The Alpha's Little Rogue

Before

Part Seven of Seven

"What?" The question came out sharper than Clay had meant it to and he immediately realized his mistake, holding up his hands and apologizing.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Baby. I was just surprised. I would never hurt you. You're my life. I swear to you. Please, just tell me what happened."

Nova closed her eyes as she began to try to tell the story, her body shaking before she managed to get a word out and after a moment she let her mate move next to her and wrap her in his thick arms. "It's okay, you're safe. He murmured in her ear. Nothing will hurt you. Take your time."

Letting out a deep sigh, she relaxed back against his chest, looking almost asleep. And then she began to speak, telling him the story of how she came to be a rogue.

"My father was the Beta of the pack that I was born into, which made my mother the Beta female." At these words Clay felt a cold ball of fear grip his stomach but he stayed silent taking deep breaths and praying that he was wrong. He thought he might know another side to this story, and  the side he knew had always bothered him, but he pushed away his own memories and forced himself to listen.

"They had three children. First was my oldest brother, Samson. It was widely believed that he would take my father's place as Beta when my father stepped down. Of course my brother was a teenager, only seventeen when this story begins, and becoming Beta was still a long way off. Next was Elio."

"For a long time after Samson was born, my parents tried to have another child and it just didn't happen for years and years. They finally accepted that it wouldn't. And then one day the Goddess blessed them again with another son. And that is why Elio was born almost ten years after my brother. He was seven when this story begins, a brave and precocious boy who loved hearing stories about humans and the lives they led in their cities far from the forests." She had to stop for a moment here, choking back tears at the memories of this brother, who was only four years her senior.

"And then there was me. I was four. I had two older brothers and I thought that I was the princess of our pack. I'm sure you've figured it out, haven't you? The pack? My father was the Beta of the Brittle Moon pack and I wasn't the princess at all, although that was what my father called me. But the princess babysat me every other weekend, along with Elio at our house, so that my parents could have a date night. I thought that Sorcha, your oldest cousin, was as beautiful as the Moon Goddess. Everyone in the pack thought so. Especially my oldest brother."

"If you had asked my brother he would swear to you that Sorcha was his mate. I was very young, but I do know this. All the girls in our pack were head over heels for Samson and he never brought a girl up to his room before Sorcha. Before her seventeenth birthday when she came over they'd joke around and flirt and everything, but that night, when she came over after she turned seventeen, everything changed."

"They put on a princess movie and made us popcorn and we didn't see them for the rest of the night. Elio joked when they came downstairs later that they were mates and I thought Samson was going to kill him. By then everyone already knew that our Alpha was planning on marrying her off to some other Alpha of a nearby pack to cement an alliance. A choice mate? A forced mate is more like it."

"After that day Sorcha practically lived at our house after school. She said she was babysitting me, but she wasn't. She was always in his room. My parents weren't home, because they both had duties in the pack house and usually Samson watched us. The pack was so safe. If he had to be somewhere he could drop us at the pack daycare. But now he never had somewhere else to be. We watched so many movies and they were always in his room."

"Then one day mom came home early and found them up there and there was so much yelling. And then Elio and I had to go upstairs and after that Sorcha didn't come over anymore and Samson was hardly ever home."