Ashes Of A Mate

Chapter3

Rejection AT The Altar Of Fate

“Are you alright, Lexi?”

It was her mother who called to her. She looked up at them with tear filled eyes and nodded slowly.

She realized that she must have been freaking them out, smiling with tears threatening to fall from her eyes.

How was she to explain that she had died and gotten reborn?

How was she to explain that in the flames her own mate had tried to burn her alive with, she had found absolution?

How was she going to explain that the moon had watched her die for hate and had spat her right back out to fight for love?

She could not do that, so she simply nodded.

“I'm alright mum”, she said calmly.

Her mother, enraged, turned to Ethan’s mother.

“Your son has made my daughter she'd tears on a day that should bring her joy. How do you plan to fix this before our families are joined?”

Amelia averted her gaze and turned to her husband, Beta Sabastine Gray, who looked annoyed and offended. Nothing about his outward countenance suggested that he was mortified by his son's dishonourable act.

Maybe he was, deep inside. Who could tell?

He was a very proud man and he was better positioned to defend his ego than he was to do the right thing.

“It doesn't even matter anymore.”

Lexi stood up from the sofa she had been sitting on with her parents and cleared her throat.

“Let's just call off the engagement”, she shrugged.

She found that her countenance was a bit too chirpy for a wolf who was expected to be mourning her probable rejection by her Alpha, so she looked down to seem affected.

Beta Gray sat up on his seat in alert as soon as the words left her mouth. He might have been a proud man, but he also had a sense of priority and he could tell that his son's betrothal to the only daughter of the Old Alpha Orion Jared pack meant a lot more than his pride to him in that moment.

“Let us not be quick to make decisions, girl. I know that you are upset at Ethan. He has broken your heart by not showing up on time but to that I say; there is nothing broken that cannot be fixed if we are willing.”

He smiled at her as the words left his mouth.

Amalia glanced at him and nodded in agreement.

“Lexi, dear, you know the love that you and Alpha Ethan share. We don't even know why he is late. Shouldn't we just wait for him to get here?”

Lexi kept her gaze fixated on the floor in front of her as the two tried to make her see reason. She held back the urge to scoff about a million times. To her, she had been extremely stupid those five years back when she had sat there quietly, waiting for Alpha Ethan to show up. She had even joined the Grays to convince her parents that Ethan deserved to be waited on.

How could she not have seen their angle all along?

She was the only child of her father and his pack is the most powerful in all the land. Of course they needed the mate bond more than she did.

Before, she had felt like Ethan was the evil one and his parents were kinder because they at least wanted her in their family, but she could see in that moment that their family was full of vipers.

She already guessed that if she were to return to her past life, the one she had been so harshly liberated from, they would not be opposed to the idea of their son burning her alive as long as he found a way to still inherit everything that was rightfully hers from her father.

As she thought more about it, her disgust only increased till she could no longer stand to face them.

Lexi turned to her parents, hands clenched by her side.

“I really just want to call the whole thing off. I no longer want to be with him. I'm done, honestly.”

Her voice was stoic this time. She could not be bothered to mask her emotions for those clowns any longer.

Beta Gray opened his mouth to speak but her father spoke over him anyway.

“Are you sure about this, Lexi?”

Her mother looked at her as well, eyes full of worry.

The amount of concern she saw on their faces almost brought her to tears.

She could not fathom how in the past, she had caused her parents to sit with people of a lower calibre than them, just because she was in love with a man who hated her more than she could ever know.

She sighed and tilted her head in sadness.

“I'm sure about this, dad”

Beta Gray quickly burst in, refusing to let his dreams of someday inheriting the Old Alpha Orion Jared Pack pass over him like that.

“Listen to me girl, you're being irrational…”

He was quickly cut off by Luna Flora, who frankly had been waiting the entire day to give him a piece of her mind.

“My daughter's name is Lexi, and if your son cannot respect her enough to even show up here, then you are lucky we waited for him this long.”

After she said her piece, Old Alpha Orion Jared got off the sofa and gave Beta Gray a gentle nod. The rest of his family took their cue and walked out of the room behind him while Gray and his mate sat back, speechless and defeated.