Dark Alpha: A Fated Mates Novel

37: THE APOLOGY

~VANNIE~

Sinclair turned sharply to see who had called his name, and Vannie had a feeling she epically messed up.

"I'm sorry," she said, stopping in her tracks as she saw the group of wolves with their teeth bared towards the gate. This was the last thing she'd be expecting to see when she decided to follow Sin. "I could feel the danger coming. After you left. I came to warn you—"

He came closer to her, leaving the pack he commanded. "How did you find me?"
"I followed your scent," she whispered, wondering if now would be a good moment to find some hole to burrow into.

"You ran here? Without accompaniment? From the fucking palace? After I told you there was a war coming and that you should stay in your chambers?"

She'd done so many horrible things to Sinclair, but coming here seemed to be the straw that broke the camel's back, because he was glaring at her. He'd never glared at her. It was a rather disconcerting, heartbreaking thing to experience.

And she wanted to cry again.

She raised her nose into the air and choked back the tears. "It doesn't matter now. I'm not a doll you can ask to just sit in one place. And I'm here to help you."

"No, you're only going to be a distraction now, so go to the tent my Keepers pitched beside the garage. Please. This will be over soon." She opened her mouth to argue, and he near-shouted through gritted teeth. "Vannylla. Please."

Of everything that he said, it was the 'please' that did her in. He remembered to be polite despite everything that was going on now. She didn't understand what was happening, and she felt she deserved a front seat to whatever would happen next because she'd caused it, but she still turned back to go to the tent.

To wait for him.

The tent had no windows, so she couldn't even see outside. But she knew the moment the Inlands were breached and intruders came in.

It was a carnage, she could tell. She heard the grunts and tears of flesh from flesh and the loud chant of the Inlanders that were in their homes. They didn't sound worried, her packmates. They sounded like they were hyping the fighters up and waiting to be named winners of the battle.

And when had she began to start thinking of them as her packmates?
Since she got her wolf back. Since she finally realized that Zhode wasn't her home, not anymore. Since they were proving now that they would stick by her and fight away the demons she'd brought into their abode.

Vannie had to look. She crawled over to the tent and opened the makeshift cover she'd come in through. She found Sinclair immediately, right in the middle of the bloodshed. He wasn't in his wolf form, and he wasn't fighting. No, he stood right in the middle of the battle, tall and inconquerable. He looked every inch the god he was spawned from, and it was certain that none of the wolves that had come to attack the Inlands would be going scot free.

He'd killed her parents for their betrayal and treason. He could destroy the whole territory Crom was working for simply by mobilizing his entire army. They were very stupid to try. And she was even more the fool for wanting to play along.

She wondered if Crom had been the one to advice his people to attack the Inlands. Maybe he'd seen her hesitation and thought she wouldn't be able to go through with the plan. But she had. And Sin didn't even look affected by the poison in the least. It was the most ridiculous thing, how greatly she'd underestimated the King.

How greatly they all had.

"You're doing great," she whispered. "And I'm sorry. I'm so sorry you have to go through this because of me."

His spine straightened the second she started to talk, but she wasn't expecting him to turn towards her. He did, and for some painful moments, his eyes held hers. "Ego dabo vitam meam Regina."

I'll give my life for my Queen, he'd said, a promise spoken in the ancient language. She'd heard his voice in her head without his mouth moving once, and it was so companionable, so easy between them, that she almost forgot that it shouldn't be possible.

She shouldn't be able to hear his thoughts.

And more than that, she shouldn't hear him speak to her like he did. That was something that could only happen between packmates who had access to the link. She didn't yet. For a wolf to join the pack link, they had to go through a round of loyalty tests and rituals. They had to become blood bound with other packmates.

Vannie couldn't remember throwing her blood into a bowl of other Inlanders' blood, or having her loyalties tested. She had already failed with the last one, anyway, so what exactly was happening?

But she didn't have time to question it, because she could feel another pair of eyes on her. Not Sinclair's. Sinclair didn't make her feel like a million arachnids were crawling up and down her spine.

She took a step back into the tent and looked around the scene again, trying to find the creep this time. The fight was still going on around them, but it was clear who was losing and who was winning. Wolves had died, and it seemed more were going to be taken hostage. There was a certain desperation to the opposing team now. It turned more brutal as they realized this was a fight to the death.

She saw a brown wolf transform to his human form and fall to the ground in surrender. Smart wolf. He knew what his comrades knew, but chose the smart option of surrendering before he got killed.

But then, Vannie heard that voice again in her head, old language dripped in Sinclair's honeyed voice, and the male on his knees suddenly. . . combusted. Just like that. His body splintered into a thousand pieces, and he was no more.
She gasped and fell back fully into the tent. Sinclair had ordered the man's wolf to destroy itself, and it had, no questions asked. Was that what it meant to be Alpha of all the wolves? He could command them to do anything, and they had to do it because he gave a direct order, and their lupine nature must obey?

Fear beat down Vannie's chest. This was a whole different, merciless part of Sinclair she hadn't seen in a long while and had almost forgotten existed. It was becoming clear that he may not even need his army to fight a battle against lupine territories, because he was in control of their wolves.

Or was it just because they were having this battle in the Inlands? Was this the place where Sin's true powers lay?