The Mate That Wasn't Mine novel Chapter 91

Chapter 91

Chapter 91

TESSA POV

Princess Hazel looks at me, hope blazing in her cornflower blue eyes. Eyes rendered bigger and brighter thanks to the strange bald, roughness of her head. “Well, what do you say?”

The pages of rebel nonsense thrust into my hands have a translated page stapled behind. Quickly flitting through I can see descriptions of different herbs, how long to boil down for, when to cool, press size, strength moderation. Everything.

No matter how excited the Princess appears to be, I don’t want to be her personal guinea pig.

But then a reset?

What if that is what I need? Swiping away that invisible barrier. I want to remember how it felt to first meet Maxim. To land in his lap and be wowed by him. Even how it felt to complete those horrendous looking suicide runs on the archery field. To compete and win.

“Well?”

“Maybe…but is there one for making a man stronger?”

“Why, what’s wrong with Maxim?” she asks, brow creasing. She’s very quick when she’s interested in something.

“Nothing,” I answer, hoping my cheeks do not burn up and reveal just how strongly I believe Maxim, my mate to be pretty much perfect. “No, it is just that the rebels we fought.. Maxim killed over a dozen on his own. But they decimate Ravenbows army?”

“Did he? Wow…” Hazel softens. “To save you?”

“Yes. All I remember is waking up surrounded by these men I didn’t know, then Maxim raining hellfire.”

“I love it,” the princess smiles. “I mean, to have someone care that much for you? To just believe in you…” and I watch her energy start to fade away, her quick expressive hands hanging listlessly upon her thighs.

“Can I ask what happened to you?”

“No. No you fucking can’t.”

Shit. Ice charges down my spine, naturally ducking my head down a little. So the bantering friendship clearly only extends to Maxim. Not me.

Hazel sighs. “Someone else can fill you in. It won’t matter for long.”

I blankly scramble for another topic, rifling through the pages.

“Let’s go then!” Hazel snaps, her brightness switched back on. Like the sidings of a railway track, randomly pulling levers in her own head, deciding when to be bright, when to be sad.

Neither version is quite real. The cold sensation in the pit of my stomach intensifies.

“Shall I leave you to get dressed then?”

Hazel looks down at her old, miserable formerly–white silk nightgown. “That, is a good idea.”

Before long Princess Hazel is imperial in a simple, pure white, seamless gown. Except she payses at the door and reaches for her damaged, tufted scalp.

“I can’t. No. 1…I can’t.”

I run back into her room and root around in her cupboard, bringing out a fur–trimmed winter cloak and hood. “Okay, this…this might work…thank you.” Swallowing deeply, she wraps the material around herself neck and head. Only a splash of pink lipstick deviates from her all–white appearance,

1/4

Chapter 91

To anyone glancing at her composed posture and tilted chin, they would see only a regal woman with dazzling eyes.

We keep our heads down, but it’s not like everyone cannot tell who we are anyway. I’m the flame haired rebel liar and she’s the shamed princess in

brilliant white.

There is no mistaking us for anyone else. But Hazel is out of her room and inside the Healers Hall. Only a few women work inside the cavernous, dusty

space.

“Who is in charge here?” Hazel chirps, brandishing her page of translations. “I have a recipe. Has Warden Bea’s replacement been named yet?”

“Are you not making it yourself?” I panic under my breath. “We shouldn’t be letting these recipes out into the open?”

Hazel narrows her eyes in thought. A student sprints forward, her bright green eyes and sharp black pixie cut hair eager and bright. She wears the same beige and gold uniform as myself, she must be a first year.

“Your Highness, I am ready to help! We have no official overseeing Warden yet though,” stretching out her hand for the sheet of paper.

To my relief Hazel flinches, straightening her shoulders and putting on a proud, haughty tone.

“Actually, no. I will head to the storeroom. Can you help Tessa prepare a work station. Burners, everything?”

“Of course. I’m Malva Kellett by the way. Ranked top. You might have heard of me-”

“I haven’t. But thank you for helping,”

Malva gives a wounded “Of course,” her keen smile unchanging until Hazel disappears around the corner when she turns to open a cupboard.

It’s quiet, like a rustle of wind but undeniable. “You bitch.”

I look around over my shoulder. There is no way she’s talking to me?

“I’m sorry?”

“You heard me.”

“Do we…I’m sorry do we know each other?”

The spiky Malva rolls her emerald eyes, slamming a wooden case full of glass test tubes onto the thick workbench.

“I watched your mute ass moping around for years. Thanks to your shitty, vile little family, my parents are dead. Our village has gone! So I have to stay here because I have nothing else left now! Nothing!”

“1-1 – That wasn’t anything to do with me!”

“Course it was! Luca Tamish wasn’t it? Your best friend? He steamed in after we left for Ravenbow. Then your parents vanished overnight. My mama wrote! So what the fuck were your awful, snakelike little family up to? Maybe YOU drove the Alpha mad. Maybe you were working for Donlon!”

My head is taking a beating. I must look pathetic, all wide eyed confusion and mouth hanging open.

