Chapter 252 – Mated to the Alpha and His Beta Novel PDF Online Free

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My disguise was working!

The bar I picked was called The Silver Crescent. The man at the door gave me a long, up and down look that at first made me nervous. I thought he was going to stop me from going in, or question me, but as it turned out, he just gave me a slow smile.

Oh, my.He was totally checking me out.

I was a little giddy, and no longer from that wine I’d had. I gave him a small smile and a nod like I did this every day…or even like I’d done it at least once. I pushed through a small crowd near the door and smiled and nodded at everyone I passed. My heart was still beating harder than normal. My palms felt a little sweaty, and the music beat throbbed in all the places my heart was pounding.

I didn’t think I wanted to drink too much more tonight, but I also felt weird without a glass in my hand. Everyone else had one. So, I went up to the bar and confidently tried to place my order.

“One beer, please.”

The woman behind the bar looked at me with a funny expression. “Bottle? Draft? Can? Any brand in particular? We have a pretty big selection.”

Shoot. I didn’t know anything about beer. All I could do was smile at her and hope she didn’t think I was a complete idiot.

“What do you recommend?”

The bartender rolled her eyes but filled a glass and slid it toward me. The first sip was horrible, so I allowed myself to use one of my Celestial skills to turn the sourness into sweet on my tongue.

I turned to watch the crowd. The dance floor was hopping. In the center of it was a girl who looked like she was having the time of her life.

To my surprise, I know exactly who she was.

Stella–

Even if we hadn’t met right after my family and I got back to Constantine, I’d have known my Aunt Selena from her resemblance to my mom. Not just in the shape of her face or color of her eyes, not even by her scent, which my wolf-self caught at once. Something else connected my mother’s sister to her, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

“Too much wine,” I said to the woman I bumped into.

She looked at the glass of amber fluid in my hand and rolled her eyes before turning back to her companion. The two of them giggled and looked sideways at me as I tried to get past.

A hot blush spread up from my chest, up my throat and into my cheeks with their unfamiliar plumpness. I blinked hard to hold back a rush of embarrassed tears.

“I didn’t mean any harm,” I said to the two of them. “It’s just so crowded in here…”

The first woman, a blonde, turned back to face me with her eyes wider than they ought to be. She let them skate over my hair, my face, down to my clothes and back again. Then she shrugged and returned to her friend.

Stung by the dismissal, I pushed past them. My beer sloshed over my hand as I got buffeted by people who were dancing, drinking, and laughing. Everything I wanted to be doing, except I wasn’t.

I needed to find a place to get out from the crush of all these bodies.

I wasn’t used to being around so many people.

My heart pounded. Even in Brightsky, I hadn’t been surrounded like this. I’d been a child for most of the time I was there, though, so much smaller than everyone else. Being in a group of people whotowered over you should have felt scarier than this did, but suddenly, I wanted to run out of The Silver Crescent as fast as my longer legs would take me.

Too bad for me, because I’d pushed my way to the opposite of the bar, as far away from the front doors as I could get. If I wanted to leave, I’d have to fight all the way back through that pushing, laughing, celebrating crowd. Instead, I decided to shrink back against the wall and watch everyone else having a good time.

I didn’t like the beer very much, but I took slow sips of it so I didn’t look even more like an idiot. I smiled with my new face and tried to bop along with the beat of the music. As much as I tried to look like I was waiting for someone, I could tell that I just looked…

“Weird,” I whispered to myself.

Selena wasn’t weird. She’d left the dance floor to grab another drink at the bar. She was laughing, tossing her hair over her shoulders as she tipped her head back. She shook her finger at the bartender as though the woman had said something naughty, and then they both laughed together.

“Excuse me. Hey, ’scuse me!” A male voice poked me into turning to face him.

The guy trying to get past me had four mugs of beer in each hand. Golden, foamy liquid splashed over the rims of the mugs as he got jostled from behind. Some of it splashed on my arm, soaking the sleeve of the blouse I’d picked out so carefully.

“Can you move?” he growled, his lip curling and his eyes flashing with the light from his wolf.

“C’mon, kid. Shift it.”

“Where do you want me to go?” I gestured at the wall behind me and the table at my side. The rest of the space was filled with people.He rolled his eyes at me kind of like the first woman had, and then twisted his body to press past me. More beer splashed, wetting my other sleeve. He was ruining my outfit, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. As far as I was concerned, my night was already ruined.

