Mate for the Prince of Beasts

Chapter 8

Alana's POV

I woke up feeling like my skin was on fire.  Everything hurt, and for a moment I wasn't sure what was happening, but then I felt a hand over mine, and turned to see the Prince sleeping next to me, and everything came back to me.  I tried to move my hand from under his, but the movement brought a wave of pain that made me groan, and woke him up. 

"Alana?" it was the first time he had referred to me by my name, he always called me his mate, and I found that I liked the way my name sounded in his voice, and immediately felt a wave of shame.  I shouldn't have that kind of thoughts about him, what was wrong with me?  He was the enemy!  "How are you feeling?"

"Everything hurts," I said truthfully, and in more than one sense. 

"What the hell were you thinking?  Why would you do something like that to yourself?"  I could hear his anger, but for some reason, I wasn't afraid of him. 

"It's my penance."

"What?"

"It's my penance for betraying my parents, for not being strong enough to resist, for sleeping with the man responsible for their deaths and the deaths of many of our kind."

"You have to get over that, you can't keep living in the past, whatever happened with your parents must be forgotten.  You are my fated mate and there's nothing wrong with us being together.  We were meant to be together, it was fate who decided it, and nothing we do will change that truth."

"I'm not your fated mate!" I yelled, confused and frustrated that he kept repeating the same thing over and over. 

"Soulmate if you prefer that term," he said, as if that could make things better. 

"For you to be my soulmate, you would have to have a soul, and a monster like you that don't think twice before slaughtering dozens of innocents cannot have a soul.  The other possibility is that I don't have one either, and I refuse to think that, I want to believe that I'm a good person, not someone who would deserve to be with something like you," I could feel the tears running down my face, because that was my biggest fear.  I knew there was something uniting us, there was a powerful force that attracted me to him, but if it was indeed because we were meant to be together, then what did it say about me?  Was I such a bad person that I was supposed to be his soulmate?  Was I a monster?  What fault did I have?  

"You are not thinking clearly," he said, his voice gentle, like he could see that I was reaching my breaking point.  "Fate gave you to me because I'm doing what is best for my people, I'm taking back what is ours and punishing those who wronged us."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Your people call us beasts, monsters, but when my ancestors first communed with the spirits and became shifters, they were the ones to hunt us down, to take our lands and condemn our people, to cast us out and mark us as unworthy of this land.  Now we are making them pay for that, showing them who is better."

"Are you telling me this is because of something that happened hundred of years ago?  Whole generations ago?"  I asked, borderline hysteric.  "We are not the same people!  We have done nothing wrong to you!  Anyway, your actions have shown that everything our ancestors were afraid of it's true.  You didn't come here to ask for a chance to prove your worth, another chance at being here, you came here and started killing and taking whatever you wanted with no regard for the lives you were destroying.  My father was a good man, my mother was a good woman, they helped any person who needed help, but you never gave them a chance, you killed them!  You killed them!  And then you corrupted me, you made me a betrayer.  I loved them more than anything, and I have done wrong by them," my voice was breaking by the end of the speech, and the hiccups stopped me from continuing.  He came to me and hugged me, surely trying to comfort me, but I was full of wounds and his touch hurt, just like I wanted, because I didn't deserve comfort, and I needed a reminder that it was wrong to find it in him.  I left a painful groan escape my lips, and he immediately let go. 

"Are you hurting?  I will call the medic so he can give you something for your pain."

"No, don't.  I need the pain, I need the penance and I need the reminder that no matter how good your touch feels, it's evil."

"You will cease that talk right now, you are mine, and you better get used to the idea.  I won't have you disrespecting me or denying me anymore.  And you are forbidden from putting yourself in danger ever again.  I'm afraid that right now I can't trust you, so you won't be left alone, you will have no privacy until I can be sure you won't try hurting yourself again.  Understood?"

"You are a monster, and I hate you, no matter how my body and my mind betray me, I will always hate you for what you did to me and my people.  You may think you are in the right, going over innocent lives to satisfy your greed, but I know, and everyone from my people know that you are a monster, and I hope you die, horribly."

The medic walked into the room just as I was finishing my speech and stared at me with wide open eyes, as if he couldn't believe what I had just said.  I started crying again, it seemed like it was all I could do lately, but there was nothing else for me to do, I was weak, facing beasts far stronger than me, and I didn't even know where I was.  I was truly trapped.  I was just glad my brother had left to be with his soulmate, but I was equally afraid that the monster in front of me would go after his village next.  He had taken far too much from me, but he could still take more. 

"This will help with your pain," the medic said, offering a cup of tea, but I used what strength I had left and did my best to ignore the pain, as I hit it, throwing it to the floor. 

"I don't deserve it, I don't want it," I told him.

