Not just the Beta (Oriana and Slade) novel Chapter 167

Alpha Gretta

Relinquishing one’s Goddess-Gifted Mate and volunteering to take a chosen mate wasn’t considered coercion. It seemed Roman had taken away a lot about coercion from Alpha College, and found ways to get around it, so things wouldn’t be seen as coercion at all.

Though he was not counting on the council coming here and seeing everything that was going on, she flipped through a few of the other mating alliances and all had to relinquish their Goddess-Gifted. Oh, she really wanted to rip that man’s head off right now.

She took a breath in and released it as she came to Slade’s name, a boy that had once been broken by his own father. She opened it and there she found the pack he was to go to had already been pre-chosen. A deal struck when he was just a baby between two packs.

A proper wolfen betrothal, so to speak, his eldest son to go to another pack that couldn’t seem to produce male heirs. The eldest daughter of Alpha Ivan White of the Iron Bark Pack out in California. Though, as she looked at it, that deal should have been made by now.

There was a clause in it that he got to take his Gamma and Delta with him, and they would see him take the Beta of that Iron Bark Pack as his Beta. Seems both Palmer and Yuri were part of his deal, but not Oriana. She was not mentioned in that alliance deal.

It had the words null and voided stamped on it, and she knew why. Roman had no choice but to cancel it on his end and he’d had to pay an exit clause for it; he lost five million dollars to that pack when he voided

But he had no choice. He no longer had any control over Slade. His son was not about to let himself be mated off by a man he didn’t care for. His son had no intention of returning to this pack until his own mission was complete, and with what they thought and what they wanted for him clashing. There would have been no mating alliance anyway.

What they had done to Slade had ruined their own plans for the boy. He didn’t seem to know his own son at all, though as she was perusing that file she did note there was no list of names, just the eldest daughter of Alpha Ivan, a she-wolf named Silvie, who’d been sent a betrothal band for her 16th birthday, the picture of it looked much the same as Dariah’s. there was a picture of a very nice looking mens watch attached to Slade’s file, his betrothal item.

She left all the files out on the table for them to be read by the others. She had been doing this in alphabetical order, because that was how they were filed. There was no file on Oriana Vale, but she now understood some of the goings-on within this pack.

She now believed they had hurt Oriana on purpose, after what they had seen that night before he’d gone to Alpha College, and likely actually did believe that Oriana was going to be Slade’s Goddess-Gifted Mate. So they needed her to leave this pack, so they could mate Slade off, and that deal he’d struck with his father,

She also suspected there was something going on within the Vale family, as did Austin. They’d not gotten to that yet, but she was willing to bet it was also going to revolve around Oriana herself. Ember had lashed her own nephew over that, something about a long-time promise being broken.

There was something within the Vale family that none here knew about something between Ember, Anders, Bronnie and Oriana. She wondered if Hayden knew what it was. After all his dealings with Oriana, it was possible. That boy had entitlement issues… Ah, he did know what the family secret was, and he’d expected to be the next Beta as well because of it.

Slade, however, didn’t want that, and it likely hurt the boy all his life, considering how attached to Oriana Slade was, and Hayden had to see it, and know Slade didn’t want him as his Beta, even. The Vale family needed to step down, it seemed, somewhere along the line, their bloodline was no longer fit to be Betas, likely Roman had corrupted Anders after whatever happened within the Vale family.

They were going to have to dig into the Vale family and find out exactly why they had turned on Oriana, the heir to their bloodline and their only daughter. She understood Roman’s need for the matter, but not the Vales.

Anders and Bronnie had been cruel to her most of her life, emotional abuse even though they’d raised her .