Chapter 71 – Kidnapped by My Mate Series II: His Lost Queen

Filed To Story: Kidnapped by My Mate Novel (Belle & Grayson) Online Free by Annie Whipple

I struggled against her, but my dizziness made it nearly impossible. “W-What are you doing here?” I asked.

She stared at me with pitch-black eyes, telling me her wolf was at the surface. “I thought that was obvious.” Her smile grew. “I’ve come to kill you.”

Her hand flew to my throat, gripping it tightly and cutting off my airway. I grabbed her arm, digging my nails in and trying to pull it away from me as I gasped.

“You look awful,” Adalee continued, unfazed by my attempts to free myself. “I guess getting rejected by your mate really is as horrible as they say.”

“L-Let me g-go.” I struggled to speak over her grip on me.

“No, I don’t think so.” Her hand tightened even more, making me wheeze. “Tell me, Belle, how does it feel to know your mate doesn’t care about you? Doesn’t even care if I kill you?”

My mark burned at her words like someone was forcing scalding hot iron into my skin. I tried to scream, but it came out more like a gargled yelp.

Adalee’s expression was filled with sadistic glee. “That’s right, Luna,” she spat the title as if it were an insult.

“Your mate couldn’t give a damn about your miserable life. In fact…he’s sick of being tied to you. Remember that other she-wolf he mated with?

“He needs you dead so he can finally be with his real mate without you getting in the way.”

Every word she spoke was like a knife to my heart, agonizing and sharp. She had to be lying, right?

Grayson may hate me, may not want me as his mate, but I never thought he would consider killing me.

My head exploded with the worst blinding pain I had ever experienced. I screamed.

Grayson. I knew it was Grayson. He had never tried so hard to get into my head.

Adalee squeezed my neck so tightly that my vision went out for several seconds.

When I came to, I was coughing and gasping for air, her grip on my throat just loose enough that I could take in several deep, gulping breaths.

And then something incredible happened. Warmth, sweet and soothing, filled my form. The burning on my neck subsided a bit.

Even my head stopped hurting for the first time in months, although I could still feel the blood spilling down the back of my neck from where Adalee had shoved my skull into the hard wall.

I felt… relief. I felt safe. I felt like everything was going to be okay.

“Are you reaching out to your mate?” Adalee’s taunting voice said to me, pulling me out of my stupor.

“That’s good. Let him feel your suffering. Let him know how you felt—all the pain, all the fear—during the final moments of your pathetic life.”

I was reaching out to Grayson, I realized with shock. When I lost consciousness a few moments ago, I hadn’t been able to continue blocking him out of my mind.

My mental walls had finally fallen. He was in my brain now, sifting through my emotions. It wasn’t as though I could hear him or his thoughts, but I could feel him.

I felt his terror, anger, and stress. The part of me that still had feelings for him reached out to him, wanting to comfort him even though I knew it was wrong.

His beta was here to murder me, and he didn’t care. He would rather have me dead than have to think of me again.

Boy, did that hurt to know.

It didn’t matter, though. All that mattered was the peace that took over my form even as Adalee sneered in my face and her grip on my throat tightened once again.

I stopped fighting her, dropping my hands. Feeling that connection to Grayson made it easier to accept what I knew was coming. There was no way of fighting this.

My vision started to cave in. Strangely enough, I could feel Grayson’s panic increasing more and more with every second I stood there, waiting for my life to end.

I couldn’t help but wonder why he cared. This was his fault. None of this would be happening if it hadn’t been for him.

And yet, I still gripped onto what little comfort Grayson offered me through what was left of our broken bond as if it were my lifeline. At least I wouldn’t die still fighting him. At least I could die in peace.

Through my teary eyes, I could see that Adalee’s expression was full of pure rage. It was the kind of hatred that developed through betrayal and pain.

I didn’t know what Grayson had told her about me or why she looked at me with so much loathing in her gaze, but I wanted to tell her that I was sorry.

Whatever I had done to make her look at me that way had to have been evil. There was no other explanation.

And just as I thought everything was over for me, that my meager life was coming to an end, she dropped me.

I fell to the ground, gasping. I tried to breathe even though I still found it extremely difficult. I coughed, tasting the metallic flavor of blood. My head dropped to the wet floor.

Through my foggy vision, I could see someone standing over me. Hope filled my chest.

“Grayson?” I tried to whisper, but nothing but gasping breaths came out.

Liam’s face came into view as he crouched down in front of me. Horror immediately gripped me.

Liam’s mouth was covered in blood, dripping down his chin and to his neck. Fangs, sharp and long, were poking out from beneath his top lip.

He looked exactly like the Grayson from my nightmares.

I dragged my gaze over to the body on the ground next to him. It was Adalee. She wasn’t breathing.

