Page 55 of The Alpha's Bullied Rejected Mate

Chapter 11 - Marcus

The air was as cold as the church was silent. Kieran had done a full sweep earlier, ensuring it was secure for the night. But he hadn’t returned since, disappearing into the trees like smoke as his usual nature.

Which left Marcus alone.

With her.

Athena lay still on a bed in a modest room in one of the church’s living quarters. She was barely breathing, her skin was almost translucent from exhaustion, and there was a weariness in the slump of her frame, even as she lay unconscious.

Marcus sat on a stool just at the edge of the bed, with his elbows resting on his knees. His eyes locked on her like he was trying to solve an equation he didn’t have the formula for.

It scared him the way she had looked when she collapsed—pale, weakened. He placed a hand on her forehead again, and she was still hot.

She scared him. Not because of her power or the secrets she had kept. But because of the way she looked now—vulnerable, human, fragile. Nothing like the fierce woman who always kept him on edge.

He moved closer as he stretched his palm over her forehead to feel her temperature.

She was still cold.

He pressed a damp cloth to her forehead, his other hand braced against the back of the pew to steady himself. He adjusted the blanket up to her shoulders like she wasn’t the most dangerous thing to his sanity.

He dipped the cloth in the bowl again, squeezed it, and pressed it to her forehead in the same manner, brushing away a damp curl that clung stubbornly to her skin. He laid the cloth there as he rose and walked to the other side of the bed. He opened up the bedside drawer where he had placed his secure tablet.

With a soft click, the screen turned on. He swiped through it, noticing a backlog of unread messages. The world still turned despite the chaos he currently stood in.

The most recent message stood out from Councilor Jane:

“Hunt update, Alpha Marcus. We trust it was successful as usual.”

He huffed.

Another message from Adrian Cross, dated one day ago:

“Hey, check this out—it’s from one of our fake delivery surveillance setups at Aza Nath’s, from three months ago. I don’t know how we missed this.”

Attached to the message was a picture.

Marcus opened it.

The breath left his lungs.

It was Athena—not the cloaked version he had seen these past few days, but her true form, the one that lay in front of him recently. Unmasked. Unglamored.

She was standing at her doorway, her eyes narrowed as her lips pressed in a stern line.

Adrian’s follow-up text blinked into view:

There is only one image like this. The rest show the previous pictures we worked with.

But all the other pictures were taken outside her home. We think we caught this in a moment of lapse. We suspect a spell trick. A glamor spell. But the thing is, only witches with white energy can cast glamor spells. What’s this telling you?

Marcus scrolled further,

So I ran background checks on the picture from her home, and this is the most shocking part. It matched the data of a witch named ‘Athena Meadows’. A former inhabitant of Moonridge Pack. Your home pack.

Isn’t she the witch you’ve been trying to track for years now? Coincidence, huh?”

He had scrolled to the end of the texts. Marcus closed his eyes tightly.