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

A lexis

My steps did not falter as my legs carried me to their destination—the ballroom where the pieces that would unite us Eastern packs, my Shadow Moon Pack and Lucian’s Nightwing Pack as allies, currently lay.

With each determined stride, bitter memories from the most tragic time of my life rose higher in my mind, having become more frequent in the past days, and a weakness hit me in the knees.

Flashes of how both my parents—fated mates—withered away right before my eyes just because they were forced into marrying each other, even when it was clear from the beginning that they shared no love, caused the high surrounding walls to shrink around me, almost cutting off my breathing completely.

Father’s heart had truly belonged to another, and the only element of his relationship with my Aaka—mother—was the mental pull of the fated bond, so he could not give her the love and life she deserved.

Their forced marriage laid the foundation for our broken family, punished my innocent mother with a heart-wrenching mental breakdown, and drove her to suicide .

My hands clenched into tight fists, my fingers brutally digging into my palm to draw blood and feel something other than this hurt. I directed a pained stare at the doors that loomed ahead, mirroring the sunken feeling in my chest—a feeling that had never eased up over the years.

That was why a rib-rattling growl loaded with nothing but unbridled rage shook me to my foundations when the doors finally opened, ushering me into an opulent ballroom with a multitude of people, but like a moth to a flame, my eyes connected with one figure in the crowd, and the only thing that filled my once resolute mind was to be near her…

claim her…mark her in every way humanly and inhumanly possible as mine… then own her forever.

Mine!

“It can’t be.”

Igaluk wouldn’t be so cruel as to punish me with the same fate my parents suffered—the same one that I hadn’t even yet recovered from!

From the way her forest green eyes glowed as she took an unbalanced step in my direction, muttering the goddess’s word for mate, “Ilak,” I knew she felt the pull as maddeningly as I did.

Gasps in the expression of shock filled the ballroom from all directions, but I couldn’t be concerned with that right now.

I couldn’t see or hear anyone else. My heart was going in crazy circles, painfully banging against my chest, looking to escape, but my feet moved on their own accord, shortening the space between me and her.

“You have to be kidding me right now,” someone screeched loudly, and I whirled my head to the source as the pull between me and this strange woman snapped, only by a tiny fragment.

The one who screamed had an elaborate dress on, one I was sure she could barely breathe in, and nothing about her looked natural.

That wasn’t what irritated me, though. It was that I hadn’t even seen her standing beside…

“Selina, you cannot be Alexis’s mate! If this is supposed to be a joke, it’s a pretty expensive one,” she yelled, visibly shaking with anger, but all the while, I kept chanting her name in my head like a mantra.

Selina. Selina. Selina .

From the corner of my eye, I saw Alpha Lucian fast approaching, and I turned to face him, grateful for the distraction. I didn’t know how much longer I would have lasted without doing something out of character.

“Alpha Alexis,” he rasped out, smiling and stretching for a handshake.

I took it briefly, my focus on anywhere but him.

“I see you’ve met my beautiful daughters, eh…

Selina, especially. I knew you had an eye for the finest things,” he said, pointing to her and stepping in between Selina and the fuming sister, who he didn’t care to name.

I didn’t miss the way Selina winced at the obvious faux compliment, and my beast thrashed against the surface of my skin, his guard shooting up.

I opened my mouth to speak, but Lucian beat me to it, grinning like he had won the lottery.

“She’s your mate, eh? You can see that Igaluk herself supports this union between our packs.

What a beautiful beginning of such happiness. ”

I caught the hope shining on Selina’s face, and I immediately pulled my palm from Lucian’s grip like it burned.

How was that possible?

Happiness?

How could there be a guarantee of happiness when all the mate bond did was permanently bind a person to a stranger?

That was the only thing the bond was capable of.

Triggering a physiological reaction that brought about an illusion of the perfect love story, but I knew firsthand how much that mattered in the long run.

My parents’ faces flashed in my mind; my mother’s unmoving eyes as she took her own life to escape the shackles of this freaking curse, and my father’s corpse-like state from then on till he too died.

