The Alpha and his Mate
Chapter 31

Annabelle’s PoV

I was startled awake as ice cold water was poured all over my head. I tried to hold onto the dream with Jax for as long as I could, but the shock of the cold forced me out of my unconscious state and back into the real world.

“Wakey wakey little Annabelle, we have a surprise for you” a voice sang.

I looked up through my semi sleep hazed eyes and came face to face with the guys that smells like Alpha Parker, I really had to learn his name.

“What do you want?” I grumbled. The silver around my wrists and ankles were causing me too much pain to care about how I addressed him at the moment. It probably wasn’t the best idea to get grumpy with your captor though, especially one who didn’t mind throwing the odd kick your way.

“Watch who you’re talking to bitch” someone growled at me and I looked up to see a new person standing next to Alpha Parker’s scent double. He stood tall, almost 6′6, with broad shoulders and tribal style tattoos running down both of his arms.

“Easy Sebastian, she’s alright” the scent double chuckled as he took in my fearful expression. “I just wondered if you wanted to see the show” he continued as he took up his regular stance of leaning against the door frame.

I frowned “What show?”

“Well we just thought that as we’re going to kill your parents and the four members of your pack, you’d like to watch? We’re going to put on a little show you see. The guys here have been so bored lately and I think they deserve a bit of entertainment, don’t you think?”

Bile rose in my throat at the thought of having to watch anyone die. “Why are you doing this? You have me so why not just let them go?” I pleaded, hoping to do as I’d promised to Jax and delay him as much as I could.

He chuckled “and let them run straight back to that pathetic Alpha of yours and tell them where you are? I don’t think so love”.

Xavier, who had been quiet throughout the interaction between us, growled at the mention of Jax being weak.

“Oh cool it Beta, I’ll get to you in a minute” the scent double shot back as he gestured Sebastian with his head towards Xavier.

I watched in horror as Sebastian stalked over to Xavier and proceeded to punch and kick him wherever he could. Being restrained in silver there wasn’t much Xavier could do to deflect the blows, he had no choice but to lay there and take it.

Sebastian held Xavier’s head up by the hair at his nape and kneed him in the face causing blood to spew out and a large cut to form on the bridge of his nose before dropping him to the floor and repeatedly kicked him in the ribs.

“No please stop... I’ll do anything... please?!” I screamed as I saw Xavier’s eyes role into the back of his head.

“Anything hu?” The scent double questioned as he gestured Sebastian to stop.

I nodded, unable to get any words out through the tears that were streaming down my face. Oh Xavier.

“Sever your mate bond with your Alpha and mate with me” the scent double growled as a sinister smirk appeared on his face.

“W-What?” I stuttered, not able to comprehend what he was asking me.

“You heard me, end all your ties with Alpha Jax and willingly mate with me”.

He had pushed himself off the door frame and had come to squat in front of me as I lay on the ground in a puddle of water and Xavier’s blood.

“But...why?”

“Why not” He countered as he continued to stare into my eyes.

“But you said you didn’t want a mate, that mates were designed to make werewolves weak so why would you want to be mated to me?” I was so confused.

“Yes, but having the opportunity to be mated to a direct descendant of the Moon goddess herself? Who would pass up an opportunity like that? What better way to hurt and betray the Goddess then to forcibly rip her descendants’ mate from her and then force her into a mating with someone else against her will? If that happens the Goddess will be forced to remove her touch from you and therefore weakening both your family blood line and her herself. It’s a perfect plan” he shrugged.

I stared at him in shock as everything started to click into place. “This was your plan all along wasn’t it? All the scheming, kidnapping my parents, making me live with the Leftens, it was all part of yours and Alpha Parker’s plan to get me to be your mate”. I felt sick, physically sick, that my whole life has been played out like a check list for him. I had ben a pawn in my own life.

“Very clever. I have to say when you managed to escape the Leftens it threw a spanner in the works, I had to go and speed things along a little bit when I heard that you had found your mate, but you being so scared and untrusting worked in my favour. I would have never been able to follow through with the plan if you and that Alpha of yours had completed the bond, so I guess I should be thanking you for your role in making sure it all went to plan” he smirked.

This time I did throw up, although seeing as I hadn’t eaten anything there was little in my stomach other than bile and stomach acid. “You’re a monster” I gasped out after I had finished emptying what little contents of my stomach that I had.

The only thing he did was smirk at my reaction, he was loving every second of my torture.

“And my parents?” I questioned.

“What about them?”

“Why did you take them and torture them this whole time if your whole plan was to get to me? Why not just kill them?”

He smiled and grabbed my chin with his hand whilst his thumb stroked my cheek bone “well how else were we supposed to get you here? We didn’t know whether a few kidnapped pack members were going to be enough to get you here, so we kept your parents alive, just in case. We then just had to play the waiting game”.

He laughed at my horrified expression as he got up and made his way back towards the door. “I’ll give you till sundown to decide, better make your mind up quick” he taunted as he looked out of the small slit we had acting as our window before the door was slammed behind him by a smirking Sebastian.

What was I going to do now?

After they left, I just sat there in silence, not knowing what to do. Turning myself into these people to save everyone was a no brainer for me but the idea of having to reject my mate, to reject Jax, sickened me to my very core.

