Chapter 2: Fantasy World

“WHAT?!”

“Alpha…”

“No, this isn’t right.”

“Alpha, do you know who that woman is?”

Of all the outcries, the last was the only one that caught my mate’s attention away from my face; the outcry of the man who stood closest to him, sporting shiny blonde hair and a pale complexion a goth would kill for.

“That is an Irwin child, Alpha - the Irwin child. I knew Markus, I knew what that monster looked like, and she’s just like him.”

The alpha glanced back at me, his eyes narrowing, but I saw the way his pupils had dilated first. It didn’t matter who I was, I was still his mate.

“Omari, my mate is to be taken to my suite. Immediately.”

“B-But Alpha!” stuttered the other man with them. “She’s- she’s an Irwin! Her father is a traitor, scum of the earth.”

“Yes,” Omari agreed. “He was a traitor to his previous pack, Alpha. Killed his beta. You can see why it might make me a bit uneasy to allow his daughter into the packhouse. Alpha, what if she is just the same? She-”

“- is not her father,” the alpha finished. “And she is my mate. Take her to my goodman suite before we have issues here, Beta.” He had snarled, before turning and storming out of the room. The moment he was gone, I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding and released my thighs from the intense grip I’d had on them.

Beta Omari glared at me. “If you try anything, Irwin…”

“I wouldn’t,” I whispered, looking away.

He scoffed. “You’re an Irwin. The only thing you aren’t going to do is live peacefully.”

The guard, who showed no signs of the taste he once had for me, grabbed harshly onto my arm and dragged me out of the chair, toward the same door my mate had stormed out of. I obediently walked alongside him, hindered only by his quickened steps.

Beta Omari followed closely behind us, his presence speaking louder than his words had been. We walked through an empty house, up two flights of stairs, and then I was shoved through a door into a hallway… and locked in.

I blinked, staring at the door, before I turned to check out the space around me. There were six places to go; an archway into a kitchen-diner, a set of double doors, an archway into a hall with three ajar doors, and a locked door. Behind the double doors was a large master bedroom that looked completely uninhabited, as if no one had ever lived there; each of the doors in the separate hallway led to a smaller bedroom, two of which had only a small bed, one a double set up like a guest room. Everything was modern and bare, adorned only by necessary items.

It was immaculately clean and tidy, like nothing I’d ever seen.

I was standing in the perfect guest room peering out the window at the woods behind the house when someone came into the suite, the door loudly opening and closing out in the hall. I hurried from the bedroom, though I tried to look casual when I peeked around the corner at my mate specifically taking off his shoes before placing them into a closet. He glanced up, eyes bright.

“I should apologise for my pack’s behaviour,” he said, “but first…” - his hand stretched out toward me - “I am Jari-Einar Colborn - Alpha Jari-Einar. But you can call me Jari.”

Ja-rye-nar // Jar-ree

“Hazel,” I muttered, as I shook his hand. The skin contact caused both of us to inhale sharply, but we didn’t mention it.

“I’m sure you can understand why my pack was so wary of you, Hazel - why they are so wary of you. Just yesterday evening, the news spread around that you’d escaped. Alpha Kade has wolves out looking for you, you know.”

I gulped. “Are you going to give me up to him?”

“No.” Jari paused. “Although it is what I should do as an alpha, it is wrong of me to do that as a mate.”

A sigh of relief slipped out of my mouth.

“The only way I would give you up is if you did something unforgivable to my pack, which I do not think you will do. Of course, I could be totally wrong; you could be just like your father.”

My face crumpled into a look of disgust before I turned my back on my mate and walked toward the kitchen, the room with the best view. 

“It’s a reasonable worry,” Jari pointed out, following me.

“I know,” I grumbled, “that’s what I’m mad about.”

“All you have to do is prove everyone wrong.”

I wrapped my arms around my stomach. “Is that all?”

He fell silent, and I watched through the window as a small group of people ran into the woods together, laughing amongst themselves. I noticed they wore swimwear and carried a basket, with the classic red and white picnic blanket wrapped around one of the guys’ shoulders.

“There’s something else,” Jari admitted, following my gaze.

I turned to look at him.

“I think it’s best that, for your safety, you stay up here in this suite. It has everything you might need - a kitchen, bathrooms, a bed. Plus, an omega will come and feed you if you don’t feel like making something yourself - and they’ll clean the whole place up. I make sure it’s tidy at all times.” He gave me a half-smile. “I’d like you to feel comfortable in a tidy home.”

I frowned. “Can’t I look around? I didn’t exactly get a chance with that wolf dragging me upstairs.”

Jari’s face changed. “A wolf dragged you?”

“Yes, the guard from the prison. I think that was for ‘Omari’s safety’.” I rolled my eyes at the idea and slipped around Jari, who stood frozen still. I headed back toward the suite front door, knowing it led to the rest of the house.

