Not just the Beta (Oriana and Slade) novel Chapter 202

Ana

She sat quietly in that war room even though she didn’t really want to know just how much more those people out the from of the packhouse had screwed up her life, and listened to Alpha Gretta read that scroll out to everyone. It was very long and detailed, all the things that Elise and Roman had done to their pack, and for what? For money and power, she thought, they were completely horrid people.

They had lulled their entire pack into a full false sense of security. No one had been safe from them, it seemed; not even their own kin. To hear what they had done; gone to the lengths of using a foreseer to help them get what they wanted, just to stop their own wolves, that they were supposed to protect from things just like this.

Roman had practically sold his pack to that witches coven, and all from what she could tell, so they, the witches, could do this to other packs as well. To stop all wolves from scenting out their Goddess-Gifted Mates. That was just plain cruel, and she could only think that somewhere down the line, one of those witches had been harmed by wolves. Yet they still lived in a wolfen pack. She didn’t get it.

That part about Slade’s future having been read by a foreseer, and she was to be his

Goddess-Gifted Mate. Roman and Anders had told Slade that at one point, she recalled reading that they had. It was just to try and make him go down and speak with her in that pack’s bar.

They had used their knowledge, she now understood, in an effort to have them come to actual blows, to help see her hate him even more. Anders himself had even tried to make Slade go back to the bar, and put a stop to whoever it was he believed she intended to sleep with. She didn’t know if she had done that or not.

But she also understood that, if Slade had gone back down there and tried to stop her, she’d likely have beaten the hell out of him, she supposed, she didn’t really have any memories of that moment, just a flicker of it, could well still have been trying to fight of that bloodlust.

But no one had the right to stop anyone from having sex with another just because they wanted to, which is what it would have looked like. Even if shed not been under the influence of bloodlust she’d have thought it was them trying to control her life and still taken to him for it. A no win situation for Slade and Roman and Anders would have gotten what they wanted; her attacking Slade.

If she had done that, beaten the hell out of him, it would have been seen as a direct attack upon the heir to the pack, and they’d have had the right to call her a traitor to the pack, and kill her for it. That was, she now thought, exactly what they would have done.

She had smashed a bottle on him, she had read that in Slade’s scroll, that should have also been considered an attack on the heir. She thought about that as she sat there. It had to be the threats he’d made to Anders that had stopped that.

That maybe, that was the very moment they had realised they’d lost Slade. That his loyalty to her was stronger than to them, something to do with their Mate Bond and how strongly they were bonded. Perhaps that outweighed everything due to the full moon being less than a day away. 19 hours she’d read in that scroll.

She didn’t want to hear anymore, didn’t want to know just how horrible those people were and all that they had done. Everything had been a complete and utter lie. They’d even known she was pregnant, and could well have listened for it every day, after what they’d seen and the foreseer had stated, ‘the first time they came together a child would be conceived.’ That foreseer had not been wrong on that. So, it was unlikely she was wrong about them being Goddess-Gifted Mates as well.

They’d known she was pregnant, and they’d still done all of that to her. Anders had really hated her, she now understood, the blood bonding had never taken effect properly on his side of it, and a part of her wondered if he’d severed it on his end at some point. Anything was possible, she’d not know, or remember if she’d just been a tiny baby.

Even when she had left this place, he’d still continued to act as if he cared. He’d faked caring about her in front of Slade, played at only just knowing about her being pregnant, and tried to take on Slade himself. She wondered at that moment if Slade had been winning that fight, and that was why Roman had pulled them apart.

Maybe that fight had been orchestrated as well, to rid themselves of Slade because they now knew that he was loyal to her, and they no longer had control over him. So all they could do was get rid of him. She thought about that, a grieving father taking a piece of a boy that had gotten his daughter pregnant and not acknowledged it. Thought about the laws around that, and she understood that would negate the traitor laws of the pack.

It could be forgiven in that moment in that situation. Anders had, she now thought, tried to kill Slade that day, and likely with the Alpha’s own permission, and for what? So that Roman and Elise could continue with their plans for this pack. They’d realized, they’d no longer be able to bring him into the fold, and have him be the Alpha to that pack that mined those moonstones. Likely just change that to Clay, if they could have killed him. But even that had not worked out, Slade had lived.

She was standing there thinking it through inside her mind, all those moonstones had arrived inside this pack already imbued with witchcraft, and it would be seen as this pack hadn’t done that, it was plausible deniability she realised. The blame would fall on the pack that sold them.

So, if Slade was the Alpha to that pack, it would be seen that he had done this, that he was running things. She knew Roman had made a deal with that pack, a blood oath to seal it. He’d signed his own son’s life away that very day.

Those here before her would have all pleaded ignorance to it. Stated those stones had been tampered with before reaching the pack, and of course they were, would be handled twice before reaching this place.

A low growl was being emitted from China as they stood there now, staring down at the man who they had once believed was their father, only to understand he was just a murderous bastard, like everyone else out here, only his hands were likely the dirtiest, because he had been the one to physically harm Slade.