Chapter 25 - Not all men are made equal.

IT CERTAINLY MADE sense why Rebecca treated Lena so much differently than Alaric did. He had no idea about his lineage! He had no idea his mother was a blood witch! Lena knew that she could have used magic to hide her scent, so it was very possible that nobody in the pack knew about her lineage, but what did they think she was?

Lena frowned and Rebecca stopped reading. Lena asked Rebecca if she knew what her mother was and Rebecca explained that she knew because of the diaries, but she didn’t know if anyone else knew. Lena frowned again and asked Rebecca if her mother could shift and Rebecca burst out laughing. She pulled out one of the diaries Lena hadn’t read yet and handed it to Lena, but she told her what it said.

Rebecca’s mother was not only a blood witch. Her magic allowed her to shapeshift. Lena was completely blown away. She had heard of shifters before, but there were so few of them in the supernatural world! It was a very rare talent. Most shifters could only ever shift into two forms. Their human form and the animal they were linked to. Lena wondered if Rebecca could shift and she shook her head, which reminded Lena that the little girl was still very young. Rebecca hadn’t even found her wolf yet!

They talked for a little while longer about what Rebecca could remember about her mother and what she read about her before Rebecca had to say goodnight. Lena lay in the darkness and thought about her own parents and when she grew up. Her parents always made her feel so loved and cherished. She couldn’t imagine her father doing what Alaric was accusing him of. If he did, he couldn’t have known about Rebecca, could he? Surely, he wouldn’t have killed her parents if he knew there was a little girl at home waiting for them. No, she couldn’t believe that her father did this. Alaric was wrong!

Lena hadn’t been plagued as much by her nightmares lately, since she was too uncomfortable and in too much pain to sleep. Now that she was in a comfortable bed and her wounds were taken care of, she could actually just close her eyes and drift off. Images of her parents laughing together floated into her mind as she started to smile in her sleep. She dreamed about a day her father returned from one of his trips and he had brought her a beautiful music box. She was so excited about the box that she couldn’t wait to show it to her friends and she rushed out of the house, running right into someone who was on their way to see her mother. The music box flew out of her hands and crashed into pieces on the ground.

At the sound of the music box breaking, Lena’s dream drifted to her mother, waking her in the middle of the night. She wanted Lena to go somewhere, but Lena couldn’t hear what her mother was saying. She got up and followed her mother outside where Alaric was growling in his wolf form. Lena’s father was lying on the ground bleeding and shouting for Lena to run, but her mother kept pushing her toward Alaric! Lena started to summon fire as Alaric’s jaw opened.

“LENA!” Rebecca’s voice pierced her dream and Lena sat upright. The only light in her room was the fire burning beside her bed! Alaric rushed in with the fire extinguisher and quickly put out the blaze while Lena tried to figure out what went wrong. Rebecca explained that she smelled the smoke and when she came into the room, Lena was thrashing around throwing fire balls in all directions.

“I’m sorry!” Lena felt petrified! She had never done magic in her sleep … Ever! “I’m so sorry!” Tears started streaming down her cheeks as she looked at her hands and then at the scorch marks all over the room. Alaric rushed over and pulled her off the bed and into his arms and she could hear his heart racing. Behind Lena, little Rebecca put her arms around her and they both just held onto her. It was the complete opposite reaction to what Lena would have expected and she quickly pushed out of Alaric’s embrace as he cleared his throat and looked confused.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened!” Lena wiped her tears with her sleeve as she tried to figure out what the hell went wrong. Rebecca was the first to mention a nightmare and Lena nodded. When Alaric asked what she dreamt about, Lena remembered but she couldn’t tell him. There was no way she would ever tell him that she had dreamt about him, even if it was a good dream!

“I guess I’m a little overcharged.” Lena studied her hands again as Alaric frowned. She sighed when she saw the look on his face and explained that just as their energy to do magic depleted if they did too much magic at once, so too did it sometimes become too much energy if they didn’t do any magic at all. “Magic requires a very delicate balance and I haven’t lived a very balanced life since you captured me.” She didn’t mean to blame it on him or anything. She was just stating a fact.

“Are you saying this is my fault?!” Alaric instantly looked furious as his eyes went from Lena to Rebecca and Rebecca just shrugged. When his eyes returned to Lena she could have sworn she saw pain flash over them for a second, but it was gone so quickly that she wasn’t sure what she saw. Alaric stormed out of the room before Lena could say anything else and all she heard was the instruction that Rebecca was to return to her room when she was ready. Lena wondered why the two guards outside her door didn’t do anything, but it didn’t take much to know that answer. They could probably care less if she was dead or alive. Lena and Rebecca talked for a little while about Lena’s magic and what she had to do so she didn’t burn down the entire pack house in her sleep and Rebecca seemed excited to speak to Alaric about it in the morning.

ALARIC WAS PACING back and forth in his room, trying his best to stop his wolf from taking control. He had already overstepped his boundaries when he pulled Lena into his damn arms! What the hell was his wolf thinking?

“That we will take our mate and make her ours before someone else does!” His wolf growled in the back of his mind and Alaric sighed. They had been over this a million times. If they marked Lena there would be no turning back. There would be no possibility of a second chance mate, not to mention the fact that they might die if they rejected her. His wolf shrugged and Alaric didn’t have to see it to know he had done it. In his wolf’s mind it was an easy decision.

“That is why the beast needs a human counterpart!” Alaric shouted at his wolf who was now ignoring him. “You want to live like an animal in a human world.” Alaric sighed and poured himself a drink. He was going to have to do something about Lena’s magic. He couldn’t take the chance of her burning down the pack house in her sleep! He started to wonder what other powers she might have and then shook his head to clear his thoughts. That was yet another problem he would soon be facing.

Some of the packs were already saying he kept the witch to strengthen his pack. Some of them didn’t believe that Lena was his mate. He fell down on his bed and glared at the ceiling as if it would give him the answers, but none were forthcoming. His hormones were driving him insane, but he couldn’t relieve the problem because, suddenly, each time he looked at anyone other than Lena, he felt physically sick. Just the thought of touching anyone other than Lena made him feel as if he could lose his dinner in a split second! It wasn’t fair!

He wondered how some other males he heard of could take a mistress and still have a wife, then he was reminded of something his mother told him when he was younger. “Not all men are made equal, son. Some are stronger and others smarter.” At that stage he didn’t understand what she meant, but those words were slowly growing on him! He was definitely stronger and not smarter! He sighed and rolled over only to look at the empty pillow beside him.

Yup, he was stronger! He jumped out of bed and decided a run should tire him out enough that he would be able to fall asleep. Feeling the strength of his wolf form as he shifted, his paws dug deep into the dirt and he sprinted out into the moonlight.