Alpha Raphael's Second Chance Mate

NORA

There were people close by. I could pick up on their scent before anything else registered, their emotions pressing in on me from every side, their voices were faint,it's like they were coming from behind thick walls.

Whatever they were feeling was heavy enough that my body reacted to it even before my eyes opened.

I could feel their worry, their pain and hurt but surprisingly, I don't know who they are nor do I know where I am currently.

My body hits with surges of pain, the moment I move my hands.

I tried to move again,but all I got when I pushed through was more darkness.

I opened my mouth and nothing came out. I tried to reach for something, anything, just to show them I was still in here.

Nothing moved.

The blackness had me completely. There were no shapes, no light, no faces. Just voices floating somewhere above me that I could not get to no matter how hard I pushed.

"Why isn't she opening her eyes? What is going on with her? Doctor, talk to me." A deep masculine voice broke through the room.

And I tried to strain against whatever was holding me down, but I guess my body is too heavy to move. As much as I tried to understand what's going on, I don't have any ideas of what this is .

"Give her time. Right now she is in a coma." The doctor's response came through and the words landed somewhere in my chest.

Am I dying? Do they think I already have it? God, my pup. My baby. I cannot feel my child anywhere near me.

I was running. My body was on fire with pain and I was screaming and the people around me were not helping. They were laughing. Every face I could see belonged to someone who had spent years making sure I knew I was nothing. My feet kept going even as they shook under me.

I looked back and they were growning. The faster I ran the further behind I seemed to fall, like the ground was working against me, like no matter what I did they were always going to be closer than I could handle.

Then the ground disappeared from under me and I went down hard in a place so dark and so hidden I did not even know spaces like it existed.

I curled in on myself and shook and screamed for anyone and nothing came back.

"Mother. Father. Please." My voice cracked on every word and my legs would not stop trembling no matter how tightly I held myself.

"Running was pointless. We will finish what we came to do and send what is left of you back as a warning. Nobody is pulling you out of this." The voice that answered was male and it was full of something spiteful that even I couldn't understand.

I pressed myself further into the dark and prayed. I was not ready to go. Not like this. Not here. There was too much still unfinished and too many people who had walked away from what they did to me without any consequence at all. They took my pup. They threw me out like I was nothing. I was not done yet.

"Moon goddess, you move with the powerful and the chosen and you have left me behind at every turn. But I am telling you right now that I am not dying in this place." I whispered slowly with tears running down into my hair and their voices cutting through before I could finish.

"Track her scent. She could not have gone far. We are not walking out of here without her head. Alpha Kael and Lena will make sure we suffer if we come back empty handed."

So there it was. Kael and Lena. They already stripped everything from me and now they had sent people to make sure there was nothing left to strip.

I felt a surge of anger move through me at the thought of what they planned to do to me.

First they took my child, sent me out of the pack and now they want me dead, gone and forgotten?

"Moon goddess, I do not know if you have given up on me completely, but I'm not giving up on myself. Get me out of this darkness. Please." I said,as tears kept falling down from my eyes.

I was wallowing in the dark,when a light broke through and someone grabbed my hands and I screamed.

"No! Moon goddess!" My eyes flew open.

I was staring at a ceiling I did not recognise. A man in white clothes stood over me, his mouth moving slowly.

"You... you are... awa... awake..." He could barely get the words out properly. He stepped back from the bed and ran towards the door. "Alpha! She is awake!"

'Where exactly are we right now?' I pushed the question to my wolf, scanning the room again. Nothing about it was familiar. Not the walls. Not the smell. Not even the equipment surrounding me.

"Finally! Nora, you scared our mate half to death. He did not leave this place all night, not once, not for anything!" My wolf was going in my head, all worked up and loud.

What the hell happened to me? Where am I? This is not Kael's pack. This is not anywhere I have ever been before. And my pup. Damn it. My baby.

The thought hit me so hard that I was already moving before I had made the decision to move. I sat up and looked down at my hands and there were needles in them, tubes running from my skin to bags hanging beside the bed.

I pulled them out.

Both of them.

I hurriedly,stood to my feet and headed towards the door, without any hesitation and the blood running from my hands had not even registered yet when the doorway filled up.

He was just standing there.

I stopped when I saw him.

His build.

His eyes.

The way he glared at him,I couldn't help but stare, with my heart beating so fast.

Everything about him hit me at the same time and my wolf lost her mind completely, spinning and crying in my head like she had been waiting for exactly this moment and could not contain herself now that it had arrived.

"This is our mate, Nora. He stayed up all night just watching over you. Look at him." She would not stop.

The room was tense and quiet and he was staring at me and I was staring at him and I did not understand what was happening in my own chest.

"Your hands are bleeding." His voice came out deep and cold.

Slowly,he moved toward me and the doctor came rushing in from behind him at the same time.

"You should not be off that bed before I clear you. What the hell are you doing?" The doctor asked, a bit angry .

" It's okay, I will walk her back to the bed"The man, who happened to be my mate, mutters slowly.

His deep voice caused my wolf to spine .

My wolf had gone from spinning to full celebration in my head and I could not make her stop. I stood there and looked at this man and could not fully explain why my heart was doing what it was doing.

I watched him , walked up to me and picked me up,then carried me back to the bed like the decision had already been made and there was nothing to discuss about it.

He laid me down and the doctor came in and reinserted the cannula and the whole time this man stood beside the bed and kept his eyes on me with an expression that I could not understand. The way he looked at me I don't know if it's with care or coldness .

His eyes were a dark caramel.

His hair was neat and coiled close and his shoulders were broad and he was taking up space in the room without doing anything to take up space and I caught myself looking longer than I meant to and looked away.

"Luna, how are you feeling? Has anything improved?" The doctor asked, looking between me and his clipboard.

I blinked.

Luna.

"Hold on." I sat up and my eyes went straight to the small blade sitting on the table beside the bed. My hand was on it before I finished the thought and then I was on my feet again pointing it at the doctor,who put both hands up immediately.

"Who are you? Where am I? And why did you just call me Luna? This is not Kael's pack." My voice came out louder than I planned.

The man with the dark eyes sighed once again.

"You have been in this hospital for several days. I came across you in the forest and you were unconscious with people chasing after you. Put the knife down. He has not done anything to you and you are not healed enough to be doing this right now."He explained to me, coldly.

He chooses his words carefully, I was staring at him with desires, when it hit me hard that I had just lost my pup.

"My pup." The words left my mouth before everything else and the knife dropped and my legs went off,he was already there catching me before the floor came up.

"Take it easy. You need more rest before you go anywhere." He steadied me, his scent came off him close as I went completely still in his arms because I had smelled that before.

I don't think it's recent.

I couldn't place where and when in my memory. But somewhere. Somehow. That scent had been on me before and I did not know when or how or what it meant.

"We will find them. You just have to get better first and then tell me exactly what happened and how all of this started."