The Mate That Wasn't Mine novel Chapter 99

Chapter 99

MAXIM POV

Finally I can start making my way back to Ravenbow. I’ve got myself a horse and we’re making quick time.

Except it all feels a little rushed. A bit too much like I’ve gambled everything.

I’ve taken so many baths in lakes and rivers. Even paid for the use of several guest houses but nothing takes away the grims of murder. It’s a greasy feeling. Beyond the actual layers of skin.

I do not doubt that the Exilers I have been hunting down deserved their fate. They all took their duties far beyond humane. Dragging those hot, burning silver claws down spines, knowing they were breaking a bart of their very soul? Of course justice was needed.

So I snuck into newly purchased farming homesteads and factories, ready to slit throats. Or arranged thoroughly tragic accidents or suicides. My training has provided me with enough detachment to avoid nightmares.

It was trickier to find the Wardens. They knew something was coming and hid.

The Exilers were dumb, cattle–like and predictable. Almost smug about their new status. Finding ex–Warden Kendrick was a nightmare, huddled away in a mossy, wretched cave, seemingly spending his entier retirement pension on lethally sharp bear traps.

So I got my bow and arrow and launched one through his head when he stepped out of his hidey–hole for a piss in the night. Then one through his neck, right along the same scar line.

You can’t make everything look like an accident. But finally, they are all gone

Killing the former Wardens was trickier to reconcile in my head. Each dead Warden felt like a leap of faith and commitment in my Alpha and his judgement about who will be loyal and who will fail.

The only thing that truly bothers and irritates me is the fact I’ve had a month away from Tess. My horse sense the urgency and tracks a little faster, its chestnut form cantering beautifully for me.

At my current pace, I should make it back in time for the blade competition. They’ll all have a day off training. I lick my lips at the thought of whisking Tess away somewhere.

We might cheer for Allette a little bit. Show some friendship. Completely ignore Kai and Silas, they’ll understand. Then I’m stealing Tess and making her blush with a dozen different ways.

Then, just before she falls asleep she will whisper she loves me. When the barrier of shyness is abandoned there and nothing but love in her gaze. That’s my true home.

The way she says my name in that sleepy state is fucking magical.

Being even more honest, there is another issue bothering me.

The young, ash brown–haired teen who died for nothing keeps flashing up in done that without something decent remaining within.

my memory far too often. I replay him bandaging Tess. He couldn’t have

Had he fled a different way, not run straight towards the other rebel group, he could still be alive. Guilt lingers. I don’t even know what his crime was but i feel compelled to find out in the archives when I return.

Neither am I completely selfless. The money given to each of the Exilers and Wardens by Alpha Remy as part of their retirement plan has not been wasted.

After killing the first one, a grunting lunatic known as Beta Hector, I noticed the bulging velvet bag of coins hanging by his waist. Another kept his under

the floorboards.

1/A

Chapter 99.

In order not to act like a complete plece of shit, I put over half into the coffers of each area’s local apposte The Test Name with

It’s turning into quite the sum. I keep changing my appearance, the leather jacket placed in a holdall, white shirts, brown thing, overal district with a new name every few days. Constantly searching, never resting.

But each place gave me no mention of Briggs. How can a man whose face I almost melted off be invisible? Weeks of questioning lead me të torchide must have never left Ravenbow.

What if he waited it out, in the meadows and pointless, lifeless grassland? Now the Exilers have all been taken, he could have easily made his way down the passages and tunnels that lead back to the cliffs, the royal tunnels? He needs finding.

It is almost dawn when the final boundaries of Ravenbow approach. I’ve been delayed for hours by the guards at various defence points Questions and no knowledge of my name. Well of course not, I’m a fucking assassin.

In the end I had to skirt around the borders, use longer routes. Ideally, I wanted to wake Tess up in our bed. Invading her dreams with sweet kisses had kept me going for dozens of miles. But now, when the perfect hour offers itself, around five in the morning, I pause for a moment.

The flags will be flying high for the blade competition. The pink–kissed dawn sky suggesting a beautiful day ahead. The event is normally conducted at the end of the first year but Alpha Remy declared, why not cheer people up?

