C H A P T E R 23

Valentina Dove Blackclaw

world around her seemed strange as she opens her eyes. The ice blue in her eyes looking up at a white brownish ceiling in confusion as she scans where she is. The last thing that Valentina had remembered was being in that room and after the pain that she went through she let out a scream and then the darkness pulled her into the deepest and creepiest depths of itself where she has stayed for a time that she doesn't know how long yet.

Her body is aching all over and the pain was intense but she does sit up on the most uncomfortable bed that she has ever laid on, though not as uncomfortable as the ground had been in the cell of the dungeon that she had been in for days with no end. This bed is most likely made out of steel or iron or anything that is hard but still not wood. It creaks when she sits up and as she looks around the small room that she is she feels this fear start to take over her.

She doesn't know where she is nor does she know how she got there. All she knows is the pain and the fear that is keeping her alert. Her sense can't feel her Mate anywhere so she is confident that he is not the cause of this yet even now her body is craving for him and wishing that she were with him. She longs to be in his arms and she longs for him to make her feel the way that he does and while he doesn't even know it, he has no clue what he does to her.

The room around her is so small that even the dungeon cell could be larger than this. The room carries mold and dirt everywhere and even cobwebs scattered around. It holds no furniture but a small table that has three legs but is holding together but a stick and duck tape, and the bed that she sits on. It doesn't have any windows and the light in the ceiling is flickering and will soon die. A horrid foul smell is in the room as she is in it and she wonders if this room is even safe to be in.

Though she doesn't have time to think about that as she looks at her body to see that her clothes have been changed and every wound that her body carries has been treated and bandaged professionally. Brining the golden haired girl even deeper into the confusion that had taken over her body. While she can still feel the pain that her body is going through, she can tell that it is much duller than it had been before. At least her memory serves her like that though it does confuses her as she can't recall ever being inside this room in her life.

An old wooden door opens and she gasps when she sees who walks inside. Her Alpha. The man that had murdered her father and taken his Alpha title away when he had died. He had left her and her mother to suffer and never cared much. The last time she saw him she was being taken away to be sold. She gives him a confused look but she is wary of him as she doesn't trust him. That man is someone that the ice blue-eyed girl has never truly trusted after he killed her father.

"I'm glad you're awake, we thought we had lost you" He says to her softly and she studies him. His face carries scars pink scars that will eventually fade to white and will forever stay there, those scars were never there when she last saw him. Like herself he had gone through suffering and he had gone through pain. How much? Valentina doesn't know and he doesn't want to know the pain that she has gone through, physical as well as mental. "Where are we?" She asks as her eyes are only on him. He closes the door and walks over to the bed and sits down.

She flinches and moves a bit from him. She doesn't remember that much of the last time they spoke but she can remember how he made some sort of promise to her. It all seems hazy to her. "Safe" He tells her but doesn't say anything more than that and she can tell that he's holding something back which does make her more wary of him now than she did before. Valentina's time with Vladimir has made her realize that anyone can attack you if you are vulnerable enough to them and they decide to strike.

"For our people safe is a word that can't be used anymore" She speaks to him a bit harshly then she had intended but doesn't matter because the fear inside her still holds her back from trusting him. Perhaps it is the fact that he did kill her father or the fact that her memory has a hard time remembering what had happened between the two of them in the horse wagon. After she watches her mother die, the world became dull and her memories aren't coming back to her. She had been so lost in her mind that time that she doesn't even remember the faces of the Vampires that had taken her away.

The Alpha watches her and though she can't tell what he's thinking, she can tell that he's thinking something. Judging her possibly or perhaps he feels sympathy for what had happened to her. "That may be correct but the that doesn't mean we aren't safe now" He tells her but she gives him a confused look. "I promised that I would find you and I did. I promised myself it would be sooner but finding you was the hardest part" He speaks.

She vaguely remembers him telling her that he would find her yet she can't remember the words that he has used. It was a couple of weeks ago and she was in a dark place at the time. "Why would you risk your life for me when you did not even care much for me when you murdered my father?" She asks him. Sounding rude which was not her intention at all yet can't help it as he is the one that had murdered her father and did nothing when she along with her mother were shunned and no one cared much for.

"Because I owe that to you. I owe you the explanation of my actions and I owe you my life. After what I did, it's the least I could do" He tells her. Her eyebrow furrow in confusion as she looks at him but she doesn't come closer to him on the bed as she does not trust him, not yet. "Your actions were clear. You wanted power and saw the perfect opportunity to get it so you did" She says to him with a glare. Her gives her a sad look, though he should've expected her to be this way with him.

Valentina is not going to forget the hell that she was put through when he murdered her father and the pain that followed right after it had happened. "I did not want the power. Believe it or not I was waiting for you to be ready to take the title" He finally tells her and the words that he speaks stun her as she can only stare at him with pure confusion. He lets out a sigh before he clears her throat and his eyes meet hers. "Your father wasn't the man you believe he was" He tells her.

