Fated to the Alpha

Chapter 8

Athena's POV

That night felt like the longest one of my life.

My poor, miserable life.

An existence where nobody loved me, not even the man that I had given my everything. I felt so ashamed, but that did not take away from what I had planned. There was no place left for me in this pack.

As I stood under the shower and washed away the remains of my vomit and tears, it really struck me that there had never been a place for me. There was never a time that Raphael had a smile so kind to me as he did with Isabella.

All this time, I had convinced myself that he was simply not the romantic type who would write a woman poems and give her flowers. I just thought that he found those things cringy, or maybe he was the type to express his love through other means. I rationalized his behavior so much until I thought that I was going crazy. Then I saw the way he treated my sister, and I found out that he was indeed romantic.

Just not towards me.

With Isabella, he never failed to show her she mattered. Whether it was something as small as tucking a stray strand of hair in the back of her ear, arranging elaborate outings in her favorite places, or giving her grand gifts, he never failed to do one of such things every day. And I would just be there on the sidelines, watching him love another woman in the way I hoped he would look at me, just once.

She didn't have to try. she didn't have to bend herself backwards to prove anything.

In fact, she seemed to be even more demanding every time he proved just how much she meant to him.

I would have been more than happy with even quarter of the gifts and attention that he gave to her. In fact, I would have been fine with the attention alone. But she had a very high standard concerning what she would get from him

A few months back, he had bought her a diamond necklace. She gave one look at it and then tossed it in the trash the next second. Turns out she knew her gems really well and that diamond had been a fake, she had not even elaborated at first, just grabbed it and found the nearest trash can to dump it.

I thought that this time he would get angry at her and berate her for disrespecting him and tossing his gift.

I waited to see his reaction, to see his anger explode but instead of him getting angry, he came to her on his knees, pleading and begging her to forgive him, saying that he was not aware that the diamond he bought was a fake. And that same week, he replaced it with a box filled with rare diamonds. He took a huge chunk out of the pack's yearly budget to afford it. When he gave it to Isabella, she finally smiled, and he looked like a noose had been taken off his neck.

While I stood watching it all with my heart tearing apart, I told myself that he was just trying to be a good host, that was what I had echoed in my mind over and over again.

Though after last night, today there was no denying it anymore, no point in trying to deceive myself, even when the evidence was looking me straight in the eye and yelling at my face to see it all.

She was the one in his heart.

It would never be me.

But for now, I had to protect the baby.

Which means I'd have to escape.

I didn't want to be caught and dragged back, because no matter how much I hated it, I was less of a Luna and more of the Alpha's property that he had bought.

As such, I needed to be careful. There was no telling what he would do to me if he found me trying to escape and then eventually caught on that I was pregnant.

But time was not on my side. I knew that every day that passed, my belly was growing slightly bigger, and eventually wearing larger clothes was not going to be enough to cut it.

That was when I started making my plan of escape. I was summoned by a trusted guard in the middle of the night. Of course, I paid him to keep his lips sealed about the information that I was getting from him.

Eventually, to confirm if what he was telling me was the truth, I reached out to other guards, calling them at the same time and having them come to my room and report what I wanted to know. The information I was looking for was their patrol routine and the timing for it. I needed it if I was going to escape without being spotted.

But I didn't know that this would eventually snowball into a problem for me.

I was in my bedroom, waiting for the guard to arrive, but instead the person who was standing at the front door was my mate, Raphael.

My blood instantly went cold, behind him was Isabella, and both of their eyes came at me like daggers.

I stood up immediately, alert. Before I could even say anything or ask what they were doing in my bedchamber, Raphael had already come towards me, grabbing me by my arm and pressing me so hard I felt the blood flow shorten.

"You have a lot of explaining to do, Athena. Did you think that I would never find out about it?" My eyes bulged at the audacity of the words coming from him.

I had never confronted him about it, but I had already carried the suspicions in my heart before that he was having an affair with my sister. And now I was able to prove it too, yet he was the one accosting me, his voice sharp as a dagger.

"I have no idea what you're talking about Raphael... Please let me go!"