Sold as the Alpha King's Breeder
Chapter 599

Chapter 99 : My Mate is There

*Xander*

I spent the short day watching the wall of mist along the horizon, wondering what the hell was onthe other side and why Zeke hadn't gone with lanthe.

Zeke finally crawled out of whatever hole he'd be hiding in around dusk, his face shielded from thelingering daylight by the hood of his cloak. He looked sunken, and his eyes were burning withfrustration.

I flinched a bit as his eyes met mine, glowing like raw gold in the fading sunset. His expression wentbeyond the hurt of sending his sister away. He looked hungry.

"You can't eat me,” I said quickly, rising to my feet. “My blood is like poison, apparently—"

“I don't feed on people," he sneered, rolling his eyes as he turned his gaze to the water. He sniffedindignantly, watching the surf. In a flash of black fabric and a spray of water, he disappeared belowthe surface.

I waited and waited for him to come back up, cursing his name after nearly five minutes had passed.That bastard was killing himself, I thought. And 1 still didn't know how to get to the Vampire King.But his head breached the surface of the water in the distance, his mouth open and gasping for airas he began to swim back to shore. He rose to his feet, the gentle waves swirling around him as hecarried several good-sized fish in his arms and dumped them on the rocky beach a few yards awayfrom me.

He was sopping wet and irritated as he pointed his finger to the sack he'd been carrying aroundduring our journey down the bluff and through the city.

“There's matches and kindling in there. Start a fire,” he commanded.

"Yes, sir,” I grumbled, watching as he knelt before the fish and chose his first meal.

I turned my gaze away before I witnessed him sucking the blood from a f*****g fish. That wassomething I didn't particularly care to see.

I started a small fire while Zeke did whatever he was currently doing behind me. Eventually, hedropped several pieces of driftwood next to me, sitting down with a long sigh of relief.

He'd dropped a fish in my lap, some creature I'd never seen before with pale pink flesh. I flayed it,laying it over a level piece of slate to roast above the embers.

“Thanks for leaving me some," I said, glancing at the pile of shriveled fish carcasses just visible in thedistance.

Zeke shrugged, closing his eyes and tilting his face to the sky as dusk receded and night bloomedover the tops of our heads. “You're welcome.”

I narrowed my eyes at him and popped a piece of fish into my mouth, chewing slowly. It had astrange flavor, slightly salty, but fish was fish.

“Why didn't you go with her?”

“Because it's a realm of daylight and sun. The boat wouldn't have moved if I'd stepped into it,anyway. I don't understand their magic, so don't ask."

"Okay..."

"And anyway, I need to return to Brune.”

"You're still taking me to the Vampire King, right?"

“I'm taking you as far as I can,” he said shortly, picking at the fish and putting a piece of it into hismouth.

"What do you need to do in Brune?" I asked, noticing his expression go hard as steel.

He eyed me, then looked away. “You ask a lot of questions—"

"You just seem like... I don't know, you'd rather do anything else but go home. How long have youbeen gone, anyway? Kiern and Costas didn't even mention that they had a son"

He flexed his jaw, grinding his teeth as I uttered Costas's name. Interesting.

"At least a century, maybe more. You lose track of time after a while.”

"And you don't get along with your dad?"

He clicked his tongue, his eyes meeting mine again with a silent nod.

“Well, he seemed fine to me," I murmured as I took another bite of the fish.

“He's just as bad as King Nikolas in many ways," Zeke said sharply.

I furrowed my brow, giving him a look of marked confusion. But that little flicker of unease I'd beenholding onto since leaving Brune flared across my skin.

"Why?"

“Did you make any deals with him?" Zeke asked, and I sucked in my breath before explaining hisdesires to open a portal and allow his army, and the armies of the pack lands, to work as oneagainst the Vampire King.

“But you didn't agree?" Zeke pressed, somewhat frantic.

“No, I didn't. My sole focus is getting my mate out of here.”

Zeke nodded, but then looked to the sack of bloodstones on my belt. “You should get rid of those.Throw them in the water.”

"Why?"

Before he could answer, a thundering cracking sounded above our heads, too loud and nearby tobe a storm. The ground trembled, and I turned to Zeke just as a light split the sky into two.

I almost screamed, but I gathered myself as something the size of a man fell from the sky and intothe water.

Zeke was panting and had covered his face with his hood from the light. We looked at each other,then out to the water as whatever, or whoever, had fallen from the sky resurfaced, coughingviolently.

