The Alpha’s Hated Mate

Chapter 4

Elowen

The journey to Blackthorn Pack felt like walking toward my own execution.

Every step sent a sharp bolt of pain through my injured ankle, but I refused to give the warriors escorting me the satisfaction of hearing me complain. They kept their hands firmly around my arms, as though I might suddenly grow wings and escape.

I wouldn’t.

Not because I didn’t want to.

Because I knew what happened when you ran without knowing where you were going.

Sometimes, the monster chasing you was worse than the one you had left behind.

The packhouse emerged through the trees, its dark stone walls rising above the surrounding forest. Lights glowed from the windows, warm and welcoming to anyone who belonged here.

I didn’t belong anywhere.

I had learned that lesson a long time ago.

“Keep moving,” one of the warriors ordered when I stumbled.

I bit back a cry as my ankle twisted beneath me.

“She’s injured, Bram,” the other warrior muttered.

“She’s a rogue. She can walk.”

I lifted my chin.

“Don’t worry. I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you by bleeding on your precious boots.”

Bram’s grip tightened painfully around my arm.

“Watch your mouth, girl.”

I met his glare, refusing to look away.

It was a foolish thing to do. I knew that. Men like him rarely tolerated defiance from women they believed were beneath them.

But I was tired.

Tired of being frightened.

Tired of swallowing every word that threatened to make someone angry.

And tired of allowing other people to decide how much pain I deserved.

“Then stop giving me reasons to open it.”

The second warrior made a strangled sound that might have been a cough.

Bram looked ready to drag me back into the forest and teach me a lesson.

“Enough.”

The single word came from behind us.

Kael Varyn.

I hadn’t heard him approach, but suddenly he was there, his black horse standing several feet away while he watched me with those cold, merciless eyes.

Even in the fading evening light, I could see the scars crossing his face.

They weren’t small imperfections.

They were deep, jagged reminders of something terrible, stretching across his cheek and disappearing beneath the collar of his dark shirt.

For a moment, I forgot my own pain.

Then his gaze settled on me.

“Can you walk?” he asked.

The question was so unexpected that I hesitated.

“Yes.”

His eyes dropped to my swollen ankle.

“That wasn’t what I asked.”

I hated the way he could make a simple question sound like an accusation.

“Then perhaps you should ask a question you actually want answered.”

His expression hardened.

“Take her inside.”

The warriors resumed their grip on my arms.

I swallowed the pain and forced myself forward.

I would not give this man the satisfaction of watching me fall.

Not if I could help it.

⸻

The packhouse was enormous.

Dark timber beams crossed the high ceilings, and polished floors reflected the light of the chandeliers overhead. The walls were decorated with paintings of wolves, generations of Alphas, and battle scenes that reminded me just how much power the people living here possessed.

I had never felt smaller.

People stopped to stare as we passed.

Some looked curious.

Others looked disgusted.

A few whispered the word rogue as though it were an insult that explained everything they needed to know about me.

I kept my eyes forward.

I had spent four years learning how to survive people who thought they knew my worth simply by looking at me.

These people wouldn’t be any different.

Kael led us down a corridor and through a heavy wooden door into a room furnished with a long table, several chairs, and a fireplace that offered little comfort.

“Put her there.”

One of the warriors pointed to a chair.

I lowered myself into it carefully, trying to hide the sharp pain that shot up my leg.

Kael noticed anyway.

He noticed everything.

That didn’t mean he cared.

“Leave us,” he ordered.

The warriors exchanged a glance.

“Alpha, are you sure—”

“Do I need to repeat myself?”

“No, Alpha.”

The door closed behind them.

Silence settled over the room.

I sat rigidly in my chair, my hands folded in my lap to hide their trembling. Kael stood on the other side of the table, watching me as if I were a particularly unpleasant problem he intended to solve.

“Name.”

“Elowen Hart.”

“Age?”

“Twenty-one.”

