Fated To The Alpha novel Chapter 212

Read Fated To The Alpha [by Jessica Hall] Chapter 212 – POV

5 years later,

The high-pitched scream made me look u p from washing the dishes to look out the kitchen window. Marley and Alicia were out the back playing with the twins. Eziah, my social butterfly, squirts Marley with his water gun. Her scream rang out loudly as she ran away; the twins are six now and couldn’t be more opposite to each other; kids at school always surrounded Eziah. Marabella, however, was socially awkward, but still, she did her best to fit in and made a few friends; I had invited their friends over to play, having been a rather rough week for them. We had another rogue a****k, the fourth in the last two weeks, and tensions have been running high.

I chuckle to myself watching Eziah chase after Alicia and Marley squirting them, Marabella sat in the sandpit, playing with her bucket and pale before tossing it across the sandpit. My brows furrow as I watch her. She looks over her shoulder before slipping her gloves off and molding the sand to make a castle.

When I hear the doorbell ring loudly, I look over my shoulder, and I quickly dry my hands on a teatowel before going to answer the door. My face split into a grin when I saw Jasmine standing on the doorstep.

 

“Why didn’t you just let yourself in?” I ask her. Jasmine and I were still close, but something had been off with her lately. She and her mate had been having issues. I understood her mate’s concerns, but I also felt it was a little unreasonable. Marabella was a child. She wasn’t dangerous to anyone, not intentionally anyway.

“The lock must have clicked; I tried to open it,” Jasmine answers, stepping inside and closing the door behind her; I head back to the kitchen to turn the kettle on.

“Coffee?” I ask her.

“Yes, please, wait, is that Alicia?” Jasmine asks me, and I glance out the window while I fill the kettle up.

“Yeah, I invited her over, so Marabella had someone to play with.”

“So they are friends again, that’s good then?” Jasmine says, sitting down at the kitchen table.

 

“What do you mean, they have always been friends?” I asked her, slightly confused; Marabella told me Alicia was her friend, so did Eziah.

“Oh, maybe Marley was wrong.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing, she is a good kid, she came over the other day, but Marley said Alicia always picks on Marabella at school,” Jasmine tells me, and I turn to look over at her.

“Maybe Marabella forgot to tell me they argued,” I wondered; I would have to ask her about it later. I poured the coffee and milk into the mugs when Jasmine shrieked, jumping up and nearly knocking the dining table chair over as she rushed out the sliding doors. I followed to see what happened, only to see Jasmine rush toward the sandpit. “Marley!”

I glance at the girls playing in the sandpit when Jasmine stalks over to the sandpit ripping Marley out by her arm.

“What have I told you? You know not to get too close when she hasn’t got her gloves on,” She scolds. Marley seemed confused as she looked down at Marabella. Marabella hangs her head, reaching for her gloves.

“I will put them back on the sand, it is hard to play with, “Marabella tells Jasmine and Jasmine turns to look down at her, a sad smile on her face and her cheeks blushing.

“Sorry, sweetie. I didn’t mean it like that,”

Then how did you mean it, Jasmine? I could only interpret one meaning of what you said,”

“Kat, come on. You know better than anyone else. You said she would have her gloves on, now I will have to….you know what never mind. Come on, Marley, we should head home,” Jasmine says, tugging her daughter’s hand and rushing off the side of the packhouse, Marabella looks down at her hands before glancing back at Jasmine and Marley’s retreating form.

“I wasn’t going to touch her, Mumma,”

“I know, sweetheart, you did nothing wrong,” I told her. Eziah reaches over and grabs her hand and I see him squeeze it.

“I will start making lunch,” I tell the kids; I will deal with Jasmine later. Marabella did nothing wrong, and I didn’t like how she reacted in front of my daughter. It irritated me that everyone was so frightened by her, she is a child. Yet fear makes people respond in different ways; as much as I hated to admit it, Marabella was treated differently by most people, yet it couldn’t be helped and I tried my best t o lessen the gut-wrenching blows when parents said no to letting their kids play.

After the first few times, I learned. Marabella would ask to have a playdate and be all excited and ask me to ring their parents. The look on her face broke my heart so I never asked front of her anymore. After a while she stopped asking, so I felt relief when Alicia’s mother agreed for her to come over. I didn’t particularly like her mother, she was pretty rude and didn’t seem to differentiate between being too nosy and just plain rude sometimes, plus she was a gossip. If you wanted the entire town t o know something, all you had to do was mention it to Ayla and that would guarantee it would be around town by the end of the day and a more elaborate exaggerated version.

Walking inside, I grabbed the bread from the pantry and made sandwiches for the kids, hearing the front door open. I was relieved when I smelt Ezra’s scent waft to me; signally he was home. Turning around to greet him, I was startled when Marabella rushed inside, tearing past me and nearly knocking me over. Her face streaked with tears. I could just make out Eziah yelling at Alicia as I took off after her. She races down the hallway beside the stairs only to run into her father.

