Page 62 of Knocked Up By My Fated Alpha
Matthew let out a broken laugh that held no mirth.
“All these years, you were so hung up on her that you never took another mate.” His eyes fixed on mine, dead serious. “Don’t act like you don’t want to know why she did what she did.”
At the sound of his words, the scene that had haunted me for years rushed to the forefront of my mind. In a blink, I was back to that bloody day and to the moment where I knelt with the body of my older sister cooling in my arms, the cries of my people fighting and dying a dark symphony in the air.
Rielle stood barely a few feet away after rejecting me. So close I could have reached out and crushed her throat for her betrayal, but I didn’t.
I couldn’t.
“Don’t hate me too much for this, Damien,” she’d whispered, tears sparking in those eyes I’d fallen in love with. “Please.”
Back in the present, I stared at the sleeping woman who’d broken me once. Matthew stood still, watching me with eyes as dull as flints, already knowing the decision I would make.
Raven was waitingwhen I returned to the pack house, bone weary and tired. She drifted towards me, the smile on her lips fragile and shy from our new intimacy, yet impossibly radiant, and I felt the darkness on my shoulders lift and my worries ease at the sight of her.
For a moment, I wanted nothing more than to embrace her, to hold her, to take in her scent, secure in the knowledge that all would be right in the world if I just held her.
“You’re back,” Raven shifted on her feet almost abashedly, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. A flush rose to her cheeks as she stared anywhere but at me. “I wanted to talk—”
I saw the moment Raven noticed. The moment her beautiful smile slipped, her movement stilling as she caught sight of the person who’d pretty much tucked herself behind me, seemingly terrified of anything that moved.
I wish I had kissed Raven one more time. I wish she had finished that sentence. More than that, I wished I weren’t so consumed by the past. By my hatred.
“Raven, this is Rielle,” I said. “My former mate.”
Chapter Twenty
Raven
“Alpha Damien still hasn’t arrived?” Irene, the pack doctor who oversaw my pregnancy, seemed surprised.
I smiled, but it felt more strained than anything.
“He sent word that he won’t be able to make it.”
In those hours when Alpha Damien and I fell into each other’s arms, I thought everything would change and that we could become…No. It didn’t matter what I wished for.
Everything had changed after all, just not in the way I’d expected.
Alpha Damien drew me aside shortly after he had Rielle settled in the pack house.
“Rielle will be returned to the Sky Pack once she is recovered.”
I didn’t look at him. I couldn’t.
“I understand.”
He caught my chin between his index finger and thumb, forcing me to look at him. His voice was so tender and deep, it almost undid me.
“Raven.”
Pushing down all the emotions I felt certain would drown me, I met Damien’s gaze.
“She’s your soul mate, and we are co-parents who sometimes sharea purely physical relationship. You don’t need to explain yourself to me.”
Alpha Damien let go of me, his gaze shuttering, the wall between us springing to life again.
“Of course.”
