Mated To The Alpha: A Standalone Wolf Shifter Romance, стр. 39
She moaned as she rolled over, trying to get her hands and knees under her and stand up against whomever had attacked her in the hot springs. She fell back over instead of standing up, her wrists and ankles tied firmly with some kind of leather straps.
"Kate. Kate, where are we? What happened?"
"Emma, I'm so sorry. I thought she only wanted to talk to you. I didn't know..."
"Kate. What the hell? Where are we?"
She tried to get up again, the sudden pain stabbing her head, clouding her vision, as she tried to make sense of where she was.
The cave.
The cave she'd found right before Elam had kissed her, right before they'd found out Thomas was dead.
The furs under her were soft, welcoming, and Emma was tempted to give up. She wanted nothing more than to lie back down in their softness, pull a skin over her and sleep until the world made sense again.
But she couldn't.
She realized that someone had hit her in the head. Hard. And someone, or a couple of someones, had obviously brought her here.
She tried to bring a hand to her head and feel out the damage, but she realized again that her wrists were tied tight.
If only she could hold a thought long enough to remember...
Emma shook her head to try and dislodge the cobwebs there, and was surprised to be rewarded with some relief. She felt a bit better. She realized that her wolf's blood was helping her heal faster that a normal human would. She was about to comment on that fact, but decided to keep that little bit of information to herself until she knew more about why she had been attacked and brought here.
"The hot springs." She started to speak. "You and I were talking. And then a voice said something about devil's spawn, and then nothing. Kate, what the hell happened?"
Ziva's voice rang out, answering her instead.
"I called you the devil's spawn, and then I hit you over the head, Emma. Are you really so stupid that you couldn't figure that out for yourself?"
"But why, Ziva? What is the point of all this? What do you want from me?"
"Why, your death, silly."
Kate's shout overpowered Emma's response.
"You liar! You said you just wanted to talk to her. When we saw her heading toward the hot springs, you said I should go ahead and join her, and you'd be along soon because you wanted to talk to her. Then you charged up out of nowhere, swinging a tree limb."
"Now Kate," Ziva said with a tired, put out sigh. "Would you have distracted her for me if I had told you I wanted to kill her? Is your generation slow as a whole, or is it just the two of you?"
Emma could feel the adrenaline flowing through her, and was starting to feel better by the second, but she still wanted to know why Ziva hated her so much that she wanted her dead.
"Ziva. What did I do, what did my mother do, that makes you hate us so much?"
"Your mother!" Ziva spat out the words, so full of hatred and viciousness that Emma had to bite her tongue, fighting to bite back a verbal defense before Ziva'd even finished her sentence.
"Your mother was never supposed to be Alpha. Thomas was supposed to be everything. He was supposed to save me from my fate, after Elam was born. Thomas didn't know, you see. He didn't know that Elam was really mine. No one here did. I'd walked away from that life, that curse. Thomas was my new start. We mated, and I got to start over, clean. He was supposed to become Alpha, give me a real son, and make me whole again. And then Reine won."
She spoke that last sentence, "And then Reine won," like the words filled her mouth with acid, and the thought alone was an abomination.
But Emma focused on the part she'd said almost in passing, like it was unimportant.
"Whoa, what are you talking about? Elam wasn't even born then. He was found in the woods a year or two later, his parents killed. He wasn't yours."
"Reine won, don't you see?" Ziva was focused, her mind and her words still intent on Reine.
"It had to be that devil's doing. I knew it immediately. Reine won, throwing everything out of whack, and then seconds later an injured wolf from my old pack bursts in, with news of my old pack's demise? I knew then that he was behind everything."
"Your pack's demise? He who? Ziva, are you insane? What devil? What are you talking about?"
Emma tried to keep up, but Ziva's words were too confusing.
"The one who raped me and left me carrying his seed. Elam was that seed. And you must be, too! He must have gotten to your mother as well, spawning you both! I knew it! I even asked her if it was so!"
Emma looked to Kate, confused.
Kate just looked back, wide eyed and terrified herself. There were no answers there, so Emma addressed Ziva again.
"Tell me, Ziva. Please. Tell me everything. If it is true, and I am what you say, it's my right to know."
"You have no rights!"
Ziva came at Emma then, spittle flying as she spoke.
"No one believed I was raped. They thought I was lying! They thought that because I was their slave that I was nothing! I can't kill Elam, he is too strong. I should have killed him when I killed his fake parents, but I couldn't find him, and then Thomas showed up with him, wanting to take the bastard in, of all the crazy things."
Emma had a quick thought about that being the least of the crazy before Ziva grabbed a hold of Emma's hair, yanking her head back so she could yell right into her face.
"But I can kill you! You're a half breed demon child who can't even shift! I bet even your devil