Her eyes were vacantly staring at me, her throat torn open, blood flowing from the open wound and pooling around her body.

Dead. She was dead.

I looked back at Liam, who met my gaze with concern and trepidation.

The last thing I thought before I blacked out was: Vampire.

GRAYSON

AN HOUR EARLIER

My wolf was being an asshole. He wouldn’t stop forcing himself up against my consciousness, trying to take control and shift. He was pissed. Livid.

He kept reminding me that our mate was out on her own, completely unprotected and in extreme danger—and we were doing nothing about it. As if that weren’t the only thing on my mind.

“You doing okay there, Alpha?” Kyle asked me from his seat across from me. “You’re not looking too good.”

I ignored his question and continued to pace back and forth at the head of the table with my fists in my hair, barely holding it together.

Of course I wasn’t okay. I was the furthest thing from okay. I was barely eating or sleeping, unable to focus on anything but finding her.

My Belle.

The thousand-year-old wood of the table in front of me was completely covered in papers and documents, all pertaining to any clues as to where Belle might be.

I had any, and all information I could find on my mate spread out before me.

Where she went to preschool, her first job when she was fifteen, the name of her oboe instructor from fifth grade, and the doctor who treated her father for his cancer.

I even managed to get a hold of all of her yearbook pictures.

I reached out to anyone who might have known her in Minnesota, but no one had heard from her since before she left for Paris to visit her mother.

I went to her old apartment and took the time to visit her father’s grave site to pay my respect, thanking him for creating and raising the woman I would be spending the rest of eternity with.

So far, however, all I knew was that she had boarded a Greyhound bus in Minneapolis. That was the last time she’d used her credit card.

She didn’t have a cellphone or anything that could be used to track her, and her scent was long gone. Belle was too smart. She was evading me at every turn. And it was making me lose my fucking mind.

My wolf often let me know that he thought this whole thing was stupid. He was convinced that he would be able to find her if I let him out.

He would simply run and search every inch and crevice of this earth if he had to.

This was why I hadn’t shifted in nearly three months.

I knew the moment I let him out that he wouldn’t give me back control until he found Belle, and, as smart as my wolf thought he was, the only thing he would accomplish was prancing around the woods while our mate suffered.

A huge downside to keeping my wolf inside, however, was that I was extremely on edge. I moved myself and my pack into the palace of the Mortars in a complete trance.

I had only been here for a few weeks and had already proved to be the worst king in all of supernatural history.

Zagan Mortar, the former king, very quickly realized what a mistake he had made in sending my mate off on her own while I was still unconscious.

I snapped at anybody who bothered or inconvenienced me even the slightest bit and had no interest in ruling—or doing anything, really—until I had Belle by my side again.

She was my one and only concern. Zagan made up for his mistake by continuing to take on many of the responsibilities of king. I didn’t have it in me to be grateful, though. I didn’t have it in me to be anything.

The only thing holding me back from completely flipping my shit was the fact that I could feel Belle and knew she was alive and okay. She was in pain and felt incredibly uncertain and afraid, but she was okay.

She missed me. I could feel her longing to come back to me every day, and I wished with every part of my being that she would, even though I knew she wouldn’t.

The worst part was that she hated herself for it. She thought it made her weak and pathetic to still want me after everything she thought I did to her, and it broke my heart.

I wanted nothing more than to pull her to me and tell her that there was nothing wrong with her and that it was completely normal to want to be with me. I was her mate.

My heart squeezed painfully in my chest to think she would ever hate herself for something so natural as loving her mate.

I had spent the last three days in the room I was in now. It was meant as a conference room.

It sometimes made me stall to think of all of the important, influential, and historical characters who had stood in my very spot.

The room was enormous, with dark wooden walls carved with intricate designs, bookshelves with ancient literature surrounding us, and a fifty-foot-tall ceiling made completely of stained glass.

It was a work of art, the stained glass, which told the story of Evangeline and Elijah Viotto, the former hybrid king and fairy queen of the supernatural.

Its breathtaking windows bathed the room in deep, rich colors throughout every hour of the day.

Even during the night, the moonlight shone through and covered the surrounding space in a blanket of iridescent light, making me feel like I was standing in a painting.

As beautiful as it was, I often found myself looking up at the stained glass above me after throwing my head back in frustration.

Only to be faced with even more anger as I studied it, seeing the unfortunate way that Elijah and Evangeline’s story ended, with both of them dying at the hands of the first Mortar to take the throne, Damian Mortar.

Even now, my hands clenched into fists as I looked up at it through dark-red eyes.

Some said that Belle and I were Evangeline and Elijah reincarnated, as we were the two that, according to prophecy, were meant to take on their same roles, as king and queen of the supernatural.

I resented that. I would take the throne alongside Belle, but I would not have the same ending as they did.

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