“Pack?”

I hesitated.

“None.”

His mouth twisted.

“Convenient.”

I stared at him.

“I didn’t realise being homeless was a privilege.”

“You’re not homeless. You’re a rogue.”

“Is there a difference to you?”

His eyes narrowed.

“Careful.”

There it was.

That familiar warning.

I had heard it from my father countless times. Sometimes it came before the shouting. Sometimes before the blows. Sometimes before the long, suffocating silence that followed.

My stomach tightened.

For one humiliating moment, I was seventeen again, standing in front of a man who believed he owned every breath I took.

I forced myself to breathe.

Kael wasn’t my father.

He wasn’t.

“Why were you on my territory?” he demanded.

“I was trying to find somewhere to sleep.”

“In an abandoned hunting cabin?”

“It was raining.”

“And the man you attacked?”

“He attacked me first.”

“That’s your version.”

“It’s the truth.”

“Rogues have a remarkable talent for making themselves the victims.”

I looked at the scars on his face.

Something terrible had happened to him. That much was obvious.

I didn’t know what, and I had no intention of asking.

But I understood something about pain.

It could change a person.

It could make them angry, suspicious, and desperate to find someone to blame.

What I couldn’t understand was why he had decided that every person who reminded him of his suffering deserved to suffer too.

“Perhaps you should ask him what happened,” I said quietly.

“I intend to.”

“Good.”

His eyebrows rose slightly, as though he hadn’t expected me to agree.

I leaned back against the chair, fighting the ache in my ankle.

“Then perhaps you can decide whether I’m lying after you’ve heard both sides.”

For several seconds, he simply stared at me.

Then he came around the table.

Every instinct in my body screamed at me to move away.

I stayed still.

He stopped directly in front of me, close enough that I could see the fine lines of old scars disappearing beneath his collar.

“Let me make something clear, Elowen Hart.” His voice dropped. “I don’t care what story you tell yourself about why you’re here. You’re on Blackthorn land, and until I know exactly what you were doing in that cabin, you will answer every question I ask.”

I lifted my chin.

“And if I refuse?”

His expression became frighteningly blank.

“Then you’ll discover how little patience I have for disobedience.”

My heart hammered against my ribs.

I wanted to tell him that threats meant nothing to me.

That I had survived worse men than him.

That I would never allow another person to break me.

But the truth was, I was frightened.

Not of the scars on his face.

Not of his reputation.

I was frightened because I was exhausted, injured, alone, and trapped in a place where nobody would believe me if he decided I was guilty.

So I said nothing.

Kael reached for my wrist.

I flinched.

It was small.

A quick, involuntary movement.

But he saw it.

His fingers stopped just short of touching my skin.

Something flickered across his face.

Surprise, perhaps.

Then it vanished.

“Your hands.”

I glanced down.

There were bruises around my wrists, some old enough to have faded to yellow, others dark purple against my skin.

I pulled my sleeves down.

“They’re none of your concern.”

His jaw tightened.

“Everything about a rogue on my territory is my concern.”

“Then you must be a very busy man.”

His eyes flashed.

Before he could respond, I shifted in my chair, and my sleeve caught on the rough edge of the table.

The fabric tore.

A narrow strip of skin became visible beneath it, marked by an old, pale scar that ran along the inside of my forearm.

I snatched my arm against my body.

Too late.

He had seen it.

For one brief moment, neither of us spoke.

Then Kael’s expression hardened again.

“Who did that to you?”

The question slipped out so quickly that I almost failed to recognise it as one.

I stared at him.

“Why?”

“Answer me.”

“No.”

His face darkened.

“You seem to be under the impression that you can dictate the terms of this conversation.”

“And you seem to be under the impression that being an Alpha gives you the right to know everything about me.”

“It gives me the right to protect my pack.”

“From a woman who can barely stand?”

His gaze dropped to my ankle.

I saw the moment he remembered it.

