“She wants to die so I should kill her!” She shouted in a shrill voice, her eyes dark and fixated on me. “This little hussy! Who are you to cause so much trouble!?” She squeezed harder.
“Grace,” Noah called his mother by her first name, his tone sending chills down my cold body. “Let her go.” He wasn’t the Alpha yet but her hands loosened their grip on my throat. She was the Luna, higher than him in status, but when he added, “Before I get pissed off,” her hands fell from my throat and tears stained her eyes.
“Noah, why are you defending this whore!” The Luna cried like her son’s girlfriend. “She has caused so much trouble for us! Alpha Norman is withdrawing all his support for our pack because of this insult.”
Ha.
If I lived, they cussed at me but if I died, they also cussed at me. Tears stung my eyes and I rubbed my reddened throat. The Luna’s strong grip crushed my windpipes and I hacked for breath on my hospital bed while the family held a discussion, ignoring my existence.
“I didn’t save her life to have you kill her,” Noah growled. “Don’t be stupid now!” He snapped.
“Don’t talk to your mother like that!” Alpha Howard growled.
“If she wasn’t so stupid -” He started with a snarl but then stopped when his eyes caught mine. “If you kill her then the deal with Alpha Norman is gone forever.”
“It’s gone already!” Luna Grace screeched. “He has asked us to send back the gifts he sent the other day.” She swerved on her heels to glare at me and I cowered, shielding my face. “You’re not even pretty so how can you object to having a rich mate?” She hissed.
Did she say a rich mate?
Alpha Norman had lost half his fortune in a legal battle after having adult relations with a twelve-year-old. His mate who just died turned eighteen on the day he married her. I would be the oldest of the three mates he had taken in his lifetime and he was already fifty-two. They were selling me off to a disgusting, perverted old man and they acted like I should be grateful to them. If audacity had a face, it would look a lot like Luna Grace, the crazy pretentious woman.
“It’s not gone.” Noah’s eyes had a twinkle in them. “She’s alive so she can get married.” His words stunned the room.
“But she tried to kill herself rather than marry him. It’s not a good look for him to mate with her after that,” Luna Grace pointed out. The Alpha stood at the sideline listening to his family make plans. It was no secret that Luna Grace ran this pack with her son while the Alpha stood as a ceremonial head.
“Let him worry about his reputation,” Noah said with a shrug. “Don’t you think it would be good for them to be mated? That way he can decide her punishment for smearing his name.” He showed an evil grin that exposed all his teeth.
“That’s a good idea,” the Alpha butted in and his son’s grin widened. “But the lunatic can try to kill herself again.”
“The mating would have originally taken place in three weeks,” Noah pointed out. I lay there with pain making my body ache while they planned how to trade me like a piece of meat. “Lock her in the dungeons until then. There’s no way for a prisoner to commit suicide.”
“Ah, you’re a genius!” The Alpha laughed, smacking his son’s shoulder jovially. Noah only gave a small and irritating smile. “Doctor!” The Alpha bellowed.
Thus, I woke up in the hospital from a near death experience and then I was shipped off to the dungeons in my hospital gown. They put handcuffs on me like a prisoner and threw me into a cell, my shoulder scraping against the wall and my skin tearing open.
The guard locked the gate and Noah stood outside, a smirk on his lip and a twinkling in his eyes. At that moment, he looked like a devil sending me to hell.
“You’re a fun toy,” he whispered.
Then, something inside me snapped and a dam exploded. My heart pounded in my ears as I gnashed my teeth. Red covered my vision as I watched his retreating back.
‘For the evil you have sown, I will be sure you reap ten times of it.’ I vowed in my heart. ‘Even if it takes my last breath, I will do everything in my power to make you suffer, Noah Howard. And your pack will be reduced to rubble.’
Red Lake had drained my will to live over the years but it was renewed at that moment. I cannot die until I ruin this pack.
I lost track of time locked in the dungeons like a filthy criminal. At first, I tried to count the days but the place was dark. I could not tell when night came or when the sun rose high in the skies. Every day was filled with darkness and pain. My body still hurt from being pushed off the balcony. I may have broken something inside but there was no way to tell because there was no doctor to examine me.
Often, the pain in my body tripled and tears spilt down my cheeks before I had time to hold them back and every time this happened, I knew my mate was getting intimate with another woman. This was the reason he didn’t reject me. He wanted me to be in pain every day as he desecrated our sacred bond.
I thought I lived an awful life until I met my mate. Noah showed me that I’d been living a happy life before he returned to the pack. Sometimes, he visited the dungeons but he never came to my cell. I didn’t see him but I felt him, much to my annoyance. Although he was metres away, my body was attuned to him in a way that could not be explained. I hated it. It made me hate him the more and I wanted it all to end.
My eyes were closed and my stomach in knots when my body froze. Hunger made me delirious sometimes but this time, it was so much worse. They hadn’t brought food for me in a long time. The mouldy bread and dirty water I got at intervals couldn’t be called a meal but it saved me from starvation. I hadn’t received a portion in what must have been days.
While I groaned in agony, I scented the last person I wanted to see in this life. Although I hated him, my body reacted to him. I thought he had come for his normal round of inspection but I felt him get closer and closer to my cell, and then I saw him.
“Miss me?” He gave a boyish grin, tilting his head to the side as the enforcer opened the door.
He was dressed in a black tuxedo, his hair slicked back and an expensive watch on his wrist.
“Do you like my watch?” He held out his hand to my face and my body reacted to his scent. It was animalistic to feel this way about someone who put me through all these but the goddess had wired me with these emotions.
I liked his scent.
“Are you too hurt to play with me?” He stroked my dirty hair. “Even though I brought food?” It was then I noticed the platter he held in one hand. I’d been so consumed by two opposite emotions warring inside me at the sight of him that I missed the tantalizing scent of food.
“Here.” He shoved a pitcher of water at me. “Drink.” The water splashed on my face as he started to pour and like a dog, I opened my mouth and lapped at the clean water pouring.
A chuckle came from above me but I closed my eyes. It didn’t matter if he laughed at me – all I cared about was satisfying the thirst that felt as deep as my soul. He could laugh all he wanted but I would lap at the water he poured on my face like a starved dog because I was nothing more than a starved dog at that point.
“Where is your dignity?” He snickered, setting the pitcher of water aside. More water had poured on me than entered my mouth, leaving me thirstier than I was before he gave me water. “It’s too early for you to break, Carrot. I’m not done playing with you yet.”
To this bastard, I was nothing more than a plaything, a toy for his amusement, a thing he could toss around as he wanted without care of it breaking. Sometimes, he acted soft and concerned for me and in the days since I’d been locked up in the dim dungeons, I wondered if he didn’t feel even a shred of emotion for me. I hated him with every fibre of my being but the barely formed mate bond made me feel weird things for him. For example, his scent made my stomach clench and it wasn’t due to disgust. It made me think it was possible that he felt even a shred of emotion for me that’s why he acted nice sometimes.
What I didn’t consider then was that Noah Howard was a psychopath that had chosen me as his victim.
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