Alpha Leo and the Heart of Fire novel Chapter 41

Read Alpha Leo and the Heart of Fire Chapter 41 – You Don’t Know the Pain

LEO.

“Leo…”

She walked over to me, and the moment she touched my back, sending a rush of sparks through me, I felt a wave of calmness washi over me,

The f*****g bond.

“I didn‘t mean it in a bad way. You know. Hrowing up, everyone called me a freak because I was born with the help of magic, so they found the word fitting. There were even a few people in the pack who refused to acknowledge me because of it.

Heck, some still exist…. as I got older, I stopped telling my family because I didn‘t want to always cause them trouble…” She sighed, and I did my best to remain calm. Flaring anger rushed through me, and I wondered if that was why she was so cheerful because inside she was dealing with a lot.

“I know you always say I‘m the daughter of an Elite. Although my life is nowhere as harrowing as I‘m sure yours has been, I just wanted to let you know that things aren‘t always what they seem.” She moved in front of me, her hand running along my waist, before she placed it on my chest. “It‘s ok to be afraid. I sometimes am… like right now. I don‘t know how this will work… with this baby… us… What will we tell our child? Why aren‘t we together?”

She placed her hand on her stomach, and that intense urge to touch it once more tempted me, but I didn‘t.

“We‘ll figure it out…” I said quietly. We would… I would figure it out for all of you…

I saw the vulnerability in her eyes when she had told me her situation.

Tonight had felt like a snippet of the life that maybe we could have… Her, Corrado… our unborn pup… She‘d be the mother Corrado would love. Even if she wasn‘t what I would have expected, somehow, she had won him over, the perfect balance of wild, cheeky and mature…

I reached up, brushing her silky locks back. Her eyes fluttered shut for a second as my fingers grazed her skin ever so lightly.

These sparks… What were they?

So unexplainable…

She leaned into my touch, her head tilting up slightly, and that intense tension returned.

I wanted her.

“Yeah… maybe we will.” She responded quietly. We fell silent, but I didn‘t remove my hand from her hair, my thumb caressing her jaw. 1 knew what I was afraid of, but I‘d never speak it out loud… I was f*****g afraid of us letting our guards down once more, only to be cast aside like always…

“Your nightmares.” She whispered, her heart thundering as she tried to focus.

I frowned, for a moment I thought she‘d have forgotten… I sighed, looking down into her eyes that were watching me intently.

“After suffering under Endora, watching her torture and experiment on everyone, it was pretty normal… When I was five…. She began to sense that I was stronger than Marcel was as a child and so, she began experimenting on me too. But whatever she was trying to attain wasn‘t happening.

Her magic never really worked on me as it did with Marcel and the others. I was just someone she never wanted to lose, yet someone she hated… I was only a pup who wouldn‘t be able to do any damage to her anyway, for now. But I saw it all, the beatings, the torture, the dark magic…

Her sacrificing our own kind… her feeding the scraps of our people to our own. Creating the wendigos… it was sick. No one would hear me… because those who had a chance to do something… well they were under her control or too scared to rebel. I was just a fool to think that there was good in this world…” 2

I turned away, wishing I had a cigarette right now. “There is good in this world.” She replied.

“Is there? Those who I thought were our heroes… our saviours, were allowed to storm into this pack and caused more suffering. I get the reasons, I f*****g do. I know the pain when one‘s mate is hurt, but then I realised violence is dealt with, with violence. Was there a difference between good and evil when those views and beliefs became distorted and justifiable when it suited us?” 1

Flashes of the past crossed my mind, and I pushed them away. Delsanra Silver… That night when Alejandro and Kiara had broken in, I had seen her struggling to free herself, and so I had secretly unlocked the cell and cleared the escape route for her. She never knew I had helped her back then, and I made sure no one saw me, but I had wanted to help her because she didn‘t deserve the torture either.

Sure, when I snuck her food I‘d get punished if I was caught, but it was ok as long as I did the right thing Right?

I didn‘t really know.

Right and wrong were blurred into one…

“The cherry on top was that it was her mate who did this. She was someone who, as a f*****g child, I tried to protect, although I was weaker at the time. I treated all those in those caverns as my people, including her. I wanted to protect them all… I was seven and I was burying the bodies of our dead with my bare hands. Endora would come for me, or Dad would take me to her. She‘d tie me up, and all I remember is the excruciating pain that she inflicted on me. I would wake up bleeding after blacking out on the floor, and I would just get up and get back to my sorry life.” I was unable to hide the pain and bitterness from my voice. “Do you know how it felt to drag the dead body of my mother to try to bury her? A body that I couldn‘t even recognise after her transformation into a Wendigo?” 4 She reached up cupping my face, her heart pounding and her eyes full of anger and pain. I was unable to stop myself from grabbing hold of her waist. My own emotions were a f*****g storm, I had never told anyone that s**t. “I‘m so d**n sorry that you had to go through that… You‘ve always helped. You were even

part of the battle against the Djinn a decade ago. You had a hand in saving Rayhan‘s mother.”

Don‘t go getting any f*****g ideas. I did that because no child deserved to be without his or her parents… I did it because it was the right f*****g thing to do… not because of the b*****d.” I replied icily. “Rafael Rossi… I want to believe that if he knew, he wouldn‘t have let Rayhan do what he did. I did what I did because it just felt right.”

“It shows that you have a good heart… just like Marcel said.” She murmured quietly.

No, it just showed that no matter what I did, it was never enough… Selene saw everything right? Were our deeds worth nothing?

“Endora was a monster, who deserved so much worse than she got… You suffered too much, and what hurts is no one knows exactly what you suffered at her hands… you told me to speak to my parents, and I think you need to do the same… But regardless of that… Do you know what I see? I see an incredible human before me, a true leader, one with compassion, strength, and justice. Hell, I can‘t believe I‘m saying this. Did you put something in the whiskey?” 2