The pain.

The bruises.

The fact that I had been dragged through his territory while struggling to put one foot in front of the other.

For the briefest instant, something resembling uncertainty crossed his face.

Then he stepped closer.

“Look at me.”

I didn’t want to.

But something in his voice compelled me to raise my eyes.

And the world shattered.

⸻

Kael

The scent hit me first.

Rain.

Wet earth.

And something warm, delicate, and impossibly familiar.

My wolf surged to the surface so violently that I staggered.

Mine.

The word thundered through my mind.

I froze.

No.

My wolf pushed against my control, desperate to reach the woman sitting before me.

Our mate.

The room seemed to tilt.

I had imagined meeting my mate before. Not often, and never willingly, but the thought had existed somewhere in the distant corners of my mind.

My father had found his mate when he was young. My mother had told me stories of the moment they first recognised one another, describing it as though the Moon Goddess herself had reached down and joined their souls.

I had never believed the stories were meant for me.

I had never expected the Goddess to give me anything so precious.

And now, when the bond finally revealed itself, it had chosen a rogue.

A rogue.

I stared at Elowen Hart.

She was pale from exhaustion, her clothes torn and her hair tangled from the rain. A bruise darkened her cheek, and she sat with one hand wrapped around her injured ankle as though she were trying to keep herself together through sheer stubbornness.

She looked frightened.

She looked exhausted.

She looked nothing like the monsters that haunted my nightmares.

And yet the mate bond was unmistakable.

My wolf howled inside me, demanding that I touch her, reassure her, and take her somewhere safe.

I wanted to tear the walls apart.

“What’s wrong with you?” Elowen asked.

Her voice dragged me back into the room.

I realised I had been staring at her.

I took a step away.

Then another.

“No.”

The word came out before I could stop it.

She frowned.

“No what?”

I shook my head, as though I could somehow shake the bond loose.

“This can’t be happening.”

Her expression changed.

For the first time since entering the room, she looked genuinely confused rather than defiant.

“What can’t?”

I didn’t answer.

Because saying it aloud would make it real.

Because the Moon Goddess had taken the one thing I had never wanted to give her control over and placed it directly in my hands.

Because I could still see eleven boys lying motionless in the forest.

I could still hear their screams.

I could still feel the rough hands that had held me down while a rogue laughed in my face.

And now my mate was one of them.

My wolf snarled.

She is not them.

I clenched my fists.

I didn’t care what my wolf thought.

The bond could be wrong.

The Goddess could be wrong.

Anything had to be better than this.

Elowen slowly rose from her chair, wincing as she put weight on her injured foot.

“Have I done something?”

The question should have been simple to answer.

Instead, it felt like a blade sliding between my ribs.

I looked at her and saw the person I had spent ten years teaching myself to despise.

A rogue.

An outsider.

A reminder of everything I had lost.

“You,” I said, my voice colder than I intended, “are going to be a problem.”

Her lips parted.

For a moment, she simply stared at me.

Then she gave a short, humourless laugh.

“Well, that’s reassuring. I was worried you might be pleasant.”

I should have been furious.

Instead, the sound of her voice made my wolf press against my ribs, restless and distressed by the distance between us.

I wanted to reach for her.

I wanted to know who had hurt her.

I wanted to understand why the sight of her flinching had unsettled me more than it should have.

Most of all, I wanted the bond to disappear.

“You’re a rogue,” I said.

Her expression closed.

“I believe we’ve established that.”

“Rogues have no place in Blackthorn.”

“Then perhaps you should have left me in the forest.”

The words struck harder than they should have.

For a fleeting moment, I saw her standing alone beneath the rain, injured and terrified, with nowhere to go.

Then I remembered the cabin.

The attack.

The years of nightmares.

My wolf’s protests became a distant, unwelcome noise.

“Until I determine whether you’re a threat, you’ll remain here under guard.”

Her face went pale.

