The Alpha's Daydream ✔️

Chapter 49

"She wouldn't have. You wouldn't have done that, right, Ari?" Hamilton looks at me, his hazel eyes clouded with the unacceptance of what I just told them.

But I know what I've done, and I know it is hurting them as much as it hurts me.

I shake my head, then stop once I realise what I'm doing. Words are stuck somewhere between my mind and heart, my throat squeezing the lies from them.

"Tell us again exactly what you did," Malachi pins his unrelenting gaze on me. A gaze I can normally hold onto for strength, knowing it can pull me from the depths of his darkness. But now, it washes over me in depthless waves of disbelief.

"A couple rogues wanted to know where you were. They kept trying to make me say, but I didn't know exactly and wouldn't tell them. Then they started torturing Aunt Chesca. They had her tied down in chains and injected silver into her bloodstream. Her baby would've been killed, so I just said you were at the Justice Pack. I didn't think they'd actually find you! But I knew you could protect yourself—"

"You told them." Malachi states. Clarifying the horrible truth of my words.

"I didn't want to. I didn't care if they hurt me so I would never have given them what they wanted. But as soon as they started cutting Chesca with a knife..." Even my own words sound pathetic in my ears, despite knowing I would do the same again if the night played over. I shrink under the heavy stares of the men around me, their disgust for me evident in their cool eyes.

They hate me. For so long I've been working to gain their trust, yet now it feels like in one night I've ruined all hope of ever being trusted.

Hamilton looks at me with lips pressed tightly together and brows scrunched up, and the sadness and disappointment in his eyes makes me want to run into an oblivion and bury myself ten feet under.

Blinking back tears, I whisper, "Malachi?" I turn to him and take his hand, willing him to understand what I feel for him. "I knew you could take care of yourself." In the back of my mind, in some twisted way, I probably thought that a group of wild rogues would be no match for the dark beast lurking under Malachi's skin.
Is that it? I sent them to Malachi hoping he'd tear them to shreds and give them what they deserved?

He doesn't reply. For a moment, I watch a few emotions briefly cross his face, darkening his eyes that refuse to meet mine. He clenches his jaw and his throat convulses as he swallows hard, then he looks at me.

His face is now void of all emotions. This expressionless mask he wears is cutting me deeper than any anger or rage I expected from him. Harsh words being flung at me is what I deserve, yet this cold silence is breaking me so much more.

It is deafening, screaming louder in my mind than an entire chorus of haters.

"Then it seems we know where your loyalty lies." He tears his eyes from mine and turns his back to me.

"Malachi, it's not like that! I care about you—"

"Just leave." He pulls away when I lay my hand on his arm. "I have my men to care for," he murmurs in a tone of finality.

My feet take involuntary steps back. His quiet rejection slams into me and pushes me with a force I not only feel, but see. The darkness emitting from his hunched shoulders, the despondency permeating the air around him and his wounded warriors— it makes me want to hold on and never let him go, but at the same time give him the space he is demanding from me.

I messed up.

I may have ruined the chance we had for us.

"Ariella, come on. I'll help you get cleaned up." Knight wraps his arm around my shoulders, effectively stilling the sobs that wrack my body. I am shaking, but he guides me through the clinic, shielding me from the cold stares of those lingering in the foyer.