Page 12 of Reclaiming His Lost Mate (Secret Legacy #3)

A lexis

I was in the comfort of my pack now—had been for a month—surrounded by those I had missed, my loyal packmates and my Beta and trusted friend, Rhys.

But even as I relished the familiarity of Shadow Moon, I couldn’t shake the weight of that night with Selina.

It gnawed at me, a persistent reminder of the choices I had made.

Why had I been so drawn to her?

The memory danced through me of how out of my mind with desire I’d been after the drugging. In that haze, the allure of her warmth and the fleeting sense of connection had pulled me in.

After my night with Selina, I had chosen to put hundreds of miles between us, convinced that the vast distance would grant me the reprieve my heart craved and the ability to push her from my thoughts.

But my hopes proved futile. Even with the protective walls of Shadow Moon encasing me, Selina’s presence clung stubbornly to my mind, refusing to fade, a constant torment.

Selina’s face was still every-darn-where I turned.

I’d been so blinded with rage when I woke up beside her—with no recollection of how I got there and only a splitting headache, which told me that I’d been drugged—that I didn’t pay attention to my actions until days after I returned home to Shadow Moon Pack.

My memories from my night with her were blurry at first, but the details all rushed back to me before long, every last one of them. Since then, I hadn’t been able to help but feel like I handled things poorly and way out of character.

“Are you with me?” Rhys snapped, momentarily yanking me from being drowned in my well of thoughts.

Rhys, my twenty-four-year-old Beta, one of Shadow Moon’s most skilled combat men and my most trusted ally, was currently standing behind the free chair in my private home office, posture astride, and hands clasped in front of him as he brought me up to speed on pack matters as he did once every week.

He had been speaking for a while now, but…

“you barely heard a single word of what I said in the last ten minutes, did you?” Rhys completed my line of thought, and I sighed in exhaustion.

“My apologies. What were you saying, Rhys?” I asked, looking up at him from my seat as I wiped a hand down my face like that would help reduce how much I saw Selina’s charming smile or her delicate qualities.

Rhys’s dark green eyes stared back at me, and if not for the fact that I had a reputation to uphold as Alpha, I would have broken the gaze first. There was no way Rhys wouldn’t see through me.

“Still can’t stop thinking about your mate?” He asked, confirming my last thought, and I shook my head once.

“No. The fated pull won’t let me,” I said, feeling as if there were barbs under my skin, working their way deeper into me at the thought of the insufferable bond that, even with so much distance between us, I was still fighting against.

That was all this was, Selina’s allure—the intoxicating promise that the fated mate bond induced.

But what had that fated connection brought my parents?

A descent into despair, culminating in death.

No, I couldn’t allow myself to be distracted by such illusions.

Rhys, thinking in a similar line, raised his eyebrow in question.

“Did you not reject her publicly and choose to marry her sister instead?”

I nodded, trying to reaffirm the much more sensible choice I’d made a month ago by accepting Marissa as my intended mate. I’d witnessed her sharp edges with her malicious streak, but she was by far the more pragmatic choice than Selina, who was surrounded by the uncontrollable force of fate.

“Then why do you think it’s the bond’s doing?”

I thought about his question for a second, and not finding the answer, I shrugged. “I don’t know. What else would it be?”

Rhys considered me for a moment, emotions sifting across his face, and then he switched from his soldier stance, easing his make-believe, stoic features.

Rhys did this sometimes. He was a good friend to me, always had been, but he never crossed the lines when it came to our positions.

He maintained his respect and due courtesy for me as his Alpha, but there were times that he let his guard down and stepped in his brotherly shoes, even though I was a year older than him.

It was one of the reasons why Shadow Moon prospered more than some others, having a good Beta as well as an Alpha.

My eyes tracked Rhys as he came forward to occupy the free seat he was earlier standing behind, and I waited for what he had to say.

“Are you going to be honest with yourself, Alexis?” Rhys asked, leaving behind all formalities.

My eyebrows drew together in a frown, but I knew that Rhys was right. I needed to be honest, so I nodded again.

Rhys adjusted in his seat, inching forward, hands clasped together and propped under his chin, saying. “So tell me, what about her is bothering you right now.”

My answer wasn’t thought of. It just rushed out of me.

“I can’t stop thinking about how much I hurt her all through the time I knew her.

I should have given her a chance to explain herself after our night together because she seemed at a loss when I accused her of drugging me, but I shut her down.

” I took a deep breath, thinking about how Selina felt under me, how she shattered apart with my name tumbling out of her seductive lips, and how perfect it felt to bury myself deep inside her.

“I miss her,” I admitted, chuckling at how unfair I was to her.

“I miss her after I broke her, and I hate myself for it.”

Rhys’s face had no judgment on it. “It’s been a month since that happened. She may have moved on,” he said, if only to comfort me, but I shook my head .

“No. It doesn’t feel like it.”

He sighed in response to my words, thinking about his words before voicing them out. “I’d say, go get your mate, man. Or at least talk to her and apologize for walking out on her. You’d feel so much better.”

I looked up at him, considering his words. His words held some promise to it. “Yeah. I think you’re right, Rhys. Thank you. Thank you for the advice.”

“Always,” he responded, rising from the seat and moving to get back to his many duties.

I spoke before he could leave. “I know it’s a lot to ask, but I need to make it right. I’ll be back as soon as I can, in a few days at most, so will you please look after things for me? Again?”

“Of course, Alpha. Our pack is always in safe hands,” Rhys said, getting back into character, and I let out a forced chuckle.

New purpose filled my heart, driving me forward as I chased the woman I wanted, for real this time, and it was the first time in years that I could beat my chest and say I was nervous and excited about something at the same time.

