Rejected Mate and Following Fate novel Chapter 42

"What?" it's like every cell in my body stops as a deathly silence fills the air, shock stilling my thoughts, my lungs ceasing to move, and you can hear a pin drop as his words sink in slowly…. so fucking slowly.

Juan executed my family. They didn't die in battle.

That's a lie, it can't be true because they weren't the only pack to never return. The entire Whyte line, among others, they all died protecting our kind. It was a war for god's sake, and we had many casualties. Did Juan kill them all too?

The doctor has to be playing me, lying to mess with my head for some kind of ulterior motive and I'm falling for it. Maybe it's a test to see if I'm strong enough to turn, despite being in this isolation tank. Maybe I was wrong to trust him, and this is all a ploy to break me down and get intel he thinks I may have… but how would he know her name?

I take a much-needed breath as I begin to suffocate under the pressure of my own mounting emotions, realizing I wasn't inhaling or letting it go. I take a moment to let it sink in, my head spinning as my brain tries to dissect and makes sense of each word and how it comes together in what he just said. I don't know how to react; cry, rage, scream, laugh? I sit here like a numb dead weight staring at him as though he just told me the world is ending and we're to wait here to die. Momentarily devoid of feeling as shock fills the void.

It has a different effect on my body though, and for a second, I think I might throw up. I wretch, my body lurching, and as it all spins out of control and I have to lift my heels to the edge of the bed so I can prop my head between my knees to ground myself. Swallowing down the rush of salvia that clogs my throat and breathing through the waves of nausea.

"I'm sorry…. my memory is not what it was, but the gist is that Juan was eliminating the possibility of a prophecy coming to fruition… a white wolf Queen, rising from the shadows to reign the people in a victorious and united future. Juan believed your mother was going to dethrone him, after she proved herself a worthy warrior on the battlefield and led many a victorious attack on your enemy by uniting the packs. Your kind were losing the war, and she turned it around… your mother, she was gifted, and special, and more powerful than he could ever dream of being. The kind of specimen I could only dream of being able to study." He sounds concerned, regretful, apologetic, all at once, but it's all meaningless noise and I just keep coming back to it, over and over.

Juan…. he killed them all. My whole family. All those that mattered to me. My past ten years have been a lie, and I suffered, not because they failed, but because he took them from me. This can't be true, especially not if she was so powerful.

"Then how did he…. If she was" The words die on my tongue, hastily uttered in a breath as my brain tries to rationalize the details, as warm salty tears roll down my cheeks and I sit absorbing a history I never knew, as the pieces are laid out before me. Confused with the conflicting statement to what I've always been told, and a fire of rage building inside of me slowly to overcome the icy cold that has spread through my nerve endings. It's like a drip, drip, as it's fed and allowed to grow slowly. It warms my belly and spreads across my pelvis and down my limbs, something growing inside of me so all-consuming that I almost welcome its warm fluid expansion to my cold empty soul. My brain just cannot seem to filter and arrange it so that it makes sense.

"Your father was her weak point… just a peaceful land-dwelling wolf that he murdered to get to her. Your kinds devastating ability to kill both mates with one blow, and sadly an uneven pairing as that was her only downfall. It's a rather sad travesty, that even your strongest is only as strong as the mate bonded to them in the end and highlights the importance of why they shun the impure. He then ordered his own sub pack to hunt down and destroy everyone from the pack she was residing with in case they linked in the last moments and knew of his treason. He had to tidy up loose ends, you see. He had to cover his tracks, and only his loyal knew of what he'd done and aided him."

I inhale sharply, my heart constricting as tears bite my eyes and the words wound my soul. Sliced open and ravaged with a truth that's more devastating than the one I lived for ten years.

The Whyte pack, none of them returned from war, as they were apparently cursed as warriors and fell at the first battle. Not strong enough, fast enough, not able to hold their own because of being weak land workers and not warriors at all.

All lies.