Alpha Returned: A Rejected Mates Reverse Harem Shifter Series (Feral Mates Book 3)

by Sabrina Thatcher

  “Do not ever speak to me in such a way again. I rule you. You are my possession, my property, and you will do what I say, when I say it. You will never question me, you will never insult me with another breath for the rest of your life, or I will take that very breath from you, as is my right. You live at my will, not your own. I will end your life if you ever cross me like that again.”

  The moment Rylan’s hands unclasp from my neck, Sergei comes straight to me and lifts me from the floor, bringing me to my feet. He wraps an arm around me as I try to catch my breath, both my hands rubbing the pain out of my throat. I truly did think for a long minute that I was going to die; that my life was ending, and I would not see another minute of it.

  And in that moment, I regretted nothing.

  Nothing except that I would die looking into Rylan’s face, instead of Roman’s. Instead of Teague. Instead of Elon.

  That would be my only regret.

  “Get her out of here,” Rylan growls acidly to Sergei.

  The captain of his guard escorts me from the room so delicately, as if he’s afraid I might break in his strong arms. He takes me back to my quarters, right to my room, where he lifts me and lays me in my bed to rest.

  It’s only then that I see him exhale, and I realize that he’s been holding his breath.

  “Are you all right?” he breathes worriedly.

  I nod. “Yeah, I think I will be.”

  Mara and Elise rush in with cold water and a cool cloth for my forehead. Sergei steps back to let them tend to me. They’re in a panic, but they keep it under control well.

  “Please don’t ever anger him that much again. I thought he was going to kill you,” Sergei groans miserably.

  I eye him curiously. “I saw you behind him. You were going to stop him, weren’t you?”

  He sighs and nods. “Yes.”

  “But … that’s insubordination. That’s basically what he just killed Bastian for. He’d probably have killed you too, for trying to stop him from anything he was doing.”

  Sergei shrugs. “I wasn’t thinking about it in the moment; all I could think was that I couldn’t let him hurt you.”

  I blink and stare at him. “Is that a hunter thing?”

  He gives me an intense look. “It’s a hunter thing when an alpha is in danger.”

  There’s silence between us for a long moment, and I remember distant words coming back to me from conversations that feel so long ago now. I could be the alpha because I am Roman’s mate, and Roman should be the alpha but hasn’t taken it, so the role could fall to me if I want it.

  Sergei takes a step forward as the handmaidens back away.

  “I want you to know, my lady, there are more friends on your side than you might think, and should you ever need aid or support, there are many here who would fight for you.”

  I regard him thoughtfully.

  “Thank you, Sergei. I deeply appreciate everything you’ve done. It means a great deal.”

  “Rest, my lady, and heal.”

  He leaves, and I lie back into my pillows and stare at the sheer white canopy draped over the bed above me. I know in that moment that I can trust Sergei with my life, and it’s a strange, empowering sensation.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Roman

  I step into the boat with Teague and Elon close behind me, and Elon waves to the scruffy looking old man on the dock who rented it to us. Teague slips a roll of paper from his backpack and unfurls it as I rev the motor and pull away from the dock.

  “What’s it look like? Do you think we’ll be able to find this place?” Elon asks hopefully, looking over Teague’s shoulders as Teague traces his finger over two pieces of paper. One is Sydney’s hand-drawn map from the letter, and the other is a map that we bought off of the old man at the dock.

  “Has Sydney ever even been to this area? Has she ever said?” I ask, steering through thickly overgrown banks and trees growing out of the water while at the same time seeming to want to grow right back into it again.

  “She hasn’t ever been outside of Tampa,” Teague replies quietly as he studies her hand-drawn map beside its counterpart. “This is extraordinary!”

  “What?” I ask, trying to get a look over my shoulder while still keeping us clear of any growth that could stop the boat.

  “Her map …”

  “Not even close?” I groan. “Of course, she couldn’t have drawn a correct map of a place she’s never been to.”