One would have thought that my mother’s tragic demise would have been the beginning of my father’s happy life, but the glorified mate bond did not stop there.

Call it a punishment for him not bending to the will of the bond, but right after Mom’s death, Dad’s depression followed, and it led him to his early grave.

A wave of anger washed over me instantly, thinking about the pain of my loss and my aversion for mate bonds!

Was I going to knowingly repeat such a tragedy?

Taking a deep-trained breath and gathering every atom of resolve I could, I forced my raging beast to calm down within me as I spoke in a controlled voice.

“It would be unwise of me to make such an important decision just by looking at one of your daughters and feeling nothing other than a mental pull to her, Alpha Lucian, don’t you think?” I asked with a cocked eyebrow.

I doubt Lucian thought about the question, but he nodded eagerly anyway. “You’re absolutely right. They’re both amazing young women,” he praised, flashing his teeth, “but you do have to know each of them for yourself and then decide. Wha-what do you suggest?”

“I will speak with her first,” I said, tearing my eyes from Lucian to face the other sister. I painfully and carefully avoided Selina’s eyes because I knew that one look at her would be all I needed to go crazy.

“It’s Marissa,” she blurted sharply, making herself visible again. “The best way for us to do that would be on the dance floor,” she suggested with a skillful smile planted on her face.

Wordlessly, I moved to the side to let Marissa through to the large clearing at the center of the ballroom where the ball had been going on behind us.

A couple of other people were intimately moving against each other to the music, but I found my scowl deepening as Marissa stepped into my personal space, her hands wrapping around my neck and her long, scratchy nails prickling the back of my head.

I was not hers to touch, but I was doing this for Shadow Moon Pack, so I had to do it right. My hands came up to hold her by the waist, and my skin recoiled with resentment, likely because of the fated bond, but I breathed past it.

“Do you want to go first, or should I?” Marissa asked right as we began shuffling our legs to the music.

Not beating around the bush. That was good.

“You seem so willing to get married. What is your reason?” I asked.

Marissa only took a second before her answer formed.

“The pack needs an alliance, and someone has to step up for it. I am the best candidate for the job,” she nodded, self assured.

“And why do you say so? Do you know what is expected of the person bound to me by this marriage?” I asked, a frown on my face. “Or just how much affection you would be able to get out of me?”

This time, she shrugged. “What I will expect from you is to be my Alpha, protecting the packs in the fields and behind the conference tables. I will not want you to treat me like some woman in distress or have you feel entitled to showing me any form of affection,” she said, face set in adamance.

Inhaling a sharp breath, she went on. “You are also willing to marry for your pack and not for love, seeing as the idea of an arranged marriage doesn’t faze you. Am I right?”

I nodded once. “Love is not in the books for me.”

“Then you and I are so much alike,” she said with a sweet smile. “Like you, I know what needs to be done, and I’m always ready to do whatever it takes. I know the benefits that us being married will bring to our packs, and my mission is to see it through as your Luna.”

“You will need someone to love you in the long run,” I argued, expecting her perspective to shift a little, but Marissa only scoffed.

“I don’t care about love. I have never believed in it, and I never will.

I will play my role as your wife without fault, ensuring the harmony between Nightwing Pack and Shadow Moon Pack, and I will not fail in whatever other duties I have to you,” she said suggestively, but her tone told me that there was something else, so I asked.

“But?”

Marissa smiled. “But I can understand if that won’t be what you want, Alexis. I will encourage you to find your own lovers if I do not interest you sexually because what I am most concerned with is the Luna title.”

In the heartbeats that followed, I pondered on the woman’s words, letting the gravity of it all wash over me.

This way, I could continue doing what I had been doing for years—putting the needs of my pack as a priority, keeping us as safe as possible in the conflict-ridden society we lived in, and this time, I was doing it by also making sure that history did not play out again.

“We can both get what we want,” I echoed at last, seeing the picture come to life—me avoiding the shackles that ruined my family and my pack staying safe.

