Chapter 141 - What If There Was Another Way?

Luck had been on Zezi's side that night and she didn't even have to look for George before he came to her.

He had picked the lock of the Hall of Sculptures and slipped into it, his eyes sharp with observation, until he took a step back, startled.

"I thought they were here," the words rushed out of his mouth, then he paused, his nose scrunching upwards. "Your scent has changed. You smell like them."

Even though Gwen had brought a new dress for her, it felt like George could still see her in her ripped white dress. She smoothened the sleeves of her dress with her hands, brushing her fingers lightly over the high collar after she was done. 

He knew what had happened here, and something passed in his eyes at it.

Accusation and disappointment.

"I was hoping we could talk." Her voice sounded firmer than she felt, and she was grateful for that.  "Tell me the situation of the Capital."

He stared at her through slanted eyes filled with emotions and he walked towards her mindlessly, as if he was being carried by the air.

"You said you would come home." His voice was quiet.

"George, please. Just tell me how everything--"

"My love." He captured either side of her face and he pressed his forehead against hers. "You promised me. You promised both of us."

Tears welled up in her eyes, not at the promise, but at how things had changed. Her heart no longer tugged to honour a promise to a man she no longer felt the same for. She no longer felt like her place was in his arms, and even if she had realized it before that she had stopped loving George, to be faced with the evidence of it was jarring.

She pulled his hands away from her and backed away, blinking her tears away before they would even have time to accumulate and roll down her cheeks.

"I told Aunt Alice to tell you to find someone else. I told her, to tell you to be happy."

"Because you are happy here?"

That wasn't something she was ready to answer.

"Tell me about the Capital, tell me about the Packs, tell me what is really going on? You are the only one I trust to tell me the truth."

"No," he shook his head. His movement was jerky. "You didn't answer me. Are you happy here?"

"My happiness is irrelevant. The answer to my question is paramount."

He started pacing, running his hand over his lowly shaved hair, while his lips trembled with words he whispered.

He looked different, leaner and... so different.

"You can't be happy here. Those Bloodsuckers ruined our lives. You love us, you love Mira, you love me, Aunt Alice. You want to come back home because there is no happiness in the four walls that belong to the monsters. You want to come back home!"

"George?" She stepped closer, cautiously and he went deadly silent.

"This whole place stinks of your infidelity." So silent were his words, so deep were their cuts.

"He is my mate." She said before she could even think.

"Of course. You fucking WHORE!" He raced towards her, slamming her into the nearest sculpture.

This wasn't George.

Not anymore.

How could she have forgotten about his wolf?

How could she have forgotten the abuse?

His eyes were glowing red and every memory of how he had numerously brought her to the brink of death, ran through her mind, paralyzing her.

"I am glad he sees you for who you are now." He chuckled menacingly. "You were never worthy of us. I will leave your corpse behind for him, and this time, he will be grateful."

He raised his claws, ready for a killing yank, but she pushed him off her with a force that slammed him into the wall, leaving more than one crack behind.

George's wolf stood up, dazed.

He was a Beta with an Alpha's blood, a common daughter of a dead Beta shouldn't be able to command the strength to send him flying into a wall, as if he was a mere pest, a fly.

A simple inconvenience.

She stepped closer to him, and he stepped back, shrinking slowly into himself.

"The next time you raise your hands against me, will the last time you have hands."

A smirk snaked up his lips.

"You will not do that to George."

She smiled, "George will be grateful."

For the first time ever since she had known George's wolf, she saw fear in his eyes.

Fear for her.

Good.

He must know his place.

"You must have no guilt, no conscience. Drawing power from that mark you bear." She turned away from him and he kept on talking. "The mark the King of the monsters gave you. Monsters that are killing us!"

"If that is your best attack, Wolf, then consider me dead from disappointment." She was only some distance close to her door. "I will speak to George when he is back. You are useless to me."

"George hated you too, he was just too much of an hounrable partner to show it. Every second, he despised you."

She stopped in front of the door, refusing to let the wolf get to her.

"If you want to use words to attack me, then those words must have the ability to stun me. Try again when you are better."

"DO YOU THINK ANYONE WOULD HAVE LOVED THE STEPSISTER OF HIS OWN MATE?!"

Zezi's hand ghosted over the doorknob, heat danced at her back and silence threw the hall into violent peace.

"Stunned yet?" He mocked.

She shrugged, turning back to him. The victorious glint in his red eyes made her angry. She really needed to talk to George, she had no time for this.

"No, I expected you to do more than tell silly lies. Be creative."

"Silly lies?" It was his turn to arch her an eyebrow. "It is the truth."

Zezi would be a fool to believe his words. George never said anything about having a mate, and she didn't have a stepsister.

If she had, she would know.

"Think about it," he brushed off the dust on his shirt. "Why did George willingly agree to be your mate if there was hope that he would find his?"

Before she could speak, he held a finger up.

"About your stepsister, remember that pup without a wolf that was sent out of the pack with her mother." A devilish smile cast on her lips. "Try to remember, what happened that night with your parents. They fought didn't they?"

All trace of arguing slipped away from Zezi, a chill slowly captured her heart and all she could do was remember.

"It was rough, wasn't it? So much shouting like you had never seen before?"

Yes, that was the first night she had ever seen her parents fight. It was the night the daughter of one of the Pack members had been tested. Her father had the grimmest look on his face when she had failed, but Zezi had thought he was just unhappy for the poor fatherless child.

There was no way, that girl was her father's daughter. She had never seen her father and that woman together before, they didn't really live within the pack either, they lived around the border.

Her hands clenched by her sides and she struggled with the information. She shook her head.

He was lying and she would be a fool to believe him.

Her parents had probably been fighting that night because one of them didn't want the woman and her daughter to get banished, because her parents were just that caring. The daughter of that woman had no father, it must be---

George's wolf was lying!

"It was so rough, you had to run away."

"You are wasting your time. Your lies won't work on me."

"And when you saw George by the river, he was crying too."

Her heart was hammering in her chest and she was struggling to control how much of her emotions Valerick would get. She didn't want him busting through the door, and throwing George into the dungeon for something his wolf had done.

This was all a lie!

Nobody had to get hurt because of a lie.

She didn't have a stepsister and her stepsister wasn't George's fated mate.

There was no stepsister!

"George would never shed a tear for a stranger, except if she was more than a stranger. Our fated mate."

"You should really get creative." Without turning to the door, her hand found the doorknob, but her grip trembled around it, she couldn't find the strength to open the door and leave.

To put a stop to this insanity.

She just couldn't.

"Do you remember the dying girl at the border? The one we took you straight to after the Bloodsuckers' attack?" There was so much pain in his voice that it could have tricked her.

Or maybe it was tricking her because tears clouded her sight, and all she could see was the girl at the border, taking her last breath in George's arms, next to her dead mother.

The girl had looked at her with warmness in her eyes and said, "Please take care of her for me."

It was something she couldn't make sense of then, and something she refused to overthink now.

He was lying!

"We have more than one reason to hate the Bloodsuckers. They took everything from us. Took our family, took our mate!" He paced in front of her with rage. Then he stopped and she felt the heat of his gaze on her but she refused to look because then he would see how much his words affected her, then she would have lost.

By the Moon, he was lying!

"George would have told me. George would never hide something like this from me."

He laughed, low and dry.

"He never would let me say it. I think he hangs on to you because of the promise he made our Ria. I think he sees her in you, just as she had seen a little sister."