Chapter 81: HE WILL ALWAYS BE MINE

Ellen Evans POV

My body slacked against the wall beside the door in disbelief at what I had just heard. The door creaked open then, and Dylan coming into view as he stared me down.

"Eavesdropping, are we? Huh, Ellen? Is that all you have got?" He asked me, his eyes cold and unforgiving.

"What were you discussing?" I asked him as I tried to sound calm. But my voice still trembled like a leaf on a tree in an autumn storm.

"It is none of your concern miss I did not know that I was pregnant," he snapped at me with a voice that dripped with sarcasm, an unyielding expression, and a thickly built fortress of ice, his tone slicing through me like thin strips of meat.

"Dylan, please listen to me," I pleaded with him as my voice cracked under the weight of my emotions.

"Enough, Ellen," he interrupted me sternly in a detached tone. "Leave me the hell alone."

A thousand tears pricked at my eyes like a thousand needles as I backed away from him feeling lost, betrayed, and shattered.

"Dylan," I whispered.

"Save it!" He snapped and then he slipped past me as he walked down the corridors. His mother came out behind him. She gave me the most dirty look I have ever received in my entire life. There was a sly smile spreading across her face like a victorious banner.

"Still scheming?" she asked me. "Do not worry, I will make Dylan see through every single one of your tricks," she promised with words that stabbed me with a cruel precision. I felt that sting in my heart as it began to bleed. But I refused to be intimidated. I stood my ground with her in the defiance burning within me like wildfire.

And then she left.

I stared after her, wondering how on earth she had poisoned his mind so easily, and manipulated him.

My brother's earlier words replayed inside of my head as the last fragile thread of hope that I had been holding unto, clinging to so desperately had snapped into two.

I ran down the corridors to my bedroom as tears fell freely down my cheeks in a torrent of despair.

I was trapped, still unsure of how to regain my mate's trust.

My heart was collapsing, suffocating at the weight of his rejection as I began a dejected destitute on the floor of my bedroom, bathing in the salty eye liquid.

I cried, for hours.

When I looked into the mirror, my face stared right back at me. My face was swollen from crying so much. My eyes were so bloodshot, scary even to me who owned them.

I washed my face with warm water and soap.

It was then that Martha came to inform me that the visitors were leaving finally. I wore a nose mask and headed outside so no one would know I had been crying for what could have been forever.

I watched them leave with despair hidden behind my fake untouched demeanor. I did not tell my brother about anything that had happened so that they would not take me away to the Clux pack as a prisoner.

I walked back to my room after their departure, taking off the face mask on the way there. My phone vibrated in my hands. It was a message and I looked down at the sender.

It was from my brother, Zedd. I kept forgetting that he was the only person who ever had that number because he was the one who got me the burner phone to use.

"Be good Ellen. Stay strong in everything. Good things only come to those who have wait for it. Dylan will come around so be patient."

I felt as fresh tears began to travel down my cheeks unrestrained at the text message. I managed a really weak smile again as I raised my hands to my face and began to wipe my tears away from my face.

I decided to be optimistic.

Zedd could be correct and my mate could come around. I let his words get into my head slowly like a tangible reassurance. I clung unto it like a lifeline inside of the turbulent sea that was my emotions.

I clutched my phone in my right palm as I still stared at the message, each word echoing inside of my mind.

But how? How would he? Would his mother and her poisonous tongue allow him to do so?

His mother's venom was hard, sharp, and it had infected him. He now saw me as a manipulator at the end of it all because of the picture of me that she had painted in his head.

I decided to talk one last gamble.

I decided to go to Dylan one last time and explain to him how everything had happened, how everything had come to be. I needed to let him know how the child in my stomach had started growing inside of it.

I was determined to prove my love for him by letting him know that it had all been a mistake. I decided to confront him about everything that he was doing now, to me.

I left my bedroom with my heart on my sleeves. I took a deep breath as I approached his study room.

I stood outside for a while gathering myself before I knocked on the door of the study.

"Who?!" He snapped from behind the locked door. I gently opened it and slowly walked into the room. He was staring straight at me, his eyes never leaving me as I turned to shut the door behind me and then turned back to him once again.

"Dylan, I-"

"What do you want?!" He demanded with irritation.

"Dylan, please listen-" I began as my voice began trembling. But he kept interrupting me.

"I am busy Ellen! Make it brief and concise," he said. He turned back to the papers on his desk. I assumed that was what he was focused on before my arrival.

"I didn't mean to get pregnant Dylan. It is just that my twin sister, Elena, she wanted me to-"

He looked up from his papers then with his eyes hard and cold. "-sleep with her mate?" He continued for me with raised brows.

"Yes, as a matter of fact, she-"

"Your lies wound my heart, Ellen. If that is what you have to say alone, then leave me alone, Ellen, please leave me alone."

I stood my ground. "You are misunderstanding everything. Please, Dylan, I love you."

He scoffed as he abandoned the papers in his hands and stood to his feet. "Love? You call trying to trap me with a pregnancy for another man, your twin sister' mate to be precise, you call that love?" His words cut deep into me but I refused to back down.

"I would never trap you. I want our child, our family." His expression softened for only a moment and a glimmer of doubt quickly flickered across his face soon after.

"You still lie?! Get out!" he growled at me, masking his uncertainty with his loud voice and angry expression.

"Dylan-"

"Out!" He emphasized. My shoulders slumped in surrender. At least I knew that I had tried. I turned away from him and left defeated, but Zedd's words still resonated within me.

I went to my bedroom to lie in my bed with the duvet around me, unable to cry anymore. I had run out of tears to shed over this.

Tears would not come.

And sleep too will not come.

As I lay on the bed, hours passing by, I soon heard the door to the bedroom open. I sat up instantly, having a feeling that it would be Dylan.

I was wrong.

It was Stephanie, and the look on her face formed me that she was there to gloat over my misfortune with a smirk on her lips.

"Ellen, Ellen, Ellen," she sing, sang as she came to the bed. "You have fallen from grace to grass and now I the prospective fiancée will rise to the ranks of grace."

"Try all you want. I will get Dylan back Stephanie."

"My dear Ellen," she said to me with a sneer. "You are obviously no match for me here. You have lost. Dylan will be mine you see, so just stand down graciously tomorrow as I take back what was originally and rightfully mine. You should have stayed hidden in your stupid pack and saved yourself all this stress."

"Dylan," I said to her as I smirked with a fierce determination that was burning inside of me. "He is my mate girl. He will always be mine."

"You will regret every single thing that you are saying this instant," she threatened me with narrowed eyes.

"Let's see how you will make me."

She turned away sharply and left, banging the bedroom door behind her with so much force that the door frame shook helplessly.

I realized then that the battle for Dylan's heart had only just begun.