The rejected bond of Alpha Marcus

Stake out

Sarah POV

Angry? Angry was not enough to describe how Sarah felt. Pissed off was more like it. Livid! f*****g raging is what she was doing.

Sarah had tossed and turned for the few hours she’d been permitted to sleep, thinking of all the satisfying ways she could kill Marcus. Skinning him alive and cutting off his d**k were just a few of her favorites.

He probably thought she would be heartbroken. That she would cry herself to sleep. Was that his thing? Sleep with women and then dumb them? Hoping they would crumble and become weak? Probably, yes! That was it! He was an asshole!

She’d had to talk herself out of going into his room and strangling him with her bare hands multiple times. She just wanted to—Snap!

“Hey, watch it! This is a brand new car!” Alexandra grumbled, looking at the broken doorhandle in Sarah’s hand.

“Did something happen with Marcus or something?” She asked as her eyes darted from the road to her.

“If you want this car to make it to Edinburgh, I suggest you don’t say that name every again!” Alexandra quickly got the hint and they continued on in silence while Sarah contemplated asking Aurora, the Royal High Priestess, to make her a voodoo doll of Marcus. Yes, she would do that. She couldn’t wait to start poking him with a toothpick.

“So glad to see you’re smiling again,” Alexandra said after a while, noticing the smile of Sarah’s face. Sarah nodded, while imagining sewing a little d**k onto the doll and tearing it off.

The warriors in the seat behind her were quietly talking among themselves. They’d only taken half a dozen warriors since it was a recon mission rather than an all-out war.

The mission was to get a good look at the enemy. To find out what numbers they were dealing with and check for any survivors. For all they knew, the rogues could have spared the women, doing Goddess knows what to them. Sarah didn’t even want to think about it.

The car slowed down when they approached the border, making sure to hide the cars behind bushes and underneath branches before they snuck to the pack's highest point. They’d used a scent masker, before belly crawling to the edge of the hill, looking down into the valley.

Get comfortable people, this is going to take a while. Sarah spoke through the mind link. They all laid side by side, listening and looking in silence.

In the meantime, she couldn’t help but think of him. She wondered what had gotten into him.

He had seemed to be as into her as she was into him. When they weren’t fighting that was. But even then, there was a chemistry between them that could not be denied.

What would he have said if the guard hadn’t interrupted their conversation? What if he'd had a good explanation for his absurd behavior?

It had taken them days of laying around. Days of sleeping in turns and eating dried beef jerky. Days of listening to meaningless conversations, but on the third day, when she felt numb from laying on the hard rocky hillside, a few of the rogues finally came close enough to the edge of the mountainside to be heard clearly. They looked as though they were patrolling.

“Do you think he’s legit?” A very clean, well-dressed, dark-haired man asked his companion.

“I sure hope so. These taxes are killing our packs,” The blonde one spoke.

“But do you think he’ll be able to become the new King?” The first one asked.

“Well, he did say that he was close,” A third man joined the conversation.

“Yeah, that’s true,” the blonde one grunted his response.

“Once he makes that b***h submit,” One of them laughed sinisterly. “Apparently, he’s close to winning the trials, or something”

“I don’t know. I mean, she seems like a tough little cookie,” The first one interjected.

“And she fights alongside the warriors. She’s nothing like the Royals before her,” Sarah and her group of elites remained silent. They continued listening to the men’s chitter chatter, that was about the she-wolves they were currently involved with, before they wandered toward the town once more, out of earshot.

I think we’ve heard enough. Sarah said, slowly crawling backwards. The group followed her lead, making the soundless descent back to the cars. Once they were safely inside and on the way back, Alexandra finally broke the silence.

“Sarah, do you think—” she began, carefully choosing her words.

“They were talking about me,” she completed the sentence. She knew they were. Who else would they be talking about when they mentioned the Royals?

“But if they were,” Arnold, one of her elite warriors in the back of the car said, “who was this new King they were talking about?”

That was something Sarah had been thinking about herself. Whoever he was, he was connected to the trials. So he had to be one of the Alpha’s, right?

The whole car ride back, Sarah mauled the conversation over inside of her mind. Could it be… No, it couldn’t. Though why else would he sleep with her and then dump her? He would have kept up the affair, right? But then again, breaking her before making her submit was a tactic that was known to work.

She thought back to all of the moments she’d shared with Marcus… the first time they saw each other in the garden, their date with the horses… it couldn’t be him. But she had to remain cautious.

She could tell Alexandra was thinking about something. She always made this face when she was really stewing on something serious.

“What are you thinking?” She asked her Beta.

“I was just thinking that the rogues didn’t look like rogues…” Alexandra said. Sarah thought of that for a moment.

“They did look very clean and well put together,” Sarah nodded, thinking of the men they had seen and the people they’d noticed walking around the town.

“And they were very well organized. I’ve never seen rogues who had a patrol schedule set up.” One of the guys in the back of the car interjected.

“And the place didn’t look like the warzone we were expecting it to,” Another chimed in.

“So?” Sarah asked, still not connecting the dots. However, she had thought it strange that there weren’t more dead bodies strewn around.

“What if… no.. that’s stupid,” Alexandra whispered the last part, seemingly having an internal argument.

“Come on, out with it,” Sarah impatiently spat, after watching Alexandra open and close her mouth like a fish out of water a few times.

“What if the rogues that we saw… what if they were pack members?”

“Babe, you’re not making any sense. Did you get heatstroke or something?” Sarah mockingly asked, trying to feel Alexandra’s forehead.

“What? No, stop it. I’m being serious,” Alexandra grumbled, slapping her hand away.

“Well then how would you explain Alpha Adair trying to claw out his own heart?” One could not fake that. Or it had been an Oscar worthy performance, but Sarah seriously doubted that. The blood she’d seen…

“Because,” Alexandra spoke as if she was talking to a child, “What if Alpha Adair wasn’t feeling his pack members dying? What if the snapping bonds--,”

“—were pack members rejecting the pack,” Sarah spoke in a whisper, finally catching up.