The Alpha's Witch-Bride

Chapter 3

"His wife." He said as he gave her a brief and curt nod. "As you all were." He added, letting his deep voice become even deeper as he boomed it across the loud room that was being rented by whispers.

And just like that, the atmosphere was back in place. It was like she was never there. Like she had not tried to squeeze the life out of that man barely a few minutes ago.

“What are you called?” he asked her, pointing towards a bar stool that was behind him.

“My name is Raya.” She told him. “Raya Bennett.” She iterated.

“Ah,” he began with a pleasant smile. “The Bennet witches. How wonderful. I’ve only heard tales of your family.” He told her as he winked at a burly man at the bar.

“None good I would imagine.” She inferred before she could help it.

He smiled as he turned to the bartender he had signaled a few seconds ago. The man dashed a bottle his way which he surprisingly caught with little effort or attention.

She didn’t imagine that there would be any good thing to be said about the witches in her family.

They had to pave their own way by blood and by force to become a force to be reckoned with so she did not imagine that there would be anything good to say.

“Well, would you join me for a drink Raya?” he asked her.

It was not really a question at this point. She had to be here. She had come for a reason so it made sense to sit down and have the talk.

“Now that you know my name– “she began.

“My name is Jackson.” He told her, cutting her short.

She raised her brows at him, causing him to burst into a mild smile as he knew what she was expecting. She wanted to know his family name.

“Lumiere.” He said with a tinge of reluctance.

“Lumiere?” She responded almost instinctively as she moved towards him in a light stride.

"Yes." He said as he offered her the seat that he had left open for her.

Raya gave him a once over as though she was rethinking this rather horrible plan one last time before it would indeed be too late but she knew that there was no time for that now. There was no possible way that she could back up. She had come too far to back down now. The trouble was beyond her and she was going to do all that was within her means to fix it.

The first step was making them all aware of the problem. They also needed to know that without them all standing together, they may as well be embracing their own extinction.

The demon hoard was becoming more and more prevalent and she could only do so much with her magic. She needed an alliance that could last and that was the only reason that she sought to do the unthinkable. For the first time in nearly five hundred years, she was going to try to bring them all together and the journey started with bringing the wolves together.

“So you wanted to talk about something?” Jackson asked.

“How can you tell?” She said, giving him a wry smile.

Was she flirting with him? Why was she being so free all of a sudden?

“I don’t imagine you, a witch came into the den of the wolves. Quietly literally too without some sort of motive.” He told her as he snapped his fingers at the barman again. “So what’s it gonna be sweetness?”

She felt a tinge of excitement run up her smile for the oddest of reasons. She stifled her shock, settling for a mild frown that left him with a permanent grin on his face.

He seemed almost free when he smiled.

There was an aura about him that unsettled her, but she could not quite put her finger on it.

“Well, you make a good point.” She said as she let herself relax a little bit.

She was not dropping her guard down around this man. Not even for one second. She was in their den and there was no telling what would happen to her. She could defend herself and even though her mother would always tell her that she was the strongest of all the witches in the last five hundred or so years, that was beside the point. She did not want to have to fight the very people whom she was looking to get their help.

Raya sighed as she tried to phrase her request in her head. Her mother would kill her, she thought to herself. But then again, she was always saying that she should take responsibility and be the woman she thought that she could be.

This was her doing just that so she couldn’t exactly be faulted for that.

“Something is coming.” She said almost instinctively. “And it doesn’t belong here.”

“I suppose you’re going to tell me all about it?” he said rather calmly.

She had not seen anyone take this dreadful news better than he just did. He either had a lot of practice with bad news or he knew how to take care of himself pretty well.

"It first started as dreams." She began to tell him as she took a gulp of the drink the bartender had passed to them. "Dreams are windows to the other world. We are able to see things that should normally be veiled from our plane."

"Ah, well that's something I never knew." He said in his deep, dreamy-like voice, she thought. "What has that got to do with this?" He asked her as he absent-mindedly ran his free hand through his hair.

She seemed a little distracted but she called herself to order. This was very important. More important than the silly girly nuances that were flooding her brain right now.

“That was when I saw him.” She told him, instantly taking on a grim expression.

She could see that his face had changed and it was mostly because of her own.