Filed To Story: Claimed by the Alpha I Hate Book Read Free
Nolan, we were together. How did I end up out here?’ I stammered, trying so hard not to lose my shit.
‘You need to let me through to you. Okay, Daisy? I’ll be able to tell where you are, and
I’ll use the shadows to come to you. It’s- it’s going to be okay. It’s all going to be okay.’ She chanted, but the edge in her voice gave me the feeling she was trying to convince us both.
I nodded even though she wasn’t here to see it.
‘Okay. Bring…bring some clothes with you, please.’ I whispered, shutting my eyes, and succumbing to the maelstrom inside of my head.
It could’ve been minutes or even hours that passed before I felt the air cleave in two as my best-friend appeared in her shadow beast form. Her paws slammed into the ground, kicking up tendrils of shadow that evaporated into thin air. The sound of flesh tearing in two was abrupt and made me flinch, but not a second later a pair of arms wrapped around my shoulders and helped bring me to my feet.
“Daisy…” Breyona whispered; her eyes wide as they darted around the ring of slaughtered animals. “…
what happened?”
“I don’t know. I don’t fucking know. I can’t remember. Goddess, why can’t I remember?” My voice cracked and
Breyona yanked me forward into her arms.
“We’re going to figure this out. It’s going to be okay. You’re going to be okay.” She promised, but the waver in her voice told me she was just as shaken up. “What’s the last thing you remember?”
“ANolan and I, we swam at this lake and had a picnic. Oh, Breyona. He proposed to me.” I managed to hold back a sob but was powerless to the ragged gasp that clawed at my chest when I looked down at my left hand and saw it was bare. “The ring, it’s gone. I lost it…”
“We’ll find it, Daisy. I’ll scour this entire fucking forest myself, but we will find it.”
She said fiercely, but I was far past listening.
Again, I shouted down the mate-bond only to be met with a wall of blistering pain that threw me out on my ass.
“Nolan, there’s something wrong with him. I-I think he’s dying, Breyona. I can’t get to him. Oh, he’s in so much pain.” I cried out, clutching at my stomach and doubling over as absolute devastation tore me in half. 2
“Daisy, listen to me.” Breyona hardened her grip on my shoulders until I had no choice but to look her in the eye. “Nolan is alive, but-but there’s more important things you need to deal with right now. Do you understand?”
With every fiber of my being I wanted to grab her back and scream, “What’s more important than my mate? Nothing! Absolutely nothing!”
I didn’t, though, because staring into her eyes brought something to my attention, something I might’ve missed if she hadn’t forced me to get myself together.
Her eyes were bloodshot, the whites tainted pink from the thin veins crawling like earthworms. There were bags beneath her eyes from lack of sleep, but they were swollen and an angry shade of red.
“You’ve been crying. Breyona…why were you crying?” I whispered, my panic skyrocketing when grief clouded her eyes and drew tears of silver down her cheeks.
“You’re scaring me, Breyona. Did something happen to Nolan? What happened? Tell me. Tell me, now!”
I didn’t realize I was shaking her, or that I’d even put my hands on her to begin with. My vision was tunneling and all I could make out was her face-her tear- stained face so heavy with loss that I knew, I just knew, something awful had happened.
“Cordelia…she’s dead, Daisy. She was murdered.” Breyona said softly, her lips quivering with each word. 1
“No, that-that can’t be right.” I gaped, a cold chill passing down my spine. “Why do I feel like you have more to say? Did- Did more happen?”
“Daisy, your grandma and Sean…”
Every word from that point on became a low buzz in my ears, melting into the white noise that flooded my senses to the point of overload. Disbelief wasn’t a strong enough word to encompass the absolute denial shocking my system, frying my insides the way lightning crackled along the treetops, cooking the bark until it turned to white ash.
She couldn’t possibly be right. No, I wouldn’t believe it.
My best-friend was lying.
She had to be.
It was all a blur up until the moment my feet. hit the polished tile floors of the towns Hospital.
Breyona steadying me as I screamed, the air melting from between my fingers, replaced with shadow and night, was vacant from my memory.
“Room 232…” A faceless woman in cheery, rainbow scrubs said to Breyona.
I blinked and we were down the hall. The second time and a set of elevator doors were closing, a third and we were in another hall, approaching an open doorway where the scents of my friends and family poured from within.
Every step we took was another chance to get ahold of myself, to control the ragged breaths that slid past my lips.
It wouldn’t have mattered. I wasn’t sure even Nolan himself could put together the broken shards of my heart, not when I stepped into the room and saw her.
The woman on the hospital bed, frail and much too thin, couldn’t have been my grandma.
This couldn’t be the same woman that put her entire heart and soul into every pastry she baked to the point where she had the entire town hooked on her desserts. 1
Grandma’s face wasn’t this lumpy, this misshapen or speckled with black and blue splotches like deadly flowers blooming beneath the skin. This wasn’t the woman who would spend all morning baking, dancing to a tune only she could hear while the cottage filled with the mouthwatering scent of cinnamon and baked apples.
This had to be some kind of sick joke.
I told myself this over and over again, but her scent-the scent I’d memorized over the long year I’d lived with her, said otherwise.
The only solace, and the only thing keeping me together, was the steady beep from the heartrate monitor at her bedside.
I scanned the room to find Breyona, but instead spotted Mason, Clara, and Holly.
Clara was rubbing Mason’s back in slow, soothing circles, her grief-stricken eyes on where grandma laid in bed. Even the witch, who had somehow become a part of this pack, cared for grandma. Mason’s hazel eyes were bright with tears, the green specks so much brighter when he cried without abandon.
His lips were moving, saying something, but I couldn’t make out the words. Holly was rigid, carved from stone as her attention darted back and forth between grandma and I, unable to settle on one thing.
Chris appeared in the doorway, charging over to grandma’s bedside, his mouth moving but nothing emerged.
I found Breyona standing off to the side, her hand against her lips to muffle the sobs that wracked her chest.
“Where is my dad?” I asked her.
“He’s downstairs…” She whispered, her voice teetering on the edge of a sob. “… identifying the body.”
Again, I blinked and was elsewhere, standing in a dimly lit hallway on the bottom floor of the Hospital. 2
The Morgue.
New Book: Veiled Desires of the Alpha King Novel
Dayson was the alpha of the largest pack in North America. Powerful figures from other packs sought to offer gorgeous girls as potential mates for Dayson. He steadfastly rejected these advances, he was not a pawn to be manipulated. But eventually there came a mysterious girl he could hardly say No. Who was she?