My excitement was cut short, nervousness taking up the whole space, as I arrived at the now-accustomed lands of Nightwing Pack, specifically the pack’s treatment hut, which was where Selina should have been since I was already in sync with her daily activities, and was met with not only her absence but a shocking, heart-riddling news as well.

The unrecognizable face I found in the hut squeezing a herbal plant behind Selina’s usual spot had only two words for me. “She left.”

Thinking that Nightwing Pack’s treatment hut had received an added set of hands within the month, I asked.

“What time is her new shift, please?”

The lady’s eyes snapped up from the herb she was grinding to meet mine for a mere second before going back to her chore, speaking without looking up.

“I said she left. She moved away from here.”

My heartbeat faulted, seizing for the next couple of seconds, and a groan filled with denial slipped past my lips as the words settled over me,

“What do you mean by she left? Left to where? When?” I bombarded the young herbalist with questions, my brain scrambling for an explanation as I shook in panic.

Selina couldn’t be gone. Gone as in how? Because of me?

The herbalist shrugged, pausing to stare at me blankly like no one was supposed to care for Selina’s whereabouts. “I do not know.”

She wasn’t going to help me, so I stormed out of the hut, moving fast on my feet in search of someone who would.

I breezed past unfamiliar faces as I aimed for Lucian’s royal house.

Everyone was going about their business, either unbothered or oblivious to the fact that Selina wasn’t in Nightwing Pack anymore.

As I sped to my destination, gnawing suspicions clawed at me.

Had Selina left because of me?

The thought seized around my heart like a fist. I couldn’t be the one that had driven her away, could I?

But then my thoughts crowded in with all I’d done to make her life unbearable in her own home.

I’d accused her of drugging and taking advantage of me when all I craved before and after then was exactly that and more—her.

Lucian’s office doors loomed in front of me now, and I forged ahead through a quiet hallway that was in contrast to the buzz of activities that had gone on during my time here, reminding me that my visit to Lucian was unannounced and not scheduled for. But that was the least of my problems.

With my heart thundering furiously against my ribcage and blood roaring in my ears, I would not have thought I could make out the voices coming from behind Lucian’s office door.

But the hallway was empty and quiet, and with the help of my heightened senses, I did.

The first words I heard rooted me in my spot.

“Selina is not coming back, Daddy, so will you please think about me now?”

Taken aback by the words, I remained unmoving in front of the door.

Did Marissa have something to do with Selina’s disappearance?

My wolf roared to life, thrashing in my head on hearing his mate’s name, but I shut my eyes as I drew one long breath in, my rational side winning the fight. If I was going to hear what Marissa had to say about Selina, I needed to be quiet.

Tuning into my skills as the Alpha of Shadow Moon Pack, Alaska’s known and most skilled concealers, I forced my breathing to drop below normal, taking in slower breaths than a more-than-average supernatural could for their brain to still function.

I reached for my wolf, letting him take over our heartbeat, the switch helping to reduce the sound of blood pounding in my veins from a constant thud to almost nothing.

Then, I listened.

Shuffling sounded first, then Lucian’s stern voice.

“Don’t say that, Marissa. You know that I only thought of you when I presented you and your sister for Alexis to make his choice.

Just as I expected, he chose you, and it’s nobody’s fault but yours that he didn’t take you back to his pack with him.

You had one job, and it was to make sure he was locked in, but you let your chance slip. ”

I stood there, stunned. Marissa spoke now, and I imagined her face twisting in anger, not in remorse for failing to go through with their vile plan.

"I tried to do it, and I got so close. We were supposed to sleep together that night after I laced his drink, and I made sure we were around each other all through the banquet, but I don't know how he managed to slip out of my sight. "

So, Marissa was the one who drugged me and not Selina?

The confession made me stagger on my feet, not because I was surprised to learn that night was Marissa's doing, but because an invisible hand drove into my chest at her words, twisting my heart till it dislodged from its chamber, yanking it out, just as I had taken it out on Selina.

Marissa, having no idea that I just heard her, continued.

"Now I’m thinking he’s having second thoughts because he was supposed to take me back with him.

What if he left with that mutt? You have to help me, Daddy.

You have to convince Alexis to speed up the marriage.

Tell him something important came up. We can have it this week. "

That was enough information for me. I got everything I could from them. One was that it was Marissa who tried to take advantage of me, never Selina, and two, both Lucian and Marissa had no idea where Selina was.

Instead of leaving, I gripped the knob, yanked the door open, and slammed it against the wall, shaking the structure to its hinges. I would have reveled in the sight of the horrified looks on both their faces if my mind wasn't so set on another mission.

I spoke.

"I would be telling lies if I said I was surprised that your hands weren't clean since I have come to a close understanding of what kind of woman you are within this short span, Marisa.

" My voice was calm and controlled, contrary to the turmoil driving in my head, but I spoke regardless.

"I do not know what you seek in a Luna title that will push you to this extent, and I do not care to know, but you will not be getting it from me.

The engagement is called off," I stated, turning around and not wasting a spare second to hear the fake strings of apologies from Marissa or the palpitating tone of Lucian's voice.

My back was turned to them and Nightwing Pack as a whole, and I could only think of Selina—how short of words she had been when I accused her, throwing horrid names in her face, and just how devastating it must have been for her to pack up her things and abandon the pack she lived in all her life.

Hate was a strong word, one I have never used on anybody, not even on my father, who could not give my mother the life she deserved, but I hated myself right there and then.

I needed to find her. I had to make things right—all of it, and redeem myself enough to deserve even half a quarter of Selina's worth. Falling into my thoughts then, I wondered. ‘Where on Igaluk's green earth am I going to begin?’