  “No!” Teague beams up at me, looking incredulous. Elon’s eyes are wide as well. “It’s every bit as accurate as the map the old man sold us, or even more so, I’d bet! She’s nailed it!”

  I blink as my brows go up and I turn to look ahead fully again. “How on earth do you think she managed that?”

  Teague comes to stand beside me, keeping the map close to his chest so that it doesn’t blow away in the wind we’re making.

  “It was the goddess,” Teague replies seriously. “I know you don’t put much stock in her, but I do, and so does Sydney, and apparently it’s paid off. This map she drew freehand for us is a crystal-clear directive of where to go.”

  I smile just a little at the corner of my mouth, feeling proud of Sydney, even if I’m not sure I believe in that goddess of hers.

  “Well then, tell me where we’re headed!” I lift my chin determinedly.

  Teague guides us as I drive, and after two hours of deft maneuvering through what looks like it should be completely uncharted wilds, I drive the boat up onto the edge of a beach on a tiny, hidden island.

  “There’s no way anyone would ever find this place without a map,” Elon announces assuredly as he drops an anchor and splashes down into the shallow water.

  “I think that’s the point.” Teague follows him, tucking the map back into his backpack and slipping it on.

  I look around cautiously, seeing a pure jungle of mangroves and grasslands, and take up the rear. This place looks like it could swallow us whole in an instant and no one would ever even know to come looking for us.

  We head across course golden sand as Teague carves a way for us with a machete as we venture into the green.

  “The flower is near a spring, so listen for water,” Elon tells us, and we strain to listen as we walk in silence.

  “Stop!” I cry out suddenly. “Don’t move!”

  They both freeze in place and turn their heads to look around. Directly above them, sliding surreptitiously down a tree branch is the biggest python I’ve ever seen.

  “HOLY SH—” Elon begins, but Teague takes his shoulders from behind and slowly draws him backward.

  “It’s going to strike,” I say, knowing ahead of time what’s about to happen. “I can smell it. Be prepared to-”

  “DUCK!” Teague cries out as the snake’s head shoots out of the tree.

  Elon isn’t fast enough. The massive snake coils around him instantly, as panic shoots through all of us. I yell, clamping my arms around the snake’s wide body to try and pull it off of Elon, but it’s constricting, and I know that even with my superhuman strength, it’s going to take a gargantuan amount of effort.

  “MOVE!” Teague shouts at me. I dodge out of the way just as his machete comes sweeping down through the air, cleaving the great snake’s body at each coil, until the blade finally strikes the ground. Pieces of snake fall away in heavy chunks, and Elon collapses to the ground, gasping for breath.

  I’m at his side immediately, checking him over and wrapping an arm about his shoulders.

  “Are you all right? Can you breathe? Is anything broken?”

  He coughs horribly and then finally catches his breath. He lifts his head, and his face is dark red, as is his neck, as blood rushes back through him.

  “I’ll live.” He moans as I help him to his feet. He coughs a few more times and sucks in great gulps of air. “I was pretty sure I was a goner. Thanks, Teague.”

  Teague nods and pulls the rest of the snake out of the tree. “It’s over thirty feet long. Well, it w
as.” He announces quietly. “This is a reticulated python. They’ve been known to eat humans now and then.”

  “Well, this one’s not eating anything anymore,” I grumble, giving it a dirty look.

  “Come on. The danger is over. Let’s find the flower,” Teague tells us evenly. Of the three of us, he’s the only one who hasn’t seemed to skip a beat over these last weeks. It’s almost as if the trauma of losing Sydney has struck a chord in him that was buried deep inside. The chord that marks him as a would-be alpha himself—in a life passed.

  A life that he would have led, had he not been excommunicated from his pack.

  Elon stares at him. “Just like that? Aren’t you even a little freaked out about that thing?”

