FATED TO ALPHA HUNTER BY VENNEH LISAH

𝐀𝐍𝐈𝐀'𝐒 𝐏𝐎𝐕:

As I walked out of my room, I was greeted by Junior, who came over and looped his arm through mine as if we were best buddies. "And what adventure are we going on today, my Queen?" he asked, and I chuckled, looking around for Desmond.

"Desmond went to get your breakfast," Junior informed me as I glanced around.

"I'm not hungry. I just want to see Rina," I told him with a frown as I walked down the steps toward Dwight's room. Rina hadn't left the room since that first night back, and I knew that was why Dwight wanted to take her somewhere. I wanted to see Rina before she left.

Arman had informed me of her departure through the mind-link. It always freaked me out when he used it. I wasn't used to having someone in my head after such a long time, let alone being a part of something. Rina was rogue again, and I hated that, but she refused to let Dwight mark her. Every time I asked Arman to make her join a pack, he said she refused and he couldn't unless he changed her.

I knew why. She didn't think she was worthy of having good things, but that wasn't all. If Dwight couldn't change her, then she wouldn't become a vae-wolf, and I didn't know what I would do without Rina. Dwight had stopped by not long after the King left to let me know he was taking her somewhere, and they were leaving after lunch.

Walking through the winding corridors toward the back of the castle, I knocked on Rina's door but received no answer. Looking up at Junior, he gripped the door handle and pushed it open, then stuck his head inside.

"I think she's showering," Junior whispered, though he had a strange look on his face, as if he knew something I didn't. So, I pushed the door open wider and stepped inside.

"I'll wait here. Dwight isn't here," Junior said, sniffing the air and looking away from me awkwardly. I nodded before stepping into the dark room. The curtains were closed, and the lack of light made it a little difficult to see as my eyes adjusted. I managed to stub my toe on a coffee table and felt like cursing at the darn thing. I made my way to the bathroom and knocked on the door.

"Rina? It's me," I called out to her, but I received no answer. However, I could hear her crying behind the door, and in that moment, I understood why Junior didn't want to enter. Taking a quick glance around the room, I opened the door and closed it behind me. As I turned to face the dark bathroom, I noticed that the mirrors were covered with large sheets of black paper, making the bathroom even darker than the main room. The air was heavy with the saltiness of her tears and the billowing steam.

Instantly, I broke out in a sweat. It felt like a sauna in there. I could hear murmuring coming from the fogged-up glass shower stall.

"Rina?" I whispered, opening the shower screen. There she was, at the bottom of the shower, scrubbing herself aggressively while pressed into the corner. Her skin was bright red from the scalding water. It was evident that she was not okay. Everyone knew that, but seeing her in such a state broke my heart. She abruptly stopped, as if she hadn't realized I was there. Slowly, she lifted her head and stared ahead, vacant and distant. In her hand, she clutched a scourer, the kind you would use to clean a heavily stained pot, not to scrub skin.

"I can still feel his hands, Ania. I can still taste his vileness in my mouth," she whispered, her gaze fixed on nothingness. A tear trickled down her cheek, vanishing into the drain along with the cascading water. Her lip trembled as I stepped into the shower, my clothes becoming saturated, the water scalding hot. I moved over to her, near the far wall, and sat beside her. Some parts of her skin were bleeding, as if she had scrubbed herself raw. The scars that covered her body were still raw and angry, though thankfully healed, now only raised from the harsh scrubbing.

"Sometimes it's okay to remember the dark parts, Rina. Just don't dwell there for too long. Don't let it trap you, and don't give him the control he no longer has over you," I told her, and she turned her head to look at me. I took hold of her hand, the hand clutching the scourer, and interlaced my fingers with hers.

"I don't want his control. I want to forget. I want to hate him and still not love him. How can you still love someone even after they do something like that? I should have listened to Dwight. I should have stayed," Rina whispered.

"It was the mate bond. That wasn't real love, just some twisted version of what you perceived as love," I explained.

"I was naive, stupid," she scolded herself.

"No, you wanted something more than what we have been given, and that's not your fault," I told her. I sat with her, allowing the boiling water to scald my legs. Thankfully, she only had her legs under the water, while the rest of her pressed against the wall. Yet, her skin was raw and raised.

