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Chapter 287
EMILY
The stranger-Axel-is cold and indifferent.
His expression is harsh and unforgiving as he stares at me.
Could my wolf be wrong?
How can this man be our mate?
He stands before me, unfeeling and unsympathetic, like a statue of ice.
“I told you not to say it,” he growls at me, and I want to run from him, but he’s holding my arm in a
bruising grip.
“I-I’m sorry,” I stutter out, wishing I could take it back.
“Since you’re so insistent on knowing,” he says, tone cutting and caustic. “Yes, it does seem like you’re
my mate. But I do not accept it. I do not accept you.”
I flinch and feel myself shrinking.
Of course he doesn’t accept it.
Or me.
I’m damaged goods.
I spent ten years being locked up.
And even though no one knows my secret, I’m dangerous, broken and unlovable.
“Are you rejecting me?” I whisper, and already I can feel the pain of our mate bond tearing jaggedly
apart.
“Yes, Emily. I reject you.”
Follow on NovᴇlEnglish.nᴇtThe ache turns into a sharp shot of pain like an elastic pulled too tight and suddenly snapped.
I cry out, and my knees give way, but Axel doesn’t let me fall.
He dispassionately holds me up, and I barely have time to recover from the slowly fading pain, before
he’s dragging me into motion.
If rejecting the mating bond hurt him, he certainly didn’t show it, and I’m left wondering if this man can
feel anything at all.
Who is he, even, and how did he come to be part of the Rathborn pack?
My Brother’s top men, I assume, since Aaron entrusted him enough to help find me.
“Let me go!” I shout at him, pulling against his hold.
I’m strong.
Stronger than a regular wolf should be thanks to the old Roberts Alpha and his experiments.
But apparently Axel is stronger.
He easily subdues my struggles and growls at me, eyes glowing for a brief moment.
“You will go back to the house, Emily. Now. Aaron wants to see you, and since Aaron is pack Alpha,
you will obey him, which means you will obey me.”
In that instant, I hate this cold, arrogant, horrible man.
I’m glad he rejected me.
Clearly, being mated to him would be a fate worse than death.
Something I am already familiar with.
“I’ll return only because I want to see my brother, not because you tell me to,” I tell him stubbornly, even
though part of me fears how he will retaliate for my defiance.
This time when I tug on my arm, he lets me go.
But it’s calculating, designed to humiliate me, because I’m not expecting it, so I end up falling
backwards into the snow.
He looks down dispassionately at me.
“Shift so we can run back. It’ll be quicker,” he orders as if he is an Alpha in his own right.
Where does he even get the audacity?
However, before I can say anything, he shifts himself, and then stands there staring at me.
I can tell he’s impatient and disgusted with me, even in wolf form.
My cheeks burning with shame and self-loathing, I shift and then obediently follow Axel all the way
back to the mansion.
The closer we get, the more anxiety twists my stomach into knots.
If Aaron is back, then I’ve got no doubt his traitorous bi ch of a
wife is here too.
I can’t believe after everything, not only did Aaron marry the daughter of our enemy, he went and fell in
love with her- mated her-as if the war that killed our parents, the pack who were responsible for all the
misery inflicted on us as children didn’t matter any longer.
The old Roberts Alpha, he made it clear one of the main reasons he’d held me captive instead of
simply killing me, had been because he’d been forced to hand his daughter over to Aaron in order to
maintain a peace he didn’t even want.
He would come and visit me regularly, giving me updates on Leah’s life I didn’t want to hear.
Many, I refused to believe.
Like when he came to tell me that Aaron had eventually married Leah, as per the agreement.
I’d thought he was lying.
Just another way to torture me.
But the truth when I’d finally been freed from my captivity had
Follow on Novᴇl-Onlinᴇ.cᴏmbeen so much worse.
And the fact that she had been the one to find me?
I hated it.
In fact, I didn’t even believe it.
I’m completely sure she knew where I was the entire time.
Her father or brother would have told her-bragged to her- about the truth of my captivity.
She would have chosen to continue my imprisonment once her father and brother died.
She probably loved knowing that I was out there alive, and Aaron was just walking around in oblivion,
grieving me when I wasn’t even dead.
But once she thought Aaron was dead, she’d needed a reason to maintain control and sympathy of the
pack, so she devised this whole thing about accidentally ‘discovering’ I was being held captive so she
could look like a hero to the pack members, and they would want to keep her around.
As I shift and walk back into the house-even though it’s my childhood home-it feels like walking back
into a prison. Like I might never see daylight again.
It takes everything within me not to turn and flee.
777
Pretty much the only reason I don’t do it is because of Axel’s threatening presence, and the fact I know
he won’t let me get
far.
My only hope lies in getting through to Aaron.
Somehow, I have to make him see his mate for the lying, two-faced manipulative bit h she is.
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