, fast, desperate. "Please. Give Zayn control back."

I let go. Tristan hit the floor coughing, one hand at his throat, and it took a full breath before I felt my own hands again, before I could tell where I ended and Leo's fury stopped.

*You've always been too soft on him,* Leo said, disgusted, before he pulled back and left me standing in a room I'd just wrecked, staring down at my beta gasping for air on the floor.

"What the hell, Zayn," Tristan managed, once his breath came back, still not standing, still watching me like I might do it again.

"She's my mate. That's what the hell it's about." I dragged a hand down my face. "Leo won't let me hurt her. Best I can do for what's left of my sanity is make her my personal slave."

Silence. Raphael stayed on one knee, not moving, not looking at me.

"You're lucky you never got to sleep with her," Tristan said to him, some of the tension finally cracking, dry humor bleeding back into his voice. "He would've killed you."

Raphael scratched the back of his neck, still not meeting my eyes. "I did try. She stopped me herself." A pause. "Suppose I owe her a thank you. For the kick."

"I think you should," Tristan said, laughing despite himself.

Raphael shot him a sharp look, then turned back to me.

"So what are you going to do," Tristan asked, careful now, standing but keeping his distance. "Are you accepting her?"

Something in my chest went white-hot. "Never." Flat. Final. "I am never taking a human as my mate."

"You can't reject her either. You know what that does to you."

"I know what it does." My jaw ached from how hard I was clenching it. "That's why she's my personal sl..."

I couldn't finish it. My tongue locked. My skull split down the middle, pain so sharp I nearly dropped to my knees, Leo screaming behind my eyes at the word before I could even get it out.

Raphael, wisely, said nothing.

"Can't believe we waited this long for our Luna to be human," Tristan said quietly, more to himself than either of us.

*I want to see her,* Leo said, and it wasn't a request. *Why aren't we with her right now.*

*You know what her kind did to our parents,* I said back. *We can't accept her.*

*I don't care what her kind did. She isn't the ones who killed them.*

*They're the same kind,* I screamed at him, and cut the link before he could answer, before I had to hear him say it again, before I had to feel how much I wanted him to be right.

That was the part I couldn't afford to sit with. Not the anger. The wanting.

Tristan and Raphael were both watching me in silence. They knew the look of me mid-argument with something that wasn't either of them.

"He's not taking it well," Tristan said finally.

"No. He wants to see her."

Raphael glanced up. "Should I have the guards bring her here?"

"Do it."

A few minutes later, a knock came at the door.

"Bring her in," I said, and hated how much of me meant it.