Bad Love: An Alpha's Regret (Leah and Aaron) novel Chapter 337

AXEL

I’m so furious with Emily and the fact I scented another man on her that I don’t even realize what I’ve done until I get back upstairs and see some of the housekeepers and Jessica gathered by the foot of the stairs, staring at me with wide, alarmed eyes and shocked expressions.

I glare at them with a low Alpha snarl, and they scatter, rushing off and out of my sight.

I stalk up to my room and slam the door, but then think maybe I should have gone outside and shifted to run off some of this fury.

That, and escape the shame rapidly burning hotter and higher within me.

I don’t know how to get through to Emily that she can’t keep running off on her own. It’s especially worse if she’s leaving the safety of Rathborn lands altogether.

But the fact that she’s clearly meeting up with some other man has singed me all the way to the heart I claim not to possess.

It shouldn’t matter.

I rejected her.

We can’t even be together, not without her living under constant threat from my enemies.

I should want her to move on and be happy.

Except I’m not that altruistic.

I’m definitely not that selfless.

The idea of her being with someone else is enough to drive me wild with rage, as highlighted by the fact I just dragged her down to the cellar and locked her up like some kind of caveman.

The shame burns hotter as old memories taunt me.

Things I haven’t thought about for decades.

Not even being locked up by that bitch Karolina reopened these old scars, but knowing that I just subjected the mate I can’t claim to being locked underground in a small, windowless room is eating away at my insides like acid.

I spent almost one hundred years locked in the cold, damp, dark dungeon of a castle back in Romania.

At the mercy of a ruthless clan of vampires who had figured out how to weaken and subdue me with a potent mix of wolfsbane, opiates and valerian. Valerian is poisonous to vampires the same way wolfsbane is to wolves.

Or course, they didn’t give me enough to kill me, just enough to keep me in a constantly weakened state.

That century is a blur of sickness and misery, the memories of which I usually keep locked down in a vault inside my mind.

Now, however, my treatment of Emily has brought it all rushing back.

I can’t leave her down there.

I shouldn’t have put her down there in the first place.