"f**k me, that hurt," said a voice over the sound of the waves, and I jumped to my feet.

“No f*****g way," I whispered, shock numbing my body as I ran to the water's edge. “Oliver?”*Oliver*

Mom's letter was curt, and to the point. According to her, I was a hard-headed menace who didn'tcare about the repercussions of my actions. There was a war going on, for Goddess sake. Where thehell are you? So on, and so forth.

I folded the letter up and set it on the side table in the sparsely furnished bedroom I'd been living infor over a month now, tucked in the upper level of Gideon's house. I could hear Adrian and Abigailtalking in hushed voices next door, bickering about something. Adrian has just returned fromanother trek back to the camps outside of Breles for information on the current situation in the packlands. He'd returned with news about feuding Alpha's and bored warriors, and to my great surprise,a letter from my mother.

She was going to Winter Forest. My grandma, Rosalie, was still up there, tending to the refugeeswho had crossed the sea between Red lakes and the eastern continent. Clare, Sasha's mother, hadbeen one of them, and after a month of speculation and worry, Sasha and her mother were to finallybe reunited.

I knew something strange was going on in Winter Forest based on the wording of Mom's letter andher vague description of her itinerary. Aunt Hanna was going too; something was up.

“I know you're trying to replace Lena,” Mom's letter said toward the end. “But this is a journey sheneeds to go on by herself. She needs to replace out who she is, and what she's capable of."

The words stung, only because I was selfishly wondering why no one seemed to notice that I wasalso strange and powerful in my own right. I felt as though my parents had sheltered me the sameway Hanna and Rowan had sheltered Lena.

In all honestly, I wasn't too worried about Lena. She'd always been able to hold her own. I didn'tknow Xander well enough to form an opinion on his disappearance, but whatever had happened tothem had stopped the nightly attacks in the small villages dotted across the west. The portals to ourrealm had been closed.

Or so I thought.

“You better be in Breles when I get back,” Mom's letter concluded.

Sure, I thought dismally. We'd have to leave Gideon's house eventually. We'd been sitting here forweeks, looking for clues. There was no sign of Lena or Xander anywhere.

I decided to go on a walk as night fell, much to Adrian's chagrin. Gideon and his brothers were offon some errand, and Alma kept to herself in the kitchen most nights, preparing what would beanother delicious meal laced with blood root. I was getting used to the taste, and as I made my waydown the stairs and into the living room, I realized I'd never actually seen the stuff before.

Adrian said it grew like moss in the distant hills.

Well, I had nothing else to do. Maybe Alma would be nice to me if I brought some back for her.Maybe she'd even make those oatmeal cookies I liked.

I walked out into the night, my hands tucked in my pockets. I considered shifting, but was enjoyingthe cool night air on my skin too much to want to coat myself in fur. It was mid-February, and thefirst hints of spring were evident in the air. Mist clung to my feet as I walked in no particulardirection, just forward, toward the distant stars.

But then I felt it-a ripple of electricity spreading across my chest. I stopped walking and lookedaround, wondering if Abigail was coming up behind me. I only felt this way around her, and aftershe'd explained that she had a twin, it made a lot more sense, especially since now that unusualspark was tearing into my chest.

It was intense, like I was being pulled toward whatever was causing it. This was much more that thatlittle flare of heat toward Abigail.

This was it-my mate bond. And it was pulling me toward my mate, right at that moment.

My breath hitched in my throat as I walked forward into the misty darkness, unaware of whatdirection I was traveling in. I was too caught up in the feeling gripping my body, mind, and soul tosee how the sky seemed to contract in front of me, the stars hanging upside down, the air pulsatingwith energy.

I thought I heard a voice nearby, soft and feminine and lifted in laughter. It was her; it had to be-mymate.

I took a few more steps, then I was hit by a force I didn't have the words to describe. A panickedscream was ripped from my mouth as I was pulled apart, my body knitting itself back together inseconds as blackness consumed me, then spit me out, and then I was falling, and falling, and fallingWater-I'd fallen into water, and lots of it. I struggled to the surface, gasping for air as my headbreached the water and I opened my eyes.

Pure night.

“f**k me," I coughed, looking around. “That hurt.”

My eyes focused on a fire in the distance along a beach, and two shadowed figures rising from therocks, watching me.

“Oliver?”

"Xander?" I gaped, swallowing water and choking just as Xander ran toward the waves breakingagainst the beach.