A familiar little building appears on the path. The whorehouse I left Tess at. No red lantern gleaming though. I had assumed those things never turned

off.

With a grimace I look down at myself. I now smell, not only of murder, but of horses. I love my mate with all my heart but I don’t want her first expression to be one of horrified retching.

Or thinking I am someone else, my scent muddied with the outside world of thuggish brutes. Though she tells me all her memories are restored, 1 sometimes worry the rebels were crueller than she dare admit to me.

Thanking my chestnut steed with a hearty set of pats, I slowly guide him towards the rundown building. A few of these stolen coins will get him a bucket of water and food. Maybe a hot bath for me.

My wolf twitches as I dismount. Something isn’t right. The upstairs window is smashed. It wasn’t before. Something has happened.

Tying the reins against the nearest tree I take out my curved, silver–edged blade and cautiously knock at the wooden door.

“Hello?”

No answer. I twist the door handle and it yields. Not locked. Which considering it is still the middle of the night is worrying.

“Hello, I mean no harm, everyone safe in here? You have a broken window?”

Then I step backwards, assuming any potential male visitor or even burglar might charge at me from the door, don’t need anyone getting the jump on me now when I’m so close to home. Achingly close to reclaiming my Tess.

“HELP! HELP!” scream two female voices. In that instant, as much as I long for my mate, I know what the right thing to do is.

Without hesitation I charge in, down the familiarly neglected corridor and up the wooden stairs into Daff’s meagre room. The same place she once bit into my chest, my heartbroken form merely a shell. Even so I remember how her pale green eyes were both scared and curious at the same time.

I find the two women tied tightly together, wrists, ankles and necks wrapped together. Both of them were bleeding from wounds to the head. Their rumpled skirts are up high around their waists and I’m going to hope to fuck that is from them struggling to get out of their restraints and nothing worse.

“Here, here, let me help!”

“It’s you! I know you!” Daff whimpers. Her honey–coloured hair has been matted into a wild mess, I wonder how long they’ve bee floor for. My blade is quick, even with their panicked thrashing, I manage to release their bindings.

g around on this

“Maxim isn’t it! You brought the girl!” the larger madam cries her mouth grimacing with pain instead of pursed up into a tightly wrinkled pit of

Chapter 99

miserliness. “If you are behind this I will kill you myself!”

“Behind what? I’ve just cut you freel” thick red welts vivid across their wrists and necks. How long have they been struggling feri

“That psychopath! He’s held us here for over a week!“:

“Who?”

“He never told us his name. But he knows you! He said your name more than enough times! Hours on end!” Mrs Braithes complains, hauling herself up with an unsteady wobble, smoothing down her ruined skirts. Her brown and grey hair had been tightly curled at one point, now bedraggled

We all try to pretend that the room doesn’t stink like any other prison cell where there is no way to relieve oneself.

“He tied us up, after the first night, when…when we refused his money,” Daff whimpers, roughly pulling her skirts back down over her slender, stockinged legs. Mrs Braithes places a hand on her shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze, rocking slightly.

“When did you both last eat? Drink?”

Daff speaks up. “Drank…yesterday? Ate, I really don’t know. But there’s nothing left. We heard him packing up the larder.”

Shit. “Where did he go, when did he leave?”

“What good will that do us now…ruined. Ruined…” Mrs Braithes wheezes, the heavy–set female dragon in human form lumbers over towards me only to faint. I cannot stop her tumbling down the stairs with sickening thunder. Daff shrieks and wails. Her mouth wide open, revealing those tragically missing

teeth.

“Daff please, I need to know everything!”

“Get us help first!” she cries, tears spilling down her cheeks. She pushes past me to try and help the unconscious mountain away from the wooden stairs. Her head has split open the other side now and I realise with a twinge of guilt that I cannot leave these two women as they are.

“I have a horse, where is the nearest town for food? Don’t worry she’ll heal up soon enough-”

“No she won’t!”

“Daff, calm down. The nearest town?”