Twice Tempted: Between Two Alphas (Mia and Cameron) novel Chapter 90

Chapter Ninety

ASHLEY

I’m not sure how I came to be where I am.

In the literal sense, I’m on a plane.

I’m sitting next to my new husband, whom up until recently was the same Alpha I’d devoted myself to killing.

Fate has a terrible sense of humor.

A series of decisions—most of them bad–put us on this collision course. When I look back at the years of my life, the joys and blessings I took for granted as a child and teen, the family that was my foundation for everything…I still cannot believe how horribly wrong it could have gone.

My mother–mothers–are dead.

One by her own hand. The other by mine.

I traded my lineage, a gift I neither accepted nor understood, in my blind quest for vengeance.

I hurt and used a good man. Alienated my sister.

Lied, stole and cheated, all in my quest for war.

But my biggest crime… what I’ve done to my daughter.

I hold back a sob.

Eric glances at me from across the plane. He’s…attuned to me. We may not have marked each other with our true forms or traded blood as is done in the old tradition–because they’ve stripped me of my wolf–but we are joined, all the same.

I wish more than anything this wasn’t the case.

And the loss of my wolf… having Isis ripped from my body, feeling her soul splinter from mine… the agony was unspeakable.

And I know quite a bit about pain.

The physical kind that detaches your mind from your body, and the emotional pain–the torturous loops of memories and horrors that sink their claws into your soul and don’t let go.

Eric’s dark eyes are cold. He has no sympathy for me or my plight. Yet HE is the one who set the match to the fire that razed my whole life.

“We’ll land soon,” he tells me.

He rakes a hand through his thick dark hair and I hate that I notice the flex of his bicep and the way the dark strands fall back into place.

He’s tense, dreading the return to his pack because no doubt my presence is going to cause an uproar.

“The deed is done,” I say quietly. “We can call this a mating in name only. There is no need for us to … burden each other.”

He scoffs but doesn’t look at me. His gaze remains focused on the window. He looks longingly at the landscape as the plane descends.

Is he thinking of my sister? Missing her?

He’s made no secret of wanting her over me.

My sister who lived such a charmed life. Beloved by not one Alpha but two. Whilst I was set up to fail. Misled by my own mother.

Abandoned. Broken. Betrayed.

If my mom indeed could See anything, then why didn’t she see far enough to spare me the horrors of this war? Instead her cryptic message left us vulnerable.