  Teague gives him a half-smile. “I’m from Aussie, mate. This is just another thing in the bush. Probably someone’s exotic pet that got too big, so they set it loose. I doubt we’ll see another one here. Let’s go. Eyes open.”

  We trek onward, but this time every one of us is much more wary than we were when we started out.

  “Ouch!” Elon smacks his arm, and before I can take a look, I feel a sharp sting on my shoulder, and then on my other arm, and a moment later we find ourselves in a cloud of stinging flies.

  “Damn it!” I swear, smacking them left and right, and trying to swat them away.

  “How are we going to get free of them, Aussie?” Elon manages to ask through clenched teeth.

  The stings are sharp, like burning needles piercing deep into our flesh. It’s pure hell. There are too many around us to get away from them. Teague drops to his knees, opens his backpack and flicks a lighter against something in his hand. Grey smoke pours from it, and he hands it to Elon.

  “Here. Smoke bomb. Just hold it in your hand and don’t touch anything but the bottom of it.”

  He hands one to me, and there’s a noticeable difference in the fly cloud. When he stands back up, we’ve all got one, and the smoke around us is growing dense.

  “Try not to breathe it in,” Teague gasps as we hurry forward. The flies ditch us quickly, unable to handle the smoke. We’re a good distance from them when the smoldering ball in my hand begins to burn my skin.

  “Drop it when it burns you and make sure you put it out. Stamp it into the ground. We don’t want to set this island on fire.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Elon grumbles, looking around in irritation.

  “Teague, you wouldn’t happen to know what those flies were, do you? Because you’re both swelling up with welts from the bites.” I point out and then notice that my own skin is turning red and puffing up in patches as well.

  “No, I don’t. Hopefully we’ll live through it.” Teague mutters. “Just don’t scratch it, whatever you do. Try your best to leave the bites alone.”

  “It’s agony!” Elon looks as miserable as I feel.

  The heat of the day becomes suffocating as we continue to hack our way through the overgrowth. It feels like we’re in an oven, with the humidity intensifying under cover of all the trees and vines overhead, the plants around us, and the sun beating down on it all and cooking us from the outside in. We go on, silently, doing our best to keep from scratching the burning bites all over our arms, necks, and heads.

  “This island isn’t that big,” Elon snaps. I’ve never heard him lose the jovial side of his nature for so long. “When are we going to get there?”

  Teague pulls the map out and looks at it closely. “I hate to tell you this, but you’re right. The island isn’t that big. I think we’ve circled the flower.”

  We all groan, and Teague looks around carefully, then pulls out a compass. “We should go right.”

  We’re ten more minutes in to carving our own path through the wild, when Teague, who has the lead with his razor-sharp machete, stops so suddenly that we almost walk right into his back.

  “That’s it … my goddess,” He murmurs.

  We move to either side of him and get a good look.

  There, growing at the center of a deep, jade, cool looking spring, is a small mound of earth, not more than a foot in diameter, and at its center a green stalk has grown about knee high. A tuft of long, thin, slender leaves surrounds it, and at its tip a beautiful blossom has grown—crimson such as I have never seen.

  “That’s the loveliest flower in the world,” Elon whispers.

  “It’s also the deadliest, at least, to us.” Teague replies, digging in his backpack again for three pairs of gloves and a woven silk sack. “Don’t touch it without gloves.”

  “Right. How are we going to get to it?” Elon walks forward and looks into the water. I join him as we each take a pair of gloves and pull them on. There is no bottom to see. The water only darkens the further down it goes.

  “You think there’s something in there that might come after us?”

  “Who knows at this point,” Elon sighs heavily as he plants his hands on his hips.

  “I’m going to jump in and swim to get it. We didn’t come this far only to be stopped by a little water.”

  Without another word, I dive in. It’ll be a short swim if I go fast. The water feels so refreshing, so cool against my skin, and it’s an instant reprieve from the fiery heat of the welts and painful stings. In fact, the pain is gone by the time I reach the small patch of ground at the center.

