The Alpha’s Forbidden Valkyrie

Chapter 5

Jax’s POV

I sat upstairs in the bar, in the shadow of the back booth, clutching my whiskey glass. The liquor burned my throat, but it didn't even come close to the fire raging in my chest. The girl's hoarse, desperate voice echoed in my head over and over again.

"I have never drunk human blood in my life, you i***t! I'm disgusted by it!"

My inner wolf was tense, pacing nervously in my mind, as if it wanted to crawl under my skin. It kept muttering: you made a mistake, Alpha. You tortured our mate. An innocent.

I tried to suppress the voice. I shook my head and downed the rest of my drink. She is a vampire. Her fangs are sharp, her veins hold the blood of the species that slaughtered my family. But the facts she had thrown in my face in the basement were beginning to shatter my worldview.

Suddenly, a sharp, icy pang shot through my chest. It was as if an invisible rope, which had been stretched taut between my soul and hers, had suddenly snapped. The air caught in my lungs. The glass slipped from my hand and shattered into pieces on the wooden floor with a dull crash.

"Jax?" Silas was instantly beside me. I rarely saw concern on my Beta's face, but now he noticed that something was very wrong.

I didn't answer. The bond twitched. I didn't feel anger from the other side, nor the stubborn defiance she had fought me with until now. Only a massive, dark, freezing emptiness. The girl's life was fading.

I sprang to my feet. I knocked over my chair, and without looking at anyone, I started running toward the basement. The pack members looked after me in confusion, the music faded, but I didn't care. I practically tore the heavy iron door off its hinges and burst into the cell.

Freya hung lifelessly from the chains. Her head lolled to the side, her wet, dirty blonde hair covering her face. Her chest rose so shallowly that for a moment I thought I was too late.

Anger and a kind of dark, suffocating panic washed over me. I didn't want her to matter. I wanted to hate her. But as I saw her raw, bloody wrists and her tiny, trembling body, my wolf howled wildly in my head. I stepped up to her, grabbed the rusty chains, and with all my might, with a single yank, I ripped the thick bolts out of the stone wall.

Freya's body pitched forward lifelessly. I caught her, locking her fragile figure in my arms. Her skin was ice-cold. As cold as death.

"Wake up, Freya," I growled into her face. My voice was rough, threatening, but the hand holding her waist involuntarily became gentler. "I didn't give you permission to die. Do you hear me?"

No reaction. I scooped her up into my arms. I was surprised by how light she was. Almost weightless. I pressed her tightly against my chest, hoping I could force some life back into her with my own body heat, and started heading out.

When I reached the bar upstairs, a thick, suffocating silence greeted me. Thirty pairs of eyes fixed on me. Shock, incomprehension, and growing anger vibrated in the air. The Alpha, who had wanted vampire blood, was now carrying the intruder in his arms.

"What are you doing, Jax?" Kane stepped into my path. The huge biker's eyes flashed with anger, his hand resting on the hilt of his knife. "You're taking her to your room? This beast?"

I stopped. I held Freya to me as if my life depended on it while I sized up my fighter. My gaze was so icy and destructive that Kane involuntarily took a step back.

"Get out of my way," I rumbled, the beast clearly bleeding into my voice. "Or I swear, I will rip your head off right now."

No one dared to speak. I carried her upstairs, kicked open the door to my own bedroom, and stepped inside. The room was dark; only moonlight filtered in through the window. I carefully laid Freya down on my massive black bed.

The girl hissed softly and involuntarily curled up, trying to preserve what little heat she had left. The red velvet dress hung off her in shreds.

I cursed in the dark. My common sense dictated that I leave her there, but my inner wolf wouldn't tolerate its mate suffering. I stepped up to the bed, grabbed the thick, heavy down comforter, and pulled it over her. I tucked her in carefully right up to her chin, so that the dense fabric and my scent would envelop her.

For a moment, my hand paused by her face. With my thumb, almost against my own will, I brushed a dirty blonde lock of hair away from her pale skin. Her skin was still too cold.

"Stubborn little mutt," I whispered, and jerked my hand away. I clenched my jaw, turned my back on the bed, and headed back down. As much as I wanted to stay by her side, a war was waiting for me downstairs.

I went back to the bar. The pack was waiting at the bottom of the stairs, tense, with Silas at the forefront.

"We expect an explanation, Alpha," Silas spoke. There was no friendship in his voice, only a cool respect for the order of the pack. "You broke your own rule. You said yourself that we would execute her."

I stopped on the bottom step, crossed my arms over my chest, and looked over my men.

"The girl is not like the ones who killed my parents," I began, and my voice filled the entire room. "She's a mutt. Half-something, half-vampire. Her own coven hunted her, and they wanted to kill her for the exact thing we stand for: she refuses to drink human blood. She has never killed a human. She lives on animal blood and normal food."

A murmur of disbelief rippled through the room.

"And why does that matter?" Kane shouted, stepping out of the crowd. "She's still a vampire! Her fangs are just as sharp! She is our enemy, Jax!"

"It matters because I won't allow us to execute an innocent on my territory!" I took a step toward them and released my alpha aura, bearing down on everyone in the room. "But there is something else you need to know. Something that overrides every rule we've ever made."

I took a deep breath. My wolf snarled triumphantly inside, eager to finally declare what was his.

"This is why I didn't kill her the first second I saw her. This is why none of you can hurt her either. Whether you like it or not, fate has decided for us."

I fell silent. I let the tense silence weigh down on me before I spoke the words that changed everything:

"Freya is my mate."

The bar grew so quiet, it was as if everyone had stopped breathing at once. The glass slipped from Silas's hand and thumped dully onto the counter. Kane's face went completely white, and the rest of the pack stared at me with wide eyes, in mute, overwhelming shock. A vampire mutt... the Alpha's mate. In that moment, the pack's world shattered to pieces.