The Traitor's Daughter

Alpha Vander's POV

*A psychopath?* The word echoes in the quiet space of the bedroom. I stare down at the small, furious woman standing on the opposite side of the mattress. Stunned. No one in my life has ever been brave enough, or foolish enough, to call me that to my face. Not my greatest rivals, not the members of my own pack, and certainly not the fated mate I just pulled out of the woods.

“Yes! That’s exactly what you are. A fucking psychopath!” Fallon spits the venomous words at me. Her chest heaves with every ragged breath, stretching the fabric of her filthy shirt. Her wide grey eyes flash with a deep, profound hatred. It is a hatred that I know without a doubt is fueled by her mother’s lifelong lies.

I grind my teeth together, fighting to keep my cool. The muscles in my jaw jump. I genuinely never wanted my mate to fear me. I did not want her to hate my guts. But her mother had done a phenomenal job over the years. She had poisoned her daughter's mind against me, twisting the narrative until I was nothing but a bloodthirsty monster hunting them in the dark.

"I saved you from that Rogue, Fallon," I fire back, taking a step forward. I force her to confront the brutal reality of what would have happened to her in the forest if I had not intervened. "Do you have any idea what he would have done? He would not have killed you quickly. He would have snapped off a limb. Just a little at a time. A finger. A thumb. Maybe your hand. He would have eaten you alive while you screamed. Would you rather I let that happen to you?!"

Fallon snaps her mouth shut. She sharply looks away, her gaze dropping to the heavy wooden floorboards. She falls into a stubborn, heavy silence. The fight doesn't leave her rigid posture, but the harsh truth of my words pins her in place.

I let out a long, exhausted sigh. The protective anger drains out of my blood. I move to the edge of the large bed and sit down. The mattress dips under my massive frame. I rest my forearms on my thighs, looking up at her tense form.

"I don’t think you know anything about me," I mutter quietly. My tone shifts, dropping the heavy Alpha command. I need her to listen to me now. "I will let you ask me one question and I will tell you exactly what happened. I will let you feel the truth."

Fallon snaps her head up. She tilts her head to the side, her brow furrowing in deep confusion.

To prove my honesty, I close my eyes for a fraction of a second. I lower the heavy mental walls I have kept reinforced since the moment I carried her into this territory. I promise myself not to block our mental mate connection. I push my raw emotions—my frustration, my desperate need to protect her, my sincerity—straight across the bond to her mind. I let the warm, heavy pressure of our fated connection wash over the room.

She gasps. Her eyes widen as the sudden rush of my unblocked emotions hits her system.

She jumps to her feet. Her posture shifts into something frantic, desperate, and defensive. She eyes me like a cornered animal waiting for the trap to snap shut.

"Why did you kill my Dad?"

The question hangs in the air, thick and suffocating. The truth is heavy. I have carried it on my shoulders for years. But it has to be said out loud. She needs to know the reality of her bloodline.

"Your father was the one who killed your Alpha," I state clearly, my voice steady in the quiet room. "That man happened to be my father. Your father betrayed his own pack."

Fallon freezes. Her breath hitches in her throat.

I don't give her a chance to interrupt. The floodgates are open now. "The exact moment I became the Alpha King, my senses locked onto you. I knew instantly you were my mate. Even though I was almost ten years older than you, I had to quickly find a way to protect you. If the pack found out what your father did, they would have slaughtered you as a traitor’s daughter. You were just a child."

"You’re lying," she whispers. Her voice shakes with pure denial. The color drains from her face. Total panic sets into her bones.

She lunges at me. Her small hands hit my broad shoulders with unexpected force. Her fingers curl into the fabric of my shirt. She desperately tries to physically shove me off the edge of the bed. She pushes with all her might, gritting her teeth, fighting against a truth that is tearing her reality apart piece by piece.

My massive frame doesn't budge an inch. I sit there, letting her hit me, letting her push against my chest.

When she realizes she cannot move me, she lets out a piercing, high-pitched scream. It tears from her throat, raw and agonizing, bouncing off the bedroom walls.

Through the unblocked mate bond, I force her to biologically feel the undeniable truth of my words. I push the cold, hard facts through our connection. She feels my lack of deception. She feels the heavy sorrow of losing my father to a traitor's blade, and the frantic desperation I felt trying to save my young mate all those years ago. The truth crashes into her mind, shattering her years of carefully constructed denial.

