The Alpha And His Mate (Silver Hills #1)

Chapter 23

The next hour passed in a blur.

I was faintly aware of women cloaked in darkness moving around me, their hands in my hair and lightly painting my face, but they were little more than shadows to me at that moment.

Never in my wildest dreams had I imagined my wedding would be anything like this. Instead of marrying my mate- the one being who is my equal, whether it's for weird child breeding purposes or not- I was being forced to carry the child of an ancient, powerful being. One I didn't know and should probably be terrified of.

No being should ever have their freedom stripped from them. I hadn't thought about it enough until then. So many innocents shaped and corrupted by fates uncaring hands.

I forced back tears as I was forced to look into the mirror. My dark hair was curled so it gently draped my horrified face, and the vampires had done something to make my brown eyes striking and alluring. Scarlet lips, a faint blush on my cheeks. I was gorgeous, but I wasn't me.

Jax help me. Those words echoed through my head, my one consolation. But he wouldn't come. He couldn't. Even Andre didn't know what had actually happened to me.

"You're a beautiful bride," the voice told me. Could he see through my eyes?

A delicate veil was slid into my hair. It was so long it coiled on the ground like a white snake. My wedding veil. My funeral shroud.

Help me, I screamed at the voice in my head. That had worked once, with the vampires at the cinema. Unless it was just coincidence that pulled Caspar to my rescue.

I highly doubted Caspar would charge into a mansion full of bloodthirsty vampires, so I knew better than to hope for his arrival.

"Help yourself," the voice said, before leaving me more alone than before.

But there was no escape. No way out of this hell. I was only human, no matter how special my blood may be.

A slight knock at the door dragged me from my pity party. A slight vampire with blonde hair pulled back in a tight bun entered the crimson bedroom, her black gown swishing as she gracefully came towards me.

For a second she just inspected me. Then, she nodded in approval.

"Yes," she muttered to herself as she took me by the hand and pulled me towards her. "Master will like her very much."

Like a puppet, I let the young vampire lead me out of the room and into a dark corridor.

"I am Elsbeth," she told me as we walked. "I suppose I can be your maid of honour."

"I don't want you to be," I said in a dead, unenthusiastic voice. This didn't sway her cheer. She had a lightness in her step as we descended down a grand staircase.

In the light the house might've been beautiful. In the darkness it became a haunted shell fit for nightmares.

"Your union with master will be the start of a new age for the children of the night," she explained. "An empire shall rise that will crush those beastly wolves once and for all."

A small flutter of panic entered my chest as I noticed we were beginning to descend into what seemed to be a basement. I tried to talk to banish my dread.

"I'm the alphas mate, you know?" I said, hoping Elsbeth didn't already know that. She just pursed her lips and contemplated me with deep red eyes. I saw how, with the slightest of movements, her tongue traced two sharp canines. She saw me staring and we came to a stop in front of a grand mahogany door, gilded in gold.