2. Betrayal

Chapter 2

Betrayal

NIKA

Aiden had always been a decent pack mate. Even knowing that one day the pack would be his, it never seemed to go to his head. I wondered how he was fairing as the Alpha, now that his father was gone. The transition of power happened about eight months ago, while I was away at school. With my family no longer able to pass along information about what was going on in the pack, I had no first-hand knowledge of how everything had gone since Aiden took over.

When I pulled into the pack's lands, there was only one place I wanted – no needed – to go and that was straight to my moon-blessed mate. The drive there was spent worrying over whether I could handle being the Luna in an Alpha coupling. Graduating college had been a dream, but it had only been the first step toward what I really wanted. Step two might be thwarted by my duties as the Alpha's mate. As scary as it was, even that wasn't enough to keep me from going directly to him.

When I got there, no one stopped me from entering the Alpha's domain. That was strange, as the previous Alpha required everyone visiting to be announced. Oddly enough, one of the sentries guarding the front door rolled his eyes before making a snide comment to his partner.

"I guess our Alpha doesn't have enough already. What's one more of our females, right?"

He ignored the querying look that I threw his way as I entered the heart of the Alpha's stately manner. It was a bit much for me, but then again, it always had been. My taste ran more toward the humble and natural than the overstated and dramatic. The marble flooring and gold filigree banister that wrapped around the stairs and led to the second level were what I considered a touch too far in the opulence department. The money spent on the extra bells and whistles in this place could have been put to better use amongst the pack.

It wasn't my place to decide those things though. Well, at least not until Aiden and I were mated on the next full moon. Truth be told, the mating ceremony was mostly pomp and circumstance, the minute we touched, the bond would snap into place, and he would know that we were moon-blessed mates.

Afterward, we only had to claim one another willingly. The bites that would seal the deal and leave our mark on one another, were the only formality. The mate claiming, normally a private affair for other pairings, would have to take place during a pack ceremony only because he was the Alpha, and I would become the Luna of the pack. It was important that the pack acknowledged and accepted my position. There might be challenges, but my wolf and I agreed that we could handle anything thrown at us.

Those were the thoughts that rolled around my mind when I opened the door to the throne room. Yes, there was a legitimate throne room where Aiden's parents used to sit to hear pack grievances. The layout of the house, and usage of the rooms within, weren't Aiden's or his father's fault though. Those things were all set in place long before, thanks to another generation of wolves who had a whole series of different beliefs.

Still, it was like stepping back into the past. The minute I looked up and really noticed what was going on, it truly felt as though I had been transported to a darker period in shifter history. I had only heard rumors of what the throne room used to be used for ages ago, when pack leaders chose harems to sit upon their throne and keep them entertained while their mate stayed out of sight and out of mind whelping their pups. That practice had been abolished several generations ago and set as an unbreakable rule in our pack by the former Alpha.

To my complete mortification, I realized that was no longer true as my intended mate sat on his throne amidst a harem of mostly undressed, and some fully nude, female shifters. There were six females in all. One knelt between Aiden's legs. Her head bobbed up and down on him in a rhythm that made it obvious what was happening. She didn't stop at hearing that another person had come into the room either, which meant what took place in the room was not an uncommon occurrence. As soon as the Alpha glanced up and saw me there, his face wiped free of the pleasured look and blanked out as he tapped the woman who still bobbed between his legs.

"Why did you suddenly go soft?" She asked. I knew that voice, even though it sounded a little rusty, no doubt thanks to what she had just been doing. Kyla and I had gone to school together. While I was busy with extra college courses she kept herself occupied with any of the males our age who didn't care to save themselves for their future mates. as he stood to greet me. I couldn't make my feet move any closer to the awful scene.

"Nika!" Aiden called out as he tucked his cock back into his pants and stood to greet me. His golden hair was teased up into short spikes on top of his head and his eyes glittered like the emeralds whose color they mimicked. "Welcome home. Are you here for winter break?"

The greeting didn't seem real when paired with the scene I had walked in on. Words were meant to come out of my mouth, but I couldn't remember what they were. What could I say? This wasn't exactly the welcome I expected. My visions certainly hadn't shown my mate surrounded by a harem of females from my pack. Had that been the case, I would have never returned to my pack at all.

"Nika?" Aiden questioned as I stood there still too stunned to form words.

"Aiden. Sorry, Alpha," my mumbled apology was quickly waved off.

