Ariadne: Almost an Alpha | ✓

Chapter 62 - A Story

Chapter 62 - A Story 

Already over 200 pages in, I flip another page of the novel. I had known I wasn't going to get any sleep tonight even if I tried and had grabbed it from the display under the tv.

Lately, after everything that's happened, I've been dependent on having Dylan with me to sleep. Also tonight, there's just too much on my mind. You'd think that eliminating the cause of my nightmares and fear of the dark would make it all go away, but they'd both unfortunately stayed.

I turn another page, and although my strained eyes are reading the words, my brain isn't processing them.

The door to the room opens. Before I can really begin to panic, Mateus's head pops in, staring at the empty bed before flicking to the unoccupied bathroom.

"I'm not going to leave you again," I say, closing my book. "Not unless you ask me to."

The fear on his face disappears as he notices me, leaving a blank slate, and his whole body steps through the doorway.

"I saw the light under the door," he states. "It's almost two in the morning..."

I pick up on the unspoken question and shrug. "I still have trouble sleeping. Old habits die hard, I guess."

He hesitates awkwardly in the doorway before sitting in the chair across from me instead of leaving.

I take that as a good sign.

"This time let me tell you a story," I beg.

I guess there's something about these moments that leaves us both vulnerable because he nods.

I take a deep breath, giving myself a second to try to piece together the last four years of my life into something that makes sense. "I was the oldest child of Abel Lucia." I begin. "I had three younger brothers, but my dad was pretty progressive. He didn't care that I was a girl, and he was going to give everything to me. He raised me to be a leader and even taught me how to defend himself, but the night everything happened I was too scared to use any of it.

"Cain and my father were twins, and Cain was named second in line instead of my father. My father knew Cain had always been jealous and couldn't be trusted in a position of power, so when my dad became alpha, my dad didn't even put him in the line of succession. This, as you can probably guess, enraged Cain.

"When I was fifteen, there hadn't been any attacks, not even anything on the border in a long time, so no one had bothered to go patrolling around in the swamps in years. That's where Caine hid all of the rogues. He had had his plan set for years and had basically started his own pack in the basin. But he'd always been greedy, always wanted more. He'd planned the attack for the middle of the night, and all of the rogues flooded out of the swamp.

"I told you how my parents died. I wasn't lying about that, but after, I couldn't find my brothers. Eventually, I made my way out of the pack house, and it was chaos outside. There were rogues all over the place, dead ones and live ones. Wolves were fighting everywhere, but at the time I was still so out of it. I just wanted to find my brothers. One rogue tackled me to the ground, but I didn't fight back. When you're training your opponent doesn't actually want to kill you. There's not a thirst for blood oozing out of their every pore. So I froze. And would've been dead meat if Dylan hadn't saved me.

"Even though he's two years older than me, we'd been friends our entire lives. His dad was my father's beta, and he was training to be mine. Dylan had been outside fighting for a while; he knew the pack was done for and kept trying to convince me to run away, but I was too focused on finding my brothers.