The Mark of Betrayal - Chapter 50: Chapter 50

Roman
‘We need to shower, then we have to talk to the pups. What’s the situation with the warriors here?’ I ask my father in the mind link.
‘There was resistance, but everyone heard what Gillian said. No one can deny that Althea betrayed her wolf, her family, and her pack.’
As I hold my crying mate, I look around the pack. She’s not the only one crying. However, I think most of these people are crying because of the betrayal that they just heard about, not because their Alpha and Luna are dead.
‘Can you clean this up? I’m not willing to give Sawyer and Althea a warrior’s burial, but I don’t want to leave them to be eaten by animals either,’ I say.
‘We’ll bury them. I’ll get some warriors to dig their graves. The pups may want some place to go visit their parents someday. I’ll make sure we mark the graves,’ he says.
‘Thank you. Can you also make sure the pack doesn’t shut down? Once we talk to Sloane and Slade, I’ll come down and address the pack.’
‘I’ll call your mother and have her come over here to help. Samara is suffering and so is this pack. They need someone who can help keep them together. You and I can focus on the warriors, while your mother focuses on the omegas.’
‘Thanks, Dad,’ I say, just as Samara begins to wipe her tears off her cheeks. I know my hands are bloody, but I take her face in my hands and swipe the tears away.
“We need to shower, then we need to talk to the pups.”
She nods, but I can feel the devastation inside her. Coming back here had opened up the old wounds. Hearing that her sister had been part of the betrayal had ripped those wounds into bleeding gashes in her heart.
“Samara and I are taking control of this pack until such time that we decide what the next steps will be. You all heard Gillian. You know we didn’t kill Althea or Sawyer without cause. Many of us knew that there was someone other than Alpha Dean involved in the betrayal of this pack. Now we know the truth. Now, we can finally begin to heal,” I say to them.
“What about those of us who followed Alpha Sawyer here. I understand that he betrayed this pack, but can we return to Alpha Dylan’s pack?” a warrior asks.
I meet my father’s eyes across the room.
‘I’ll have them ‘escorted’ and taken into custody the moment they cross Dylan’s pack lands.’
I give a brief nod so he knows I agree. “If you want to return to Alpha Dylan’s pack, see my father. He will make arrangements.”
I look around once more before taking Samara’s hand and leading her up the stairs to our room. When we pass Sawyer and Althea’s room, the room that used to be Alpha Royal’s and Luna Jessica’s, I can hear the muffled crying of Sloane and Slade. As much as I want to go to them, Samara and I are covered in the blood of their parents. We need to shower first.
Since I’m already naked, I help Samara get out of her clothes while we wait for the shower to warm up. When we step in, I gently push her under the spray of water. She doesn’t have as much blood on her as I do, but severing arteries causes blood to spray and her neck and the lower part of her face are splattered with Althea’s blood.
“Do you think she killed my mother?” she asks, looking up at me with haunted eyes.
I think about it for a moment wanting to be truthful in my response before shaking my head. “No. She said she came looking to kill you, but your mother had gotten you away. What I saw in your memory of that night was your mother fighting outside the door of the secret passageway. The wolf that killed her was sniffing under the door, then scratching to get in. If it had been Althea, she would have ripped the door open and killed you. That’s not what happened, so I don't think she killed your mother.”
“Why do you think they sealed off the secret compartment?” she asks as I begin washing her hair.
“I don’t know, but I intend to find out.”
“How could she betray her wolf?” she whispers, and the tears begin falling again.
I lean down and kiss the corners of her eyes, capturing the tears before they fall.
“I don’t know that either. Pierce and I sometimes disagree or even argue about things, but I would never, ever forsake him like that. He is a part of me, and I am a part of him. Yes, he has his own consciousness, but that’s all the more reason why we should listen to our wolves. They are the better part of us. Yes, they run on instinct, but that instinct keeps us alive more often than not.”
I sigh, rinsing her hair before getting a washcloth and soap. “You were a lot younger than Althea. She was always very selfish. She wanted to be more than she was. When I found you in Alpha William's pack, I knew you weren’t an omega like you claimed, but I also knew it wouldn’t have mattered to me if you were. You were mine, the gift given to me by the Moon Goddess. If she had given me an omega, I would have trusted that there was a reason for that and I would have loved you just as much as I do now. Well, minus the intensity that having a white wolf gives us. But I would have loved you above all others if you had been an omega, a warrior, a ranked member, or the most amazing woman in the world, which you are,” I say, smiling softly and leaning in to kiss her gently.
“I will say this, one thing Althea did say that was true, you were the pack’s darling. They adored you. I always assumed it was because you were younger and, of course, into everything,” I say, smiling when she chuckles. “But now, looking back on it, the pack never responded to her the way that they responded to your mother, or even you, and you didn’t even have Ayla back then. I guess that’s part of the instinct of the wolves. They were always more drawn to you, even if they didn’t outwardly acknowledge it.”
She wets a washcloth and puts soap on it before starting to wash Sawyer’s blood off my body.
“What are we going to tell their pups?” she asks.
“The truth. They deserve that. They may not understand it, but there have been too many lies in their lives, in all our lives, for too long.”
When she focuses on washing my chest, even after the blood is gone, I tilt her chin up to look at me.
“Talk to me. What’s going on in that head of yours?” Her mind is a mess of emotions and thoughts floating around and being pushed aside or down. As soon as I ask, her mind focuses on her next concern.
Slade.
“Is it wrong that I don’t want the son of my family’s betrayer’s to be the Alpha of my family’s pack?” she whispers.
“No. No, it’s not. I had the same thought already. It was bad enough knowing that Sawyer’s son would run this pack. But that was before we knew that Althea was part of the betrayal. We don’t have to make those decisions today and even if we agreed that he should take over the pack, we need a plan for the next thirteen years. Someone has to manage this pack and the people in it.”
She nods, finally moving to wash a different part of my body.
“One thing at a time, my love,” I say to her, tilting her head up and pressing another kiss to her lips.
She pushes up onto her toes, deepening the kiss. I wrap my arms around her, pulling her against my body as I feel her need for me to make all of this go away for her for just a little while.
I know it’s temporary, I know it won’t last, but I press her against the wall, pull her legs up to my waist and slide inside her. As our bodies connect, I connect to her mind. Pierce and Ayla push forward, also needing to feel the connection to each other and us after hearing Gillian’s story today.
I take it slow, keep it gentle as I kiss her tenderly. I capture her moans as she comes, gripping tightly to my shoulders as her body contracts around mine. Then I push her up and over again two more times, before I finally let go and jerk my release inside her.
We stay like that, mentally and physically connected and still kissing as our bodies come down. When I finally slide out of her, she seems steadier, ready to face the pups and whatever comes next.
“Thank you for being here with me. Thank you for standing by my side and for helping me avenge my family’s deaths,” she says.
“I promised you I would before I knew who you were. I always intended to keep that promise. It just worked out that the promise that I made to you and the promise that I made to Theo were the same.”
“I love you,” she says.
“And I love you. Let’s get dressed and go break the hearts of two young pups and figure out how we’re going to feed and take care of a newborn.”
“Okay,” she says, turning to look at me. “I know I don’t want Slade to become Alpha of this pack, but those pups are family. They need to come live with us.”
“There was never a doubt in my mind that they would be coming home with us,” I say to her. “As you said, they’re family and we will raise them as family.”
She steps up to me and presses her body against mine. “Just one more reason I’m thankful to be mated to a man like you.”
I stroke my fingers over her cheek. “I will be forever grateful that I'm mated to a woman like you,” I say, kissing her nose before we get dressed and make our way to destroy the lives of two young pups.