Chapter 4

EMILIA POV 

“I don’t think I understand what you mean,” Alpha James replied to Alpha Lucas.

“I’ll take her as a prize for my win. She doesn’t seem to be worth much to you all in this pack, don’t you think?” He raised my hand and shoved it from side to side to prove his point on how frail and useless I was.

“I don’t think—”

“Who is her guardian?” Alpha Lucas questioned, ignoring and interrupting Alpha James like he had done for most of the night.

“I am,” Carlos stated, standing up. His eyes were cold and hard as he looked at me, and there was only one thing I could read from them – you have brought shame upon my name for surrendering.

“Do you have any much use for her? Will you let me have her as a prize for my win?” Alpha Lucas requested.

I expected Carlos to be a bit reluctant about letting someone take me to a pack I had no idea of, but he simply sighed and cleared his throat.

“Unfortunately, Emilia has brought nothing but shame. She has not improved throughout the years since I have adopted her after my brother’s death. I am willing to hand her to you as a prize for your win as you have won fair and square, on the condition that you take care of her just as I have taken care of her. She is my brother’s daughter, and I owe her my responsibility.”

A part of me wanted to laugh at how sincere he sounded, but the other part of me was exhausted and heartbroken at how easy it was for him to give me away to just anyone he wanted.

“Then, it’s settled. I reckon I have your blessing, Alpha James?” Alpha Lucas questioned, raising his brows at Alpha James.

“Well, if you have the approval of her adoptive father, then there’s really nothing I can do, is there?”

The celebration of the Blood Moon festival went on, and I sat in silence, now in the spot made for members of Moonclaw Pack.

I started to wonder why Alpha Lucas hadn’t told them that I was his mate. Was he ashamed of me?

I stole glances at him all through the night until the end of the festival.

“We leave by dawn. Meet me at the Southern border,” he ordered me as soon and everyone started to leave the court, not giving me a chance to leave before he left.

*

“What’s this?” Alpha Lucas questioned the next morning, taking my hand and scanning it with furrowed brows.

I withdrew my bruised hand from his grip, hiding the consequences that Carlos had made me face all through the night as a result of surrendering loudly in public.

The memories played out in my head as I recalled him giving me a parting beating and making me place my hand against a burner throughout the night so I wouldn’t fall asleep.

“It’s nothing. I fell,” I lied, even when I knew that he wasn’t naive enough to believe something like that.

We started the journey through the southern borders towards the pack of Moonclaw.

“Two hundred and fifty-four times,” Alpha Lucas said all of a sudden. “I started to count the number of times I fell twelve years ago. I have fallen two hundred and fifty-four times in twelve years, and I have never had any injuries that look like that.”

“Our bodies are different,” I argued.

“I have been burned quite a number of times, too.” As he said this, I froze. He noticed my change in demeanour, but I managed to keep walking forward to convince him that I was okay. “I do recognize burns that look like that. I also know that you wouldn’t have lied about falling if you had done that to yourself. Was it your uncle?”

I didn’t answer his question. What use was there for telling him everything about what I had been through in the hands of Carlos if we were already on our way out of the pack?

“I don’t like silence for answers, Emilia,” he informed.

“It really doesn’t matter,” I said.

“That’s also an answer in itself,” he noted, stopping and turning around.

“Wait, where are you going?” I called after him, hoping to the Moon Goddess that he wasn’t going where I thought he was going, but with each step, I realized that he really was – he was heading to Carlos’s house.

“You really don’t need to do this. I’ll heal. We’re leaving. It doesn’t matter,” I tried hard to change his mind, but he kept walking forward without paying attention to me until we were right at Carlos’s doorstep.

Carlos opened the door upon hearing the knock on it, only to be greeted by Alpha Lucas punching him right in the face. Alpha Lucas, not giving him time to recover from the effect of the punch, grabbed Carlos by the hair and slammed his head into the door seven times before letting him fall to the ground.

“It’s my token of appreciation, for taking care of my mate all these years,” Alpha Lucas said, grabbing me by the arm and leading me back to the border.

*

As we kept walking, the silence got even worse and deepened until we walked right into Moonclaw.

“Welcome to my pack, Emilia,” he announced, leading me towards his house, where I found a lady walking down the stairs and into the living room.

“Oh, you brought someone along.” She smiled, walking towards me and taking my hands. “How lovely. What’s your name?”

“Emilia,” I responded, noting how similar her hazel eyes were to Alpha Lucas’s.

“Are you his mate, or did he just bring you here for his own fun?”

At her question, I swallowed the lump that grew in my throat. How often did he being people for his fun? What kind of fun? Was I supposed to tell her that I was his mate?

“She’s my mate,” Alpha Lucas replied before I could. “She doesn’t answer questions much.”

“I’m Katarina,” she introduced, “Lucas’s sister.”

She pulled me in for a hug and whispered the strangest words in my ears.

“Welcome to hell, Emilia.”