"I can't live like this, Ania. I don't want to anymore. I don't want to be the broken doll," she hissed.

This wasn't my Rina; this Rina had given up. This was what remained. She looked helpless, as if the days of our slavery had aged us prematurely.

Now that we were older, we saw the horrors of the world in a different light. We saw the monsters, the lies, and understood that nothing about our five years of slavery was normal. What we once thought was normal no longer held true. The new normal remained uncertain. We had grown comfortable with pain because it was all we knew. We found comfort in our own misery, thinking it was normal. Being broken had become our normal. But how do you fix what is considered normal?

How do you break the cycle of a thought pattern? Pain is not normal, despite it being all we know. I had started to question this when I met Arman, but Rina hadn't yet encountered her new normal. She still suffered in the version of normalcy we had grown accustomed to. And I knew she was tired, tired of the old normal. She wore her resilience like armor, but now, laid bare, I realized she no longer wanted to carry it.

"You're not broken," I whispered, despite the fact that she looked it.

"I am. I don't know who I am anymore," she whispered, staring off into the distance.

"You're my best friend, my sister. You are more than my life," I told her, squeezing her hand.

"No, we are not. We are rogues, we are whatever they let us be and nothing more," she said.

"Only if you let yourself be. You are not what he did to you, Rina. You are not what the butcher did to you, and we are not what Richie and Lucy made us believe," I told her.

"You aren't. You are a princess and soon to be Queen. You are Ania Talia Devonshire. I am a rogue, I am nothing, and now everyone knows what they did. Everyone knows the dirty things I wished I could forget. I am sick of them looking at me with pity, sick of them looking at me with disgust, sick of being what he made me!" she chirped.

"Then be Rina," I told her, putting my head on her shoulder.

"But I don't know who she is," Rina murmured, her voice emotionless.

"What they did to you is not you but a reflection of them. That is who they were, Rina. They are dead, and you are still breathing. They don't get another chance, but you do, so take it. Don't let them chain you down in the memory of what they did. They don't deserve it. Live because you can and want to," I told her, and she shook her head and pulled her knees to her chest.

Rina put her head in her hands and cried. Her shoulders shook, and I couldn't begin to imagine what she was going through, but she would get through this. She had to because this world wasn't worth being in without her.

"You sound like Dwight, but even he looks at me the same as everyone else. Even you do. I know you can't help it, but..." she choked out, her entire body shaking.

"I don't look at you with pity, Rina. I know who you are, and that is all I see. I see you, and this is not you. You are better than them. I see the girl I am willing to die beside, the girl I jumped with, the girl that kept me going when she wanted to give up herself, and you are not giving up. More than my life, Rina. I am here, and you're staying right here with me. If you go, I go. So which is it, are you jumping? Because if you are, I am jumping with you," I said.

"You have a mate and you're the Queen, so don't say that. I am nothing compared to you," she said, and I heard in her voice how much she truly believed that.

"You are everything to me. You always have been. My title doesn't change that, and you have Dwight and will be my Beta, so don't tell me you are nothing because the only reason I am still here for any of this is because of you," I explained.

Rina chuckled and shook her head but lifted it, placing it against the wall. "I am a werewolf. You are a vae-wolf. I can't be your Beta, and I wouldn't know the first thing about being a beta," she stated.

"You think I know how to be Queen?" I laughed, sitting up to look at her.

"I can't even read Spanish, but we have people here who will help us. I have Arman. You have Dwight and me," I told her.

"Yeah, until he tosses me aside when I can't give him what he wants," she chimed.

"He wants to change you and mark you. He isn't going anywhere, and even if he does, I am still right here," I told her.

"Would you change me?" she asked.

"I wouldn't think twice about it, but we may have to ask how, though, because I am not sure how to," I chuckled, and so did she before her smile fell.

"Who would have thought freedom would be worse than the chains that restricted us," she whispered.

"Freedom isn't something given, Rina. It's a mindset. Only we can free ourselves," I told her.

"Do you feel free?" she asked, and I sighed.

"I don't know, but I know we aren't the rogues anymore. I don't know who I am either, but I am determined to find out, and I prefer we find out together," I told her, and she swallowed.

"More than my life," she whispered.

"More than my life," I replied.

"More than my life," Dwight's deep voice said, making us both jump. Neither of us had heard him come in, and I swiped my hand down the glass to find him leaning against the sink basin.

