The Alpha Heirs’ Prize

My father raised his hands in the air and struck me on the cheek as he loudly questioned: “HOW DARE YOU?!” “I didn’t know, I’m sorry,” I responded, crying my eyes out as I backed away from him. I gasped as he grabbed me by the hair and pulled so hard that I thought he would break my neck. “No! Father, please!” I begged as he took me out of the back door and towards our fireplace, in the direction of the pot of burnt food. “I swear, I didn’t know there was still fire underneath the pot. I turned it off the way you said I should have!” My pleas fell on deaf ears as he pushed me against the pot, and I almost landed against the pile of hot coals. “You did this on purpose,” my father accused, pointing to the blackened pot and the equally blackened food inside it that had now stuck to all the sides of the pot. “You burned this food on purpose, Nailea!” “I did not, I swear!” I shook my head vehemently. “I put out the fire. I cooled the coals and—” I yelped as he slapped me one more time. No matter how many times my father hit me over the most trivial things that I didn’t do, I still couldn’t get used to it at all. Each strike was always more painful than the last, and it was almost as if he wanted to test how far I could go if he hit me that way. My mother did nothing to help. She only watched me get hit and would not say a single word about it. Sometimes she would tell me that it was my fault, that maybe if I had done things differently, it wouldn’t have turned out the way it did. “When I speak to you, you answer! Do not act deaf!” My father roared at me, pushing me back against the floor. In an attempt to balance my fall, I stretched my hands far behind me, but I shoved my right hand into a pile of coal. I screamed at the burn and stood up before my father would see it as an opportunity to pick up one of the coals and stone me with it. “Now you will make something new. A better breakfast. Do not think you can leave this house if you don’t make it,” he ordered, walking away from me without addressing the pain I felt in my hands. I got up and rushed into the house, dipping my hand in water as I blew on my hands to relieve myself of the pain. I wiped the tears from my face with the back of my palm and went back out to make another round of breakfast to give to him. I couldn’t defend myself to my father and tell him that I had dropped the pot from the hot coals when the breakfast was ready. I couldn’t tell him that I had seen him getting the coals heated back up and placing the pot back on the hot coals so that he could get the food burned on purpose and have the perfect reason to hit me. ~ “Nailea?” Nathan called out to me as I finally joined him at our secret spot – a small cave that nobody in the pack had seemed to discover just yet. “You’re late, what happened? What’s that on your hand? Let me see.” I showed him the burns I had gotten from the coals and how slowly they were healing as hot tears started to roll down my cheeks before I could even say a word. “Nathan, I’m so tired of it. I’m sick and tired. He hit me again. I burned my hand in coal while he was hitting me, and he didn’t even care! I had to make breakfast for him again after he burned the breakfast on purpose just so he could hit me.” I expressed sitting beside him. He pulled me against his chest and rubbed my back in a soothing manner. “Goddess, I wish I grew a mate bond with you when I turned eighteen so I could be out of there,” I cried. “Me, too,” he said. “You can’t continue to stay with those people, Nailea. I know they’re your parents, but they don’t even treat you like it. Your father hits you every time he gets the chance, and your mother doesn’t do anything about it. People are going around and making up rumors that you might not even be their real child. I don’t want you to keep staying with those people.” “What should I do about it, Nathan? If I were mated to you, you would have told your father, and we would have had a mating ceremony done. Now—” “We can still do it,” he cut me off, making me look up at him in confusion. “What do you mean?” I asked. “Do you love me?” He cupped my cheeks in his hands, staring at me. “You know I do, Nathan,” I answered without missing a beat. “And I love you, too. What we have is stronger than a mate bond could possibly be. Mates go around rejecting each other every other day. You and I, we can never reject each other. I want us to get my father convinced about it. It doesn’t matter if we share a bond or not. If he approves and we get bound by blood, nobody’s going to stop us. If my father, the Alpha is on our side, there’s nothing your parents can do about it. You can finally leave your parents and stay with me forever.” I smiled at the idea of it, but the smile faded as soon as it came. “How are we going to convince your father?” He gave it a thought and soon, he smiled as an idea popped up in his head. “My brother is coming back from his cleansing journey tonight.” I frowned in confusion, wondering what his brother’s arrival had to do with anything. “Okay?” I narrowed my eyes at him, giving him the permission to go ahead with his plan. “My brother is going to be the Alpha of the pack if my father steps down or dies, that’s a given. What we need to do is convince my brother to talk to our father about it. He just needs to tell him a thing or two – my father almost never questions my brother’s ideas, so I doubt he’ll question this one.” “Are you sure your brother will agree to go along with it?” I expressed my worry. “If he sees how much I love you and how much you love me in return, I have doubts that he’ll want to put an end to it. I was thinking of introducing you to him anyway. I want you two to meet so that he can be assured that you love me just as much as I love you enough to take the risk of approaching him with the offer. He won’t say no, I promise,” he gave me his word. After our little rendezvous, I went back home and waited for the evening to come, where I would return to our meeting point and he would take me to his brother. Luckily, neither of my parents were home that evening, so I walked out when the sun set and met Nathan already in wait for me. It was fulfilling, having just one person who wanted me when I was convinced that nobody did. “Let’s go “ He took my hand in his, leading me towards the pack border, where he expected his brother to come from. We waited there for hours, entertaining each other and having doubts that Daniel would arrive anytime soon. “He’s coming!” Nathan announced, causing me to turn around and look towards the borders, where Daniel’s silhouette appeared from. My heart inflated at the sight of Daniel, then it popped, then it inflated once more. Then, my stomach started to react strangely. Daniel was looking straight at me as he arrived, his brows furrowed in thought and concentration. I had heard of this feeling from the mouths of people who had experienced it firsthand – it was the feeling you got when you saw your mate. Nathan’s older brother was my mate.