Hate Mates (The Alpha Shifter)

This had never happened before.

She was always at the mercy of her wolf until sunrise or exhaustion took her wolf away.

Cheryl was still in her wolf form, and Alexa cried out as she was grabbed by her hair and dragged up from the cliff edge.

Alexa tried to fight off the wolf, but her scream of pain filled the air as Cheryl wrapped her claws around her waist and bit down. Teeth sank into her flesh. Pain burst through each pore of her body. She was going to die tonight.

Alexa didn’t know what happened, but Cheryl’s jaw was wrenched open, and Alexa fell to the ground, curling up in a ball.

There was more of the pack coming to deal with Cheryl. She didn’t exactly know what was happening. Placing a hand on her side, she tried to stop the blood, and her head hurt so badly.

Nothing made a whole lot of sense.

She heard an earth-shattering howl, and then total darkness.

****

Three days later

Landon didn’t like that his father had called a town meeting.

Ever since the full moon, the pack had been in uproar. Not once, not in the history of any pack, had there been an attack like the one Cheryl did on Alexa. His father was pissed, as was the pack.

They were all angry. Some of that rage was directed at him. They blamed him for what happened.

He wasn’t the cause of the attack. Cheryl acted on her own, but she did so because she wanted him. It didn’t matter that he tried to explain he’d never led her on. Never made her believe there would be anything between them. She had done what she wanted without a single care for anyone else, including him.

Alexa had healed. That was all his parents would tell him. He hadn’t seen her since the attack.

When he’d stumbled onto her bleeding on the ground, puncture wounds in her body from where Cheryl had been determined to break her, he’d never felt so much fear in his life. Alexa didn’t deserve that, and he’d been so scared he would lose her.

He sat in his place at the town meeting, where his father had told him to wait in the front row, and he looked up at him, aware of the pack entering the hall.

Alexa and her family arrived, and he chanced a look at her. She had a hand on her stomach, and he knew it was where the tooth had punctured the deepest. As she’d been attacked by a pack wolf, her ability to heal was hindered. It was always the case with the pack—not that they’d had many opportunities to test the theory out.

He wanted to go to her, to ask if she was all right, but she took her place, at the front, on the other side, looking up at the alpha.

Minutes passed, and he sensed the hall filling up.

He should have been able to stop Cheryl. His strength had wavered so fucking much that night. The moment he saw Cheryl toss Alexa over the edge, and she’d turned back into a human, he’d been taken aback. That had never happened. Landon had also felt the spark of strength that had flooded him when he saw her being dragged and then bitten.

“Thank you all for coming. As you all know, the events of the last full moon have … left a lasting impression.”

A rumble sounded throughout the hall. Landon kept his gaze on his father, who held his hands up to silence everyone. “I know that I as well as all of you are upset by Cheryl’s actions against Alexa. We also know that she has believed for a long time she is the rightful mate of Landon, my son. We all know that is not true. Landon and Alexa are … true mates. Their lives are intertwined. I had hoped that with time and with their transitioning, they would come to see that they are bound together in ways that are unbreakable and unavoidable. However, the events of three nights ago leave me no choice. Landon, Alexa, please come up here.”

He glanced at Alexa, not liking where this was going, not one bit. From the look on her face, her furrowed brow, and how she bit her lip, she wasn’t too happy with it either.

They made their way up to the small podium where his father stood.

Landon kept his gaze averted from Alexa at all times. He didn’t want to read her face.

He watched as his father turned toward them, and he frowned as he saw the handcuffs in his grip.

What the fuck was happening?

“Hold out your hands.”

There was no denying their alpha. They both held their hands out together.