“Under guard?”

“You heard me.”

“I haven’t done anything to your pack.”

“You expect me to take your word for that?”

“I expect you to listen before deciding I’m guilty!”

Her voice cracked on the final word.

I saw the anger in her eyes, but beneath it was something else.

Something raw.

Something that looked horribly like desperation.

I had seen that expression before.

On my father’s face when the warriors carried me home.

On my mother’s when she realised her son might never be the same.

And on my own face, reflected in a mirror, after I woke screaming from another nightmare.

I hated recognising it.

I hated that this woman could make me remember the boy I had been before the forest took everything from me.

Most of all, I hated that my wolf wanted to comfort her.

“You will be taken to a room,” I said. “You will remain there until I decide what to do with you.”

Elowen looked at me as though I had just confirmed something she had always known about the world.

That kindness was temporary.

That safety could be taken away without warning.

That men with power rarely cared what happened to women like her.

“Of course,” she whispered.

The quietness of her voice unsettled me more than her defiance ever could.

She lowered herself back into the chair.

I turned toward the door before I did something unforgivable.

“Guards!”

The door opened almost immediately.

“Take her to the east wing. Put someone outside her door.”

Elowen didn’t look at me again.

Not when the warriors helped her stand.

Not when she struggled to walk on her injured ankle.

Not even when the door closed behind her.

She simply went with them.

And for reasons I refused to examine, the sight of her leaving felt like losing something I had never possessed.

My wolf fell silent.

The sudden absence of its fury was almost worse.

Then a single thought rose from the depths of my mind.

Mate.

I slammed my fist against the table.

The wood cracked beneath the blow.

“No,” I growled into the empty room. “I will not have her.”

But the bond remained.

And somewhere deep inside me, beneath the hatred and the memories and the scars that had shaped my life, my wolf knew the truth.

The Moon Goddess had chosen her.

And I had just made my first mistake.

⸻

Elowen

The room they gave me was clean, warm, and far too comfortable for a prisoner.

There was a bed with thick blankets, a small fireplace, a wardrobe, and a window overlooking the dark forest.

Someone had even left a jug of water and a plate of food on the bedside table.

I stared at it all without moving.

I had learned long ago that comfort could be a trap.

Still, when the guards finally left me alone, I sat on the edge of the bed and let the tears come.

Not loud sobs.

Not the kind that made my chest ache.

Just silent tears slipping down my face while I pressed my hands against my mouth to keep anyone outside from hearing.

I had survived my father.

I had survived the years of fear, the hunger, the nights spent hiding, and the long stretches of loneliness that had followed my escape.

I had survived things I still couldn’t bring myself to name.

And now I had found myself trapped in another man’s territory, at the mercy of an Alpha who looked at me as though my existence offended him.

I wiped my face angrily.

I would not cry over Kael Varyn.

I didn’t know why he had looked at me as though something terrible had happened.

I didn’t know why he had suddenly become even colder after staring into my eyes.

And I didn’t care.

He was an Alpha.

I was a rogue.

Men like him didn’t give women like me happy endings.

I limped to the window and looked out at the forest.

Beyond those trees lay the road I had been trying to reach. Somewhere beyond that road was a place where I could disappear again, where nobody knew my name and nobody had the power to decide what happened to me.

I pressed my forehead against the cool glass.

“Please,” I whispered to the Moon Goddess. “I’ve already survived so much. Don’t let this be another place I have to escape.”

The wind stirred the branches outside.

No answer came.

I turned away from the window and sank onto the bed, drawing my knees toward my chest.

I had no idea that, only a few rooms away, Kael Varyn was fighting the same impossible truth I was completely unaware of.

That fate had tied our lives together.

That the man who despised rogues had been given a rogue as his mate.

And that before this was over, the hatred between us would cut deeper than either of us could imagine.

Because the Moon Goddess might have chosen us for each other.

But she had not promised that either of us would know how to love.