"I've always been Aiden to you, no need for formalities now. You just got back for your break." He grinned again, and it never occurred to him that he was wrong. Shouldn't the Alpha of the pack know that I had graduated from university and was home? If nothing else, he should at least know that yesterday was my birthday, and I most likely had the mate dreams.

Before I left the pack, they used to celebrate every time a female shifter turned twenty. She was brought to the center of a pack meeting and showed off to everyone. Before she took her run, she would call out if her mate was within the pack and then they would run together. That was how it was supposed to happen. I would have been home for my own celebration had it not been for my confusing dreams that made me believe something would go wrong with my final transition. Instead, something was wrong with my mate.

"Not a break, I graduated." It physically hurt to get the words out around the lump of emotion that threatened to choke me.

"Graduated? College? How is that possible?" I ignored his question as my eyes continued to track the women - some of whom wore smug smirks on their faces. It was clear they were showing they held a favored position. "What brings you by today?" Aiden finally asked when I failed to answer his questions.

"I just got back." My answer was just as inane as the scene my poor brain repeatedly failed to process. Our pack did not allow harems any longer. There had been good reason to ban the practice. It caused too much strife and conflict amongst the male shifters who felt their females were being sullied needlessly. There was no need to even talk about the fact that many of the females hadn't been willing participants in the harems of the past. That didn't seem to be an issue with the women who lounged upon the dais where the Alpha and Luna's thrones sat. Kyla draped herself around the Luna's throne as I watched. She didn't climb into the seat, but the fact that her nude body hugged it possessively was enough of a message.

What no one ever addressed from those histories was how the harem affected the discarded mate. It was abuse, as she would feel pain every time her mate was with someone else. Many lost their minds, and sometimes their lives because of their mate's participation in the harems.

"And the first thing you did was to come here?" He asked me as a cocky grin spread across his face. It took a few minutes for his words to register beyond my thoughts.

I nodded my head stupidly, still unable to process just what was going on in the room. There had to be some other explanation because this was an abomination. A practice that Aiden's father himself had helped to do away with in other packs during his rule because he had seen how it nearly tore his own pack apart when his grandfather had been Alpha. That was something I thought Aiden and his father had agreed upon.

"The moon gave me a vision of my mate," I explained as my eyes continued to survey the scene.

"She did? You know you don't need my permission to seek him out." I could hear a hint of dishonesty in his tone. It wasn't that I need not obtain his permission. That was true. He knew that I was most likely his mate, though. His father had mentioned it many times through the years as we grew up together. Aiden wanted it to appear as if he thought I was there for someone else. Maybe it helped him to assuage his guilt for what I walked in on.

I shook my head again. "I came here to find my moon-blessed mate."

Aiden glanced around stupidly. "There are only the females and me here right now."

That time my head bounced up and down twice as I swallowed down my nerves. "I came to find you , since the moon instructed me that you were to be my mate."

"Me?" Aiden stopped his approach instantly. Then, as if to add insult to the already humiliating experience, he took two very solid steps back. Moments ago, his arms had been outstretched toward me in welcome, ready to pull me into a hug. They hung limply at his sides after he moved away and eyed me cautiously.

A crack formed on my heart at the picture he painted. My mate actively avoided the touch that would secure our bond in place while six naked, or nearly naked, females sat behind him. Some had looks of pity or worry on their faces, others still wore smug masks after they watched Aiden reject my words with his actions.

"Yes. You are to be my mate."

A couple of the women who were still perched along the raised dais, where the thrones sat, tittered at my proclamation, while the others glanced at one another nervously.

"I can taste the truth in the words you speak," Aiden whispered. Since everyone in the room happened to be shifters with supernatural hearing, that meant they all heard him and knew that I spoke the truth. Some of the tittering laughter then turned over to shocked gasps and even more worried glances as the doors on either side of the room opened and a few pack enforcers strolled inside.

I took another step forward, but to my complete horror, my mate backed away from me again.

"Nika, this news is a lot to take in, especially considering I'm only newly appointed as the Alpha of our pack."

"I'm sure it is a lot to take in, but that doesn't change the vision Selene gave me, or the path we must venture down."

Aiden glanced behind him at the women who waited there for him. A sick feeling settled into my belly as I noticed a longing desperation in his eyes that I did not see when he looked at me earlier.

The males of our pack, who had made their way into the throne room since my arrival, were on guard waiting to see what might transpire. Some of them seemed almost relieved at my reason for being there. Others, much like the few women on the dais, offered pitying looks to me and disappointment or scathing glares for their Alpha.

