Page 14 of Reclaiming His Lost Mate (Secret Legacy #3)

A lexis

I hadn’t stopped looking for Selina. I had eyes everywhere, combing packs in Alaska and beyond for the golden-haired woman who I didn’t do right by, but it seemed as though Selina had vanished off the surface of the earth, completely changed her identity, or was right under my nose and I couldn’t sniff her out.

All this time passing and me not having a chance to make up for how much of her life I ruined was a burden words couldn’t describe.

But I didn’t let that frustration stop me.

If it was anything, it was fuel to my drive, and I woke up every day with renewed energy to find Selina.

This was the only reason why when Marissa was found by my warriors at Shadow Moon Pack borders with her five-word message saying, “I know where Selina is,” I abandoned everything, and my feet moved on their own accord, hope soaring in my chest as I breezed through to the interrogation room where Marissa was held.

After uncovering that Marissa’s action was responsible for my one night with Selina and my breakup with her, I’d cut her off completely, but she had been hell-bent on reconciliation.

I’d refused to entertain her, but not today, when she held the key to finding Selina—something I hadn’t been able to do for five years.

But as I approached the interrogation room with Rhys trailing behind me, a dark feeling overcast my mind, telling me that I was doing wrong by coming here.

Rhys had already assured me that Marissa had been searched and had no weapons on her, so that gave me some bit of consolation.

Once the door opened, I stopped to take Marissa in.

She hadn’t changed much in five years, still having that desperate look in her eyes that one would easily mistake for determination, but what caught my attention about her was the crumpled piece of clothing she clung to.

“What is that?” I asked Rhys without letting my eyes leave her, my jaws locked and features tense as Marissa paced the small room.

“She says it’s the map to where she heard Selina is. She won’t let anybody touch it.”

Marissa turned just then, and her eyes widened. “Alexis. I didn’t think you would come. I have information about her,” Marissa rushed out immediately, taking only one small step forward and thinking better of it.

The nerves flooded me at once, the turmoil inside me manifesting as a scorching storm through my entire body.

My heart rattled in my chest, but I managed to shake my head once, my skeptical side winning.

“You haven’t been known to have the best relationship with your sister,” I said, sticking with the titles because saying Selina’s name out loud was something I didn’t yet deserve since she left because of me.

“Why would you now care enough to share where she is?

And if I haven't been able to find her, how come you have?” I rasped out, watching Marissa closely for any slip-ups in her character.

I got nothing.

“You can believe me or not after I show you what I know, but if we don’t act fast, Selina is going to be in serious danger,” Marissa bit out through quivering lips, eyes scanning my face in despair.

My wolf shot up on high alert, and I was crossing the door in less than a second, shutting it with every other person present outside.

On another day, I would have pressed for more information, but I had gotten nowhere in finding her on my own, and if, by some slim, goddessforsaken chance, Selina happened to be in harm’s way, I was going to do anything to stop it .

The energy permeating the air was thick and chilling to my bone marrow, but I drew closer with heavy steps, and Marissa tore her eyes from me, moving with a sense of urgency as she spread the crumpled map on the table.

“It’s a small hidden pack, but it makes sense that she would be here,” Marissa said, pointing her index finger to a tiny spot on the squeezed cloth.

I inched forward, ignoring the sudden nausea threatening to undo me until I was side by side with Marissa.

I reached for the spot on the map in order to see where it led while Marissa went on, speaking in a rapid fire.

“It has something to do with Torin, Alpha of the Black Moons, taking over our packs, and he saw Selina as…”

With how fast Marissa was speaking, hands flailing, I didn’t see her pull something tiny from her sleeve and take a sharp swipe at my wrist. I muffled a groan as pain shot up my arm, blood fast-filling the line that she had cut on my wrist and pouring right on top of the piece of clothing on the table.

Just then, Marissa’s mask fell away as a cold, blood-frosting snare covered every inch of her face.

My brows furrowed, my heart thundering now as blood pounded in my ears and poured down my wrist. That is when I realized Marissa had tricked me.

Before I could think of an explanation for what was going on, that unnatural energy I’d been feeling in the air closed in on me, wrapping its eerie, long hands around my neck in a wicked, unyielding grip, chaining me to the point where I choked.

“Marissa,” I called out in a strangled tone, ignoring the flare on my hand as I clutched my neck. “What…what are you doing?”

Marissa smiled, devilish, deceitful, and proud, like she just caught a rare kill.

“Oh. Just what I should have done five years ago. Now we’re locked in for life.

The spell has ensured it,” she said, pointing to the map soiled with my blood just in time for me to see the dark wisps of smoke rising from around the bright red stains.

Dark magic.

“You’re mad!” I bit out, drawing in strained breaths as I felt my insides shift until I watched my own body like an outsider, having no choice but to bend to every word and command from Marissa's lips .

“Yes,” she replied with a triumphant smile. “Yes, I am, and we are getting married in three days!”

No. Way.

