Bad Love: An Alpha's Regret

Chapter 272

AARON

I’m wrenched out of the dream like hitting a wall at a hundred

miles an hour.

What the hell was that?

I sit up, waiting for the weird sense of being tossed out of time and space, knowing I’m physically here

in the cell, but feeling

like I should be somewhere else.

With someone else.

With my mate.

She’s still alive, my wolf insists. Go to her. Find her.

Claim her.

I shake my head, trying to get my wolf to calm the hell down.

Leah is gone.

I saw it with my own eyes…

Or did I??

It certainly seemed like Samsen and Petyr were acting like she was dead, but I didn’t physically confirm

it myself.

Except I’m just grasping at straws.

What possible reason would Samsen and Petyr have to pretend Leah was dead if she wasn’t?

Except now I feel like I’ve got a burr caught in my mind.

Because of that dream.

It was so dam n real.

In fact, I don’t even think it was a dream.

It was like I had truly gone to that meadow and spent time

with Leah.

Everything was so bright and real, now it feels like a memory, not a simple product of my imagination

while I’m asleep.

It’s close to dawn-my wolf can sense it, even from down here

in this underground cell-and I don’t bother trying to go back to sleep.

Instead, I sit there and think about everything that’s

happened in the past few days.

Especially since I broke the mating bond and lost Leah.

The Council has been keeping me locked down.

They haven’t let me see any visitors, they haven’t let me make any phone calls and they certainly

haven’t let me out of this cell. I see the same rotation of four Enforcers over and over, as if they don’t

want me to have any other contact with anyone else.

And now I’m beginning to wonder why that is.

Why they insisted that they would get my affairs in order for

me.

Something about this whole situation is off.

I mean, more off than the Council simply railroading me into false treason charges in the first place.

And I now know how good the Council is at keeping secrets, since rumors stated that Axel had gone to

North Dakota, yet they’d been keeping him in their secret basement cells all

along.

Something is going on, and I’m determined to figure out what that might be.

I sit there, thinking and stewing, getting more and more agitated for answers.

Eventually, the familiar clang of an Enforcer coming down with our breakfast sound.

I stand in the middle of the cell and watch like I’m tracking prey as the Enforcer first goes over and

slides Axel’s tray in the slot at the bottom of the bars, before turning to my cell.

I wait, staying perfectly still as the Enforcer crouches down and sets the tray on the floor.

I wait until his attention is not on me any longer, but on the action of sliding the tray across the floor.

And then I lunge.

I reach my arms through the silver bars and grab hold of

the front of his shirt, too fast for him to even realize what’s happening.

I yank him forward into the bars until his face-and anywhere else bare flesh is touching silver-starts

sizzling.

He immediately howls and starts struggling against my hold.

But I only drag him in tighter, until his chest is pressed so tight Belonging © NôvelDram/a.Org.

against the unforgiving metal of the bars, he’s struggling to breathe.

“Listen up, buddy, because I don’t want to have to repeat myself,” I tell him in a low threatening voice.

“You’re going to tell me exactly what’s going on out there with the Council, otherwise I’m going to pull

you right through these bars until the silver mangles your entire body. Do you understand?”

www

The Enforcer jerks a desperate nod, wheezing with pain and suffocation.

“Good. Now tell me, why won’t the Council let me make any calls or see my Beta?”

I loosen my hold just enough for the guy to suck in a panicked breath, but also so he can talk.

“They told everyone that you died after breaking your mating bond,” he replied in a strangled voice.

“They did what?” I demand furiously, yanking him in tight again. “What else are they hiding?”

The guy starts struggling again, and I have to loosen my hold as he starts going purple from lack of

oxygen.

A thought occurs to me then.

If they told everyone I’m dead, then what if they were lying to

me about Leah being dead?

My wolf practically spins circles inside me, agitated and

excited that I seem to be getting somewhere with his insistence that Leah is still alive.

“What about my mate?” I snarl at the guy.

“She-she’s still alive!” he wrenches out.

I distantly hear a clamoring-other Enforcers coming to help their trapped friend, but my mind is reeling

from what the guy just admitted.

Leah is alive.

This changes everything.

Just as I’m getting ready to let this idiot go and break down the silver door-willing to fight my way to

freedom if it means getting to my mate-there’s movement in my peripheral.

Then the deafening bang-bang-bang of someone shooting a gun in close quarter. I’m hit with bullet

after bullet, and the immediate and unfortunately familiar burn of those g odda mn silver wolfsbane

bullets registers as I go down.

Whoever is shooting doesn’t stop until they’ve emptied an

I’m incapacitated, but my fury knows no bounds as I shift to heal.

The Council finally crossed a line I won’t stand for in tricking me into thinking my mate was dead.

They were worried about me and my power of three Alphas before?

That was nothing.

Then, I was still interested in playing along with Council ‘rules’ for the greater good.

Now, I’m pis sed, and I no longer care about playing by the Council’s rigged rules.

I’m coming for them.

I’m coming for all of them.

And I will be their worst nightmare.