"Dwight?" Rina sighed, shaking her head beside me.

"How long have you been there?" Rina asked him.

"Long enough. Now hop out. We are leaving," he told her, but she didn't move.

"I told you I am not going," Rina said, staring vacantly ahead.

"You are. You can't stay in here, love. So please," Dwight begged, crouching down in front of us when he opened the door. I looked to Rina, who made herself smaller like she was trying to hide her body away from him.

Dwight's eyes flitted to me for a second before he scrubbed a hand down his face, and I saw the blacked-out mirror behind him, glancing back at Rina and looking at her scarred skin. We nearly looked the same.

Hers were jagged, but my back looked like it had gone through a mincer, and so did my arms and the backs of my legs, yet the front of me wasn't so bad. Rina, however, was marred, but hers were jagged yet less, though I had no doubt hers caused her more pain because the scars would heal, but the marks on her heart, I wasn't so sure.

Nonetheless, I could tell she was ashamed of her body, what had become of it, and if that was what was preventing her from leaving the room, she needed to know she had nothing to be ashamed of. Her scars couldn't be hidden by clothes like mine could, but that didn't mean she should feel ashamed of them.

"Can you get out, please?" she whispered, her knees close to her chest.

"I have already seen you naked, Rina," Dwight told her. Her face flamed red, her lips quivered, and I knew I was right. By the way she scrubbed her skin raw, I could tell she felt dirty, like she was on display because of the marks that marred her.

"I can't go out there," she whispered. I looked at the scars that ran down her neck, mutilating her shoulders, and the cuts on her face that had left white lines once healed. To me, however, she was still beautiful. I remembered the shame I felt when the King asked me to change in front of him, the way Rina begged at his feet for me. Dwight sighed but got to his feet and walked out. He looked angry but never voiced that anger at her.

"It's just skin, Rina," I whispered. Yet to her, they were memories, and I understood that. I understood the way they haunted her, and I hated mine too. I hated the way they looked against my skin, a constant reminder.

"He mutilated me. It's one thing for everyone here to know, but it's another for the world to see," she croaked.

Trying to access the mind-link, I pushed on it, hoping I could open it myself, but I struggled. Arman opened it for me. It was strange trying to connect with him in my head. The bond was one thing, but the mind was something else entirely, and Arman made it look easy, though it wasn't.

"Why do you feel embarrassed?" Arman asked, a smirk hidden behind his words.

"Rina hates her body," I told him.

"And that makes you embarrassed?" he asked, and my face heated up as hot as my shame.

"Hmm, I don't like this feeling. Where are you?" The King's voice echoed in my mind.

"In the shower with Rina," I answered.

"I see," he scoffed.

"Not like that. I have clothes on, but..." I started.

"But what?" he asked.

"I want to take them off," I responded.

"You are both girls, I don't see a problem with that," he chimed in, and my face heated up even more. I was not afraid to be naked in front of Rina. Who knows how many times I had been naked in front of her, and she had seen me as well.

"Spit it out, Ania. Your worry is making me queasy. What is it?" he snapped.

"Say I walk outside in the castle naked?" I blurted out.

"Definitely not," Arman growled. His response angered me and fueled my next answer.

"I wasn't asking for permission," I told him, although I was kind of hoping he would give it because I didn't exactly want this to cause an argument.

"Then why are you telling me?" he inquired.

"So you don't have to find out from the staff," I told him.

"Ania!" he roared.

"I will be naked walking the corridors," I answered.

"Like hell, you are," he growled. I cut him off, only for the mind-link to open up again, and he forced his way back into my head.

"Somebody shut off the darn cameras," Arman snarled through the mind-link, opening it for all castle staff. Their voices flitted through my head, making me dizzy.

"We have cameras?" I asked.

"Yes, they were installed two days ago. You are not doing this," Arman told me.

"I am," I retorted.

"Why are we cutting off the cameras?" Dwight's voice suddenly said through the mind-link. So many voices were making my head hurt, and I struggled, trying to shut them off, only for Arman to force his way back into my head.

"Do not let Ania leave the bathroom," Arman growled at him.

"Pardon, my King," Dwight answered. Rina touched my arm as she stood, making me jump, and pulled me back to focus on the room.