Page 53 of The Alpha's Bullied Rejected Mate

“You had to?” he barked a bitter laugh.

“Make it make sense, Athena. You kept our son from me. You hid who you were. Why didn’t you reveal yourself to me? Do you know what I risked, thinking you were an enemy? The dark witch we were supposed to hunt?”

“I never asked you to risk anything!” she shot back.

“You abducted me. You,” she repeated, pointing a finger at him, “tortured me for information I repeated endlessly that I didn’t have. How could I trust you?”

His expression darkened. “How could I have known it was you?”

“Because I didn’t want you to!” she screamed.

She took a step closer to him, her hands clenched into fists, and the fury in her eyes was more vivid now.

“Six years ago. Did you forget what you told me the night before? When I came to see you? You laughed. You called it pathetic. You called us,” she waved her fingers between them, “pathetic. You said you didn’t want anything to do with someone like me.”

“‘The great Marcus Vale with a witch like me.’” She mocked.

“You. Laughed. At. The. Idea. Of. Us.” She jabbed her finger into his chest as she pronounced each word with her eyes blazing with anger and pain.

“I didn’t know you were pregnant,” he shot back loudly this time.

He held her shoulders with his hands and looked into her eyes.

“I didn’t know at the time that you were carrying our child,” he repeated, his voice lower this time. “I—

“And what difference would it have made?” Athena interrupted in a whisper. The exhaustion was crawling its way into her voice.

“You left me. No, you pushed me away. You made your choice, Marcus.”

Marcus opened his mouth to speak, but she was far from finished.

“Do you know what it’s like to live a lie every day?” she snapped. “To hide your magic, to raise a hybrid child in secret, to never know if the next person you meet will drag you to an inquisition cell to torture you or kill you on sight?”

“I did what I had to do to survive,” she continued.

“Do you think this was easy for me? Do you think I wanted to live like this?” her voice cracked.

“You stopped seeing me because you heard my powers had surfaced, right? And you hated witches that much.”

“I was scared,” she continued. “But I didn’t get the luxury to be afraid. I had a child growing inside me. And no one—no one—I could trust,” she spat in anger.

Marcus looked away and clenched his jaw tightly as his mind searched for the words to say. But there were none.

“I had a right to know,” he finally voiced. Athena clenched her palm so tight her nails bit into it.

“I didn’t know you were pregnant!” he screamed in her ears.

He held her shoulders with his hands and turned her so their eyes could meet.

“I didn’t know you were carrying our child,” he said, his voice low. But it didn’t soften anything inside Athena.

The accusation tore through her defenses like a blade.

“And what difference would it have made?” she whispered. Exhaustion was evident in her voice.

“You left me. You made your choice. You made your choice, Marcus.”

Tears burned in her eyes in anger and pain, “Then you join the very organization that hunts people like me. And now you think you have a right to be angry?”