Alpha's Cursed Mate novel Chapter 35

Estelle's POV

"What are you doing here?" I asked the man in front of me.

"You can't hurt yourself." Lance sat on the edge of my bed retrieving his pocket knife into his coat pocket.

"So what am I supposed to do? Walk out the door and get killed by vampire-hating werewolves?"

"No one knows you're a vampire except for a few of us. And when I find the murderer, there's no need to keep your identity hidden."

"Even if they know I don't know about the murderer, then I'm still a vampire. I've never heard of that vampire being liked by a werewolf."

"Listen to me." Lance pulls me out of the corner as he pushes the hair out of my face behind my ears. "None of this has been easy, I can understand you."

Lance still carried the scent of the cold night air and he did not look well. I hadn't probed his spirits at all in the past few days.

I took his hand away from my face "Can you understand me? I'm a monster, you should have killed me a long time ago."

"But I gave up, and do you know why?"

"Because I don't have a wolf."

"Yes, but not just out of sympathy."

I hunkered down in a corner of the bed, as far away from Lance as I could get. "I don't know what we have to talk about. I'm a half-blood vampire and you're the Alpha of the wolf pack."

"If I had a choice, I would never want to be this Alpha." Lance's eyes became sad and he took a deep breath. "Do you know how my mother died? It wasn't an accident, I saw my father kill her with my own eyes."

"..." Ethan and I talked about this, but I didn't think Lance had witnessed it.

"My father committed suicide not long after he killed the mate he loved so much." A hint of pain came from the mate link "He warned me before he killed himself that he must keep my wolf under control. So since then, I've never let Balder out."

This is the past he does not want to mention, and in the face of his pain, my capricious behavior brings me a touch of shame.

"Do you want to know what the Clifford family curse really is? I can tell you right now. The people in our family didn't die from the curse, and there were no accidents. Most of them were killed by their own people."

This is their family's darkest secret, the screening mechanism of an ancient bloodline. Carriers without the ability to become superior genes are purged from the family. Brutality and killing is something that runs in their blood, and they can't control their ability to do so.

"Powerfulness always comes with instability. My father was the best child in the family, and his brothers were 'purged' from the family. So the children we leave behind in our family will be more powerful and unstable, and I am that child." Lance's fingers squeezed his cufflinks, a pair of delicate silver irises.

"I'm the real 'monster', and the rumors about me from the outside world don't count for anything. Do you know how much I hate my family and my lineage? I'm going to watch my brothers who aren't 'good enough' get purged, and I'm going to watch my father lose control and kill my mother and then kill himself in front of me."

Lance's deep blue eyes were wrapped in a thick darkness, he had seen too many people die. My chest was stagnant with his pain and I couldn't breathe.

"I hated my destiny as much as you do now. So much so that when I found out about the MATE Destiny gave me, my first reaction was to kill her."

"Or you gave up." I said to him.

"Yes, because you didn't have to be a part of my sad fate. Until you got caught up in it and I had to force you back to my wolf pack. But this fucked up fate led me to meet you, which is almost one of the few good things in my life."

"A half-blood vampire MATE, I don't think that's a good thing."