I wasn’t thinking then, and the words simply flowed out in my attempt to save her life. What better way than to lay claim as a mate to an alpha of the largest packs in Alaska? Moonshine wouldn’t dare to question me or challenge my claim, lest their rogue pack become war-torn against us.
But now that we’re in Girdwood, and Rissa, the local healer, has checked Yvonne while her son is preoccupied in the pack’s nursery, I can’t help but wonder how she could have a son in the first place.
Did she move on so quickly?
Did that night in the library mean nothing to her?
A shiver of disappointment washes over me, but my feelings have to take a back seat when the door of the ward comes squeaking open. Gathering my composure, I turn in time to see Alpha Elias walk in.
“Is the newcomer still asleep?” he asks with a peculiar curiosity glinting in his eyes; as the main alpha, it’s his business, too.
I nod slowly as I rise to my feet, sighing as I admit, “She’s no newcomer, Elias.” I gesture to Yvonne’s sleeping frame on the hospital bed. “She is an ex-member of Snehvolk. Yvonne Lang.”
“Lang…?” Elias murmurs with a frown before his brows lift in recognition. “As in Giovanni Lang’s daughter?”
I nod again, my lips pressed into a firm, grim line. “Yes. She left the pack years ago and joined Moonshine out in Sunrise. She has since had a child, but her living conditions weren’t great out there.”
Elias remains silent, allowing me to update him about how I found Yvonne on the bordering river outside of Sunrise while being attacked by the betas of her pack. When I get to the part about saving her from the mob who attacked her in her cabin, I leave out the fine detail about declaring her as my mate to protect her.
It’s not like I have any reason to be afraid of announcing Yvonne as my mate. Since that day when I was forced to reject her to appease Garret, the elder has died. So have my parents.
But I can’t claim her as my mate when I have no idea what was going on while she was in Moonshine. Clearly, she moved on with another male, had his child—a perfect replica of her—and forgot all about the passion we once shared. All I know is that those words left my mouth in a moment of life and death, and I had to save her when all I wanted was to kill the mob with my bare hands.
The rage was uncontrollable, and it was as if my inner wolf took over to force those deeply buried words out of my mouth.
“That’s when I brought her here, to Girdwood,” I continue. “She was badly beaten and passed out in Sunrise. Her son is in the nursery area, but no one knows who he is or that she’s an old member of our pack.”
Elias nods thoughtfully. “I think it’s best to keep that a secret for now. We all know what the Langs did, and it won’t be safe for her here.”
“She can’t go back there,” I quickly add, to which Elias looks up with a sharpness in his eyes. “It’s not safe for her out there, either.”
Elias sighs heavily, then runs a hand through his platinum-blonde hair as he contemplates what to do.
“We’ll have to keep her in the clinic until she heals completely,” he proposes, to which I nod.
“Yes, of course. I have no idea where the child’s father is. He might come back for—”
“H-he’s gone…” a squeamish murmur interjects from behind me, prompting me to turn and find Yvonne stirring awake.
Her face contorts when consciousness settles into her body, which is plagued by the brutalities she faced at the hands of the mob. She groans as she shifts uncomfortably in the bed, and I rush to her side to offer her a glass of water from the side table.
Yvonne hesitates to drink, side-eyeing me suspiciously through daggers of shimmering silver as I tip the glass to her heart-shaped lips.
She gulps nervously as she swallows one sip of water, drawing back to avert her eyes from mine, turning her attention to Elias.
“Alpha Elias,” she instantly breathes, recognizing the alpha of her old pack.
“So, it is you, Yvonne Lang,” he remarks with a skeptically raised brow. I’m not sure what he’s thinking right now, since he has me blocked from his mind link, but I can only imagine that he has a flicker of remorse for the omega she-wolf’s condition since she once was a part of our pack.
“It is I, Alpha Elias,” she concedes with a struggling nod.
“Why did you leave the pack in the first place, Miss Lang?” Elias proceeds to question her, and she’s clearly uncomfortable, shifting on the bed as her sharp eyes flicker to me for a quick, nervous glance.
“I—um—I found my mate, Alpha Elias.”
“The father of your child?”
Yvonne squirms on the bed, her throat working on a gulp. Looming dread hangs over me like a dark cloud waiting to burst into a storm of despair. I don’t know what I was expecting, but when Yvonne nods sheepishly, I feel my heart shattering into a million tiny fragments of disappointment.
