The Alpha's Little Rogue

Before

"It was two months later when the pack meeting was called. I couldn't understand what was being said, and a lot of what I remember I probably don't really remember, but Elio told me the story so many times, that I feel like I can see it all in my mind. Sorcha was pregnant. They wanted to kill Samson. They said he'd raped her. She was trying to speak up. She kept trying to say that he was her mate and her father slapped her across the mouth at least six times, hard. My father and mother were both crying, so I was crying. Elio was Elio. He just looked furious. That I know I remember. His face and his eyes were so angry. He hadn't shifted yet, but his eyes were his wolves, even if that's impossible."

"Then the pack Luna interceded. She whispered something to the Alpha and he grinned. I saw that smile that wasn't a smile in my nightmares for years. I know I remember that too. Sometimes I still wake up with that grin in my mind's eye."

"He looked at his daughter on the ground, cradling her stomach in her hands and sobbing. I didn't know until much later that she was pregnant. That was why poor little Rowen had to marry that old bastard when she turned seventeen to make the alliance. He said that he would let the Goddess decide. We would have one hour. And then the men in the pack and any women who wanted to join seeking justice, as they called it, for Sorcha, could come for us and hunt us and kill us all."

"By then the crowd had turned. They were a mob hungry for blood. The faces I saw were no longer the faces I'd grown up knowing. They were ready to rip us apart limb from limb."

"We ran. Samson carried Elio and my father carried me. Maybe it was always hopeless to think that all of us would survive. Life as rogues with a four year old and a seven year old for a family that had lived at the top of the hierarchy in a pack? I don't know what we were thinking. Sometimes I wish we'd laid down and let them take us then and there. It would have quicker."

"Hey, hey," he cupped her cheeks in both hands, and she shook herself free from the spell her story had cast. "No. It wouldn't have been better. Because whatever happened, you are here now. You're mine. And I cherish you. I am so sorry that that bastard hurt you. I'm sorry that they did that to your family. But no one will ever lay a finger on you again." Leaning forward he pressed his lips lightly to hers in a sweet, chaste kiss.

Nodding, she managed a faint smile, before continuing her story.

"We ran for two hours before the strongest warriors began to catch up with us. My mother and father and brother could have escaped on their own, but with Elio and I slowing them down they really didn't have a chance."

"I've spent years trying to understand why our Alpha made the order. He could have just executed my brother. It would have broken my parents heart but they were loyal, if the stories Elio told me were even the tiniest bit true. He firmly believed that they would have continued to serve him. My father thought that the Alpha was his best friend, since childhood and that his loyalty was absolute. But when that same Alpha was given an excuse, he decided to try to wipe out our entire family from youngest to oldest. And I am certain that he did know that my brother was his daughter's true mate. He was leaving her in excruciating, possibly life threatening pain. I just don't understand."

Shaking her head she pushed on with the story. "Samson put Elio down and told him to run as fast as he could. He turned to fight our pack's best warriors. He was strong and a good fighter for his age, but they had years of experience on him and had the muscle of men who were fully in their prime. But what he did gave us a chance to get further away."

"My parents thought many of the people from our pack went back once Samson was dead. My parents were their friends. And killing children isn't all that fun, even for a mob. So their bloodlust might have been slaked when they murdered Samson that night, which in turn saved our lives."