Filed To Story: Claimed by the Alpha I Hate Book Read Free
Instead of shouting at the thing holding me hostage, I tried the mate-bond. I couldn’t feel Daisy’s fiery, all-consuming presence, but I had to try-I had to.
‘Daisy? Fuck, fuck! This can’t be happening.
Daisy, baby. Tell me you can hear me. Tell me you can hear me.’ I panted, breaking all over again when grandma turned to stare into my eyes.
It’s not me, grandma. This isn’t me! Run! Hide! Go, fucking go!
I shouted and shouted and shouted, but my lips didn’t move. They didn’t fucking move! Grandma stood there, staring at me and not at the person shadowing my every move.
“Sean…” Grandma said slowly, her eyes still locked on my own. The note of warning in her voice made me cry out, but it was just another plea she couldn’t hear. “Sean, get in here.”
No, don’t call for him!
When Sean’s face appeared in the doorway across the kitchen, his eyebrows scrunched in obvious confusion, I realized the horrible mistake he’d made and why this thing had brought my body here. Like a switch had been flipped, the pure disinterest it oozed was replaced with a thirst for death. Its teeth cracked from how hard it grinned, and with nothing more than a whispered command, my body lunged.
Grandma, with all the strength of our Goddess, actually threw herself in between
Sean and I. She had the fiercest look on her face, one of righteous fury and heartbreaking concern, but it was fleeting- so fleeting.
The woman that had followed me into the house chose that moment to pounce, emerging in a flash of bright hair and nails, attacking Grandma before she even stood a chance.
“Nolan? What the fuck’s going on?” Sean demanded, seconds away from leaping to grandma’s aid.
He would have, but I was blocking his way.
“Run, Sean! That’s not Nolan!” Grandma yelled, her voice no longer oozing with warmth, but gurgling with blood. “RUN!”
There was a split second where he just stood there, his attention going back and forth between grandma and I, unable to focus- unable to make a decision. I’d never truly thought he and Daisy looked alike, but staring at him, seeing his heart shatter in his eyes, made me realize otherwise.
As quickly as he dashed back into the living room, leaping over the back of the couch in a frantic race to the sliding glass door, I was already breathing down his neck.
When we collided, and the ache of my claws elongating radiated up my fingers, I froze. Disbelief kept me from closing my eyes, from blocking this out the way I wished I could’ve.
I would’ve given anything-my pack, my title, my land, to block the things I felt out, but I couldn’t.
These hands were my own, ripping into my soul-mate’s brother, carving open his chest until flashes of milky white bone appeared.
They were as stark white as his eyes, eyes that stared into my own, that begged even when his lungs filled with blood, and he could no longer speak.
I’m so sorry.
My claws sliced through his throat with ease.
His skin split, unfurling like the petals of a rose.
Please, forgive me.
The sticky warmth of his blood pooled in my hands.
I can’t stop myself.
Blood coated his face, his skin so pale, his lips still moving.
Why is this happening? Why?
His jaw grew lax, and with my claws still buried in his chest cavity, the light warming his eyes faded, vanishing far beyond the horizon where it would never be seen again. One second stretched into many as a soft, gurgling breath slid past his lips. His heart gave one final shudder before falling silent.
What have I done?
The arms of the creature that grinned over my shoulder loosened, slithering from around my broken soul. It didn’t crawl back into the depths of my mind. It simply…
vanished.
Blood roared in my ears, the silence a cacophony of screaming-of ghostly wailing that reminded me again and again and again just what I’d done.
I should’ve thought about grandma, about the woman that attacked her, but there was no room for anything other than Sean’s body, his torn flesh, his eyes staring into the pits of my soul even in death reminding me that I did this.
With full control of my body, I ran. Landing on all fours, my body a mass of bloody fur, I bolted through the glass door and heard its shards raining to the floor. The pain of them slicing into my skin was dull, nothing compared to the pain inside my chest, eating away at my brain and telling me to do the most awful of things.
The memories didn’t start until I made it outside.
As my paws hit the dewy grass, kicking up dirt, images filled my head and clouded my vision. They were old, grainy photographs with edges that blurred. With each one, the colors brightened, and shapes became sharper.
Carson, the college girl whose parents Daisy and I spoke to. She was running, mouth agape and eyes so wide they were mostly white. Running through the forest, swatting away every branch that blocked her path, looking back again and again and again until finally I caught up to her.
It was identical to what I’d done to Sean.
Next was Judge Clint’s son, just as fear stricken as Carson even though he’d been a prick in life. Just like her, he ran. Just like her, he stared at me with his mouth agape, because who would’ve ever thought their own Alpha would be the one to kill them?
In the slideshow of blood and death, I could hear my own voice begging the thing in my body to stop, begging it until they took their final breaths and the memories faded from my mind.
The images came to an abrupt stop. Color drained from my vision, but I deserved it and much worse.
I swayed on my feet, realizing I was no longer in wolf form. Everything felt wrong. The way my skin covered my bones, the way the cold air hit my skin, it was all wrong.
I didn’t deserve to be here; I didn’t deserve her.
I’d become everything I hated an Alpha that killed his own pack members for the hell of it, a mate that did the one thing I could never take back or dare ask forgiveness for.
Every time I closed my eyes it was there. His eyes stared at me; his face now so similar to Daisy’s that my mouth filled with bile.
Another plume of wind hit my chest, so cold that my vision sharpened. I wasn’t sure where I was anymore. Somewhere deep in the forest, but there was no telling if I was still within pack lines.
All I cared about was the cliff five feet away.
It looked over a sea of treetops and distant mountains, a scene Daisy would’ve found breathtaking.
Never in my life would I have contemplated jumping, but just five minutes was all it took to take everything away from me, to unravel who I was so completely that the role of Alpha now felt foreign.
I wanted to jump. To pay for what I’d done, and perhaps I would’ve, but something stopped me.