Ashes Of A Mate

Chapter2

The Ashes Of A Mate.

“I love the smell of you hurting.”

He dug his finger into the crack on her face and she screamed.

The pain on her flesh was totally nothing compared to the feeling of being shattered over and over again.

Just as she felt she could not bear it anymore, he retracted his fingers from her face and walked to the corner of the room quietly.

While his back was turned, she looked at the broken glass in front of her on the floor.

She thought of reaching for it and hacking away at the back of his neck until his head rolled off, but she knew better.

He was bigger, stronger. His death would raise more alarm than hers ever could, and unlike him, she was not pretending to be in love with him.

While she was still sunken in her thoughts, he turned around with a tank in his hand and without a word to her, he begun to empty its contents unto the floor.

The strong smell of the substance brushed past her nostrils and she widened her eyes in shock.

“Alpha Ethan, is that gasoline?”

He didn't answer. He simply kept pouring the fluid all over the place.

On the floors that she had carefully polished when he gifted her the cabin a night before the wedding; on the bed where she had dreamed that he would take her and finally make her his.

She ranted about how he was being unreasonable. She even got off the floor and rushed to him, pulling his arm and asking him to remain calm so they could talk. They were, after all, husband and wife.

Instead of listening to reason, he flung her aside again. This time, she hit her head hard on the wall and more of her pain seeped through the crack.

Once his tank was empty, he walked to the door and turned back to look at her.

She couldn't move even if she wanted to -and she did not want to.

She watched him pull a lighter out of his pocket, the same one she had given him when she realized that he would never quit his habit of smoking for her.

Her vision was hazy and in the dark of the night, he looked like the devil with fire pouring out of his palm.

He held the lighter up to his face so she could see the unknown familiarity in his eyes.

“I have hated every second of our relationship. This final one, however, is a cleansing act.”

“Goodbye, Lexi.” He threw the lighter to the bed and shut the door tightly immediately he did that.

The whole room lit up at once.

The flames were bright, hot, yet she took comfort in the fact that her awareness was already being weaned away by the rapidly bleeding wound in her head.

Painfully, she turned her neck to the window and looked at the moon that shone outside it. It was a full moon that night.

Her heart burned, hotter than the flames that locked her skin here and there, for the love that she had lost.

She let out a maniacal laugh as she realized that she hadn't lost any love since there was none to be found in the first place.

Alpha Ethan was right, the fire was a cleansing act and in its raging brightness, she had simply been disillusioned.

Her psychotic laughter gradually turned into a stream of shrieks and screams and she felt the fire feed on her flesh.

She didn't know if she was supposed to keep screaming, maybe someone would hear her and help.

It was highly unlikely. He was strategic about the location. At first she thought it was just for the sake of privacy, but as she laid there turning to ash, she knew it was so nobody would hear her beg for mercy.

She finally gave up. Her throat was dry, hot and raspy. Just as she closed her eyes and prepared to surrender to the oxygen deficiency.

Then—BANG.

A deafening crash at the door. She looked up weakly to see a familiar figure standing by the door way.

“Lexi, I'm so sorry”, he said as he scurried in and rushed to her side.

“Alpha Jace,” she whispered. Her voice came out husky, faded.

Why? Why him?”

He groaned under the heat of the flames as he scooped her up in his arms.

Alpha Jace is Lexi’s mate, Alpha of the Moonstorm Pack, who she left to be with the one she loves, Alpha Ethan.

Alpha Jace is the brother of Lexi’s best friend. She doesn't love him, instead, she sees him as a big brother.

“I'm so sorry. I should have gotten here sooner,” he wept as he took her pale body with him outside to the grass.

She sighed as soon as she felt the fresh air caress her burnt skin.

“Jace…. you fool.”

“I already turned you away. Why did you still come for me?”

“You shouldn't have”, she muttered weakly.

He knelt in front of her charred body and looked at her face, brushing what was left of her hair off it as he smiled painfully at her.

“I'm going to kill him, I swear.”

There was a determination for vengeance in his voice that Lexi had never heard before.

Through her hazy vision, she watched him tremble and weep over her as she lay there shedding her life away.

Even though she was almost just a pile of ash, he held her and worshipped her like she was the most sacred thing he had seen.

The way Alpha Jace treated her sacramentally even when she was most vulnerable made her wish that she had given her heart to him instead.

She shook her hand, barely, in a weak attempt to reach for his. He got the message and quickly grabbed her palm.

“Maybe in another life.”

As the words escaped her throat, she exhaled noisily and accepted the soft glow of the moon that was pulling at her soul.

From final exhalation to a sharp, startling gasp. Lexi's eyes shut open in confusion.

Was she in hell?

Why did hell look so familiar, and why was her entire family and Beta Sabastian Gray Family in hell with her?

“Beta Sebastian Gray, your hospitality has been lovely so far but your son is taking a rather ridiculous amount of time to show up to his own engagement.”

It was Old Alpha Orion Jared, Lexi's father. He spoke with calmness in his tone but anyone who knew him knew that for him to speak at all, his patience was nearing its limit.

“Does anyone at least know where he is,” Luna Flora, his mate, said.

She was a lot more blunt than he was and she had expressed her distaste for Alpha Ethan's tardiness only thirty minutes into the meeting.

Since then, three whole hours had passed and there was no sign of Alpha Ethan, neither was there any information about where he was. The best everyone could do was wait.

“Come on, Orion. You know that these ceremonies are just unfortunate formalities that these younger ones have to suffer. In our days, an Alpha simply marked his woman and that was the only rite necessary”, Beta Sabastine said playfully.

Old Alpha Orion maintained a stern expression as he stared at Sabastian, while Luna Flora Orion Jared shut him a dangerous look.

“If my daughter wants to go through every single ceremony before she can say she is mated to your son, then you and your entire family should do well to honour her and us. The first step would be actually showing up!”

There was a period of silence after she spoke, just like Lexi recalled it.

“It can't be.” Lexi chuckled. Everyone in the room turned to look at her as she struggled to steady her breathing.

She quickly realised that she was not in hell, she had gone back in time to the day she got engaged to Alpha Ethan, five years before he murdered her in that cottage.

It would still be hell except that she remembered all the years ahead of her, and this time around, she had vengeance to live for.