Aiden's brother joined them as we all stood there waiting to see what our Alpha would do with the information he was just given. In the meantime, we were steadily drawing a larger crowd in the throne room as word spread through the pack like wildfire. Their Luna had arrived. The question remained though, whether or not I wanted to be Luna to an Alpha with a harem. That was a simple answer. I did not.

Aiden chuckled lightly, though it sounded more like nervousness than it did lighthearted amusement. "The thing is, I haven't quite settled into my position yet, and I require more time to do so before adding the burden of a new Luna to my duties."

"Burden?" I hissed out the question. "A moon-blessed union between Alpha and Luna only works to strengthen a pack. How could that be a burden?" I asked, completely caught off guard that he would speak of our fated bond in such a cavalier manner.

"There are things…" He started to say before his attention turned back to the females who still lounged behind him, albeit a bit more uncomfortably, alongside the thrones.

"You see, there are certain rights that I have reestablished among the pack, and I can't partake in them if I'm already mated, especially in a moon-blessed union."

No. He couldn't be saying what I thought he was.

"You're rejecting our mating?" I asked in absolute horror.

"No. No. I'm merely putting it on hold for now. You know, so we can get to know one another better, and then…"

"Get to know one another better than what? I've known you my whole life, Aiden. My father was your father's Beta. We were brought up practically side-by-side in this place. What more is there to learn, exactly?"

"Well, listen, there's a place…" He started to speak again and then paused, almost as if he wasn't sure if what he was about to suggest was the right thing. My heart shriveled on the spot and fell straight down into a pit somewhere inside my stomach as he continued anyway. "Mirage Island," Aiden muttered to a myriad of shocked gasps around the room. Even the women of his harem paled significantly at the mention of the accursed place where rejected females were dumped to wait for the mate who rejected them to change their mind. Few knew it was also a place where second-chance mates could be found. My father made certain to tell me about it only because it was where his own father found his mate when it became clear that his original fated mate died prior to their bonding.

"You want to send me to the island of rejected mates while trying to tell me that you're not rejecting me?" I asked, my voice going a little shrill as I did so.

"Look, Nicky," he tried to offer half-hearted platitudes with arms out as if he were defenseless and blameless in the matter.

"It's Nika, and you damn well know you haven't forgotten my name, since you greeted me with it only moments ago. Don't try to distance yourself through falsehoods. Your lies stink up the room around you with their foul scent. Be the Alpha you claim to be and just get on with it." My words were scathing and cold in their delivery because I knew my fate would be sealed with the next thing he said.

Aiden couldn't hide the anger that my challenge caused. "Okay then. You're right. It is not our time to be paired yet. It will come, I'm sure. But you were supposed to be in university for four years. It takes four years to obtain a degree." He turned his greedy eyes back toward the harem of female shifters that were waiting for him.

"How about I have a harem of my own, and we both sow our wild oats? Considering some of those women are destined to be mated, or are already mated to other males in our pack, it's only fair that those males get to sample what's yours. Why should you be able to sample what belongs to them when they can't enjoy the same spoils?" I suggested, knowing full well that he was about to stew in his own hypocrisy.

Aiden laughed so hard he might have pissed himself. "Do you really think anyone in this pack would be stupid enough to touch what's mine?"

"See, that's the fun part. I'm not yours. You would have to touch me to pull the bond into place, and then have a true, mutual claiming for me to truly be yours. You just rejected that. You did it for them." I said as I pointed toward the women still seated behind him. "I hope they are worth it when your pack falls apart, and you lose everything as a result."

"You are mine because the moon has already blessed our union! There's no going back from that, Nika!"

It was my turn to laugh. "I will leave it to you to explain to Selene, our beloved Sky Goddess, why you rejected the mate she chose for you, so that you could play with your whores." I pointed at the women. "They are all beneath me in pack status and abilities. I can feel it and I know you can too. Everyone here can. All of them put together do not hold enough power to help you keep this pack together. Yet, you reject me, so that you can lie with them. What kind of Alpha would debase himself with weaker wolves, and put his pack's health in jeopardy, when his moon-blessed mate is standing in front of him?"

Aiden sighed and looked down on me as if I were a child. "I don't expect you to understand the old ways. You will go to Mirage Island and wait there until I am ready to come collect you. No other man will dare touch you because you belong to me. You will still be mine, but only when I'm ready for you."

"So, I'm to be imprisoned while you fuck around with multiple females, one of whom belongs to another wolf in our pack already from the scent of her? You expect me to respect you enough to agree to be your mate whenever you finally decide to come collect me?"