"When he lost himself in madness I waited as long as I could for him to pass down the title to you so all of it would end but he never did and when he was about to do the thing that would doom us all, I had to take action. Killing my own friend in cold blood is the worst thing I have ever done and I regret it every single day but I had to. Because he was growing and with power and he wanted more" He tells her. Valentina shakes her head at his words.

Not believing a thing that he is telling her. She knew her father. He was kind and just and fair. The smile on his face each time he saw her or her mother. He loved them, not once did he show signs of madness. He gave her everything that she wanted and he was the perfect father. "You're lying. Just looking out for your own skin by spreading these lies about someone you don't know. He was nothing what you say him to have been" She says. The salty tears are forming in her eyes yet she refused to allow them to fall.

Not wanting to cry in front of him and showing her weakness where he would strike at her like he did her father. "For years he was slowly sinking to madness. He hid it well. Too well. I did not even want to believe it at first but it was happening and by the time that I realized it, it was far too late. He was already so gone. The greed and lust for power was all he wanted and it was not until I found out about it plans that I knew it had to stop. He had to be stopped" The Alpha speaks.

His soft eyes are looking at her and she doesn't know if he is telling the truth as her ice blue eyes are trying to look deep into his eyes to try to make sense of all of this. She can't believe it. Her heart can't take it. Valentina refuses to believe such lies about her own father. "Your father was a man that I had looked up at for years but the man he showed us was not the man that he was. Far from it. It saddens me to say it but he was mad" He tells her.

"He was an Alpha and as much as I tried to reason with him, he told me that I was beneath him and that I could not do anything even when I was a Beta. Your father practically told me that the only thing I could do was rise above to an Alpha to be able to hold any power over him. I knew that the only reason to become an Alpha was to challenge one or get it passed down. All the Alpha's would believe me asking to have their title an act of war so I only had one thing that I could do" He says.

"I had no choice. He had to be stopped and someone had to put an end to his madness. But, there was nothing that could have been done since he had everyone fooled. Even the two people that he lived with. He acted like the kind father when in reality his heart was black as a stone. Valentina, you have to believe me when I say that I wish there had been another way but there was not. If I had allowed him to go down the road he was going, we would've all died" He tells her.

She listens to his every word and while she doesn't know if she can believe him, there is something inside her that wants to. The golden haired girl looks at him with sorrow in her eyes and the salty tears finally rolling down her cheeks from losing the war inside her mind as she could not have fought any longer. Each word that he speaks hurts more than the last and her heart is paining as she is learning one truth about her father, though she doesn't know if it is the truth or not.

In fact she doesn't know anything at the moment, everything does confuse her and she doubts the things that she knew before and the things that he is telling her now. The bone chilling fear is also rushing through her entire body while she cannot stop it. "What did he do?" She asks him. Not knowing why but she must know what her father wanted to do and planned on doing that could've had them all killed if that even happened at all which she is still trying to decide.

He sighs as he takes her hand in his and holds it tight, for support or sympathy she doesn't know and doesn't care. His touch on her hand makes all of this real and it makes her know that she truly is here in this dirty old room that looks like it will fall apart at any given second. Valentina isn't with her Mate and she isn't in the castle, either castle that she has been to. She there with him somewhere in a place that she doesn't know which is but she is there. It's all real.

"Valentina. Your father wanted to go to war with the Vampires. A true war where both species would meet in the battlefield where hundreds if not thousands of lives would be lost on either side. That is what your father wanted and that is what he was planning to but I could not allow him. The Vampires would win either way and all of Werewolves would die" He tells her sadly and she gasps at his words and shakes her head. Not wanting to believe that her father would want war. The man that dedicated his life to insure peace but somehow she finds that his words are true.

The Alpha had allowed her to rest in the room, though sleep did not wish to find her at all. Her mind was confused and it was like in a thunderstorm. Every thought in her head was shut down by another one that came as fast as a lighting and the thoughts were blowing away in the wind in her mind but still they always came back to her. Refusing to want to leave her alone. Which brings her even deeper into the confusion and the fear that still doesn't want to leave.

The fear hangs over her like a darkened cloud that would soon rain and show no mercy to anything that is under it but even with the fear she finds herself making rational choices. She chose to be alone in the room and while still thinking of the words that he said to her she still tries to find away out of the room. Her body is still hurting and it will be some time before her foot will be able to walk as it was so badly hurt and she did lose a lot of blood inside her so she would have to stay in bed for some time.

However, that does not stop the thoughts and schemes of getting out there. Even more than before she needs to be in the arms of her Mate and she needs to allow him to make her feel better. He does that to her without even trying to and the Mate bond grows stronger. She can almost feel his pain and his suffering, though she is not sure if that is just her own suffering or his or perhaps both. The girl is lost in her mind and trapped in a room with no windows nor any way out to escape.

