The Mate That Wasn't Mine novel Chapter 61

Chapter 61

TESSA POV

The train took me past border after border. Layers of protection keeping Alpha Hale safe. Thick barbed wire for miles, bridges no longer standing. The faster the squealing wheels trundled through the night the more I thanked Maxim. Every mile the train covered would have been a miserable battle for

1. me.

It didn’t stop the aching. Missing him. Craving the sensation of his hands on me. Especially when he really held me, fingers tightening so hungrily around my waist, dragging me into any place of his choosing to brand me with kisses.

In the dark of the tiny storage space, if I closed my eyes and really focused, I could still catch those precious draughts of his oak and berry scent upon my skin.

Rummaging through my backpack I discovered the gold coins, deep at the bottom. Then I broke down in tears. I never thanked him.

Dawn was only just breaking but as the train began to slow and squeal to the sound of shouts and scent of burning I knew this was the end of the line. Grabbing my rucksack, I leapt from the still–moving carriage into the undergrowth before anyone could stop me.

Keeping downwind, avoiding paths I headed towards the smoke–filled, yellow–tinged horizon.

A week’s trekking and two weeks in the industrial zone, the glossy green rolling fields of the packhouse are a distant dream. Everything is browner, darker, run down and tense out here. The yellow horizon turned out to not be the dawn, simply the yellow tinge of chemical processing.

Ravenbow has left everyone so sheltered, I never even knew what the rebels were truly fighting for. Is it simply to remove Alpha Hale? Or put one of their own on the throne? Perhaps there is something even bigger?

If Ravenbow truly is so powerful and magnificent, why would a bunch of two–time criminal rebels really cause so much devastation? All those men like Kai and Silas, even Allette. Gearing up to fight an enemy they do not even understand, feels bizarre.

Huge brick mills and tall chugging chimneys filled the sky. Unlike anything I’ve ever seen before it was too vast to ever comprehend. A person could become dangerously lost in its dark warrens.

I kept hidden in a cheap room for as long as my stomach held out. I’ve had to ditch the Ravenbow clothing. A beige headscarf conceals nearly all of my hair. Using more precious coins I had to buy a dark, burnt orange dress that hangs to my knees, paired with my leather boots.

With a square cut neck and long sleeves it will do for now. I keep my hair tightly braided. Even with the scarf, it doesn’t stop the grimy filth. Every wash in the tiny, stinking shared bathroom, the water takes on a vile mustard tinge.

I understand why Maxim would not want to return here. I dream of the airy, naive Packhouse. But I came here to escape lies and the delusions that have clouded my understanding. Because I also dream of Irene.

Now I am over–educated. My brain is stuffed full of rumours and theories.

The industrial zone is just constant noise and anonymity. There is no chance of making a real friend or ally. You rarely see the same face twice. Everyone is grafting, hustling and clawing their way up the ladder.

“One coin!” are the only words I hear. Everything costs. Nothing can ever be out of kindness.

My bow and arrow were stolen almost immediately. The one that Maxim secured for me after the one Luca first gave as a teen was broken. Now I have lost a bow from both men. A strange parallel that don’t like to consider too much.

But now, from standing in endless queues for non–existent work, shovelling quick meals from vendors, I’ve picked up the truth. The rebels are ex- criminals. Purposely so.

They are all men who should be exiled. Banned from living amongst shifters. But they’re here, daring to defy Alpha Hate. Threatening him instead.

Under their shirts, down their backs and up to the nape of their necks they sport a long, brutal branding. Forged of silver and unhealable.

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19:06 Fri, 13 Jun A

Chapter 61

Branding has always been done to those considered exiles. But it was Alpha Hale, or rather, his Wardens handling justice, who extended the length of fit

From tailbone to skull. One long line of agony.

So violently invasive that even shifting is no longer possible. It renders the wolf trapped inside their human vessel frustrated, humiliated. Prone to bouts of anger and mayhem as they struggle to control their baser instincts.

People around me, chewing loudly, spitting down metal grates would insist there were barely any find themselves ruined for life.

It sounds like they are an army of men in pain. Lost and desolate with nowhere to go.

exiles before Alpha Hale. Now one arrest and you could

The Fae can use such a wound to taunt and ruin your mind with their powers. The humans with their superior weapons can simply dispose of them. Over the weeks I picked up as much as I could.

Nobody would actually talk to me. Looking too fresh to the industrial zone, they all just assumed I was a spy.

“He’s made his own situation. The Alpha has given them nowhere else to go!”

“Driven mad by their own protector, why shouldn’t they fight back?”

“He demanded perfection. That’s why he doesn’t come to this shithole. Or the mines. Or the countryside,” snickered a mocking, elderly tone. “But then his father, grandfather, none of them would venture down here.“.

“What if you are falsely accused? Does the Alpha do the wounding himself?”

“Like the Alpha would mucky his hands, from his gilded little packhouse.”

An older man spoke up, his words garbled from across the small eating cabin by a long pipe. “There was one innocent one once.”

“That’s just a rumour.”

“No. No. The leader. That’s why he’s so fucking savage. Because he never committed a crime. Not only has his wolf gone mad. So has he. You can see it in his eyes. They’re just voids.”

The owner barks. “Pay up and fuck off,” at him, ending the conversation. The older man shuffled out, fearful of receiving a beating off few days later, another meal, another set of rumours.

“It’s been quiet for weeks. They must be planning something big. Remember the last assault when the injured all poured into here?”

“It was like a month ago? All with their long hair. Fucking ragged–looking set of pirates they are.”

1. n. I left too. A

My skin ripples with goose pimples. I try to keep my head down, chewing the porridge–like stew but it gets stuck in my throat. The actual fiery mills and furnaces of the centre terrify me. As much as possible I want to remain under a day away from seeing something green and alive.

But my money is running out. The gold coins are not endless. I need to find a job, but everywhere I ask they offer me nothing. I skirt around the edges, refusing to get lost in the dark mills and chemical stench.

Finally I get work. From an over–tanned chunky dwarf of a woman, Aydai. Whilst biting a huge, crisp and fatty turkey leg, took my final gold coin in exchange for a few nights lodging. Pushing her long hair back, swiping turkey grease into it at the same time, she looked at me with scornful pity.

Then suggested if I picked scrap, abandoned weapons, lumps of metal and brought them back, I could earn well.

I know, from taking some long, lonely walks right on the border about dumps of old weapons. Arrowheads, armour swords and shields all rusted and ruined from decades ago. My wolf’s keen scent will take me wherever rust can be found out in those half urban, half wild tracts of land.

Another two weeks pass as I use my skills and begin to build up my own little pot of earnings. I keep everything I own on my body, not trusting the shitty room with a foul, flat mattress and little else but bugs to house my wages. Ayda, with her rounded, grease–smeared cheeks was happy to take everything

fetched back.

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Chapter 61

Scavenging days are long, thankfully I found an excellent blade early in my searches, but I keep it rather than sell it.

My wolf picks up the stench of pigs. That warm, unwashed fleshy smell that makes the nose curl up. It overrode any of the delicate rust traces I’d been following. I strode ahead, seeking out the wind, a fresh breath of air.

Only the smell grew stronger. Pig, merged with sweat and leather. Only then did I realise I was surrounded. But not by swine. By long–haired, menacing men, all of them sporting the same deranged, sinister grin.

Wearing the same baggy, dark clothes as everyone else I’ve seen outside of Ravenbow, however it is their eyes that give them away. Just as the gossipers said. There is a blackness, a void where kindness should glint.

Now I have over a dozen of the mongrels surrounding me. Even if I had the blade skills of Allette I’d still be fucked.