The Alpha King’s Mate (Rise of the Wraith Wolves #1)

Aliana

Fifteen Years Old

My mother’s grip on my hand tightened. I could hear the fluid in her lungs as she wheezed.

“Mama,” I whispered, tears blurring my vision.

“T-the soothsayer told me,” she said, pausing as another coughing fit wracked her body.

I took the rag and wiped the blood that trickled from the corner of her mouth.

“Rest, Mama. Tell me tomorrow,” I urged.

“No—no time. My beautiful girl. My child,” she crooned, pushing my hair away from my cheek. “You are one in a millennium. The Moon Goddess’s child.”

She coughed again and I turned to look out of the window. My father had not returned. He’d promised he would get medicine to ease her pain. He swore Alpha Grayson could help us.

“Wait. Wait for your wolf. With great hardship, ease will come,” she whispered, pulling my head down to hers until we touched. “I will always love you, Aliana. In every life, I pray that you’ll be my child.”

I wrapped my arms around her emaciated body. Thin, damp, and as my grip tightened, I could feel her ribcage.

“I love you too, Mama,” I sobbed into her shoulder. “Please don’t leave me.”

I knew it. She didn’t have long left. She was the only one who had truly loved me. Disease had stripped away everything over the last four years.

Her arms slackened.

The wheezing stopped.

I pulled back and stared into her dark brown eyes.

Void of life.

Staring at the ceiling.

Tears still coated her eyelashes.

How could this be?

She was with me a second ago.

I screamed and screamed. Begging her to come back and cursing the Moon Goddess. By the time my father arrived, I’d curled up beside her. Cold and numb.

He didn’t approach us. He tossed a brown paper bag on the dresser.

“It’s for the best,” he murmured.

I understood. Not that she was no longer suffering—but that she was no longer a burden. He could meet with his red-haired whore and their whelp openly. There was a reason the Moon Goddess only gave him daughters.

I bit my lip.

But he was done. The performance was over. He turned and left the bedroom. Never once looking at his dead mate.

I stared at the open door and knew I would never soften my heart for any man. I would reject the mating call and suffer the pain. If my mother could bear so much, then so would I.