Her hands slip from my shoulders. Thick tears stream down her flushed face.

"If I had marked you that night, you would have been saved," I tell her softly. "You would never have had to spend your whole life running like a stray. Your father and your mother selfishly put your young life at massive risk. They forced you into a grueling lifetime of running from rival packs."

She pulls away from the bed, stumbling backward.

"If any of those packs knew the bloodline you came from," I continue, holding her gaze, "they would have wiped out your entire disgraced bloodline without a second thought. You were lucky none of them knew who your parents really were."

Fallon begins to pace the room. Her bare feet slap against the hardwood floor. She runs her hands through her messy hair, sobbing as her worldview crumbles around her. Every story her mother ever told her is disintegrating into dust.

"I don’t understand," she chokes out between sobs. "He was a good man... He was an amazing dad. He did nothing but care for us."

"He wanted power, Fallon." I track her erratic movements across the room. I know I need her to fully understand the history, even if the truth is a hard pill to swallow. "He wanted something that was never his to take."

"No," she croaks, shaking her head wildly. "Stop speaking, please."

"You need to realize this, Fallon. Your father fucked up."

She stops pacing near the far wall. The fight drains out of her limbs, leaving nothing but an empty, broken shell. She slowly slides down the wall. Her knees hit her chest as her body hits the floorboards. Her oversized, filthy t-shirt rides up, but she doesn't seem to notice or care anymore. Her wide grey eyes stare blankly through me in shock. The tears keep falling in heavy drops, but she makes no sound.

The silence stretches between us, heavy and suffocating. I watch her process the destruction of the man she idolized her entire life. I can feel the chaotic storm raging in her mind through our unblocked bond. Everything she thought she knew is gone.

"My dad was a murderer?" she asks quietly. Her voice is barely a whisper, hollow and broken in the quiet space.

"Yes," I answer simply. I offer no sugarcoating. No softening of the blow. Just the brutal fact.

She falls into a long, silent, mulling state of shock. She stretches her legs out in front of her on the floor. Her eyes stay fixed on a random spot on the rug. The minutes tick by. I sit on the edge of the bed, waiting. I let the silence do the heavy lifting. She is looking for loopholes in my story. Looking for a reason to prove he wasn’t guilty. But through the bond, she knows there are none. The facts are solid.

Suddenly, her grief twists into sharp anger. Her head snaps up. She glares at me, biting back with a sudden burst of defensive fury.

"Don’t do that," she accuses furiously. "You can’t just read my private mind because we are mated! I never agreed to be mated to you."

I don't rise to the bait. Her anger is just a desperate shield for her pain. "I left you alone in the bathroom earlier because I knew you were conflicted with your feelings. But I promise, you will learn to want me." I say the words confidently. There is no other path for us. She will have to accept me eventually.

She lets out a low, defiant growl from the floor.

I lean forward, resting my elbows on my knees. I need to explain the rest of her harsh reality. "You wonder why the other packs constantly kicked you and your mother out over the years? Why they never let you stay?"

She stiffens against the wall, her grey eyes narrowing.

"If they were discovered to be harboring my fated mate, they knew it would have brought my wrath down upon their lands. It would have made them prime targets for my enemies. They couldn't risk the destruction of their own people for a stray mother and child."

"That wouldn’t have been their fault," she argues stubbornly through her tears, her chin tilting up in familiar defiance. "It’s not like my mum went around telling everyone who I was. If you found out, they would have just handed me over."

"Not if they wanted to use you to take me down," I counter sharply. "Besides, I would have found you anyway."

"Then maybe that’s what they should have done!" she yells back, her voice echoing off the high ceiling.

I stand up from the bed. My patience snaps. She is still clinging to the false idea that her mother was just a victim in all of this mess. That her mother was just a good woman trying to protect her from a monster.

I cross the room, stopping just a few feet away from where she sits slumped against the wall. I look down at her, my expression hardened into stone. The final piece of the puzzle needs to drop. The final, devastating lie needs to be shattered.

"You don’t get it do you Fallon." I pitch my voice low, making sure every single syllable hits its mark with maximum impact. "It wasn’t just your dad that was a traitor, but your mum was too!"