“You can’t do it you know” I heard Xavier mumble from his side of the room, I hadn’t even realised he was awake. I thought he had passed out from the beating he took from Sebastian.

“Do what?” I asked, acting as if I didn’t know what he was talking about.

“I may be hurt but I’m not stupid you know, I heard what that guy said and I am telling you that you can’t do it” he muttered as he slowly sat himself up to rest against the wall for support. “If you reject Jax then he would spin out of control, our whole pack will crumble. If you think what he’s feeling now is bad there is no way to even begin to explain how he would be feeling if he can no longer feel his bond with you”.

I frowned as I looked down at my fingers fiddling with the lace on my shoe. “But if I don’t reject him everyone here will die, including you. I promised Jax I’d give him as much time as he could so that he could get here and save you all”.

Xavier shrugged, cringing at the pain the small movement brought on. “It is a price every pack member would willingly pay if it meant the safety of our Alpha and our Luna, without them the pack would fall into chaos and would easily be taken over by another pack or fall victim to the rogues”.

My frowned deepened, still not understanding. “Why would you lay your life down for me anyway? You didn’t even like me and when we first met, if I remember correctly, you even threatened to kill me”.

Xavier chuckled “yeah well don’t take that personally, I thought you were a rogue looking to make some trouble. I would never have spoken to you like that if I knew who you were”.

“Not all rogues can be bad though right? Why do you hold such a grudge against them?”

Xavier stayed silent as he looked down, a look of pain clouding his eyes as he though back to an unpleasant memory.

“So your saying that you are going to willing die for me but not tell me anything about yourself?” I questioned.

Xavier sighed before looking up at me with sad eyes. “It’s not a very happy story Annabelle”.

I shrugged “well neither is mine but you probably know it”.

He sighed again before closing his eyes and rested his head back on the wall. I had thought that was the end of the conversation so I jumped a little when he started to speak.

“It was a few years ago, back when Jax’s dad was still the Alpha. I was on patrol with Jax after I’d had an argument with my dad when we caught the scent of a few rogues close to the boarder to our territory. Being the future Alpha and Beta of the pack, we felt we had a lot to prove to both out parents and the pack so we went to investigate without informing the pack of what we were doing. We wanted to show everyone that when the time came they could count on us to protect them when our parents stepped down and we took their place. We ran over to where we could smell the scent but what we saw when we got there confused us”.

“Why what did you replace?” I whispered, not wanting to interrupt him but not being able to stop myself from asking.

“Nothing. When we got to the clearing that held the rogue scent we found nothing but a ratty T-shirt. That was when we decided to contact the Alpha and let him know what we’d discovered but when we couldn’t get through to him we knew something was wrong.

“We later found out that the scent we followed was just a diversion for what the rogues really had planned for us. They’d gotten rid of the border control, us, so that the rest of them could sneak in undetected and attack the pack.

“The attack didn’t last long; they had seriously underestimated our numbers, but it didn’t stop our pack from experiencing some losses. When I found out what was going on I ran straight back to my house, intending to protect my mum and sister who was not old enough to shift yet, but when I got there I came face to face with two rogues who, upon seeing me, ripped their throats out. They showed no mercy for them, they just killed them because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time and I wasn’t there to protect them.

“My dad was somewhere else, as he was the Beta it was his job to make sure the pack house was protected, but when he felt the mate bond had been severed with my mum he howled in pain. It was just the distraction the rogue he was fighting needed to go in for the kill.

“In one day I had become an orphan, all because of one stupid mistake I’d made. If I hadn’t of underestimated the rogues, then my parents and baby sister would still be alive today.”

I stayed silent through out the whole of Xavier story as I felt tears built up in my eyes and spill over. We sat in silence for a while after Xavier had finished his story as I let him grieve the loss of his family but after a while I cleared my throat and looked up at him.

“You can’t blame yourself for what happened Xavier. It wasn’t you who rallied the rogues to fight and it wasn’t you who killed your family.”

Xavier just remained quiet and I sighed, I wasn’t going to get through to him, but I hoped that he would soon come to forgive himself for something he had no control over.

“That’s why Alpha Parker called me the Rogue Killer” he explained as he finally looked up at me. “After they’d been killed I went on a rampage, actively looking for rogues to blame and kill, whether they’d been involved in the attack on my family or not” he shrugged. “I didn’t care, I just wanted some kind of revenge for what they’d done to them. It wasn’t until Alpha Jackson threatened to take away my Beta position that I stopped, my dad had passed that title down to me and I could loose that, even if it did mean putting my personal vendetta on the back burner”.

I stayed silent for a second, shocked that someone as amazing and loyal as Xavier had gone through something so horrible. His reaction to me when I first stumbled onto his territory finally made sense and I was so grateful that he had trusted me enough to tell me his story. “Thank you for telling me Xavier” I muttered, wishing I wasn’t chained down so that I could console him somehow.

He looked over at me and nodded his head in acknowledgement before hanging his head and closing his eyes, getting swallowed up in his grief and guilt.

“Try and get some sleep, I’ll figure out what to do next” I whispered as I watched Xavier’s forehead relax and his breathing even out.

I had to replace some way to save him and everyone else. But how?

I hoped you liked this chapter, it’s all kicking off!