CHAPTER 3

‎ “He rejected me,” I started to explain myself to my father as he took slow and intentional steps toward me. A part of me knew it was useless, explaining myself. There was nothing I could possibly say that would stop him from doing whatever he wanted.“You saw it, he didn’t want anything to do with me,” I added.“And he said it’s because you’re an omega. A weak one. Which isn’t exactly a lie, now, is it?” He asked me darkly.A small, rebellious part of me had the urge to snap at him and tell him he had his role to play in this as well. He was the beta who had betrayed Alpha Kaelen’s father. Even if I wasn’t an omega, it would have been hard for him to accept me as his mate anyway.I barely had any time to collect my thoughts when he exploded like a wildfire.“You humiliated me!” He screamed like a man without flaws and faults. “You stood there and exposed your weakness without even standing up for yourself!”What was I supposed to say when my mate was attacking me with hurtful words? I was in shock.“I told you to catch his attention, not disgust him!” He roared at me as his face twisted with pure hate. “Do you ever get anything right in your miserable little life?!”I did catch his attention. What disgusted him was not me exactly, but what I had been broken to become. And my father’s history as well.“I regret the day you were born into this world. You have always been a mistake,” he spat with venom.His words didn’t hurt anymore. They were simply refrains of what he had said before. There was nothing he would insult me with that I hadn’t heard from him before. “I tried,” I whispered weakly. My voice cracked from the slight effort. “I just…I didn’t know things would end this way and—”A sharp slap across my cheek cut me off. My head jerked sideways, giving me a momentary whiplash. The sting of the slap was immediate and hot, reminding me of what kind of man I called my father.“You were born wrong!” He hissed at me. “How else can a man strong enough to be a beta like me have something so cursed like you, an omega? I needed a weapon for a child. One that would carve a path for me. Why couldn’t you be strong like the others?! Why did you have to shift at sixteen instead of when you turned ten like every other normal wolf out there?!”I remembered the night I had shifted clearly. Four years ago, sixteen without any hope of having a wolf after I had missed the chance to shift on my tenth birthday. It had happened so suddenly. One minute, I felt nothing. The next, my bones were shifting and turning.There was nothing I could say in response. He didn’t need me to explain myself. All he wanted was for me to bleed, and I could tell.“No, please!” Even then, I still couldn’t fight off the urge to beg him to spare me as he grabbed my hand and dragged me down to the basement where I had been kept prisoner more than I would have liked.There was a dim light hanging from the ceiling, casting eerie shadows along the walls of the basement. Shadows that had spoken to me on lonely nights in the basement. I had been brought down here a lot as punishment.But it was different this time, and I could feel it.“What… No, no, no. Please, don’t do this. I admit that I made a mistake,” I pleaded as he grabbed a leather I was familiar with. It was carefully threaded with silver so that only the person holding it would control where the silver touched so it wouldn’t burn.Peter didn’t care. He grabbed my hands and strapped them with the leather.“I’ve had enough of you being weak,” he said as he smeared something cold and dark across my chest. From the strong smell of iron emanating from it, I knew it was blood. And then he started to chant words I’d never heard before.“I’m done waiting,” he muttered under his breath. “If the goddess didn’t bless me with a powerful child, I’ll just have to make do with the one she gave me. I’ll awaken something in you, Seraphina. Something even the most powerful alphas will have no other choice than to bow to.”And that was how it started. Days of torture. He kept me tied up in the basement, bringing food and water only once daily before he would start his strange rituals.He would burn herbs, slice the palm of his hand, chant spells I didn’t think he was supposed to even know about. Each night, there were more cuts and more symbols. My bones ached with fatigue.But I didn’t cry. Not anymore. Something in me was changing, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I started to feel strange. Like something was crawling beneath my skin. I would wake up in the middle of the night with a burning ache in my chest, drenched in my own sweat. Worst of all, it felt like these emotions weren’t mine. There was pure rage and so much loneliness.Kaelen.It had to be him. Each time I felt it, I also felt the tug of the mate bond.I felt his fury pulsing through me like fire. I felt his rage at everyone, everything, and even himself. He was clinging so tightly to control, desperately fighting the madness that clawed at his mind.“Goddess,” I whispered one night as I felt his hunger. It was so wide, so vast, that it didn’t have a start or an end.Hunger for me.I felt his longing and his need every night, rendering me unable to sleep. The mate bond wasn’t breaking, but it was evolving. It seemed to be growing.I soon started to lose track of time. The only thing that would wake me up to what was happening around me was Peter’s voice. His methods were even more brutal than the last.One day, without warning, he burst into the basement in a hurry that made me panic. He moved fast as he untied my wrists. The silver burned, but I didn’t scream.“Go into your room now. Go put on something decent. Make sure it covers your sleeves and your wrists. Cover your bruises,” he ordered me as he yanked me out of the basement and pushed me into my bedroom.With each stair I climbed, my muscles felt even more sore and my skin more raw.I picked a navy blue dress. It fit snugly across my skin, comforting me like the hug I longed for but never got. I smoothed my hair back and hurriedly put makeup on my face as I heard Peter’s approaching footsteps.“Well, come on!” He whispered aggressively at me as he grabbed my hand and led me out of the bedroom.My stomach twisted into knots when I smelled him. Pine and rain. Something natural and so familiar.Kaelen.I froze at the bottom of the stairs as my gaze collided with his. He stood in the center of the living room, his black coat wet from the drizzle of rain outside. His chest rose and fell like he had been running, and his eyes were so ferocious and locked onto mine, never leaving.I could tell without anyone saying anything to me. He was there for me.   

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