  I hold on to the rim of it and look back at Teague and Elon.

  “How are you? Are you okay?” Elon asks worriedly.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever been better!” I examine my arms. They’re completely free of the bites. “The water took away the welts! It’s … it’s like it’s healing!”

  “Sure, heals you before you get to the flower that kills you,” Elon snaps, but then he and Teague dive in as well and swim around.

  “This is the best!” Elon cries out happily, splashing around and swimming.

  “The stings are gone!” Teague examines his dark skin, his sky-blue eyes alight with relief. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  It’s a brief respite, a welcome moment in the last weeks for torment. For just a few moments we bathe in the cleansing water, forgetting all the rest of the world. All the pain. The sting. The loss.

  But only for a moment.

  Teague comes to me and together we cut the bottom of the stem. The moment the flower is cut, the ground around us begins to tremble violently, and the water suddenly begins to grow murky.

  “Uh oh. I think there’s something down there …” Elon peers down into the water and then puts his face into it to get a better look. He rips his face free into the air almost immediately. “Yeah, there’s something big down there and it’s coming up. We have to get out now!”

  Teague carefully slides the bloom into the silken bag and the three of us race across the water, barely making it out onto the bank before an eruption of water cascades down over us, and though we can’t see anything at all, a deafening roar drowns the air around us, filling our ears and even our bodies with reverberations.

  “RUN! Back to the boat!” I shout, and we blaze after Teague as he zips through the path he’s already cut.

  I can hear something thundering along the ground behind us, as if it’s giving chase, but when I steal a backward glance, I can see nothing. We make it back to the boat in record time, as Teague discovered our original path, before we started going in circles, and in seconds I have the craft fired up. Elon and Teague haul the anchor up and I drive us back from the sandy beach just as another deafening roar shakes every leaf on the trees at the edge of the beach, but still, I can see nothing.

  “What was that? What was chasing us?” Elon stares fearfully back at the island as I drive like mad, putting increasing distance between us and the island as fast as I can.

  “It was the goddess.” Teague answers. “We took something sacred.”

  “But, she told Sydney to get it! Why would she attack us if she told us to get it?”

  “There are great prices to be paid for valuable things; perhaps w
e did not pay the cost, or perhaps it was a defense put into place to protect the flower. I do not know. All I know is that we made it out alive, and we got what we went in for.”

  Teague turns to me with a raised brow. “Do you believe in her now?”

  I can’t argue with him, and I nod succinctly. “I never said I didn’t. I just … never took much stock in her before.”

  Before now.

  We return the boat and are speeding toward the compound, debating over the best way to get in and deliver the flower to Sydney. There’s no time to waste. We already took long enough just getting to the island.

  “Let’s use the pipes, like we did to get out. We’ll get in that way,” Elon suggests.

  “I think we ought to find a succubus or incubus to take it in. They won’t be suspect and can get it right to her,” I point out.

  “I don’t think you’re going to have to look too far to find one,” Teague warns from the back seat, placing a hand on my shoulder. I hit the brakes. There’s a barricade of vehicles, and to my surprise, incubi and succubi, right in the road. I barely manage to bring the SUV to a full stop just before we reach it.

  “What’s this?” I wonder aloud as I get out, and the boys follow me. We are immediately surrounded. Before we can say a word, all three of us are hit with tranquilizer darts, and everything suddenly goes black.

  I can hear a debate going on around me as I open my eyes. Teague and Elon are beside me. We’re tied to chairs. I wriggle immediately to try to get free, but it’s no use. I’m tied too tightly.

  “Teague! Elon!” I cry out. Teague looks at me from my left, his eyes steely blue.

  “I’m here.”

  “Me too,” Elon answers from my right.

  I see an older, authoritative succubus coming toward me. She stops a few feet from me and regards me coolly.

  “Why are we here? Why have you taken us captive?” I demand. “We’re allies!”