Academy Of Mates novel Chapter 104

Chapter 104

Chapter 104

Benedict

Bount

“I’m… Vareesa and I are,” I sucked in a breath, knowing there was no other way to hide this any longer. “We’re fated mates.”

His eyes were the size of golf balls. And it took a few minutes for him to gather himself. “You’re sure?”

“Yes.” From my peripheral, I saw the Alpha flinch like I had punched him.

Thankfully, Vareesa’s father reads the room, sees the horror in my face and the devastation in my Alpha’s. He doesn’t continue asking questions even when I know he wants to.

“Let’s go,” The Alpha announces, turning away, the plane landing on a long strip of land. “I’ve caught the scent of the guards that took her. Once we have more information, we’ll break through the borders.”

This time, I couldn’t help myself anymore and spoke up. “We can’t just storm in, Alpha. I know the man we’re facing and what he’s like. He’ll hurt Vareesa. I’m sure he will if he sees us coming. If your suspicions are true and they brought her inside the pack, then he means to use Vareesa to repel you. And I am not lying when I say I have seen him do horrible things to the girls he has.”

The Alpha begins to shake, his skin blurring at the edges as he realizes what I mean.

But it was the truth. At twelve, the Alpha would have Andrew and I watched as he used girls… younger than what was appropriate. We weren’t allowed to look away, weren’t allowed to close our eyes. We were there, as he said, to learn. And the things I’ve seen, the things I never thought I would ever see, especially at twelve, haunt me until this day.

It still burns in my memory and I think it was the first and only time Andrew and I held each other’s hand, seeking comfort with even an enemy as it happened in front of us.

We were kids. We didn’t know anything.

But we knew that was wrong and all we could do was hold each other.

And I would die if what he does to those girls happens to Vareesa. I would die before I allowed that to happen.

“Please, Alpha. Please believe me when I say I know what he will do.” I begged, my fists balled up. I was determined for him to listen and wouldn’t allow this to be ignored. “We have to go there quietly. I know the sewers there better than anyone else. No one can smell us from under there. The smell is so intense that it’ll mask our scents and we can go unnoticed.”

The Alpha sees the desperation and nods. “No one patrols the sewers?”

Relief washes over me. “No. They’re too disgusted to do so. That’s why I loved the sewers as a kid. No one could get me.”

“Very well. Give the orders to the pack.” He tells me, gesturing to the sun. “Let’s go.”

With the timing perfect, the plane lands completely on the ground and as we all disembark with military precision, the pack members that we flew with separate from us without another word, heading for the direction where I told them to go.

No one but us knew the plan, so if ever we still have potential betrayers, they would only reveal what the city pack had already predicted.

“They’re coming to the borders. Prepare for their attack.

All of this without knowing we had a different plan altogether. The Alpha, Vareesa’s father and I had shifted into our wolves and ran towards a different direction, on the hunt for the guards that took Vareesa.

I am still surprised by the betrayal. Those guards were men we’ve trained, we’ve kept safe, we’ve given new lives to live. I did

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Chapter 101

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5 Vouchers

not expect us to lose the loyalty of our people so easily, but I should have known better. The city pack has their ways and they have a specialty for sniffing out the weak links.

We ran for hours, longer, much longer. I kept myself busy by closely monitoring every single person in the pack. All of them, even the ones in the mountains, were arriving.

‘We’re close. The Alpha says after some time.

I looked up at the sky, spotting a fire in the distance. We were a few hours away from the city pack, confirming that Vareesa was most likely brought inside pack lines. My worst nightmare is that my uncle would already have her in his bed but he wouldn’t use that card so easily. He plays his cards well, a master at keeping them close but never using them unless needed, and that’s all that Vareesa was to him.

A pawn.

An insurance.

The Alpha skids to a stop, crouching low and stalking the trees like the predator that he is. Vareesa’s father and I do the same, keeping our paws silent and circling around a small clearing. I caught their scent easily and saw them not a few seconds later. They were huddled by the fire, eyes on the flames.