“Woah, what’s going on?” Ezra asks. Marabella’s is covered in sand, and Ezra brushes it off before gripping her arms.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” He asks, kneeling next to her, but Marabella shakes her head, crying uncontrollably.

“Marabella?” Ezra asks just as the front door opens, and Mateo walks in, saying something. His words cut off when he spots our daughter crying.

“Bella, what happened?” Mateo asks, stopping next to Ezra and peering down at her.

“They all hate me. Everyone hates me,” Marabella cries.

“Who hates you? Nobody hates you, baby,” Ezra tells her, and I chew my lip, watching worriedly. This wasn’t the first time Marabella had broken down over her gifts.

“Everyone, I am a freak, a monster,”

“Don’t say that. That is not true,” Ezra scolds her, he hates hearing her say things like that. We all did, she was Six, no child should feel hated, and we tried to shield her from the judgement, but it was near impossible when she had a Moon Goddess for a mother and Alpha fathers. No matter where we went, we were constantly receiving unwanted attention and so did Marabella.

The whispers got to me, the worst part i s being the bigger one and not rising to the hurtful words, trying to ignore it. Ezra once lost his temper, but I don’t blame him for that time. If he didn’t k**l the a******e, one of us would have. It was an Alpha meeting and we brought the kids to play with the other Pack Alphas children when one man, who had no children and had his pack taken by a rival Alpha for cruelty to his members, took a jab at the twins. All because I refused to help him.

“The blessed and cursed twins, abominations, and that one,” He said, pointing at Marabella. She was two at the time. “She should have been put down at birth” The growl that left Ezra as Maddox pushed forward still sends a shiver up my spine to this day.

He k****d him, then challenged everyone else in the hall to speak up if they had anything to say. None did; none were game enough, too, after watching the man get torn apart, his d**d, bleeding body at Ezra’s feet while he was drenched in blood. I shake the memory away, returning to the present, having missed half of what was going on as I looked at Marabella.

“Daddy No, don’t touch, you can’t touch me, no one can touch me,” Marabella shrleks as Ezra tears the gloves off her hands; Marabella Is hysterical as she tries to pull away from him.

“You don’t scare me; you are not a monster,” Ezra tells her, and I feel my heart skip a beat as Marabella tries to rip her hands away. Ezra grabs them, pressing them against his face.

“You are not a monster, you hear me? You do not scare me,” Marabella pulls away, but he refuses to let her hands go that are placed on either side of his face. Marabella held her breath while Ezra stared at her, trying to get her to see she was not what they say.

“Dad, please,” Marabella begs.

“Say it.” Ezra tells her.

“I’m not a monster,” Marabella tells him while sobbing, and Ezra hushes her softly until she calms down and finally stops crying. He pulls her to him, hugging her little body.

“Alicia is not welcome here again,” Ezra says through the mind link. I look back up the hall toward the kitchen, and Mateo wanders off out the back. Yes, it was best if Mateo returned her to her mother; mine and Ezra’s tempers quickly erupted. Now, knowing Alicia had something to do with her being upset, I didn’t trust myself not to give her mother the spanking her daughter deserves. I despised bullies; Marabella was a sweet girl. I just hoped she could survive everyone else, and I was determined to help her try.

“Don’t let what they say in, don’t let it in, Marabella, they are beneath you,” Ezra tells her, and she nods against his shoulder, hugging him back. Ezra’s eyes flick up to mine, unspoken worry in his eyes for our little girl.

***********

Another ten years later,

Sixteen-years-old.

Marabella POV

“I need to go see Mr. Bates,” Eziah told m e as we ate lunch with his friends, I say this because they weren’t mine. No, they were good pretenders. They always were when my brother was around, I gave up trying to tell him they hated me, that he should just have lunch by himself without me around. He couldn’t see the way they treated me when no one was looking, no one to back me up unless Eziah was here.

“I will come with you,” I tell him, picking up my lunch tray and about to follow him.

“I won’t be gone long, I don’t need you to hold my hand,” He says, smiling at me, and I sit back down. “I will be back. Then we can head to English together,” Eziah tells me. He waves to his friends, and just as I expected, the moment he was out of sight, they all got up, sneering at me and moving tables.

I masked the hurt I felt, and it was like they thought I was the plague, one they didn’t want to risk catching. I go back to eating my lunch and trying to ignore the stares I could feel on me, the whispers, My appetite was suddenly gone, and I got up, dumping my tray in the stack before walking out. I headed for the library and nearly walked in when I spotted Alicia through the glass doors. She was talking excitedly, and I looked around, debating where to go before giving up and going to the one place I always went. Watching as groups of students talked and mucked around, the sight making me feel more alone, nothing more lonely than being alone while surrounded by an audience to witness the loneliness and those closest blind to see it.

I would settle for anything, even my wolf. I couldn’t wait for that day to come. My brother had his wolf already. Mum said I had to wait until I was eighteen. It seemed unfair; at least then I would have a friend, someone to talk to.