Marissa nodded. “As long as it’s not Selina.

” Her nose scrunched up as she said the words, her hate for her sister displayed on her face openly.

“I do not want to share my husband with her, even with a Wolfsbane gun pointed to my head. And seeing as you two are fated mates, I will not even entertain it.”

I wondered what the relationship between Selina and her family was, and how she was treated. What could make her sister hate her and her father show little concern about how she was treated?

Marissa’s voice dropped, her next words coming out softly. “All you have to do is stay away from her and we’ll be good. We’ll be a powerful couple together, I promise you.”

From my evening here at Nightwing Pack, I gathered that Marissa wasn’t anything like her sister, Selina, but she shared my perspective on all the topics that had come up during our conversations.

She cared about the wellness of our packs, wanting our unity and safety, and she fit my views on marriage, the two most important things to me. It clicked.

Marissa is the ideal wife.

Even though a significant part of me didn’t believe this, I managed a curt nod. “I will speak to your father now.”

“Excellent,” Marissa said, letting go of me, trailing behind as I turned.

I found Lucian in the crowd, sitting behind a long table and shoving a spoon in his mouth with Selina standing beside him.

That electrifying feeling returned with full ferocity once my eyes locked with Selina’s green ones, which resembled the priceless gem around her delicate neck.

I reminded myself of all the negative effects the fated bond has brought about in my life, and I recited them until it stuck.

I approached the table, ignoring how her neck was outlined in a held breath and as the spark in her eyes. Having made my decision, I slipped my cold mask of indifference in place.

“Alpha Alexis,” Lucian called, rising to his feet as he saw me.

I got right to the matter. “Having spoken to Marissa, I have come to see that she is a good fit for me and, as such, for the unity of our packs. On that note, I have made my decision. Marissa and I will wed,” I said in one breath, watching Lucian nod vigorously with a triumphant smile until someone spoke .

It was Selina.

“No. Why would you choose to wed her? That makes no sense. We are fated mates, and we both know it because I can tell that you feel this pull between us,” she said, gesturing shakily between us. I shook my head, fighting to see past the melody of her voice.

My heart began to pound furiously in my ribcage as the words flowed out.

“I will not be bound to anyone by the fated pull,” I ground out, hoping that my tone showed my distaste for anything surrounding the concept.

“So I cannot marry you, Selina.” The words came out strangled, as if sandpaper leaves grated the roof of my mouth, and my heart felt dislodged by a vicious force.

“No,” Selina muttered with a gasp, and I watched her take a step back, a fisted hand raising to clutch her chest, but the pained look in her eyes didn’t stop me. I went on. “I reject the fated bond with you, Selina.”

The weight of what I’d just done settled on me. My breathing became jagged, and it was with so much practice that I was able to suppress the urge to double over in pain.

“Marissa and I will wed,” I said, turning my back to Selina and a smiling Lucian and Marissa. I searched for the nearest drink to quench the sudden drought in my throat. Each step was painful, but I’d put up a wall in my mind, and I was not looking back.

The ball went on, music and chattering filling every corner of the room, but even the unfamiliar and chaotic atmosphere was not enough to get to me. Hours and many drinks later, I still did not feel the hollowness in me reduce into something less, and my mind kept wandering back to Selina.

‘Mine,’ my wolf crooned, reminding me of the energy that buzzed between us only a while back, exhilarating to the point that I still felt it deep in my bones. She was something else, Selina, with beauty that transcended anything on this plane. I could see her having me in a chokehold.

“But all of that is a mirage,” I said, low enough for my ears only. “I feel nothing other than a forced attraction,” I bit out, willing myself to believe it.

It seemed that Igaluk decided to play games on me at my word because just then, a commotion sounded from the far left corner of where I sat, and my eyes snapped to see Selina crashing into someone holding a tray of wine glasses.

On reflex, I shot to my feet, but reason ground me in my spot. How could I suddenly care for a mate I just rejected?