Chapter 118
Amelia's POV
I wasn't fully well yet. I didn't need anyone to tell me how fragile I was, especially mentally after the incident. It had been a week and I hadn't seen my enemy at all, the one who had caused all of this. Sure, I rejoiced within me. I hoped that he would be gone for good. That the alpha had actually gotten rid of him, but I knew better.
Maybe he was the reason why I just couldn't help myself from feeling nervous at times. Maybe he was the reason for my fear in broad daylight, even though there was no obvious way for him to harm me any longer. Maybe he was the reason for my nightmares.
I thought about my latest dream. The sleep had been nice, peaceful, deeply restful, but only for a while. And then that's when it was over. I opened my eyes to see that I was in the car and the Alpha was driving slower than he should be. However, the dream came flooding back to me like a literal flood, and I couldn't just help but shudder. A movement I hoped the alpha wouldn't see, but something told me that he saw it all. Even though I didn't want to believe it, I took in a deep breath, making up my mind to act normally until I got back.
The dream, well it hadn't been scary, but apart from that, it had a piece of information that I couldn't help but wonder about. What if it was true? I went to the basement in that dream to a couple of relics that were about to be destroyed in the basement. They had been set out to be burned the next day, and there I found some information that I could never have dreamt of finding by myself. Some insight into what happened to my parents—the issue which the alpha hadn't provided any update on ever since.
I should trust him with it, I thought to myself. I chided myself for being so distrustful. I should trust him after he tried to save my life. I should let him tell me what he has figured out in his own good time. Maybe he is simply keeping it because of my current mental health, and he doesn't want me to be worried at all. He doesn't want to burden me with any further development. I told myself, yes, that had to be it.
However, despite all the things I told myself, despite all the reassurance and instructions I tried to make myself follow, I just couldn't help but feel like I needed to do this. I needed to go back as soon as possible, and only then would I figure out whether it was real or not. "It's nothing but a dream," I thought to myself, frowning as I tried to shake it off. I tried to forget about it, pretend I had never dreamt it, but it was just sort of impossible.
So I was unable to put it off any longer. It might have affected my actions, my way of talking to him and treating him. Even though I felt like everything was normal, his eyes—there was something about them. There was a way he looked at me that made me know that as much as I was trying to hide, I was playing open before him like a book, a large one for him to read into and figure out everything that was going on.
He offered for me to tell him what the dream was, but I declined politely. I told him it was just another one of my nightmares. I just wouldn't let him be that aware of it. He was staring at me now with a rigid expression.
"Are you sure I could help?" he asked.
"No, no thanks," I said. "I don't need help. I don't need you to worry about me anymore. The nightmares are getting less and less frequent," I reassured him. I knew that there was no way for him to confirm that statement, which was the reason why I felt rather relaxed despite my tense position as I took bite after bite of the bread in my hand, waiting for him to drop the issue.
"Right," he started, "but I think you should see the doctor once again. A couple of doctors for them to take a look at you and make sure that you never get nightmares again at all in your life," he insisted.
"I'm pretty sure no one has that kind of power," I interrupted, laughing. "Don't worry, I'm fine, and I don't need medical help. No, I don't want drugs to start piling up in my body and yielding adverse effects."
I watched his reaction with a mixture of satisfaction and glee. Adding a threat to my health as my reason was enough to shut him up, and for a while there, he looked flustered like it had already happened and I had some problem with my health. I was well aware by this point that he was attached to me. He was obsessive, he was possessive, and he was absolutely lovable and cute all at the same time, though sometimes it was just suffocating. As long as I could play with him like this once or twice, it was pretty much worth it. And of course, I didn't need to be overly obedient to him all the time. It would be too difficult for him to enforce that, and as long as he couldn't, well, I wouldn't. It should all work out well because he loved me. Or so he claims.
"Right then," he said, standing up all of a sudden.
I looked to see that my bread was gone already; somehow I had eaten it up and I had just been staring at him. A blush confounds on my face, something I try to hide, but the grin, the wide one he has on, tells me that he's already seen it.
"Let's go," he said, stepping into the car.
I looked around the place, a clearing in the middle of the forest. No guards, no technology, just the two of us and nature itself. He was very confident in his ability as alpha, in his strength to bring us here all by himself without any form of protection. It didn't even have to be people trying to kidnap us; wild animals, they too were a threat. But somehow his very presence must have repelled them because we hadn't been disturbed all the while.
"Thank you, Alpha," I started, while he was whisking me up into the car now.
I thought it was over, but then he planted a kiss on my cheek, one that brings the blush all over again. And this time keeps it up there with an inexplicable hitch throughout my entire body. He's grinning again like he knew what he did to me, like he likes it, as he started the car once again, heading home.
As he turned around, I think of the dream. A couple of minutes passed as I do so before finally we got there. After parting ways with him, which somehow took up to 10 minutes, I hurried off to the basement, well aware of what I might find, not hoping to see anything climactic but knowing that I might have no choice after all.
Go back, a voice tells me in my head. I almost agreed to it. What if there's actually something there? Do I want to see it? Do I want my trust of the alpha to start dwindling? Do I want anything to come between us? However, my feet just do their own thing as I move my way there, and soon I'm standing before a pile of rubbish to be disposed of the next day.
But there's something a little funny about it. How on earth was rubbish here when nobody was just obviously put down here by someone? Someone who didn't want to dispose of them the conventional way? A rising feeling of trepidation in my heart, I start going through them one by one. None is particularly murky or disgusting, so I didn't really have any qualms with it. Even if they were, I wouldn't have cared, my goal being able to trust the alpha without any reservations or finding out whatever he was hiding from me and knowing my position, where everything stood. It was paramount in my mind, and I wasn't letting anything come in the way of that.
I frowned at a couple of relics that I see at the bottom. My eyes glinted in the torchlight as I bring them out. A couple of them were artifacts. But the artifacts told a story. I knew without a doubt, once I had gathered a couple of them, that the moment I pieced them together, I would have a message. I would have the truth, at least to a large extent.
"Journals also," I thought. The alpha keeps journals? Or are they not for the alpha? How I wish I knew his handwriting, but I didn't, so I would just have to guess anyway. The information in it would provide me with a clue.
I continued searching until I had everything in place. Not a perfect picture, I knew even before I started trying to decipher it. But I also started getting excited with each passing minute as I tried to piece it all together. The journals were not from the alpha, I could tell now. The writing style, it wasn't from him. It wasn't the type I expected from someone who considered himself all-powerful. It was the writing of a limited individual, severely limited in his abilities and also simply trying to accomplish the orders required of him while staying away from the crossfire.
I raised up my head, frowning now as I have a bad feeling about all this. The alpha seemed to be the one orchestrating most of these things. I wasn't quite sure yet, and I wasn't sure if this information, the one in the journal, was authentic at all, but the relics, the little statues and the objects that could only have been found in my house, from my lineage—they were a reminder, they were a bullet point, something that told me that even if everything that I was reading through was a lie, there was an atom of truth in it. And that atom could shatter everything I've known, could destroy all the trust I have for the alpha and our relationship in general.