The Cursed Alpha’s Mate by Moon Flood
Chapter 33
“What pain?” Valens demanded but the oracle did nothing more than cry, tears streaming down her face faster.
I felt I knew what she was talking about but the more she cried, the more I doubted I understood this lady.
I’d been through H*ell and back in Redville. There were days when I did nothing but cry from the beginning of the day till the end. I’d gone days without food, been broken in every way a person could be broken. Mentally and emotionally, I’d been traumatized. There was little cause for living and I’d found no use for my life. On many days, I wanted out.
It was a sad story, one that spoke of my weakness. I’d lost every bit of strength over the years. Teenage rebellion went out of me, childhood curiosity died early in my life.
If he knew all this about me, if he knew that my weakness extended past the physical, how would he take it?
“I see it,” the oracle whispered. “I feel it.” She flinched as if someone struck her, making me wonder if she was reliving one of my run-ins with Lucien or the Alpha. If so, why?
Why would the goddess show her my pain and humiliation when she never stepped in to save me? Why would the goddess care enough to show them to her when she never answered all my supplications and prayers to be rescued? She’d given me Lucien as a mate when she knew he would not love a person like me and now she paired me with Valens as if she too wanted to punish me for my parent’s sins.
“You have to be good to her.” The oracle wiped her face with a white handkerchief she pulled out of her pocket. “Alpha Valens –“ She shook her head and cut herself off but I wished she would proceed because I wanted to hear what she had to say about our relationship.
“Are you trying to distract me from the reason I am here?” Valens growled all of a sudden. “What makes you think I won’t be good to my mate?”
“I am a seer. The things you have done and the things you will do – goddess forgive you.” My mate seemed to freeze when he heard that.
“What do you mean?” I was the one who asked, shaken up by my mate’s stiffness. Did he even feel guilt for what he had done?
“You have to know each other.” Her words were mere mumbo-jumbo to me. They should have had more significance to me but I’d come here with skepticism in my heart and I was finding it hard to let go of it. “You will have a good life only if you understand each other,” she concluded.
“Thank you,” I said to her when Valens watched her like a hawk accessing its prey.
“Thank the goddess. I haven’t done anything.” She turned to Valens with her moon-eyes. “You have denied your people a Luna for a long time. The crown is a right of the Luna Queen which the goddess forbids you from depriving her.”
“It is my mother’s crown. She was k*lled wearing that crown. It has her blood on it. Do you know how I feel seeing it?” His words were coiled tight and I knew the only reason he kept his tone levelled was his respect for the authority which the girl represented.
“The Luna’s crown belongs to the living. Your mother has had her turn with it. Your mate must have hers. It is the only way for your kingdom to progress.” Her words had more meaning to them than met the eye. “The past is the past.”
“The past can never be the past,” Valens made a vow.
“Do you wonder why you wandered for so long before finding your mate when the other oracles told you that you would find her soon?” The oracle suddenly asked.
“Because the goddess likes playing games?” Without meaning to, I elbowed his side like I used to do with Celeste when she started saying things that weren’t to be said.
I missed Celeste but I hadn’t seen her since the day at the mall and I knew without a doubt that she was avoiding me.
“You are sworn to vengeance and the goddess does not support it.”
“The goddess supported me and my people getting cursed for over a century and I deserved the curse because I want to avenge my parents’ murder?”
Once again, I found myself lost in their conversation. The people that k*lled his parent must be dead by now so how did he plan to avenge his parents?
I did notice something we seemed to share, something more than a mating bond, our distrust of someone who was supposed to protect and serve us justice. The goddess failed me and I think she failed him too. Why let a prince believed to be blessed by the goddess get cursed by a witch? She could have done something, warned him or even slain the witch before she uttered her curse but she let her curse him and she let him suffer for all these years. The more I thought about it, the more my wolf got angry on our mate’s behalf.
“She didn’t support it and those people felt her wrath. You have not let things go but you must if you don’t want to sabotage your life by yourself,” the oracle concluded.
She asked about the mating ceremony and I had no date. It was my duty to fix the date for my mating and organize the event but my mate still hadn’t said anything regarding it.
“You will wear the crown on the day of the ceremony and I think – I think it will help because it is what the goddess wants.”
We went back to the pack house that night with Valens in an obviously bad mood. His anger filled the car as he drove with one hand on the steering and his sleeve rolled up. I didn’t know something so simple could be so sexy but with every day that passed, I noticed the deepening attraction I felt towards Valens. It made the simple things that he did make my heart beat faster.
He didn’t spend that night in bed, leaving me alone to toss and turn in bed throughout the night. When I asked him where he was going when he was leaving, he muttered a single word before leaving.
At three in the morning, unable to sleep, I left the room to run in the woods close to the pack house and of course, I just had to run into the last person I wanted to see.