Series: Willow Winters
Total pages in book: 56
Estimated words: 51151 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 256(@200wpm)___ 205(@250wpm)___ 171(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 51151 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 256(@200wpm)___ 205(@250wpm)___ 171(@300wpm)
A rousing in the distance steals my attention and raises my hackles. I wish I could hum a song I vaguely remember from my mother so my pup can hear my voice, but I’m far too afraid. I don’t want them to hear me. It’s best when they just forget I’m here. That’s when it’s safest for me. Swallowing thickly, I try to keep my heart from racing. It takes every ounce of energy in me to stay calm during days like these. Days when the shipment comes in and the pack partakes. So long as I’m quiet and stay inside, they forget me, and that’s when I’m safest. I’ve learned to never try to run. The hut, although falling apart, is a sanctuary for me. No one wishes to be here.
The chill of the night creeps through the holes in the mud bricks and I huddle under the tattered blanket to protect myself from the breeze drifting through. I’m intent on simply surviving for the sake of my pup. The clay floor is bare and cold, yet it helps my swelling. I’ll take this if it means I can be left alone. I want to be as far from them as I can.
Right now, I’m safer than I was before I carried the Alpha’s child, but I know my days are numbered. I want to stay out of sight and out of mind for as long as I can. My mate has ruined me and the proud wolf I once was. I’m thankful that fate sent him another to bear the brunt of who he is. She was made for him, enjoying him and his dark ways. It offers me a reprieve.
I don’t belong here, and I wish I didn’t belong to him. The only good he’s ever given me is to let me be alone in this cramped shelter. He made me watch as his new mate pleased him, made me sleep on the floor of the same room while he gave her attention and care he’d never given me. I’m grateful she convinced him to leave me alone here, but I’m terrified to sleep. She’s come multiple times in the night while I’ve been pretending to sleep. Each time he’s come up behind her and told her to leave me alone. I suppose that means I owe him a bit of gratitude.
She doesn’t want me to carry his pup. I know she wishes me dead.
It’s only a matter of time. She’ll either defy Shadow and come to kill me in my sleep, or once my baby is born she’ll end my life and no one will bother to stop her. I know this is true, yet I no longer fear it. There’s a challenge buried inside of me. It does bring me grave sadness, knowing my child will be born into this. I have a plan though. Once I’ve delivered my pup, I’ll run. I won’t stop. I need to get my baby out of here. I will. That’s the last hope I have. I’ll do my best to fight them off and run as fast as I can. It may be the last chance I ever get, but I cling to the hope that I can try to free us one more time before I take my last breath.
I’ll save my child in a way my parents couldn’t save me.
Suppressing the hum of an almost forgotten lullaby, I rub my belly and remember how I used to dream of the day my mate would come and take me from my pack. The seers told me my mate would be an Alpha. They told me he would need me to create a worthy pack and to maintain strong ties with his previous pack so that they would join together and be an unstoppable force. They said a war was coming and I would bring a way for victory and peace. They told me lies. They filled my head with a fantasy that I was compelled to agree to. For the best of everyone else.
I remember the first time I saw Shadow. I remember my heart swelling with hope. The hope that my Alpha would take me away, make me his, and together we would do good in this world. I anticipated feeling a pull to my mate. The pull my pack always told me I’d feel. Like gravity didn’t exist and your soul was meant to merge with the other. The heat that would come and the need to be held by my mate. My sister told me it was like an electric spark and magnetic force that got stronger as you got closer to your mate. Like you were so physically drawn to that person that air no longer existed.
Shadow said he felt it. Felt the need to give me everything, to make me happy, and give me all his love. It’s not what I felt. There was something there, but it wasn’t what they told me it would be.