My eyes flickered at the Alpha but he was too fast and he had the two guards by their necks before they could even see him coming. The two guards automatically shift into their wolves to protect themselves, but the Alpha, with the confidence of a man who has killed too many in his life, shifts back into his human form, grabbing both wolves by their muzzles and dragging them to the fire.

Vareesa’s father and I watched from the trees.

The Alpha did not need our help. He needed to do this on his own.

The two wolves flail around helplessly, but this doesn’t even move the Alpha, taking them to the fire and bringing their faces to the roaring flames. Without caring for his own hands that burned, the Alpha kept their heads on the fire as the wolves lit up. They screamed, howling, and crying and making sounds that I never knew were possible.

“Shift.” The Alpha merely commands, holding them to the fire as they all burned. He didn’t even flinch. He didn’t even cry out as his skin turned black from the hot fire.

One of the guards quickly shifts back to their human form and with this, the Alpha brings him out of the flames, but not before tossing the guard, the one still in his wolf form, into the fire, burning him fully.

The smell of burning flesh and fur wafted through the air like poison and the whimpering of the wolf stops as he becomes one with the flames that raged on.

The Alpha turns to the one he kept alive, hovering over the shaking man. “Speak.”

But he was too frightened, his skin tearing off his body from the burn marks he got.

But the Alpha had already lost all his patience and quickly stomps on the guard’s ankles, the snap of bone cracking through the air.

For a long time I wondered why the Alpha’s punishments mirrored the city packs. The burning. The beating. At first I thought it was because he really was some hidden bastard of the Alpha, but I realized as I watched him that he had seen this before… experienced it before. These punishments I also endured at the hands of the city pack, but he knows this for a different reason.

They were done to him too.

Because they attacked him.

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Chapter 104

He was from a farm pack, possibly attacked and pillaged by the city.

And he was inflicting the same pain that he was shown and endured by the city pack.

55

The Alpha didn’t have to say it again, the guard crawling to his knees with his head on the ground, bowing and begging for

mercy.

“Alpha,” The man pleaded, shuddering and shaking. “I’m sorry, Alpha. Please. We had no choice. You have to believe me.”

The Alpha lifted his hands, making the guard flinch back. “That’s not what I want. Tell me where she is and what you’ve done to her.”

A shaking mess of blood and snot, the guard was unrecognizable with fear. “The city pack, they said they had my sister from the days our pack was attacked and their Alpha said if I gave up the Luna I could still save her again, but when we brought the Luna to them, they only gave us bones! My sister’s bones!”

Unblinking and unmoved, the Alpha stomps on the guard’s knees. The cracking sound of shattering bone going through the woods again. “That’s not what I asked for. Where is she?”

“Alpha, I beg of you,” He didn’t get to finish his sentence as the Alpha grabbed him by the neck and took him to the flames again where his feet caught fire, the blood that dripped from him fueling the flames until they consumed all of the guard’s legs. The crying was so intense, the loud shouts from him making my stomach turn. “We brought her to the Beta. We left her in his bedroom. The Alpha said they wanted her broken in… raped by the Beta!”

That was enough for the Alpha as he drops the guard into the flames, right on top of the bones and ashes of his fellow betrayer.

“Do you know the way to Andrew’s home?” The Alpha asked, without turning to look at me.

I shifted back to my human form, bowing my head low. “Yes. It’s right at the center of the city. If we use the sewers, we’ll be able to get inside his building. But…”

He continued to stare at the flames, an expression I couldn’t identify on his face. The Alpha looked to be remembering things, lost in his thoughts. “What?”

“His home is right under the Alpha’s.” I informed him, seeing the haunted expression on his face.

The Alpha shakes this off. “Good.”

Suddenly, something in my neck threw me down on the ground. I let out a gasp as Vareesa’s fear came crashing down on me like waves and waves of water coming to drown me.

“Benedict!”

I could hear the Alpha, could see him standing over me, but I couldn’t focus, all my attention on my neck and the beating of my heart that increased.

Vareesa was scared.

Something was happening.

Somehow, my neck burns even more and tears spring up to my eyes. And then… something. A wetness that wasn’t really

there.

A voice.

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