Page 4 of Reclaiming His Lost Mate (Secret Legacy #3)

S elina

Since Alexis’s rejection, I’d walked around with an unyielding tightness in my throat, making every little activity almost impossible to carry out.

I couldn’t stop thinking about how void of emotions Alexis’s face had been when he gutted me with his words, making me wonder if he felt the fated pull as I did or even only a little.

The image of him and Marissa plastered against one another on the dance floor, looking perfect together, tasted even more bitter than waters from the Black Moon Pack’s swamps, and it didn’t make things easier that almost everybody had something to say about Alexis, oblivious or uncaring about the way his being tormented me.

Alexis was staying with Nightwing Pack for a while, and the purpose was to get some aspects of the alliance with our pack started.

It was said that Shadow Moon Pack operated facilities that were more advanced than ours and the others combined have ever produced or even seen, making them one of the strongest packs.

With the new cooperation with our pack, some of those technologies were going to rub off on us.

Alexis had begun drawing building plans for a sub-level safe house for us, and it could hold at least a hundred people at a time, women, children, and the elderly, with enough supplies to last for days, if necessary.

A new morning came, and I found my wolf’s restlessness multiplying in folds.

I’d been on edge since my eyes opened, and even after rolling my shoulders so much that the joints shifted, I still couldn’t shake the prickly feeling off my skin.

The mate bond manifested every minute when my wolf pressed so hard against my surface, itching for her mate’s presence—his scent, his breath, just him—and the urge was overwhelming till it was almost physically painful.

Tossing on my bed and pacing my cabin didn’t help. Spending time in my garden didn’t either, so after an hour of being unable to control my and my wolf’s desires for Alexis, I got ready and found my way to the kitchen.

Once I stepped in, someone addressed me.

“Breakfast is ready, Selina. I plated one for you.”

That was Sireen, one of my father’s royal maids and an absolute Angel.

Sireen worked in the pack kitchen and was one of the few people in Nightwing Pack who was kind enough to be civil with me, regardless of the hostility I faced every day.

We weren’t best friends but just two adults who cared for and respected one another as packmates.

“Good morning, Sireen,” I greeted with a warm smile, taking in her almost faded ankle-length leaf green skirt and equally pale black sleeveless shirt, which were both half-covered with an apron. She was a beauty. “How’d you sleep?” I asked if only to get Alexis’s face off my mind.

Her eyes found mine in a second, and I preened slightly under her attentive gaze.

“Good morning to you, too, Selina. I slept well, thank you, and you’re looking quite dapper for an ordinary morning.

” As she said that, I looked down at my outfit.

I almost chuckled in mockery because it wasn’t dapper by any chance, but I’d put some effort into looking nice before I left my cabin.

Also, when I stopped by my garden this morning, I plucked a stem of my favorite flower, Kanguq Aiyut, a white-petaled flower that held so much meaning to me, and it was tucked behind my ear.

The flower not only reminded me of my mom, but it was also her favorite, and I had fallen in love with them too.

The touch of sparkling white may have given a certain brightness to my look, even though the floral’s language was quite in contrast with its appearance.

“That’s not true. I look like this all the time,” I lied through my teeth.

Sireen nodded, a glint in her eyes, but she did not comment further about it.

“Well, here’s your breakfast,” she said, pushing a plate over to me from across the broad kitchen table, and I stopped it in time before it went over the edge.

I noticed that there was a half-eaten plate at the other end of the table, most likely the leftover from Sireen’s breakfast. “I’ll see you around, but I have to go deliver this package to Alpha Alexis’s chambers,” she said, smiling brightly.

I would have commented about something else entirely if the tips of my ears did not shoot up like the mythic Iviukkuq—elf, a magical creature who was said to possess unnaturally elongated ears.

My heart did a little backflip at the mention of Alexis, my wolf rearing its head in attention, and the words were out of my lips before I could put a lid on it.

“Wait. Did you say Alexis?” I asked, trying and failing to hide the interest in my voice.

Just then, Sireen crouched down to the foot of the table and straightened with the basket she referenced.

“Yes, Alpha Alexis,” she corrected, but I ignored the fact that nobody other than Marissa, and to a degree, my father, could call Alexis by his name.

