A Lover and A Liar

What It Would Cost Her

The door flew open without a knock, making Alina almost jump from the velvet couch she had curled into, wishing it could swallow her whole so she could disappear, get away from here―from this Court, from these people... yet not from her mate. Not from him.

Not from her Julian that wasn't much hers, after all.

"I know what you did back there!" The accusations belonged to no other voice but the one Alina despised the most right now.

Welcoming herself inside, Katherine stood there in front of her, all tall and beautiful, and for some reason, very very angry.

"If you thought you were going to avoid me for much longer, witch, you were being simply stupid."

Slowly, Alina got on her feet, finally deciding to fully face her. The one and only woman she had herself helped in lying, deceiving, taking her mate from her. "Yet here I am, Katherine," she sighed. "Here I am."

The she-wolf raised her thin, pretty brows in surprise. "Fine, because I have no more time to lose. Whatever you did with your spells back then, didn't work properly!" she accused. "It's been more than three years and he still hasn't marked me."

A small, tiny hope blossomed inside Alina's heart. She had been so shocked, so desperate and yet so mesmerized by him, she hadn't noticed both of them had no marks on their necks. And Katherine was still no Queen.

Did Julian not want to mark her?

Did he feel something was wrong?

Did he feel...?

"Alina!"

"Have you ever thought, maybe he doesn't want to? Maybe he feels it, deep inside his heart, that it isn't right?" Alina pressed, this time with a bit more courage.

Katherine gritted her teeth together, not hiding the hate she felt for Alina from her expression. "Then you'll make it right. That's why you are here, to right your mistakes, and make him have no doubt he is mine."

Something inside her chest hurt just by the idea of it. By the idea of drowning him in more lies, and mostly by the idea of seeing them properly together. "I will never help you hurt Julian again." The words left her mouth without her even thinking them through. "Never!"

The malice on her eyes got soon replaced by surprise, and then curiosity. "Julian?!" Katherine repeated. "So you're in first name basis with my mate now?"

Alina's nails dipped harder in the palm of her hands, breaking the skin and drawing blood out of them. It was something she did since she was a child, whenever she wanted to hold herself back from using her magic, or sometimes launching herself on the other.

"You and I both know he isn't your mate, Katherine," she hissed, making a few steps closer the other woman, who didn't cower back. "He has never been."

"That's not important!" Katherine's voice had raised, high-pitched and annoying.

"Of course it is. I can go and tell him the truth right now," Alina threatened, meaning her words. That was the only thing that would let her finally free from her sin. That it would let her breathe again, after five years. What happened after that wouldn't matter much as long as Alina got rid of the guilt in her chest that had only doubled and tripled now that she had faced him; found out the truth. Felt what she had felt the second her eyes had laid on him.

"Oh, but you can't do that, little Alina." She let out a humorless laugh. "You can't do that when you know what will happen to your poor, poor grandmother if you as little as try to tell Julian the truth. And trust me when I say, it won't be an easy death."

Alina swallowed down the fear, but it had already crept in her honey eyes, on her trembling lips. "You forget you have a witch in front of you." Her voice didn't have the same sharpness and courage in it anymore, and Alina knew it.

Tsking, Katherine played with her long chestnut hair. "Believe me, I don't. That's why you're here in the first place, a covenless, orphan witch, that cannot even ask for help from anyone else, because, you know what happens to witches that use dark magic upon royals, right? Kings, moreover? That mess up with the mating bonds?" She tapped her fingers on Alina's shoulder. "You're deep inside this mess now and you know it. If I go down, Alina, you go down too. Never forget that."

Tears pricked behind her eyes, and she couldn't hide them any longer. "Why? Why are you doing this to him?" she desperately asked. "Julian... Julian doesn't deserve this. He's a good man."

Katherine shrugged casually, another smile finding the way on her face. "He's more than a good man, Alina, he's brilliant. And funny, and sweet, and charming. And because of you, he is mine."

Nails dipped even deeper inside the skin of her palms, making her almost wince in pain. Alina didn't remember to ever feel jealousy over anything, not when she was used to not having much. But what she felt now was more than jealousy. It was possessiveness, jumping out of nowhere, no matter she knew things would get even more complicated if Katherine ever found out the truth.

"He is not a property!" she spat.

Katherine dismissed her. "He just happens to be a romantic man, fixated with the idea of a fated mate. Which works fine by me, he thinks I'm his fated anyway," she explained. "So I cannot risk him to ever find out."

"You're just a selfish, psycho b***h," Alina told her.

"I don't expect you to understand, or believe me, Alina, but I'm doing it for Julian. No one can love him more than I do, and no one knows him better than I do. I've loved him since I was a child, do you think a commoner, or even worse, a servant, can make a better Queen than I do?"

Alina let he words sink in for a moment. The worse of it was that Katherine seemed to stupidly, selfishly believe what she was saying; that she was doing this for Julian, that this was making Julian happy. As if taking away that big of a choice from him was simply fair and right.

Who had put these lies on her head?

Who had made her believe she was what Julian needed even more than wanted?

"You had absolutely no right." She shook her head lightly. "None at all to take that away from him."

"As if the Moon Goddess doesn't take the choices away from us. I simply took my fate in my own hands. And so I'm doing again. You should make him mark me, Alina. Leave me pregnant with his pups so he has no choice but to make me his Queen."

It was so disgusting to hear, it made Alina want to vomit. "I can't do that even if I want to," she explained. "I can't force someone to do something, I can't play with the free will."

"Of course you can!" she demanded.

"That's dark magic I'm not powerful enough to cast." That was partly true. Maybe Alina was powerful enough for that, after all she had been powerful enough to make Julian's wolf believe Katherine was his mate when her magic was not even matured enough, but the she-wolf didn't have to know that. And Alina didn't as well. She was terrified to find out. And terrified to use dark magic once more, the last time she had done it, she had fell unconscious for days, drowning in nightmares that were a repetition of that cursed night.

But mostly, she couldn't use it on Julian.

Not again.

Not him.

"That's your problem and yours only!" Kathine threatened. "If he doesn't mark me in two weeks, I'm sending that damned mind-link to my men. Remember, Alina, two weeks." Turning on her heels, she opened the door and left.

"f*****g psycho woman!" Alina cursed under her breath. She felt stuck. Hopeless. Desperate. In pain.

But for one thing she was sure; casting a spell on her mate, again, was the last thing Alina was going to do.

No matter what it would cost her.