Chapter 17
XANDER
Marta was pulling a tray of cookies out of the oven when I wandered, barefoot and casual, into the kitchen.
I couldn’t see what was on the tray, because she had her back to me, but the delicious smell of ginger and brown sugar was unmistakable.
My mouth watered in hopeful anticipation of acquiring one of the warm treats.
But… maybe that wasn’t going to happen. As Marta straightened up, turning towards the kitchen bench holding the hot baking tray in thick oven mitts, she caught sight of me, and a small frown creased her brows.
I bit my lip. I liked Marta a lot. She was warm, kindly, and literally oozed maternal comfort, but although she hid it well, I knew she had reservations about me.
How could it be otherwise? Darius was like a son to her and I was clearly a poor mate to him.
Still, it wasn’t my fault I’d found myself mated to him.
And yes, he’d had as little choice in the matter himself, but that didn’t mean I had to be happy about my situation.
Marta sighed and inclined her head towards the tray of cookies now resting on the benchtop.
“Come on, help yourself. There’s plenty,” she offered.
I happily sidled up to the bench and grabbed a gingerbread cookie, humming in delight as I bit down on it and the sharp tang of ginger fizzed on my tongue.
“Thanks,” I mumbled through the crumbs.
She gave me a small smile but it looked forced.
With a rustle of her apron, she turned away and began doing something at the bench beneath the window.
When I heard her gasp, I looked up from my contemplation of further cookies.
Her attention had been caught by something outside the window.
As her face was turned away, I couldn’t read her expression, but her posture had stiffened, the tension evident in her shoulders.
The utensils she’d been holding clattered to the bench, and her fists clenched and unclenched as she continued to observe something I couldn’t see.
“What is it?” I asked, getting anxious even though I didn’t know what was going on.
Marta took a deep breath as she turned to face me. Her lips were pursed together in a thin line and her face looked severe. Despite that, her voice was soft and kind when she spoke, but she spoke with determination and authority.
“Xander, I know you’re not a bad guy, but you should go. You’re destroying this pack. You need to leave.”
“Wha-what do you mean?” I stammered, completely dumbfounded. The remark had come out of left field. “I can’t go anywhere. I’m the Alpha Mate.”
Her lips twisted, reflecting her impatience.
“It’s perfectly obvious you don’t want to be the Alpha Mate, and that you want nothing to do with Darius.
And even though he’s treated you with the utmost patience and respect, you’ve continued to disrespect him in front of the pack,” she scolded.
“Do you have any idea how that undermines his authority in the pack?”
She paused for breath, and I said nothing, partly because my mouth was hanging open in shock, and partly because I had a feeling she was not done with her onslaught.
“This isn’t the first time this has happened,” she said, gesturing angrily out the window.
A deep sense of foreboding threatened to leech the strength from my legs, but I walked over and stood beside her, looking to see what she was talking about.
Outside, Darius was facing off against three younger men.
I recognized them as young alphas from the pack, none of whom were mated, but they had reached the age where that was an option, or where they might leave the pack, or…
might want to challenge for the leadership if they were sufficiently bold.
Apparently, they were that bold. As I watched, one of them stepped forward challenging Darius.
“They are useless, immature idiots,” Marta said, bitterly. “They’d never think of challenging him under normal circumstances. But you make him look weak. They think he can’t control his mate, so he’s not strong enough to look after the pack.”
“B-b-but that’s not true!” I protested. I hadn’t wanted to be mated to him, and I’d resented it every minute I’d been in this damn pack, but even I couldn’t deny he was a fabulous Alpha and a strong and compassionate leader. “He’s strong and the other Pack Alphas listen to what he has to say.”
She shrugged. “That’s outside the pack. At home you make him look like a failure… that he can’t even keep his mate happy. When you undermine the leader, there are always other alphas quick to take advantage. He’s going to lose everything. He’ll lose the pack too.”
“I didn’t mean for that to happen,” I whined, legs feeling even weaker. I looked around for a chair, but there was none.
I didn’t want him to lose his pack. Not because of me. He… under other circumstances I would’ve been thrilled to be mated to him. I’d been a shitty mate to him, but he didn’t want me. It wasn’t my fault. Was it?
