02 His Anger

Adasha

The slap came without warning, a crack of force that sent my head snapping to the side. Pain blossomed across my cheek, sharp and stinging, leaving me disoriented. 

My breath hitched, caught somewhere between shock and fear. I stumbled backward, my body colliding with the cold, unyielding wall behind me. 

There was nowhere to go—not that escape was even an option.

“Randy, please,” I whispered, my voice trembling, barely audible over the pounding of my heart. 

My hands lifted instinctively, palms out, a futile gesture of defense. His fury was palpable, radiating from him in waves that seemed to thicken the very air. 

His chest heaved, his jaw clenched, and his eyes—those darkened, unrelenting eyes—locked onto mine with a promise I didn’t dare challenge.

“Are you not happy here, Adasha?” he asked, his voice chillingly calm. Each word was measured, deliberate, slicing through the tension like a blade. But I knew better than to trust his composure. It wasn’t real. 

It was the mask he wore when the storm inside him threatened to spill over, and the fire in his eyes betrayed the truth.

I shook my head, desperate to explain, to diffuse his fury, but the words caught in my throat. He didn’t wait for me to respond.

“All you had to do tonight,” he continued, his tone tightening, “was be a gracious hostess. That’s it. That’s all I asked of you.” His voice hardened, the venom seeping through. “But no. You couldn’t even manage that, could you?”

Each word was like a fresh blow, a second slap that landed deeper than the first. My heart twisted, shame mingling with the suffocating fear. He wasn’t finished.

“Blushing at Jason’s compliments,” he spat, stepping closer. “Dancing with him like some... like you have no sense of decency. As if you weren’t a married woman. As if you weren’t my Luna.”

The emphasis on “my” was a dagger, sharp and possessive. He loomed over me, his presence oppressive, his rage consuming. 

Every fiber of my being screamed at me to flee, but I knew better. There was no running, no escaping the cage Randy had so carefully crafted around me.

I swallowed hard, my trembling hands dropping to my sides. “I was only being polite,” I said softly, my voice cracking under the weight of my fear. “It meant nothing, Randy. Nothing.”

He laughed—a short, bitter sound that sent a chill through me. “Nothing?” he echoed, his tone mocking. “You think I’m blind? A fool? Do you think I didn’t see the way he looked at you, the way you let him?”

I shook my head frantically, but the words to defend myself wouldn’t come. They wouldn’t matter anyway.

“You belong to me,” he growled, his voice low and dangerous. “You would do well to remember that.”

The weight of his claim crushed me, the finality of his words wrapping around me like a vice.   

I opened my mouth to speak, but his words lashed out before I could form a single syllable. Each one struck like a whip.

“Do you have any idea what you looked like? What they thought of me, Adasha?” His voice carried an edge that made me shrink back. “People stared. They whispered. They judged me.” 

His anger climbed, voice cracking with rage. “Even Alpha Philip asked me if something was wrong between us.”

“I was just being polite,” I said, my voice trembling under the weight of his fury. It was small, desperate, as though shrinking would make me invisible. “I was trying to be a good hostess.”

“Polite?” he roared, stepping closer. I flinched as the heat of his anger made the air suffocating. 

“A good hostess doesn’t forget who she belongs to. A good hostess doesn’t humiliate her mate in front of everyone. Tell me, Adasha, were you being polite when you danced with him? When you strolled with him for everyone to see?”

My throat tightened, and no words came. 

What could I say? The truth—how I had been trapped at the gala, balancing between pleasing the guests and fulfilling my duties—would mean nothing to him. 

His eyes burned with fury, unyielding, deaf to explanations.

“Don’t I treat you well enough?” he demanded, his tone dropping to a venomous growl. It was quieter, but no less dangerous. 

“Don’t I praise you, compliment you?” He closed the gap between us, his presence looming, and I instinctively pressed myself against the wall. I nodded quickly, desperately, as though agreement could extinguish the fire in his eyes.

“Then why didn’t you delegate someone else to handle him?” His bitterness oozed through clenched teeth. “Why did it have to be you?”

I opened my mouth again, but no words came. 

What could I say? 

That I hadn’t had a choice? 

That turning the guest away would have been seen as an insult, a failure of diplomacy? 

That Randy’s rage would’ve found me either way? 

My silence hung heavy, and I knew—whatever I said, whatever I did—it wouldn’t matter. In his eyes, I was already guilty.

My heart pounded violently, echoing dread with every beat. 

Then his hand twisted into my hair. The pain was immediate, searing, and I cried out as he yanked hard. 

Tears streamed freely down my face, sobs choking in my throat as I struggled to comprehend how the man who claimed to love me could do this. 

How could he look into my tear-streaked face and still hurt me? How could he live with himself, knowing he was destroying me, piece by agonizing piece?

“When I chose to mate with you, it was because I thought you were different,” he spat, venom dripping from every word. “Different from the other sluts in the packs. Different from my mother.”

At the mention of his mother, a pit of nausea settled in my stomach. I shook my head, trembling, silently begging him to stop. But he was too far gone. 

His anger was a festering wound, infected with hatred that time had only deepened. 

His loathing for her had become a shadow over everything, a poison in every corner of his being.

“But I was wrong,” he continued, his words slicing through my defenses. “You’re no different. You’re just like her.”

“No, Randy, please,” I whispered, my voice breaking, barely audible over my sobs. 

The tears came harder, but my pleading only seemed to inflame him further. His grip tightened, the pain sharp enough to make me gasp.

“You’ve been a bad girl, Adasha,” he growled, his tone low and menacing, sending shivers of dread down my spine. “And you know what I do to bad girls.”

I shattered. My body convulsed with sobs, and the last fragments of my resolve crumbled into nothingness. 

“Please,” I whimpered, though I knew my words were useless. They always were.

That night, Randy unleashed his fury with a cruelty that broke me. The entire pack house must have heard my cries. 

They couldn’t not have. But no one came to help. They never did. Maybe they believed I deserved it. 

Maybe they thought it was my fault—that I had invited his wrath upon myself.