121

121

Amelia's POV

I couldn't get his words out of my mind. They lingered long after he had spoken there. We all stood there in silence in the passageway. The alpha frozen and writer himself looking like he had made a mistake.

"I'm sorry," he started, turning around quickly, his face red as a tomato. I couldn't find any words as he muttered a couple of more things to the both of us before disappearing just as swiftly as he had appeared.

If I didn't know better, I would think that none of what he said was true and everything was just to make me complicated about the alpha. I would have thought that he was simply trying to divide us and destroy our relationship. I knew that my car wouldn't do that with some lies; even if he was against us, he would be coming at us with nothing but the pure truth. Also circumstances, the various cryptic messages and signs that were everywhere for me to see were proof enough that this issue was serious, and I knew without a doubt that Riker was Alright. The Alpha's reaction also confirmed it, and that only served to add to my disorientation.

I took one small step forward, but the Alpha was bounding up towards me now.

"Hey, hey, wait up," he called, but I could hardly hear him.

"Wait up," he called again, reaching me now and holding me to stop us from moving further.

I tried to turn to him. "What do you want?" I questioned, my eyes lifeless.

He opened his mouth but closed it again, his eyes suggesting the way a million things he had to say but he didn't know what to start. He didn't know how to start tackling the issue.

"You knew about all this," I said. "You know, I know of course. Jerome truly is in his relationship with you, but you decided not to tell me anything. Even more, our deal was for you to investigate the issues concerning my parents' death," I told him slowly because that was stuck in my chest, pouring out but not without some pain.

I told him that I couldn't keep him any longer. He barked at my occupation, looking like he would rather be anywhere else but here right now. For a while, I thought he was going to turn around and leave without texting me, but then his book, "It is to protect you."

"Protect?" I repeated after, my voice cold as ice. I could hardly believe what he was telling me. I didn't know if I wanted this conversation to continue.

"To protect me?" I questioned once again.

He seemed uncertain now. "Well, wait. There are a couple of other reasons," he started.

"I can't explain," but I shook my head simply and turned around once again.

Before I had taken a couple of steps, he was with me again, not stopping me, took my room back, holding my hand.

"Please, I want to be alone for now," I said, wondering what it would take for him to get a hint. He had done so much already. How much more damage did he want to cause? Would he restrain me physically now after everything? Was he not sorry at all?

He seemed to recognize that this was the time for him to let go. Finally, he found Elitsu. "I'm sorry," he said.

But sorry didn't cut it. Well, it might have made a bigger difference if he had told me that from the beginning, instead of coming into that sorry excuse. But right now, it didn't even matter. I took his apology as a sign that he would let me go. So I gently removed his hands from mine and started walking away.

Mr. Marang, he didn't call me back or try to stop me. But the silence, him leaving me to myself and my depressing thoughts, were another source of pain for me. I could hardly believe my ears as everything replayed. My mind just kept on reliving the moment of revelation.

Sure, the people who revealed it to me were not the ones with my best interest at heart, but I couldn't help but wonder right now if it was better to have enemies who would tell me the truth than friends who would keep it hidden. For all I knew, the alpha was in a league with his uncle and had collaborated one way or the other. If not, why would he try to hide it?

Sure, it would hinder our relationship, but right now there were so many uncertainties, too many things I can't get explaining. But if he actually thought that I was going to come to him for the explanations, that it would be him I would ask to get it from his own point of view, then he was badly mistaken, because no, not ever. I wouldn't trust him with this.

I stopped at my room door, finding the place rather foreign this time around. I needed a place to comfort myself, a place of solace. Solace after the troubles of the day. This room provided by him, well, I couldn't either call it what I needed right now. However, left without the choice, I simply entered and closed the door.

My brooding lasted for another couple of hours, maybe even weeks, because that's how long it felt. I just couldn't bring myself to do anything. I could think, and the thinking, I knew, was destructive for me. Yet I couldn't help myself.

Finally, I made up my mind that I had had enough of the thinking and depression. I had already been depressed just now more than I had my entire life, and that was more than I should have. I started pacing around my room, deciding that it was good for me to find something to do, in case it could somehow make me more determined to do something better with my time and to move past this phase quickly as possible without letting it take too much of a toll on me.

It's not over yet; it's only just beginning, and I can't let myself sit on the wall and do nothing. There were a lot of things that needed answers, yes. But the answers weren't going to come by themselves, and I wasn't about to depend on the tricky alpha to give me what I needed.

I knew that I would need to take matters into my own hands, and I would need to figure out the secrets he was supposed to find out for me—why on earth things had happened the way they had and how my parents had died. It was his promise and an alpha's promise also. So he was supposed to fulfill it, but it turned out that he didn't.

Could I blame him? Should I continue dwelling on it? No, I was going to take it up by myself and get justice. He is definitely involved one way or another, I thought, making a plan, and the moment I thought totally defied. It became much more easy for me to plan and map out my course of action. It became much more easy within just a couple of minutes' time for me to stop feeling hurt, for me to no longer want to break down until I before thought of how much I didn't know, and how the album had an idea such important things for me, the one person that I had grown to trust so much.

"It's fine if he wants to do it like this," I hope to myself, "but he's going to pay the price."

I close my eyes, and when I open them back to see where the alpha was supposed to be with an enemy, someone that I was supposed to try not against. After using a lot of effort, now I wasn't quite sure if that vision of him could last, but one thing was for sure, it was only when I thought about it that way that I finally started feeling much more confident in myself, and only now was I no longer feeling so weak and helpless.

Well, if he needs to get to the level of an enemy for me, if our relationship has to be so strange for me to survive, then it would be just like that, I thought to myself. I wasn't about to take any nonsense. I think he thought that he was going to do things this way, that he was absolutely fine. I would put money, and I would do what I had to do in order to ensure that I wasn't some puppet or a pawn in someone else's game. I will be my own person, and I will win in the end no matter what players were.

With that thought in mind, I walked up to my door before stopping and heading for the bathroom instead. I would take a bath and wash away all traces of weakness because I wasn't to it anymore. I was strong and I was ready. Ready to fight.