"Yes." His immediate answer made me dizzy with sickness, especially since he threw the weight of his Alpha power behind it. How could the man, who was supposed to be my moon-blessed mate, be so adamant about coveting other females in our pack above me? The respect and hope I had for Aiden and our union only moments ago died a horrible death at my intended mate's feet.

"What if I die on the island while waiting for you to show up and finally claim me?"

"That won't happen."

"How do you know? Have you ever been there? Do you know what dangers might be lurking?"

"I will make sure regular supplies are dropped in while you are there, so that you will always have enough to care for yourself."

"What if I drown in the waters and you no longer have a mate? What if one of the rogues comes and steals me away?" I laughed then because even if that happened, he could still track me down unless I died. "Didn't Alpha Trevor ever warn you about Alphas who don't take a mate? That's one of the reasons he outlawed the practice of harems in our pack because it discouraged Alphas from finding, or claiming, their mates. You already have yours standing before you, and yet you would toss me aside, and rub in my face that you have them and want to enjoy being with them first?"

He growled out an angry response then, but I wasn't done.

"What happens when you put me on that island, and I reject you because you are now filthy and untouchable in my eyes? You can't have a true mating with me unless I'm willing."

Avery, Aiden's second and his younger brother, stepped in then. "That is your Alpha you're speaking to!"

"And I am supposed to be his Luna, the next highest rank in this pack, and yet you allow that disrespect to go on while I am discarded like the bones from last week's kill." I pointed, once again, to the women who looked more and more uncomfortable with their positions as I spoke about what would happen.

Every pack member understood what happened to Alphas who refused to take a mate. Eventually, they went mad, and the pack's power base lessened, making them weak in every way. No one, no matter their desperation to climb beyond their station in life, wanted to be a part of a weak, ill-fated pack. Certainly, only the truly stupid and self-centered wanted to be the cause of the downfall of a pack.

Avery's wince told me that he understood even though there was nothing he was willing to do to overthrow his brother's rule. Apparently, his future Luna wasn't important enough to speak up for. He stood loyal to his brother, his Alpha, even as Aiden threatened to destroy the strength of their pack for the greedy delights of the flesh.

"Come on, let's go," Avery ordered as he took hold of my upper arm.

"Know this, Aiden Thornwin, I will never be a willing Luna to you if this is the choice you make now. If you do this, I will reject the bond – even if I must die to do it."

"No, you won't because this is the pack of your family, too. You would never forsake them."

"Did you forget so quickly? I did my duty and came to you when the moon herself guided me here. I don't have to forsake anything, that weight lies only on your shoulders now, with your choice." I glanced at the women then, most of whom finally, wisely appeared more worried than smug.

"I hope you enjoy your time with your Alpha before he can no longer feed you, secure the pack's borders, and grows too weak to hold his title, these lands, and your people safely."

One of the six started to cry and stood as if she might leave until Aiden barked out a command at her. "Sit down!"

"I have a pup to think of," she argued back in a quiet voice as she sat. I felt for her. She had come willingly to this charade though. Her bed had been made with that choice too. A couple generations removed was all it took for the women of the pack to forget what happened to an Alpha's harem when he was ousted from a pack for weakening their ranks. They were cast out, left to drift as lone wolves until they were taken, claimed against their will, or simply used up by rogues.

"Get her out of here!" Aiden demanded of Avery while he glared at me as though I was the one in the wrong. The bastard was really going to do it.

"What in the hell happened to the Aiden I used to know? Where did that man go? All I see is a selfish boy before me now, who is power hungry and allowing his greed to supersede the importance of what he must do for his pack." I spun on my heel and walked toward the doors, but before Avery could put a hand on me to guide us out of the throne room, I turned back one last time. "You have just doomed your pack."

"It is your pack too and you'll never allow that to happen."

I shook my head as I glanced around the room and made eye contact with everyone who stood there before I spoke. "With this rejection, I am being forced into exile on Mirage Island. That makes me part of their pack now. I no longer belong to this pack, nor do I belong to you. I hope your decision sits well with you, and your pack, as everything falls apart. You damned our union, the Sky Gods, and your own pack. And for what?"

I never did get an answer to that question because Avery pulled me free from the room before Aiden could explode in a vicious temper tantrum. I heard things being thrown and overturned in there, and while a small part of me worried for the safety of the females who were present, the other part knew that it was no longer my problem to be concerned for them.

They all should have known the consequences of what they were doing before they agreed to it. As power hungry as Aiden seemed to have grown in my absence, I knew one thing for sure, he would never force any of them to be with him. That was a decision they made on their own and they were left to live with the consequences of his actions