Fated To The Alpha novel Chapter 218

Read Fated To The Alpha [by Jessica Hall] Chapter 218 – Marabella POV

The water was blistering hot, my skin turning a dark red as the water beat against my flesh, yet it was not enough. Anger, hatred so strong I felt like I was going to combust. I wanted to hurt something, hurt someone instead of being the one that was always taking the blows, suffering in silence, yet the pain was something that also took the anger. So, I turned the anger inward. I needed the numbness to return. Depression is funny like that; one minute, you feel too much, and others, you feel nothing at all.

When I was a child, I heard all about mate bonds, heard about the undying love that comes with it, some fairytale ending we were all supposed to get. Once I hit high school, that dream soon faded; I wanted what my mother had; I wanted to be loved and to love back just fiercely.

Be desired and desiring someone else so much it was blissfully painful, but those expectations were unrealistic, and I see that now. Back then, my mother’s words made no sense to me when I asked if it was the same for everyone. She looked at me, and her smile slipped off her face. She got that strange look in her eye like she was seeing something we couldn’t see.

“Sometimes we don’t get to decide, sometimes I don’t get to choose, sometimes the love kills them,” I remembered she looked sad, but it didn’t make sense to me; my mother was the Moon Goddess.

“But you choose the bonds?” I had questioned her.

“Yes, but some bonds choose each other. Those bonds can be toxic, those bonds I can’t control because fate had other plans for them,” she replied before brushing my hair back behind my ears.

“Well, when I find my mate, he will love m e, right, Mumma?” I asked her,

“Of course he will, bonds are sacred, but sometimes mate bonds aren’t the strongest love of all,”

“What do you mean?” I asked my Nine- year-old brain, not understanding her words.

“Chosen bonds can love more fiercely than any mate bond Marabella, that is why choice is divine, that’s why it can change fate,” I wondered now if that look were because she knew back then, I wouldn’t get my happy ending.

However, despite her words to a naive nine-year-old, I still believed a mate bond would bring me a friend and someone who would love me and me alone. I held onto that, for as long as possible, that out-of-reach dream until I hit high school.

Once I saw the fear on my pack’s faces, that image slowly died down; I no longer believed I would find a mate, no longer thought I’d find happiness or the fairytale ending I had pictured in my head. No one wanted me. Sometimes I wondered if I was more burden to my family than the blessing they called us. Since when is d***h a blessing.

I was not blessed but cursed, cursed to live in silence, so why I hoped for a mate that would love me, want me despite the flaws of my existence was now incomprehensible. I realized I was naive. Darkness doesn’t find happiness. I was darkness, darkness incarnate, the grim reaper; the one everyone avoided getting too close, everyone trying to avoid the touch of d***h, so why wouldn’t my mate fear me like the plague I am.

I was naive; I didn’t think so back then, thought my mate would want me, that mates had no limits that someone would accept me over everyone, but he turned out to be another person who didn’t choose me in the end.

Kora was hopeful and gave that hope back to me when she came along. Told me that all the years of suffering in silence would b e worth it, that our mate would accept us, love us unconditionally, and we would feel different, view things differently.

She was right, but she was wrong about the feeling. It didn’t feel like she said. Kyan invoked a new feeling, a new part of me that I wasn’t used to feeling, numb I could handle, numb I was used to, but anger coursed through me, making me want to hurt him for k*****g that sliver of hope I hadn’t realized I was hanging onto like it was a lifeline. Instead, I wanted to hurt him for wanting him and him not wanting me.

Mum said once you recognized your mate, nothing compared to the love you felt for them, it was blindingly strong. But to love and hate someone, she never told me that one. For years I remained silent, letting my life slip by, waiting for this moment to correct it, waiting without realizing I was waiting for something more. Silent for so long, waiting for a mate to make me feel whole. Silent thinking that once they came, I would find myself again, but now I wanted to scream, and I realized my silence was in its own way the loudest noise I ever heard.

I am screaming for connection, screaming for balance, screaming to be noticed. That is what silence is until eventually, silence is mute, numb, and no longer caring but accepting of the fact you’ll never be seen. You’ll never be acknowledged. Silence is breaking, and resolving the two go hand in hand. My silence for years was golden, just letting myself slip away with my voice, then it turned deafening as I lost myself within the quiet, became submissive to my life.

I spent my life stumbling blindly in the abyss of myself, waiting for my mate to one day pull me out. No longer living, just accepting, settling for what was normal for me. Comfortably complacent in my misery, until he made my heart beat faster, awakening something I wanted, for once I wanted something, and the fates took that away too. The last piece of hope I had, and they destroyed it by giving me someone who didn’t want me, someone who hated me more than I hated myself.

Kora whimpered in my head, wanting the feeling to leave, wanting the numbness back, and I hated Kyan for destroying her too. Destroying my wolf, the one person that kept me going, and what hope did I have if she was now broken too. For once, she didn’t fight me. For once, she let me, wanting the pain, anything to extinguish the feeling of sadness washing over me. Grieving something I never had in the first place or never will have, I wanted the numbness back, the autopilot feeling, the feeling where I no longer cared about what happened to me; I needed the numbness back.

My claws slipped from my fingertips with blinding speed as they dug into my t***h; the relief was short-lived as my blood spilled over the tops of my thighs and washed down the drain. My claws retract but still, it was not enough, and I pierce my flesh deeper than ever, seeking the numbness that usually comes with it, yet nothing. Not even as I rake my claws through my skin all the way to my hip. Darkness tainted my blood, streaks of black spilling onto the floor swirling through the scarlet liquid that spilled out of me. I shudder as the coldness seeps through me, coating me with numbing relief when I hear a knock on the door.