What?!Darien growls.We never promised such a thing!
We really didn’t. Sure, I was contemplating the thought sometimes, but deep inside, I always agreed with Darien that she is not the right person for us, and that I want to meet my mate.
“With his meek personality, it will be easy for you to win him over,” Mom says.
“And if nothing else helps, we can make him drunk or give him a potion,” Dad adds. “Then you can do the deed.”
“I could try to get pregnant that way,” Lissa muses.
“An honorable man like Forest would never ditch a pregnant woman,” Dad chuckles. When he says ‘honorable’, it sounds like an insult.
“No one stands in your way, Lissa,” Mom says. “We didn’t get rid of that other girl for nothing.”
At that, something inside me freezes, a cold hand suddenly grabs my heart. It doesn’t just stop at me; the cold enwraps Darien as well, putting us both in a state of utter shock.
The other girl?
eight
The Other Girl
*FOREST*
For a moment, my heart is beating so fast I feel dizzy, but it suddenly slows down so much that I am not sure if it’s beating at all. I only feel cold; dark and scary dread settles into me.
The other girl?
The other girl…
It can’t mean what I think it means. It just can’t!
“I felt sorry for her,” Mom says. “But she needed to go.”
“If Forest had spotted her and realized they were mates, he would have done everything to keep her. He is weak, but his morals show at the wrong time,” Dad says. “He doesn’t have the interests of the pack in his mind, at times like these. We couldn’t allow it to happen.”
“Good thing she was one of your friends, Lissa,” Mom says. “So, you were able to notice it in time.”
“Yeah, we were hanging out on her eighteenth birthday, and she told me she smelled some heavenly scent.”
I feel the same cold dread that keeps suffocating me, crawling on my wolf now. He is usually one who is quick to anger, but now he is just shocked.
My heart stutters, once, twice, and then a third time, beating so irregularly that I am scared I might suffer a heart attack.
It couldn’t have been so long ago; a couple of years, maybe. One of Lissa’s friends who suffered a sudden death around her eighteenth birthday… A sweet young woman with brown locks. She was a bit younger than Lissa and me. We only talked a very few times. I remember her being shy and of no specific rank.
Her name was Hannah.
My mate.
I had a mate!
I had a mate, and my parents knew about it. They killed her. They fucking killed her! I know they always found me incompetent and useless. I know Dad, in particular, didn’t like who I am, and how I don’t resemble him at all. But it’s one thing to humiliate and shun me, but an entirely different one to kill another person?!
To kill my mate!
How could…
I feel something cold grip me again. And then, in a flash, I feel Darien take over, his strength overpowering me suddenly. For a moment, I believe he will rush into the room and rip them all apart, or die trying, because Dad still has his alpha power.