Sighing she sits up on the bed and looks around once again. The room is so old that she is sure that it would not take a lot to break down the walls yet the uncertainty of what lies behind the walls does prevent her from trying even when she is able to do it with ease. She has never been to the room before nor the place that she is at as her senses and the Wolf inside her doesn't know this place which does not narrow the places where she could be.

Far enough to not being able to reach out top her Mate, she is not sure if she would be able to even if she wanted to. The Mate bond is growing stronger but not that strong and when he is a Vampire she is unsure if it would even work. The Wolf inside her can't be left out to face whatever is out there for she is unable to shift into her Wolf at all. She wonders if she will ever be able to. There is a Wolf inside her and she can connect with it, only it doesn't want to be let out into the world.

Hours pass before the door opens again and he walks inside the room holding a tray of food for her but somehow all her body wants are strawberries. It might not be enough to keep her alive for long but she likes it when her Mate, when Vladimir feeds them to her and when he watches her eat them and she does like the taste of them. The Alpha brings her food that has all the nutrients that her body needs, especially when she barely has any meat left on her bones at all.

She smiles sadly to him as he puts the tray down on the bed and then turns to leave the room. "There was another way" Her voice rings when he was about to close the door behind him and he opens it again and goes inside, stunned and perhaps afraid, she doesn't know. "There was another way" She speaks again to him, clearer this time than she has said it before. Her ice blue eyes meet his eyes and she is unsure if he believes her or not but now she has a turn to speak to him as he has spoken to her before.

"If I had known of my father's... condition then I could've challenged him and no one would've died" She tells him with no emotion on her face. In truth she could've done it. She would not know if she were able to challenge her own father, perhaps if she were to know that it was the only thing that she could've done to save everyone that she loves, though even when he was the one that killed him, the two species are at war with each other and the Werewolves are not on the winning side.

He walks closer into the room and shakes his head. "I did not want to burden you with this because challenging your own parent is something that is both hurtful and difficult. Your father once told me that he had to duel his mother for the title and he was so ashamed of having to do it and he lost because of it. He did not want to hurt his own mother and she did not want to hurt her child. This situation was impossible and if you had done it, with your heart of gold, you would not have survived harming your own father. It had to be me" He tells her.

The bloodshed could've been avoided if she had done it but he does speak the truth. If Valentina had been the one that had to fight her father and hurt him until he submits to her and surrenders his title over to her, she is not sure she could've been able to handle that. The pain inside her heart that she would have to go through and the shame of hurting her own father. He had done it to spare her that kind of pain.

"Thank you" She whispers to him and with that he nods his head and walks out of the room, leaving her in the silence with the tray of food in front of her on the bed. Her stomach growling louder than a lion and her body weak and aching for the food that is in front of her yet somehow she doesn't know if she will be able to eat at all. After having learned about her father she has this disgust inside her, for him, for her family and for herself for some reason.

The longer that she is in that room the more she starts to slowly believe what he said to be the truth and perhaps it was the truth but perhaps not. However, she begins to recall the months before her father's death. He had been more on edge than normally. Though her mother and she herself and only blamed it on the stress for being Alpha is not always fun and the most joyful thing and sometimes he would stay in his office or in meetings for hours with no ends, sometimes even sacrificing a meal or two or even sleep.

Maybe. Just maybe he had been mad and acted as if he wasn't. Valentina feels this pain inside her when a sudden thought enters her mind that if her father had been mad for years, she wonders how of the time that he spent with her and his family was actually real and he enjoyed it. Shoving those thoughts deep down in her mind she picks up some food and slowly starts to eat it, but while her stomach wants food she is not sure she wants it nor does she know if she will be able to keep it inside her stomach.

Eating as slowly as she could she finally finished the food in a matter of an hour. It had taken her longer than she would've thought and there were times that she felt like throwing up the food in her stomach but thankfully she managed to keep it inside her body. Though, while she does feel slightly sick from beating, she does also feel herself start to grow stronger than she was before. Her mind has not stopped running with thoughts of this whole thing and now she doesn't know what to do next.

Valentina can either be with her Alpha and possibly reunite with people from her Pack and stay with them for the rest of her life or she can convince him to return to the castle for she needs to be with her Mate and she can tell that he needs her. He is changing, that she can tell. The way that he was gentle with her, he was not like that when they first met and over the time they were together he changed and perhaps she did too. She learned things about him that she could tell he had never said before out loud.

And she also said things to him that she would rather not speak about, though they have had their vulnerable moments together she wants those moments and she wants to be with him again. Be around him and have him around her. Perhaps that is the Wolf speaking inside her yet her feelings are clear to her and she is softly but surely falling in love with him. She can't tell how long until she falls completely yet the Mate bond does strengthen her love and show her that it is all right to love someone like him.