Filed To Story: Claimed by the Alpha I Hate Book Read Free
A flash of brown curls flitted past as
Breyona launched herself into Giovanni’s arms. She tangled her fingers in his hair and let out her sigh of relief into his neck.
Deacon, Dina, and Spence were the next to approach. I imagine we all had the same expression on our faces, grim without the barest hint of victory.
More and more Vampire’s were traversing the cluttered streets to the center of the safe haven, to the community center that served as a sort of Town Hall. Children clutching ash stained stuffed animals padded behind their mother’s and father’s, hiding behind legs and torso’s as they scanned their surroundings with frightened eyes.
“This is the safe haven we’ve heard so much about?” A refined and almost nasal voice chimed.
Deacon’s eyebrows lifted as he turned. Dina and Spence locked eyes, something private passing between the two of them. Tristan made a sound low in his throat, his icy eyes darkening.
“Mother.” He said as a warning and not a greeting.
I hadn’t even noticed her standing there, the woman with soft blonde hair and an upturned nose. She had a delicate pearl necklace around her slender throat, one that matched perfectly with her powder blue dress and black pumps. There wasn’t a single curl on her head that was out of place. Clearly she’d gotten here long after the fight had ended.
Her eyes swiveled to my face, recognition and disdain melting into one festering pool that I did not have the energy to deal with.
“So, you’re our new Monarch. Daisy, isn’t it?” She purred, the obliviousness in her voice as flimsy as her smile.
I barely spared her a glance.
Deacon cleared his throat. “Considering you’re on her land, why don’t you show some goddamn respect and call her by her title?”
Upon hearing his threatening baritone, I tuned out everything else. Tristan’s mother’s reply was shrill and fell on deaf ears. One after another, emotions impaled me in the chest. The longer I assessed the damages, the more I realized how long it would take to restore this place to what it had once been.
Months of hard work reduced to rubble in the span of two hours.
“Honestly, you can’t actually expect us to live here, Tristan.” She scoffed; a delicate hand pressed against her bird chest. Her voice lowered to a whisper that wasn’t nearly quiet enough to be an actual whisper. “Think about your sister for Goddess sake. Do you expect her to live in a hovel?” 1
‘Don’t.’ I told Nolan through mind-link, feeling him stiffen behind me.
Anything this woman said was meaningless, and empty words were not worth starting another fight.
There was a little girl just a few feet away, clinging to the side of a man who had the same facial features as Tristan. His hair was much darker, but his deep-set eyes, angular nose, and pouty lips were identical. The little girl was the spitting image of Tristan’s mother, only younger and not nearly as sour.
She waved timidly when we locked eyes, and I did my best to muster up a friendly smile.
Tristan’s father said nothing but judging how his eyes flitted from person to person, he was observing everything carefully. They clung to my face the most, and I wondered if he was naturally this curious or if he had a habit of gauging the emotions of the people around him.
“Enough, mother. They didn’t have to invite you here, and you didn’t have to come. It wasn’t like this before.” Tristan hissed.
Tristan’s eyes found my face for but a split second before darkening. His mother was either genuinely oblivious or had a talent for ignoring the things she found unimportant, because she didn’t seem to notice the tension in the air or how all of it radiated from where I stood.
All sound apart from her nasal whine faded into white noise, crackling in my ears like the vicious flames that had eaten through over half of the houses here. The rough asphalt beneath my feet vanished, as did Nolan’s calloused hands on my shoulders.
I was suspended in time, an observer to the damage and death the witches had caused, all with
Tristan’s mother bleating in the background.
She pursed her lips at her son. “Not very safe, is it? What a pity. I was so hoping we could live here, but
I won’t risk your sister’s life when it’s clear this place is undergoing attacks every other day. She might not be concerned with us noble families, but I won’t forgo tradition-.”
“Mother.” Tristan snarled, but he wasn’t looking at her.
“Lucinda.” 1
The man I had assumed was Tristan’s father approached. His hand was on his wife’s shoulder, but he wasn’t looking at her either.
‘Daisy, baby. You’ve got to calm down. The shadows are reacting to your stress…’
Nolan’s voice trickled down the mind link, but it was faint, muffled by white noise like everything else.
Night had quickly taken over, but now that I was paying more attention, it seemed darker than normal.
Many of the streetlights were destroyed, but even the few that remained did little to illuminate the ground below.
The pinprick of a million little eyes hit my skin one-by-one.
I turned around, and there they were. There were thousands of them, perhaps even more. Within every nook and cranny, crawling over every piece of this earth that the moonlight failed to reach, the shadows writhed. They crawled beneath smashed cars and into half crumbled houses.
A few brave ones slithered across the ground and circled around my feet, whispering sweet words of vengeance and blood.
“I apologize, your Majesty. My wife has many talents, but holding her tongue is not one of them.”
Tristan’s father said in a calm voice, one without the disdain and malice his wife’s held.
Lucinda, Tristan’s mother, scowled at her husband.
“Daisy and I have worked tirelessly on this place. No one cares about it more than we do. Seeing it like this is not easy for her.” Nolan’s voice dropped low, and anyone with ears could hear the warning in his voice.
Lucinda glanced down at the shadows pooling around my feet with eyes of ice. Her lips twisted and puckered, deepening the fine lines that circled her mouth.
“Clearly.” She said indignantly, then yelped and stumbled back when a few tendrils of shadow got too close for her liking. “Honestly, your father couldn’t control those things either. Disgusting, foul creatures-“
The tendons in my neck cracked as my head snapped in her direction.
All at once, every mind-numbing emotion that burrowed into my flesh, turned to rage.
“What did you just say to me?” I asked her, unware that I’d stepped out of
Nolan’s embrace and towards the woman that dared compared me to thatthat monster.
There was a fleeting second where I wanted to show her exactly how much like my father I was. It bubbled so close to the surface that the thought was right there, hovering at the forefront of my mind, waiting for me to reach out with magic and breathe it to life.
It was gone within a flash when I locked eyes with a little girl with curly blonde hair and pouty lips,
Tristan’s little sister.
Leaning to the side to peer around her father’s legs, she stared up at me with eyes identical to her mother and brother’s. That little girl was the tidal wave that doused my fiery anger, but even the ocean itself couldn’t tame the magic that lashed recklessly in my gut, frantic and desperate to be used.
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?