I could be hanged for all I cared. My wolf was one possessive animal.

“What’s in it?” I tentatively asked about the well-lidded woven brown basket, and Sireen shrugged.

“I’m not entirely sure. Alpha Lucian asked me to send it to his chambers with some food. I’m sure they’re just supplies for their ongoing project, so it’s nothing to fuss about,” Sireen said. “Eat your food, Selina, I’ll handle it.”

As Sireen moved to walk past me, I blocked her path, recognizing this as an opportunity to see my mate again .

“Let me take it to him instead. I’m sure you have a lot more to do today, so allow me to take some of the workload off your hands.

” Sireen cocked a discerning eyebrow at me, and I folded under the pressure.

“Okay, fine. I may also want to see him,” I admitted, looking away for a brief second and sucking my bottom lip in between my teeth as I began to crimson.

Sireen’s smile was bittersweet, half reaching her eyes.

“Do you think that is a good idea? You may end up hurting yourself by seeking him out after what happened.”

I swallowed, touched by her concern. “Don’t worry about me, Sireen, I’ll be fine. Just let me take it.”

After a brief moment of thinking, she nodded. “Alright then. I guess I could use the time to check up on the plants and see what I can harvest for dinner.”

“Yes! Do that instead,” I said, trying not to bounce on my feet as I gently pried the lightweight basket from her grasp.

“I’ve got this.” Picking up my breakfast and having lost appetite for any food, I moved to the leftovers I saw earlier.

“You know how scarce our resources are here, Sireen. Father would run mad if he saw that you were giving me this much food and wasting some more,” I said, taking her leftover plate and balancing it with mine on top of the basket’s lid.

Due to Nightwing Pack’s closeness to the sun, our lands were tough and rugged.

We survived by grooming simple plants and keeping them alive with gems from our lands like sikin deposits.

We relied on the other packs for the rest of our supplies, using ores from our mines, as well as our pack’s metalworks, as payments.

Simply put, we were modest, unlike Alexis’s Shadow Moon Pack, so waste wasn’t in the books for us.

“I think we will all run mad if we give ourselves too little food to eat because we’re conserving, Selina,” Sireen said with a small smile.

“You’re too good for this pack,” she finally commented, but I didn’t pay any mind to her words.

I was sure she said that just to make me feel less alone here than I was.

I found two teen wolves lingering outside the pack’s kitchen, fishing for leftovers, and I handed the plates to them. I couldn’t even focus enough to accept their thanks because my mind was set on someone else.

In a minute, I was on my way to Alexis’s chambers, and my heart battled within me to see the light of day. My wolf urged me on, pressing and pushing, so I didn’t really have the opportunity to back down from my mission.

Once I was at Alexis’s door, I knocked rapidly, already sensing the warmth of him from within the wooden structure. The door opened almost immediately, revealing Alexis, and my thoughts muddied on taking him in.

Goddess.

I hadn’t forgotten how handsome Alexis was because I had painted his face in my mind over and over again in the last few days.

It was the only way I could get myself to fall asleep, but seeing him again for myself and taking in his blue eyes that were so bright they were almost gray, made me lose sense of everything else.

I could not also ignore how every single nerve on my body lit up, killing me with the desire to touch him.

Alexis’s eyebrows deepened till they almost touched each other, his frown alone stinging me somewhere that burned. I swallowed hard.

“Why are you here, Selina?” The coldness of his voice struck me across the face, and I visibly flinched.

“I-I…just wanted…” I was a stuttering mess, while Alexis’s impatience only grew.

“I don’t have all day. And as I told you before, I cannot accept you as my mate if that is what this is. Do you have another reason for being here or not?”

Bile churned in my stomach, rising to my throat within seconds, and I grimaced at the bitter taste, not that it could compare to the pounding ache that seared through my chest.

“You don’t have to be so cold and dismissive about it,” I ground out, looking at the parcel in my hands rather than his face.

“I only brought this to you on my father’s command, and the fact that you’ve chosen someone else over me doesn’t mean there should be so much hostility between us,” I found myself saying through the ache .

Alexis didn’t care that I was hurt. He replied in a clipped tone. “You should put that down and leave.”