Mated To The Alpha: A Standalone Wolf Shifter Romance, стр. 40
Emma heard the words flying at her, but she didn't understand them. She was surprised to realize that Ziva didn't know that she could shift now. But that was the least of the surprises Ziva'd thrown at her.
When Ziva touched her, yanking her hair, she got quick flashes of what was running inside Ziva's head.
Her visions weren't clear, like when her mate Elam touched her, but she could 'see' some.
She 'saw' Ziva as a young, carefree child, before she was traded to the wolves. She 'saw' flashes of Ziva growing up as the den's slave. She wasn't mistreated, but she wasn't respected either. She was 'nothing'd.'
They barely acknowledged Ziva's existence, really. Unless they needed her for something.
Then Emma 'saw' a man come out of nowhere. He materialized like a mist in front of a probably twenty-year-old Ziva when she was alone in the woods.
He startled her, and then attacked her. He never spoke, and Emma could see the fear and the fight in Ziva, but she didn't stand a chance against the stranger. He took her, there, roughly on the forest floor, and then disappeared the same way he’d arrived.
When Ziva realized it was over, that the mist-man was gone, she got up and ran back to her den, crying and screaming, and Emma sensed that she'd lost an important piece of her sanity on that forest floor.
When she made it back to her den, and tried to tell the wolves what had happened, they didn't believe her. Worst of all, they didn't care.
And later, when Ziva realized that the mist-man's seed had taken root, she dealt with the whole thing by turning inside herself so deeply that she was almost able to pretend it hadn't happened. That she wasn't really pregnant.
Until the birth pains.
After the boy-child was born, Ziva wouldn't have anything to do with him. She wouldn't nurse, or even hold him. She spent a lot of time inside herself, unreachable.
The wolves eventually gave the child to a wet nurse and Ziva carried on as she had before, as the pack's slave.
Only changed. Unhinged.
When Thomas's wolf saw her at that joint pack meeting, and then later claimed her, she came out of her shell some, recognizing and responding to something in him.
Her pack let her go without even a goodbye, glad that a mating-crazed Alpha's son was so crazy for her that he didn't even notice she'd recently given birth.
Then suddenly the vision fast-forwarded to the challenge.
Ziva'd been convinced that Thomas would become Alpha, and as an Alpha's mate, she would be made whole again. He would give her a true son, and she would be saved.
The logic seemed kind of iffy to Emma, but as Emma 'watched,' she was also able to feel some of how Ziva felt, and she realized that Ziva was just barely holding on to her sanity, so the logic made perfect sense in her mind.
When Thomas lost to Reine, and then moments later a wounded wolf burst in, calling her new pack to action to go help her old pack, Ziva felt like the timing couldn't possibly be an accident.
Emma 'watched' as the strange wolf told everyone in Ziva's new pack that her old pack was being attacked by humans.
The entire pack ran off to help, but when they arrived at Ziva's old den it was obvious that no one had survived.
Ziva was happy though, because she'd never cared for them, and it seemed like her bastard son and his wet nurse must have also died in the attack.
She was thrilled that he was no more, but felt that she was still somehow cursed because Thomas lost to Reine.
Reine had somehow stolen her dream, her rightful life, and Ziva's unstable mind fixated on her.
Emma was concentrating, trying to 'see' more and more, to help her understand, but when Ziva let go of her hair and backed away, the connection was broken.
Emma tried to sort and settle all of the darkness and fear and rage she'd seen swirling in Ziva's mind as the visions spilled forth, but her attention was sharpened to a razor point when she heard Ziva calmly turn to Kate and say, "You are to take over for me, as Alpha's mate, so I need you to prove your loyalty to Galen, and to me. Kill her, Kate."
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"What? No!"
"You have to, don't you see? You're the Alpha's mate now. The responsibility of protecting this pack falls on you as much as it falls on Galen."
"Until the pack splits, Elam is Alpha. Emma is Alpha's mate. And besides, this doesn't even make sense. Why would I kill Emma? She's my friend."
"We won't have to split at all if you fix this, you idiot. Emma's death will kill Elam, and the entire pack can stay here, with Galen ruling, as it should be. Galen wants to go to the adjoining lands? Where I was a slave, and raped? To bow down to Elam and leave? Never! Don't you see? Killing her fixes everything."
Kate rushed over, putting herself between Emma and Ziva.
"I won't do it! If I had known what you were planning, I never would have helped you. You said you wanted to talk to her. I thought you wanted to apologize for how you acted when Elam became Alpha, and make up. I thought we were going to go to the pack meeting all together, as a united front, to help Elam and Galen split the pack on good terms."
Emma had forgotten about the pack meeting. She wondered how long she'd been