Chapter 12
Jace's POV
I came down the stairs after, hearing the most breathtaking voice echoing throughout the house. I stepped down into the living room and froze. My eyes were focused wholeheartedly on the girl in front of me. The rest of the room and the people in the room vanished. I couldn't see her face because she had her back to me, but I knew that without a doubt, she was my mate. A golden glow surrounded her; just her presence completed me and made me whole.
I felt everything else around the room vanish, leaving me with the dark haired girl in a blue dress before me. I still couldn't see her face, but I knew she was going to be beautiful when she turned around. I couldn't help the gasp that slipped between my lips, and suddenly the enchanting girl turned to look at me. I met a pair of deep blue eyes-- as deep as the currents in the clear Pacific. Her face was cold with anger, but as soon as her darkened eyes met mine her arched eyebrows and glare was replaced by a look of peace as her jaw unclenched, and the wrinkles on her forehead smoothed out, her eyes filled with light. As she blinked her dark lashes seemed to stroke her porcelain skin. I wanted to reach out and caress it, that smooth skin the color of cream and roses. She was perfect and all that I could ever ask for.
Ellie. Her name appeared in my mind as suddenly as I had known that she was destined to be my mate, ever since the first moment I saw her in my car. It had been an early and rainy morning, and the image of her sitting there came back to memory. I had known that she was the one in that first glimpse, but I just couldn't prove it to myself until she turned 16 and shifted into her wolf form. Every minute I had with her I enjoyed, even if it was her just simply sleeping in my car, or accusing me of being a stalker.
Ther memory of her sitting on the swings in the park with the sun casting a shadow across her face making her accusation of me being a stalker seem like she truly meant it, until her contagious giggle erupted up around us.
Suddenly she lurched over and her hands flew to her ribs, her now-watery eyes darting around. Her teeth clenched together tightly as she took a sharp intake of breath followed by a small gasp. Everything in the room came back to me, and I remembered where I was after being lost in her beauty. I heard a slapping, followed by a rough voice telling her to "turn around." I growled at the intruder and raced from my position at the bottom of the steps towards the voice, preparing to defend my mate against any who dare attempt to hurt her in any way. She was mine and mine alone.
I heard my father's voice boom throughout the room as he ordered us to stop. I halted as soon as I heard the command, as did the rest of the room. I took this time to assess what was going on. My father stood by the old cracked brick fireplace with his beta by his side, who stood in his place, awaiting instructions. Directly in front of me were two people and my mate. My best friend and future beta of the pack, and my father's third in command were the two people I had been about to charge. My mate was on her knees gasping for breath with her arms tied behind her back. She was still hunched over, with her long hair covering most of her face. Ellie's scent filled my nose. That was when I realized her scent was off. It wasn't of a wolf like it should be if she were one of us, but of a human.
Inside my head, something shifted, and suddenly it all clicked. I looked back and forth from my father and my mate kneeling before me, then over at the two people standing guard around her. Ellie was a prisoner. She was the same girl who my pack had been after. She was the daughter of Jenner pack's alpha. She was the one I personally had sent out people to kill. The attack on her tonight had all been my idea, but my father had convinced me that she should live. I knew she was human, but if she insisted on living with the alpha then she got what she deserved. Until now. She was no longer just a human on the wrong side of the war between our two packs, she was my mate.
My inner wolf wanted to run over there and protect her, even if it was from myself. To comfort her in her time of need, and to save her from my friends and family, but it made me so angry that she had lied. No, it wasn't that she had lied, it was that she had lied to me. Thoughts jumbled together in my mind, like a blender set on "puree" with the lid off. My dad let us go as his brows knitted in confusion and his eyes were narrowed trying to understand what was going on. From what I thought he might comprehend this to be, he thought I was so shocked we had caught her. I was so angry about what her family has done to us because of her that I wanted to kill her. All the people they had murdered to protect her. We had the decency to keep her alive instead of just kill her once we have caught someone. My wolf was trying to growl at me for even thinking about hurting her, but I silenced it with a loud growl that caught everyone's attention and snapped them out of their time in hesitation.
"Take her to the dungeon," My father snarled. "Jace, come here." The second remark had slightly nicer quality to it, but the underlying tone was still evident.
I was frozen in my spot as Ellie struggled against them. She was kicking them and biting, all of it useless in her effort to escape, but she still continued. My little spitfire was trying to get free! She opened her mouth and yelled with a mixture of anger and frustration. She raged out loud, while inside I fought against myself. I caught a look in her wide eyes as they stared into mine that seemed to say "help me." With that one look I locked away my wolf's want to oblige that request and let the hatred I felt for the actions of both her and her pack harden my gaze. She whimpered and stopped struggling, slouching in their arms. She gave up. Ellie gave up! The cold expression that was just on my face melted away, replaced by my shock. My feisty little mate just gave up.