But just a couple of steps away, an arm wrapped around my waist and pulled me backwards. Jari moved around me, blocking my exit. “It’s for your safety,” he reiterated.

“No, it isn’t,” I accused.

“It is, and isn’t it better for us to get to know each other while we’re alone, rather than around other pack members?” He hesitated. “If you’re my mate then you’re also a part of my pack - human or not - so that makes me your alpha. I say you have to stay in the suite with me until I decide otherwise.”

My mouth gaped open in surprise. “You can’t just do that, you don’t even know me! I’m just your mate, not a member of your pack.”

“Yes but you’re an Irwin.”

Time stopped.

“I know that’s perhaps wrong for me to use against you, but you are and there’s nothing you can do about it, Hazel. What I can do about it is stop you from going out there until my pack understands that you aren’t here to kill their beta, possibly alpha, and then five more of their warriors. Can’t you understand that?”

I could barely speak. “I’m an Irwin.”

“You already knew that.”

“I’m… an… Irwin.” Each word got louder as I spoke. “That’s your defence for locking me up in your suite like an animal?”

His jaw clicked into place. “Hazel, I told you-”

“If there’s even the slightest chance that anyone in your pack would dare to hurt me, then clearly you’re not a very good alpha. For your own pack to harm their alpha's mate?” I shook my head. “That’s truly shameful, more so than a surname ever could be.”

“Really?” he snapped. “So you think a pack trying to protect themselves by removing someone with an infamous past, is worse than having the same infamous surname as two different known killers? Really?”

“You’re shaming me!” I exclaimed at him. “What the fuck is wrong with you? Aren’t I your mate? Aren’t you supposed to, oh, trust me?! What could I ever do to you?”

There was a beat of silence.

“Your father never killed his alpha, only his beta.”

I did not even stay to hear the end of his statement, I just stormed past him toward the door, moving as quickly as I could. It felt like I was fuming from the ears, when really I was barely stomping because of my tiny size after years of captivity.

But I was determined to make my statement, to prove only that I had the same fight in me that my parents and sister had…

Until I encountered the locked door.

“If I say you can’t leave,” Jari started, quiet, “then you can’t leave.”

I flung around. “This is horrific, Jari. Say this all works out and we have children, what will we tell them about the first few days we knew each other? Do you think you’d want them to know that you kept me locked in your suite like this?!”

“I can’t risk letting you go until I can trust you, Hazel, it’s not very difficult to understand,” he exclaimed at me. “These children of ours will have the minds of alphas, too, so they will be able to understand, too. If you can’t…” He shrugged. “I suggest you make yourself at home in the guest room while I cook you something to eat. It looks like you need some nutrients.”

“You are not ending this fight just like that!” I yelled.

“I think I fucking am, actually.” Jari stormed into the kitchen, leaving me alone with the locked door. I was useless here, so I hurriedly followed him. “What do you like?”

I scoffed. “Planning your prisoner’s menu?”

“Hazel,” he warned.

“Why don’t you just send the omegas in to make me something? Or would that ruin this bonding session between us?”

He spun around. “Be grateful I didn’t let them execute you on the fucking spot.”

I closed my mouth.

“They would have done that in a heartbeat, got that? You’re a danger to the pack until proved otherwise, and I hope to the goddess that you can goddamn understand why. This place isn’t the same as your old pack, but it’s also not going to welcome the daughter and sister of known killers into its home so easily.

“So if you’re done in your fantasy world where no one’s supposed to give a shit about your background, then join me in the real world and tell me something you like so I can put some meat on your bones.”

I’d never been an emotional person, but hearing those words from the one person I was supposed to love and trust more than anyone else in the world killed me; my eyes were suddenly watering, as the reality of everything came down on me.

Not just since I’d escaped, but my entire life before then. I lived under the rule of a cruel father who killed people and told me not to tell anyone; I suffered watching him get executed for killing the one person in the pack I had really liked; when I needed someone, I was thrown away by my sister, who slowly developed a vein attitude matched only by the worst of models; I watched helplessly as she was then executed just like my father; before my niece was given away, my mother and I were imprisoned for our family’s crimes - or hers, of which I hadn’t known about; six years of imprisonment being beaten and teased; I escaped right into the arms of my mate’s pack; arms that were just as fearful as those of Alpha Kade, worried that I would kill them all in their sleep while plotting to murder their leaders.

And with all of that, my mate didn’t trust me enough to let me out of the house, either.

Tears fell from my eyes before I could stop them, and I rushed out of the kitchen into the guest room, just as Jari had told me to. I heard him following me but I clicked the lock on the door to keep him out, collapsing onto the pretty double bed.

Suddenly the room wasn’t so perfect, because it had someone totally broken inside.