She was looking out the window again. Darius had quickly and easily defeated the first alpha to challenge him. That guy was limping back to his mates, but a crowd had gathered, and now the second young pretender stepped up, while the third waited behind him.
Marta put her hand over her heart. “He can take three,” she muttered, “he can take three.”
She turned back to me. “This is wearing him down,” she said flatly.
“He’s an excellent fighter and he’s strong.
But the challenges are becoming more frequent.
The constant fighting will eventually wear him down, and then it’ll be some useless idiot that manages to take him down and takes over leadership of the pack. ”
“I didn’t want to be here, but I wasn’t given a choice,” I whined again.
Marta gave me a filthy look, looking truly unimpressed.
“ Neither of you had a choice in this, but Alpha opened his heart to you and gave it a real go.”
“But he doesn’t want me… it was obvious.”
Marta looked at me as if I were a raving lunatic or an alien dropped from outer space.
“You can’t possibly believe that,” her dark locks flew as she shook her head in disbelief, “after everything he’s done for you!”
“What exactly has he done for me?” I snarked, thinking about my situation.
“You know he sat outside your room for your entire heat, don’t you?
Keeping the alphas away? If he hadn’t stood watch over you…
I don’t like to think what would have happened!
I don’t think he slept for three days! He kept you safe, even when you were rejecting him.
You’ve been difficult with him since you got there, but he’s done everything he can to be a good mate to you. ”
Her next words shook me to my core.
“Can you honestly say you did the same?”
Shame flooded me in its hot tide. I couldn’t honestly say I’d made a genuine effort to make this work. I’d been too caught up in feeling sorry for myself, too angry at the fate that had taken my choices away from me.
But I realized now, I could have made other choices since then. I hadn’t had to stay bitter and angry. Darius had indulged me at every turn. I really could have done anything I wanted.
“But…”
“An Alpha whose mate won’t even lie with him…,” Marta shook her head sadly, “No wonder they don’t respect him. He’s a good man, but they’ll judge him for that.”
“How can they know?” I protested, wondering how even she knew. I doubted he advertised it. It was humiliating. Just as it was humiliating for me to have to submit to him, though apart from that first night of our mating, I had never done so again. He’d never made me.
I tried not to think about how, ever since that first time, he’d done everything possible to avoid hurting me.
“Do you think they’re idiots? They can see it!” The way she said it made me sound like a foolish child.
Stepping closer, she pulled the loose collar of my t-shirt further down my shoulder, displaying my mating mark - what remained of it at least, as it was obviously fading.
“Your mark is fading. The pairing has to be re-consummated before the next full moon to complete the mating, otherwise the mark fades and with it, the mating. Everyone can see you haven’t lain together since the first time.”
Well, I’d known that. I’d been counting on it, but I wasn’t expecting there to be repercussions for Darius. “If you stay, he’ll lose the pack. Eventually he’ll lose a fight and then he’ll be exiled or killed. You’ll get to stay here nice and cosy, while he pays the price.”
I gasped. “Surely they wouldn’t choose me over him?”
She looked at me speculatively. “You really don’t know much about pack culture, do you? The Alpha Mate is the soul of a pack. It’s they who holds the pack together, or in your case, tears it apart. The pack will always choose the Alpha Mate, because the pack is only strong if it stays together.”
“But Darius is an excellent Alpha, one of the best there is. It would be wrong for him to be cast out,” she continued.
She turned back to look out the window. Darius had a bleeding wound on his thigh where his latest challenger had managed to score a strike. He had defeated him however and the third challenger hadn’t yet stepped forward.
But they would. They would keep going until he faltered. I could see that now. More alphas had gathered. Even at this distance, I could see hope shining avariciously in their eyes, as each waited for their turn.
This wasn’t fair! Each of them only had to fight once.
He was fighting against all of them. And he was a good man, I knew that.
With the blinkers of my self-righteous anger ripped off, I could see so much clearer.
I’d been hurting a good man, a good mate, one who might even have come to hold affection for me, if I’d just been a decent human being.