This conversation is too strange, too impossible to reconcile. Malva bends down, resurfacing with a fat, marble pestle and mortar that she has to hump onto the bench.

I look past Malva, praying for Hazel to return.

But Malva’s green eyes are fierce. Dragonlike hate spitting out in the flickers of her bright irises. “You. You mute, frigid, boring cunt, have ended up with a powerful mate, connections to the Alpha. Everything. Everything. And you deserve none of it!”

I dodge as her hand swipes for me, her fingernails just catching my cheek. Then the other one grabs the pestle, and swings it clumsily like a cavemans club.

Chapter 91

I jump backwards with a shriek. All I can think to do is dodge. “I don’t remember you! I don’t!”

A snarl twists her face. “That’s no fucking excuse! He found you with Luca, that tells me everything I need to know!” giving it another swing the misses again but crashes through a large set of weighing scale balancers.

The other healers are watching but saying nothing.

As she prepares for another swing I remember Maxim earlier. I take the back of her head and slam it downwards into the workbench. “I DID NOTHING WRONG!”

“Fuck you,” Malva burbles, her nose bust. Hazel appears in the doorway, her arm full of various herbal pots and jars. Mouth open wide.

Malva stands up straight, wiping the blood from her nose. “Apologies, your Highness.”

Before Hazel can talk, I turn away. Then I run.

I don’t need this. I don’t want this. I ran from Ravenbow once before, maybe/w roughly brushing away any rogue tears.

right the first time. Trying not to attract attention I slow down to walk.

All I can hear is the word rebel. Paranoia sends me straight back to Block E. I remake our bed, dragging the mattress back up, before collapsing onto it, pulling the covers over my head and curling up small. It smells of oak and berries. He’s going to be so disappointed in me.

The door knocks and I ignore it. It knocks again, then a third time. Loud and insistent, “Who is it?”

“Warden Marshall.”

Shit. I roll out of the bed and open the door. Am I under arrest for Malva?

“Maxim asked me to get some history books for you. On your family? I was only in training myself when it happened but I do remember. So…if you have any questions-”

“I do. I’ve got about a thousand,” I blurt out, a spark of hope rising in my chest.

“Then can I suggest we take a walk?”

I pause, leaving the Warden stood at the threshold of the huge wooden door.

“Everyone thinks awful things about me. I didn’t do anything wrong. Or maybe I did and I can’t remember. But I don’t think I did anything wrong apart from falling for Maxim.”

“Why would that be wrong, you were mates?” Marshall asks and this time I really want the fucking ground to swallow me up.

Oh fuck. How have I gone and made things even worse.

Only for the blue–eyed warden to smirk, crinkling his eyes. “I didn’t say anything then, I won’t now. But please, walk with me now.”

With two heavy books under one arm Warden Marshall leads me away from the main drag of students. Past the infantry training, huge men with shoulders like bulls crashing into each other. In another section, wolves are tackling and pinning each other, going for the kill until a Warden hits a little

gong.

“These areas are for infantry but they rarely get used anymore,” he explains, gesturing at the overgrown grassy field we eventually find ourselves in. “Here, sit down,” gesturing to a log. “Have a read, before taking his own seat, drinking from a hip flask and silently contemplating the view ahead.

Heart thudding, I open the book and begin learning. Everything was documented. Their small, constantly moving little makeshift villages. Their excellent archery and tracing skills, having never really abandoned their hunter–gather roots.

There were even a few drawings. All of them with the same long coppery hair as myself, their dark eyes burning up at me from the pages. Then, the charts with their recorded numbers. Falling and falling. From a fully functioning clan, they shrank down to just a few outlaw families who refused to give

Up.

Chapter 91

My heart surged, aching when the formal execution plans were drawn up. The final entries cover the punishments for the Warden’s who let the wa family escape, plus the headcount being out by one. Then pages are removed.

Me. The untraced, last remnant of my hill–dwelling kind.

Wiping my eyes I give the final page another look. The punishment orders. There is a Marshall in there. “Wait…why were you punished ?*

He couldn’t see you and your family fall from the diff “I didn’t set them free. That was a Warden’s choice. He was my mentor, the man who shaped me. So he looked the other way and gave them a chance to make their way out. So I looked the other way too. It wasn’t what the Alpha wanted but it was the right thing to do, every single way I looked at it. I only wish you had ended up with better people.”

“So you met my real parents.”

“Only briefly.”

“Did they love me?”

“Oh goodness yes,” he murmurs. “Your aunts and uncles too. You were the family’s Contessa. You were their little queen. That was obvious. They were facing the cliff but they never stopped making you smile. Their worries did not show for a second. Very proud, noble people, I thought anyway.”

“Maxim said Wardens disliked me from the start-”

“That was the Darnell name. Known criminals to a few of us investigating the rebel uprising. I admit your appearance struck me but I never thought you could truly be the lost Wilder.”

I shut my eyes and pray, knowing that there are no memories, only the conjurings of a sad, grieving mind.

AD