My Fated Mate Can Have Her-Chapter 160: Predator

Palisa

The air inside the building was stale and thick with the smell of mildew.

Try as they might to adorn the place as much as they could, it did not get rid of the rotten stench that chased me out of the ugly family home. The outside air hit me immediately. Crisp and clean compared to the stagnant atmosphere inside.

I drew in a slow breath, letting it cleanse the stench of poverty from my lungs.

The family stood outside, right by the door.

Two adults and one younger male standing side by side, their bodies pressed close as if proximity might offer them any protection.

Violet’s family.

The father’s hands trembled at his sides. The mother’s fingers dug into her son’s arm hard enough to leave marks, her eyes wide and unblinking as she stared at me.

The man too had dark hair and grey eyes.

But that was where the similarities ended. The girl looked nothing like him.

Nothing like any of them.

Pathetic.

These people...

If they had never given birth to her, I would not be standing here in this wretched place, and wasting my time on creatures beneath my notice.

The father’s breathing grew more ragged. Sweat beaded on his forehead despite the cool morning air.

Maybe the girl resembled the grandmother instead?

But the common wolves did not keep paintings of one another.

My irritation simmered beneath a carefully controlled surface.

This had been a waste.

The family home had offered nothing. No insight. No advantage. Just the pitiful sight of wolves trembling before me like prey animals who had forgotten how to run.

I didn’t bother speaking to them.

There was nothing they could say that would interest me.

I turned without a word, the hem of my coat nearly brushing against the ground as I turned to my foolish guide.

The brainless Alpha stood several paces away, his posture uncertain. Behind him, the rest of Shadowpine’s territory stretched out in patches of fresh grass and scattered buildings that also filled the surrounding trees.

"Why," I quietly asked the dimwit, "did you bring me to her parents’ house?"

He blinked, his mouth opening slightly like a muted fish. "You said—"

"I said..." He seemed to shrink as I walked up to him, towering over the measly runt. "I wanted to see where she used to live. Not where the dratted bitch was born."

He flinched, stepping back. "My—"

"Fool," I spat, still standing where I was. "She was cast out of this place as a child. How am I supposed to learn anything about her when her belongings aren’t even here. Take me to where she spent the later years of her life. Now."

He started moving and I followed.

Six hundred and thirty-seven years.

That was how long I had walked this world while others withered and died around me like falling leaves.

Far longer than any wolf should live.

But I had learned long ago that nature’s rules were suggestions, not absolutes.

Consuming my children had been unpleasant at first. The warmth of their small bodies growing cold in my arms. The way their trust turned to terror in those final moments until doing it while they were still infants became the most viable option. The metallic taste of their essence as I drew it into myself, extending my life at the cost of theirs.

But necessity had dulled the discomfort over the centuries.

Each child I bore and devoured bought me decades, gave me time to advance my abilities, and enhanced the sharpness of my senses.

A simple exchange.

My most recent daughter had been an anomaly. A mirror image staring back at me with my own face.

So I had kept her.

She was very useful, particularly for moments like this.

Those stubborn bastards. Who were they to come into my own domain and place me under suspension like they were caging some common criminal?

Did they really think a few stones and some pretty words about reflection and consequences could contain me?

I could sire those brats a thousand times over.

None of them had been alive when those Lycans were slaughtered.

I had watched forests burn. Heard the screams echo through valleys, and witnessed their blood soak into soils that would never forget.

I had the dutiful daughter of the Supreme Alpha doing his due diligence to cleanse the world of those vermin.

And in the aftermath, when the Lycans lay dead or dying, I had taken what I needed from their flesh.

Their bodies had taught me secrets. Their blood had numerous possibilities, and their very essence, I properly extracted and applied it to myself, showing me how to exceed the natural limitations of my abilities.

And now one had appeared again.

Young. Untrained. Powerful.

Perfect.

I frowned as I thought back to that moment.

The way she had forced the truth from my lips before hundreds of witnesses.

That measly little girl had humiliated me.

She would pay for that.

With every single moment of her life.

We arrived at a structure even more isolated than the pack than I had expected.

A hut squatted at the edge of the settlement, its walls weathered and sagging. The thatched roof had holes that could easily let in the rain, and the door hung crooked on its hinges, gaps visible around the frame.

"This is where she lived," the Alpha boy talked, "After her grandmother died nearly a decade ago."

I stepped inside.

The smell hit me first. Dust, decay and something else. The scent of a place where hope had gone to die.

The single room was barely large enough to freely turn around in. An almost thin pallet that pitifully resembled a bed lay in one corner, its blanket threadbare and stained. A crude shelf held a few chipped dishes. Cobwebs stretched across the corners, swaying gently in the draft that came through the walls.

"She... she doesn’t smell the same as before," he said from the doorway. "Something’s different about her scent now."

"Be quiet!" I hissed without sparing a glance back at him.