------------------- [From this point on I thought the song on the side Breath Me would sound cool playing in the background.]
I stomped down the creaking stairs into the basement, where the person who I was supposed to protect and love more then anything was waiting, locked behind metal bars. It was definitely more like a dungeon than a basement down here. There were maybe 6 cells, each with a tiny cot on the dirty floor and a small, rust-stained toilet. The bars were covered in silver to help keep the werewolves from trying to escape, though it didn't make it look any better down here. There were no windows down here, just a set of lights that would creak and swing with the slightest movement in the air. There was a small bathroom for the guards, and another, larger room for our more privileged prisoners.
I unlocked the door and entered the grimy cell. My heart was pounding so hard that I was sure everyone within a mile radius could hear it. I looked down at the person I was supposed to love forever, the person that made my heart pound like this, and who made even the darkness seem as bright as the sun.
But within my pounding heart was rage.
She looked up at me with sadness covering her face aside from her eyes. In her eyes was hope, and a small bit of joy. Was this really the effect she got from me being here, in the cell with her, a prisoner of my desires? I felt my jaw clench in anger. Her deep blue eyes darkened immediately as the joy vanished, leaving what might have been just a small sliver of hope.
"How could you?" I asked, suppressing the urge to scream at her in a rush of madness and tears.
She just stared up at me with a confused look on her face.
"You lied to me, Ellie. Everything I know about you is a lie. Is that even your name, Ellie, or is that just another lie that you created to throw us off from what you were doing?" I shouted, so angry at everyone that I couldn't hold it in anymore. Angry at myself, at my mate, and at fate.
"No," She lowered her head and refused to look at me. "Eliana is my real name. But the way I felt, no, feel, for you is not a lie. The way I acted when I was around you, that was the real me. That's the me I want you to think about, the carefree girl you knew not that long ago."
"Why did you lie to me?" I fumed. I didn't care what she was like when we were together. She never told me who she was, or even her name. That didn't give her the right to be forgiven so easily. She just continued staring at her hands in her lap. "Look at me!"
She looked up with such anger and fierceness that if looks could kill I would have been dead the moment our eyes met.
"What do you want me to say, huh? That I didn't trust you? That something in my mind was telling me I had to lie to you? Well that something was right," She spat out as if the words were acid. They were, they burned deeper than anything I would have expected could. Even something that she had no say in had told her not to trust me, her own mate. Could that something have known who I was?
"You're the one that lied to me. You didn't tell me your name or the fact that you were the daughter of the alpha of the Jenners. You didn't even tell me the truth about where you lived that one time," I snapped back.
"What was I supposed to say if you were human? 'Oh and by the way I'm the daughter of one of the head alphas in town. You do know that an Alpha leads a pack of werewolves, right? Oh, guess you didn't. Oh well'. What was I supposed to do? I thought you were human. I didn't know you belonged to my world." She was way past pissed. She was shaking with anger.
I too was pissed off. I was pissed off at her for calling this her world. "Your world, you aren't even one of us, and you have the nerve to call this your world?! This is my world and in my world normal humans don't EVER belong with us," I was trying to relax, but it wasn't working all that well: I was going to explode into a wolf at any minute.
"But I do belong in this world just as much as you do," She whispered in a hushed tone. She sounded so hurt and broken saying that. The way she said it made it sound as though she was trying to convince herself of this, not just me.
That made me stop and think for a moment. I remembered a distant conversation I had with my dad a while back. She was adopted by the alpha's family. Before that she had nothing else in her life at all. Saying she didn't belong was like saying she didn't belong in the universe. This world was her entire life, all she had.
She broke my thoughts. "I do belong in your world," she said with more strength then she had during our entire argument. "Fate had made me your mate. I belong to you, I belong to OUR world."
"You are a poor excuse of a mate. You are a human, weak. We shouldn't even exist, so whatever the spirits did they messed up. You make me weak. I am so weak for being mated with a F***ing human," I growled out the word gaining more volume to the point where I was shaking the bars, burning my hands where I gripped the metal. I looked down at the shattered girl sitting on her knees on the dusty, dirty floor ruining her beautiful blue dress that complemented her gorgeous blue eyes. "You are nothing to me from now on." The words came out snarled with disgust. I turned around quickly and slammed the bars closed.
Over the loud clank I heard a choked off sob, a cry for help. In a soft shaky voice so cracked with crying I wasn't sure if it was really what she said, but what I heard was "I know." Those two words broke my heart. It took all my might not to turn back around, and wrap her in my arms. To tell her that everything's ok, that I love her. Turning the corner, I caught a glimpse of her. My beautiful Eliana. Her dark hair covering her face, her small body wracked with sobs that echoed the empty dungeon. Small tears rolling off her pale chin and landing in the dirt, creating a spiral of dust to spring up off the ground, just to land again and stick to the salty tears. I had to keep walking out of there before it was too late.