"It doesn't matter what you want," the Prince said, coming to my side and holding me by the back of my neck.  "Bring another one, she will drink it even if I have to force it down her throat,"  I knew he meant that threat, and I hated him a little more because of that, but when the next cup was brought to my lips, I drank, under the control of the beast and the watchful eyes of the medic and my jailers. 

I started feeling sleepy as soon as I finished the tea, and soon I was deeply asleep, my dreams plagued by nightmares of the things the Prince had done and would continue to do to my people, while I was powerless to stop him.  While I stood by his side, allowing it to happen with my weakness to help.  

Blaze's POV

I felt the moment she was lost to sleep.  I could feel that the eyes of everyone in the room were on me, and I let out a menacing growl, by the time I lifted my eyes from my mate they were all looking at the floor.  

"You won't take your eyes off of her ever again!  Understood?" I asked Katra. 

"As you wish, my Lord," she said fearfully. 

"This shouldn't have happened, you are supposed to keep her safe, even from herself!"  I couldn't really blame her, so I needed to blame someone else.  "Go find Lira, and make sure she knows that whatever happens to my mate from now on, it will happen to her too, and that goes for all of you as well," I told one of the guards."  I looked at Katra and both the guards I had assigned to her to make sure they got my message.

I left there and went to the training grounds, I needed to blow up some steam, this had been very hard for me.  My skin was still tingling, which meant that she was still in pain, for I knew that I felt just an echo of her pain.  I couldn't understand why she would do something like that to herself.  I knew her parents were gone, and that she was away from the place she knew as home, but she was with me, and being with your mate was more important than any of that.  She should be happy just by being with me, just like I was by being with her!

When I arrived at the training grounds, no one dared to fight me, and that only made me angrier, so I ordered them to attack, all at the same time if necessary, and then I fought with all my might.  Only after, once I was exhausted, did I realize just how much I had hurt my opponents.  But I was sure the fight would do good to them, they needed to learn how to fight those stronger than them, not that our current enemy could actually pose a threat against us.

"Are you done?  Or are you going to keep beating those useless soldiers?" asked my cousin Ramys. 

"What are you doing here?"

"I came to pick up some new slaves, and see how things were going, and found out about your mate, congratulations, by the way.  But shouldn't you be happier?"

"She hurt herself, and now I can't touch her without causing her pain, and that makes me angry!"

"What?  Really?  How so?  Did she have an accident?"

"No, that's the worst part, she did it on purpose because she is mad at me, she found out it was me who killed her father, and it was kind of my fault his mother and all her village is dead," I explained.

"Wait, go back, explain that."

"She is a witch, I found her in the last village we attacked, and I kind of killed her father, before finding her and realizing she is my mate."

"Would you have done anything different have you known?"

"Of course not, we didn't need more slaves, everyone else needed to die.  I have a mission to finish."

"How would you feel if she had killed your parents? Forget it, dumb question," he said as I looked at him.  My parents' death was one of my main motivators to do what I was doing.  "But you have to admit, this is kind of a big adjustment to make, and you probably went right to the end.  I mean, do you know her favorite color?  Food?  Dreams?  Goals?  Easier yet, what do you know about her?"

"I know her name is Alana," I said defensively, "I know she was the daughter of the village's chief, not that it looks like a great accomplishment, it was a tiny village."

"So she was the daughter of the man in charge, maybe she felt a little protective of the people there, and you killed them all?"  I was uncomfortable with the direction our talk was taking.  So I didn't respond.  "I am right, aren't I?  You took a woman out of her home, after killing everyone she knew, not even bothering to get to know her before mating her.  It's not odd that she feels out of place.  I bet she also feels guilty for surviving, and as she betrayed her people by aligning herself with the enemy."

"Shut up!  She is my mate, and I'm all she should care about!" 

"You know I'm right, that's why you're so angry.  You should talk to her, really talk, and maybe slow down, not that you would have much choice if you can't even touch her."

I left my cousin, I could tell he was still speaking, even yelling at me and then laughing at my retreating back, but I couldn't take it anymore.  What he was saying, well, it kind of made sense, maybe I was being a little too harsh.  For me it was clear, she was my mate, she was mine and we should be together, but it was obvious that she was fighting our connection.  Not that she could help herself when we touched, our wedding night had been explosive, and she had no problem responding to me, which explained why she had to go to such extremes to avoid my touch.  I needed to give her time to come to terms with what had happened to us, once she accepted our connection, everything would be just fine.

I walked for a while, but finally circled back to the castle and back to my room.  She was still sleeping, no doubt victim of whatever concoction the medic had given her.  It was good, the tingling sensation was gone, which meant her pain was going away. 

I laid down next to her, careful not to hurt her, and just watched her sleep for a long while, thinking about my cousin's words.  I needed to get to know her better, I needed to be a better mate.  With that in my mind, sleep finally came for me.