My Fated Alpha's Cruel Game (Elena and Marcus) novel Chapter 6

Chapter 6: Chapter 6 Price of Betrayal

Elena’s POV

I was jolted awake in the dead of night by a searing, burning agony ripping through my chest. The pillow was soaked through with my tears by the time the worst of it passed. I crawled to the bathroom. I did not trust my legs to stand. Under the flickering bulb, I lifted the hem of my t-shirt with shaking fingers.

A bruise had bloomed below my ribs. Deep blue, almost black at the center, fading to a sick green at the edges. And in the middle of it, a split in the skin. Small. Weeping a thin, clear fluid tinged pink.

I hadn’t fallen on anything. Nothing had hit me there.

I knew what this was.

I knew exactly what this was.

Tara whimpered inside my chest, a small broken sound, and I did not have the strength to shush her.

Somewhere, in some bed in some big clean room, Alpha Marcus had put his hands on Viviana. And the mate bond, the one he refused to honor, refused to break, had taken the brutal physical toll of his betrayal out on my body. My skin. My bones. My ribs.

I pressed my palm flat against the weeping wound and breathed through my teeth.

If I did this to him, he would kill me. Publicly. As an example. A low-pack girl who dared to bleed her Alpha from the inside out.

I opened the cabinet under the sink. A half-roll of gauze. A strip of medical tape curled at the end. I dressed the wound the way my father used to dress mine when I was small and bled too easily. Fold. Wrap. Tape. Don’t cry where anyone can hear you.

I pulled my shirt down and went back to the couch.

I did not sleep again.

The sky was gray when I heard my mother moving in the kitchen. The kettle. A spoon against a mug. The soft sound of her sitting down in the chair that creaked.

I smoothed my expression into something neutral before I sat up.

“Morning.”

“Morning, baby.”

She was already dressed, looking utterly exhausted. The skin under her eyes was the color of old paper.

“Mom,” I said, watching her carefully. “You’re heading out to work again? Which one of your twelve different jobs is it today?”

She tried to smile, though it didn’t reach her eyes. “The diner this morning. Then the motel. Then Seraph tonight, if my feet hold.”

“Mom...”

“Don’t, Elena.”

She wouldn’t look at me. She lifted her mug and held it to her mouth without drinking. 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

“I have some news,” she said finally. “I wasn’t going to tell you this morning, but you should know.”

“Know what.”

“Alpha Marcus raised the rent on this rotting trailer last week.”

Something cold slid down my back.

“How much.”

She swallowed hard.

“Twelve hundred a month.”

The mug almost slipped out of my hand.

“Twelve hundred?”

“Yes.”

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