The Female Alpha’s Sanctuary novel Chapter 184

Chapter 184
“What’s the curse?”
1
I ask softly. I couldn’t resist. I stare at him straight in the eyes, trying to show him I was willing to stay. That I would be here till the very end and that he shouldn’t worry. He watches me for a moment. There’s a slight furrow in his brow. He’s trying to read me, to see what it was I was thinking but honestly even I don’t know. I was a blank page just waiting for him to paint on. Eventually, he sighs and returns to playing with my hand.
“The Goddess has placed her mark on us. The mark of a crescent moon. Each generation, the mark changes its place. It could be on your arm, your leg, your eye… My father was marked at his hip above his right leg. He was born paralyzed with it, and so they cut it off. The curse takes away a body part or sense. It’s our punishment for starting the evolution of wolves. Our punishment for existing when we were never supposed to. A wedge in fate that my ancestor forcibly created. My ancestor’s treachery led to the possibility of withstanding the mate bond. Something that we should never have been able to do. My ancestor messed with fate, and so the Goddess saw it fit to punish us. Including all of us following him.”
He goes silent, waiting for my response without looking at me. He was cursed just as the others before him. Punished for something he wasn’t responsible for. How unfair. So terribly unfair. I slide my hand away from his and he flinches, the sadness in his face visible but he says nothing. Almost- as if he was expecting rejection and was patiently waiting for it. Moving closer, I rest my forehead on his chest, allowing my hands to cup around the back of his neck to bring him down to me. I curl my fingers around his hair, uncurling them to scrape my nails on his scalp. A gesture I knew he was find of.
He sighs in contentment, an occasional growl ripping from his lips. His eyes shut in bliss as I look up and nudge his chin with the tip of my nose.
“And you?”
I ask, kissing his jaw.
“What’s your curse?”
I’m almost afraid to find out. From what I saw, he didn’t seem to suffer from a physical sense. I don’t even remember seeing the mark-
It hits me like a ton of bricks. His chest. The tattoo on his chest was the mark he was referring to. I pull back to get a good look at him. He knows what I realized and gives me a half hearted smile. Swallowing down the lump clogging my throat, I look at his chest and run my hands down his torso. My fingers stop at the hem of his shirt, curling around the fabric before I look up to him questioningly,
Tipping his head down, he gives me a nod.
Slowly, I lift his shirt up. He makes no sound or action of resistance and allows me to pull it over his
without another thought. During our time together, I was so focused on his face and what he was doing that I hadn’t really paid much mind to the tattoo on his chest. I’d thought he had it done.
head. His scent hits me even harder when I drop his shirt onto the
I was wrong.
He kept his head down, watching as I inspected his chest.
Staring at the inked patch of skin, I lift my hand to run my fingers over it. He lets me do as I wish, shivering under my touch when I trace the curve of the moon. Something so beautiful was a mark of torment. Frowning, I bury my face into his neck and wrap my arms around his waist.
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The Female Alpha’s Sanctuary
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hapter 184
“What does it mean?”
I mumble onto his skin.
Raizel doesn’t say anything for a moment until he sucks in a shaky breath and whispers,
“It means I’m mateless.”
I froze in his hold as his arms wrapped around me.
“It means I wasn’t given a mate the moment I was born.”
It finally all made sense. The thing Elizabeth and Williams were talking about with him not having a mate and the situation being “complicated”. That’s what he’d meant when he said “I should’ve known it was impossible” at the time in the Sacred Pool. He knew he didn’t have a mate and that’s why he was so sure Hestia wasn’t his.
I tried to pull from him but he keeps his hold on me tight. He doesn’t want me pulling away and so I rest my cheek against his bare chest. The comforting thumps of his heart ring in ears as I breathe him in. The warmth his body radiates mix so deliciously with mine. I don’t know what to say. How do you respond to something like this? Is there even a correct way to handle this? Here he was giving me his truth. Laying all his cards in front of me without holding anything back.
“I..”
Raizel sighs to himself, pressing his lips to my hair as he breathes in a ragged breath.
11:
Chapter 185