“I am not doing it,” I stressed out through clenched teeth, but that seemed to be funny to Marissa as her response was a condescending laughter that sounded and felt like spikes raking through my skin.

“Aren’t you, Alexis?” She asked, hand propped on her waist. The woman who was just in misery about her missing sister was gone.

“Do you not feel your insides liquefying like it’s been dipped in lava?

Or don’t you feel like throwing up till your intestines splatter all over the floor?

Don’t show up in three days, and you’re dead! ”

For three long days, I desperately sought a way to lift Marissa’s spell.

I scoured ancient texts, consulted with the pack’s elders, and even reached out to allies.

Alpha Kyle and Luna Leah of the Moonlight Pack had second-hand knowledge of magic.

But with each method I tried, I came up empty and remained tethered by Marissa’s curse.

And just as she’d predicted, three nights later, against my will and power, there was a small gathering of six consisting of me, Marissa, three elders from my council, and my Beta, Rhys, in my throne room, marking the beginning of a marriage spun by Marissa’s spell on me through dark magic.

Everything in me told me to put a stop to it and not hand the welfare of my people into the hands of a woman driven insane by her search for power and not to dishonor my memory of Selina by taking another woman into my home, but I couldn’t utter the words.

It felt like a compulsion, and nothing like the mate pull or what I felt for Selina.

It felt dark, vile, and nauseating, and the only time where I remotely felt like I was in control of myself was when I was a long distance away from Marissa.

So, one week later, with all the resolve I could garner from decades of training, I was taking desperate strides away from my pack, leaving Rhys in charge as I sought to search for a way to loose myself from Marissa’s chains.

As soon as I crossed the borders, I verbally severed all alliances with Nightwing Pack, but to say that getting away from my pack and Marissa was tough would be painting it nicely with a complementary bow on top.

That first night, I couldn’t close my eyes to sleep without drowning in my dreams or falling into a terrible nightmare with Marissa repeatedly stabbing me to my demise.

When I forced myself to stay awake, I was either conjuring real-life images of her, or my insides would feel like a volcano eruption.

My wolf suffered irrational fits of rage, misery roping its sharp jaws around my neck.

The claws of Marissa’s dark spell on me haunted me to go back to her, but as I went farther and the night turned into many, it became bearable, only echoing in a corner of my mind as a dull nibbling ache.

Suzanne, a friendly witch, was the woman I first met to help me, but she was shocked by how much dark magic was in my system, unable to flush it out without draining herself.

She suggested another witch in a smaller valley town only miles from her, Lyvia, and recognition struck me at the mention of the name.

Lyvia was the witch who helped Roman, Kyle, and Leah of the Blood Moon and Moonlight Packs a little over half a decade ago in taking down their oppressive ruler, Reginald. Suzanne had offered me shelter for the night, but I couldn’t sleep when this much darkness was soaring within me.

I didn't know how much time I had left.

My trek to Matsuna began at dawn. I couldn't shift; I lacked the trust in my wolf to handle the madness that surged through us. So, I trudged onward on foot, agonizingly slow, my strength being sapped by the grip of dark magic.

Days blended into one another, the scenery shifting from the gently sloping valley to a landscape with steeper, icier cliffs.

The cold air stung my lungs, and hunger gnawed at my resolve.

I fought against exhaustion, pushing through the fatigue and the constant echo of Marissa's vile magic threatening to swallow me.

Finally, I reached the next frozen valley over from Suzanne's—and hope kindled. I dragged my leaden feet through the snow, marveling that I was finally in the town Suzanne described—Matsuna—but it wasn't the witch who I saw first .

It was a girl.

I stopped in front of the six-story house seared into a cliff—where Lyvia should have been, but it was a child, clueless and no more than five years old, who bore an uncanny image to myself of over two and a half decades who I met.

Crouching low, in wonder, I asked, "What's your name?"

"Mia," she replied as the many symptoms I'd felt for the weeks leading up to the moment all faded away, everything diminishing to the volume of a barely beating heart.

"How old are you, Mia?" I asked.

"I'm four," she said proudly.

Astonished, I stared into her eyes, the only features that struck me as different from mine. They were a stormy shade of forest green, just like Shadow Moon Pack's forests usually reached after a wild night blessed with Igaluk's cloudburst.

Just like Selina's eyes.

They called to me, drew me in, and held me captive. The only captivity I ever craved.

Even the animals had scrambled from my presence when I startled them in the woods on my journey here, but not this angel.

This child, Mia, had clung to my hand, purifying every dark corner of my heart with her essence as she obliviously led me to her mother.

Even before we arrived, even before I heard a woman draw in a sharp, stunned gasp on seeing me approach with her daughter, I’d felt her. I smelled her.

My Selina.

It only took a second for the resemblance the child bore with me, as well as her having Selina's mesmerizing eyes, to take up meaning in my head.

Selina's night with me didn't just end as the singular best night of my life.

We made a baby together that night.

And I'd been absent for five years of it.

The question was out of my lips before I could put a lid on, even though low enough that only I heard it. "What the hell have I done?"