Chapter Four: Crumbling Fear

Following behind Jeremy through the growing dark forest, my wolf screamed relentlessly, in my brain demanding that I head back into the main section of the pack where our mate stood. Even though that was exactly what my body was almost begging me to do, with the orders from my father and which Alpha was said to be visiting, I continue putting as many blocks as I could to block out my wolf and hoped my mate would still be there on my return.

“Where are we going, Jeremy?” Isla’s frightened voice asks as she rested on my hip, with the terrain we were walking through and how dark and deadly the woods were becoming, I didn’t want her to get hurt if she fell over.

“According to the map father kept from when he was a border guard, there is a hidden creek down the southeast corner of the border, we’ll wait there until father mind-links telling us Alpha Lucian has left.” Jeremy replied looking down at the old map in his hands and continuing to push through the overgrown bushes and trees that seemed to not have been walked in many years.

“What if Alpha Lukas realises we’re not there?” Was my next question having to steady my feet when the ground seemed to incline steeply, Isla allowing my body to be somewhat unbalanced which made this journey that much more difficult.

“Alpha Lukas has the fact of appeasing this deadly Alpha to worry about rather than some family that he and his pack neglected after mother was sick. He won’t notice.” Jeremy grumbled angrily soon remembering how the entire pack seemed to turn their backs on us when mother became sick, after everything our father did for them, we were simply tossed aside.

Nodding my head having to agree with Jeremy, I couldn’t help but feel relieved that I didn’t have to stand in the same facility as Alpha Lucian, a man said to be the embodiment of death and destruction, even though my wolf seemed to want that very thing.

“I can’t believe you left the area after we found our mate!” She growled angrily at me after having broke through yet another one of my blocks, her voice hurting my already pained head due to everything that was happening.

“I didn’t have any other choice; father already made his decision, and Jeremy wasn’t going to ignore that! We can go and find our mate once that Alpha leaves!” I replied hoping to come to some sort of compromise with my wolf who had never been so angry, but from the growl, I realised there was no room for compromise and all she wanted was her mate.

As she went to scream in my head that I needed to turn around as she’d done numerous times since I entered the forest, loud booming voices of men seeming to be hunting something sound behind us. Gasping out of fear and whipping my head around to the everlasting forest below us due to the hill, I spot many men dressed in our guard's outfits seeming to head towards us.

“Jeremy.” Was all I said out of fear as though he also didn’t hear what was happening, looking away from the map he was concentrating on this entire time and to these men, I saw the shock in his face as he took my arm and began to drag me faster up the hill.

“Keep pushing!” He shouted as though these men weren’t trained to hear the tiniest pin drop and would have heard his orders, feeling my own adrenaline pumping so fast with fear, I do as I’m told and bound even faster up the hill, Isla holding so tightly onto my arm and crying into my neck.

Somehow reaching the top of the hill without falling to the ground, Jeremy looks around frantically as though this hidden creek would show itself to us in this moment but as I began to look around the almost pitch-black scene, even more guards bounding up the hill allowed me to scream. They had surrounded us and gave us no room to run, this fact angering Jeremy as he pushed me and Isla behind him with a growl.

“BACK OFF!” He growls in anger seeming to circle us with the number of guards pouring the area, my entire body soon shaking with fear and my heart pounding fast, I worried I’d soon pass out.

“By order of the Alpha, we are to take you back to the centre of pack immediately!” One of the largest guards demands and before long, we were completely surrounded in the centre, tears rolling down my cheeks while Isla, hid her face in my shoulder.

“STAY AWAY FROM MY SISTERS!” Jeremy shouted staring at the guards and before we could blink, he sprinted towards the guards with his claws extended.

But as though these guards could see what he was planning from that moment, he was soon tackled to the ground, and four huge men jump on top of him restraining him and his fights. Watching as Jeremy was chained up with the thickest chains I’d ever seen and pulled to his feet, even more guards pile in behind me and almost push me down the hill with Isla still in my arms.

“Unless you want the same treatment as your brother, walk.” One of them growls right in my ears, his voice emitting the darkest feeling of dread through me, I was shocked I still managed to hold Isla in my hands with how much I shook.

Knowing I didn’t have any other choice and I’d be taken back even if I fought, I do as the guard says and begin my journey back down the hill, Jeremy being dragged in front who didn’t quit his fights for even a second.

“Adeline, I’m scared.” Isla whimpers in my ear while her face still buried deep into my shoulder, the forest we had entered to escape seeming to thin out as we travelled back through the pack.

“It’s okay, just hang onto me and we’ll be home soon.” I whispered back hoping to keep her fears at bay even though my body was almost falling to the ground in that fear, all until that beautiful smell started to drift into my nose again.

The closer we walked back to the main section of pack, the more potent that mouthwatering smell grew and the more my wolf seemed to bound about in my head ecstatic as though she hadn’t been hounding my brain with her angered thoughts since we entered the forest!

Due to the extremely late hour, as we entered the centre of the pack where each pack member seemed to be waiting, large lanterns and even pits of fire filled the area in an orange glow only adding onto the darkness and despair I felt. Following behind the guards who were pulling Jeremy to the front who was now covered in mud and blood due to his fights, the same magnetic pull that carried my body towards here before, filled each sense of mine and seemed to give me that push to continue walking, even though in this moment my brain was telling me to do the opposite.

As we reached the edge of what seemed to be a little walkway created by the pack members who nervously stood either side, the smell became even more pungent than before, and I felt as though I was suffocating but breathing just fine. Freezing in place the moment I looked ahead and saw the beautiful man I discovered was my mate, it didn’t take me long to realise something terrifying, this man was Alpha Lucian… I was mated to Alpha Lucian whose eyes locked onto mine the second I stopped dead in my tracks at the end of the walkway and this time… a smirk filled his lips.

I couldn’t be mated to this monster, could I?