Chapter 3
The baseball bat had landed on my mother, but she acted like she didn’t feel it at all. She turned and stared Dante down.
“Dante, you’re wrong about Renna. Please stop hitting her. Just calm down and talk this through. If you keep going, you’ll regret it.”
“Regret? I regret not hitting her sooner. I should’ve slapped her the moment I saw that pregnancy report.”
“You think you can protect her? You’ve always told me to go easy on her. Why don’t you teach your daughter how to be a proper mate?”
“Today, I’ll do what’s right and punish both of you!”
He raised the baseball bat again and lashed out. My mom clung to me, using her body to shield me, enduring every brutal strike.
Her agonized screams tore through my heart.
I didn’t care about dignity anymore. To protect her, I dropped everything.
“Please, Dante. Stop. I’m begging you–stop hitting her.”
“I swear I didn’t sleep with anyone else.”
“Please, for the sake of our years together, stop hurting my mom.”
She couldn’t take much more.
But even as I begged, Dante didn’t stop.
“You’ve got the nerve to bring up our years together?” he shouted. “Haven’t I treated you well? You couldn’t give me a child, but I never pressured you. Even when my mom told me to sever our mate bond, I rejected. And this is how you repay me?”
After a few more hits, I felt Mom’s arms go limp around me.
Dante finally stopped, and she slumped like a rag doll.
My hand touched her back–it came away slick with blood.
I cried out.
“Mom! Mom, wake up! Please, wake up!”
Auto–added to the Library
She had passed out. No matter how I called, she didn’t respond.
Seeing this scene, Dante panicked.
He rushed over and checked her breathing. She was still alive, and he sighed in relief.
He carried her to the couch.
I spotted her purse on the coffee table, rushed over, and pulled out her phone to call the pack doctor.
But Dante lunged and snatched it from me.
“Who are you calling? Xander? I told you–he’s not coming.”
“I’m calling the pack doctor!” I yelled. “My mom’s unconscious! She needs to go to the hospital!”
“No calls!”
He raised the phone and smashed it to the ground. It shattered instantly.
“You must be calling your lover.”
“You’re insane!”
Tears streamed down my face. I slapped him with all my strength.
The slap sent him into another rage again.
“You dare hit me?!”
He raised his leg and aimed for my belly.
I moved quickly, shielding my stomach with my arms. His foot landed hard on my hands.
That pushed him even further over the edge.
“You’re protecting that baby? I loved
you so much, and this is what I get? You’d rather protect another man’s child
Dante’s boots came down again and again, crushing my hands under his heels.
The pain shot through me–my fingers felt about to snap.
”
“Stop! That’s enough!” a neighbor finally shouted from outside. “You’re going to kill her!”
Dante picked up an ashtray from the table and hurled it at him.
The
“Mind your own business!”
Most of the members in our old pack were elderly. None of them could match Dante’s strength. When they saw him completely unhinged, they scattered.
He turned back to me and kept kicking.
“Renna, of all people you could’ve slept with–why Xander? Don’t you know how much I hate Xander?”
Though Dante and Xander were once called friends, back during Alpha training, Xander constantly bullied him, forcing him to buy food, spreading rumors of him to She–wolves, and humiliating him.
He once turned off Dante’s alarm before an exam. He even stole his paper, and went around calling himself Dante’s father.
Dante’s own father, the former Alpha, had died young. That word, “father“, was a trigger for him.
He’d told Xander to stop many times, but he never did. On the day they finished training, they got into a huge fight.
Years later, after both had become Alphas, Dante’s pack suffered several rogue attacks.
The Alpha King doubted Dante’s ability to protect his pack and put him under evaluation.
Because of that, Xander was appointed as a temporary Alpha of Dante’s pack–constantly watching over him, even though Dante was the rightful Alpha.
To survive, Dante had no choice but to bow his head and live in fear. I understood how much he hated Xander.
But I couldn’t understand that since he hated Xander so much, why wasn’t he attacking him–instead, he was taking it out on me.
Was it because Xander was a man?
“What a coward,” my wolf growled inside me.
This the man kept claiming him love me. Now I finally saw him clearly.
I understood why my father had warned me that Dante might be a dangerous mate, a bully in his own den.
Pain dragged me back to reality. My hands were giving out.
I looked at Dante and asked, “Dante, if this baby really is yours, and you beat it to death, would you regret it?”
He roared with fury. “That’s impossible! I had a fertility test four years ago. My sperin is basically dead. I can’t have kids!”
“You–you got tested?!”
All these years without a child–he wasn’t the only one under pressure. I was too.
Aveline stared at my belly every day, forcing me to drink strange potions from witches.
Once, I nearly died from food poisoning. But Dante never told me he’d gotten fertility issue.
He’d known the whole time the problem wasn’t me–yet he still let his mother torture me.
Everything he said about loving me was a lie.
I felt my heart shatter. My strength gave out, and I let go of my belly.
His kick landed hard.
A sharp pain tore through me, followed by a warm rush of blood between my legs,
At that moment, Dante’s phone rang.
Chapter 3
He picked it up–it was from the pack doctor.
“Alpha Dante, we got the results. Luna Renna’s baby… is yours.”
Chapter 3
