The Alpha Who Rejected His Cure

Chapter 3

Rafael

I stood tall before the world, but inside, something I couldn't control screamed her name.

“Let. Go.” I seethed through gritted teeth, Serena’s grip on my arm burning through my skin.

I turned to her immediately, pouring every emotion I could muster up into my stare, that would keep her away from me at that moment.

Irritation. Rage. Anything but what’s really there.

“I—”

Her words died in her mouth the instant our eyes met and she let go of me immediately.

Good.

Because another second, and I would have crushed her wrist without meaning to.

The crowd were jeering, filled with excitement because I rejected my fated mate. They praised me for being a wise ruler, for not letting a jinx stay in our pack.

My mate…was a jinx? I gritted my teeth as I blinked rapidly.

I couldn't look at her. I wouldn't even be able to.

I don’t—

I look. Goddess, I can't stop myself. To make this easier, I had tried to avoid her stare all these while, I knew…I knew if I stared in her eyes just once, I would question everything I thought was right.

Liora.

They dragged her away, the chains were biting into her skin as the guards hauled her away like she was nothing. Like she’s not—

“She's hurting!” I whispered through the mindlink, my voice coming out rough, “Ronan, no one drags my mate away like that.” I warned through the mindlink and he began moving immediately.

My chest tightened as I forced my eyes shut, trying to keep a poker face.

Control.

I turned and walked away from the platform, each step heavier than the last, as I returned back into the pack house.

The ceremony was over.

Everything was over!

The halls were empty, the crowds still jeering had begun dispersing, the maids were outside cleaning up what’s left of the spectacle I created.

Good.

No one gets to see me like this. I dragged my feet to my quarters and the moment my door shut behind me, the world I had been holding together shattered right at my feet.

My knees almost gave out, as I staggered to the bed.

“So you choose our mate to bear the pack’s burden?” My teeth chattered as his accusing voice resounded in my head, a voice I had done my best to block out from the beginning of the ceremony. My wolf.

Sharp pain ripped through me as my claws protruded out of my fingers and my fangs elongating without permission.

My wolf.

He roared inside of me, threatening to tear my head apart, slamming against my mind like a beast starved and enraged.

“Stay down!” I snarled, my hands curling into a fist so tight my nails cut into my palms. “I did it to keep her safe.” I whispered.

Bullshit.

Even I was unable to believe the words that had just left my lips.

“Safe?” He roared, his voice echoing through my skull. “Did she look safe to you?”

That image of her hands and feets bounded hit me before I could stop it.

Her eyes…

Guilt crashes over me and with a growl, I grab the glass vase beside my bed and hurl it across the room.

It shattered against the wall, just like everything else and then silence followed but even that made everything worse for me.

Because now there was absolutely nothing to drown out the question clawing its way through me.

Did I do the right thing?

Or have I just destroyed the only thing that ever mattered? Should I have shattered my mate like that for the greater good?

A scream erupts in my head and I try to slow my breath as my mind returns to earlier that day when some mothers ran into the pack palace in search of me.

Their alpha. The only one that could save them.

Their screams echo in my head, sharp and broken, the kind that claws into your bones and never leaves.

One of the mothers has a frail looking girl wrapped in her arms, her eyes red with tears.

“Alpha… please… please, she’s all I have. My child. The curse has caught up with my child. Alpha please, you have to help her. Alpha—” Her fingers had dug into my clothes, shaking, desperate, her tears soaking through the fabric as she clung to me like I was her last hope.

Like I was something worth believing in.

My jaw tightened, I could still feel her grip on my legs as she begged me desperately.

I could still hear the way her voice broke when I didn’t answer fast enough.

Because I didn’t have an answer, because there was nothing I could do, because I hadn't decided. Just as Ironblood had said, when I hadn't sent a reply, they stopped the distribution of the serum and now my people were paying for it.

I grab one of the glass shards and stab my hands with it, anything to stop myself from remembering. I didn't want those memories.

Another child had been brought in earlier before then, a little lad, so small, almost too small.

His body had felt weightless in my arms, like something already halfway gone.

His head pressed against my chest, his breathing almost too shallow like he could die any minute now.

“Stay with me, son.” I had ordered, my voice rough and desperate in a way an Alpha should never sound.

His tiny fingers had clutched weakly at my shirt.

“Alpha… it hurts…” The words sliced through me all over again and my chest tightened, but that was all.

The guilt! The guilt was all that weighed on me. I could never feel the pain myself and somehow that hurt more than by physical pain.

I needed that pain! It never f*****g comes.

“It’ll stop. You’ll be fine, son. You will be. I promise.”

A lie.

Another lie.

Still contemplating as his mother begged at my feet desperately, I felt his grip loosen on my shirt.

He was gone. He was dead!

“You said you would protect us!”

“You said we were safe!”

“Do something, Alpha!”

Faces blur together now, grief, anger, desperation, but their voices don’t.

They haunt me on what happens when I hesitate, every passing moment and another child dies.

My hands curled into fists, nails biting into my palms as I tried to force the memories down.

I saw strong warriors drop to their knees, clawing at their own skin as if they could tear it out.

I saw families lock themselves inside their homes, too afraid to step out, too afraid to breathe.

I saw the light leave my pack, piece by piece, until all that was left was fear.

And me, standing in the middle of it.

Powerless, useless.

A f*****g Alpha who couldn’t save his own people.