The guy set down all eight beers on a table surrounded by a group of men and women who looked only a little bit older than I looked. My aunt joined them after a minute, not sitting but greeting them all with a fist bump, a hug, or a kiss on the cheek.

None of them were asking her to move out of the way.

I downed the rest of my beer, now warm, and put the empty mug on the thin railing behind me. I gave myself a little pep talk.

“Come on, Stella. I mean Elleah. You came here to dance, so get on out there and start dancing!”

With my head spinning, I ducked and wove through the throng and found a spot on the dance floor just as the song changed to something slower. Smoother. All of the people jumping and twirling around me either left the floor or paired off, leaving a lot of suddenly open, empty space.

And me standing in it, obviously, terribly, and embarrassingly alone.

Stella–

The awkwardness hit me like a shovel to the face.

I’d had a short life so far, but I’d had a lot of people paying attention to me during it. I should have been used to the weight of so many eyes on me. The whispers and the giggles.

I couldn’t handle it. I got myself off the dance floor as best as I could, bumping into people and earning their angry comments as I did. I fled for the restroom, slamming open the door and hurtling myself into a stall, where I sank onto the toilet and put my head in my hands.

The tears rose in me like a rising storm.

No matter how hard I tried to hold them back, the best I could do was clap my hands over my mouth and bite my tongue as hard as I could, hoping the pain and the taste of blood would hold back my cries. It didn’t work that great. Tears flooded from my eyes. My entire body shook.

All I wanted was to fit in, and even in this new body, with this pretty face, it was so obvious that I was never going to. I could dress up in new clothes, but the outfit I’d picked also didn’t fit in here. All the women in this bar wore torn jeans with fitted T-shirts and cowboy boots, or sleek little dresses that showed off their cleavage. My dark denim jeans and flowery blouse looked out of place.

I heard the door to the restroom swing open and footsteps on the concrete floor. Women’s laughter.

I caught a hint of perfume. Sweat. A tang that might’ve been alcohol or something else, something smoky.

“It’s crazy out there tonight,” said one voice.

Another answered. “Yeah, well, now that the Alpha’s back, everything’s going to be different.”“Co-Alphas,” a third voice said with a serious tone. “Which is so freaking weird, am I right?”

“Whatever. They’re both hot as fuck, and their Beta is fine as fuck too,” said yet a fourth voice. “I used to think about leaving Constantine, but I guess it’ll be cool to stick around and see what they do now.”

“Where else would you even go?” said the first voice. “It’s not like any of the other packs are in any better shape.”

“Yeah, but if I went to live in another pack, I’d probably have a better chance of finding a decent mate,” said the second voice. “Everyone around here is so borrrrring.”

“You don’t think the co-Alphas are going to make us…you know. Let them choose our mates? The way the High Council did?”

“I don’t know. I mean, they were forced to take Selena Stanton’s sister as their mate, and we all know they didn’t want to do that. They were totally in love with what’s-her-name.”

My tears had slowed. I grabbed some squares off the toilet paper roll and wiped my face as I listened to the conversation. Had I known about this, my Dad and Papa being forced to mate with my mom? If I had, I’d forgotten. My head spun more. I swallowed hard, hoping I wasn’t going to be sick.

“They said they were opening Constantine as a sanctuary to all supernaturals,” said the third voice.

I heard the faucet splashing water into the sink. “To tell you the truth, I’m kind of nervous about that.”

“I never believed the High Council when they said that they were bad, by the way,” the first voice piped up. “The Alpha, his Beta, and the Luna, I mean. My mom and dads didn’t, either. So I don’tthink that other supernaturals have to be bad, either. Like, I’m sure the co-Alphas wouldn’t allow dangerous people to come here to Constantine.”

“Maybe not,” said one of the voices, “but it’s not like they’re putting any kind of like, you know, standards, in place.”

Guffaws rang throughout the bathroom.

“You mean that random chick who showed up tonight? Where the hell did she come from? Mars?

‘Cuz it sure wasn’t the Moon,” said a voice edged with laughter. “Did you see the way she was wearing her hair?”

“Yeah, well, that outfit was a choice, huh?”

“It sure was,” laughed someone else. “A bad one.”

Heat slammed into me so hard I fell back against the wall. Silence fell outside the stall. I was breathing too fast. It made whistling sounds in and out of my throat.

“Someone’s in here,” said one of the voices.

A hand rapped on the door of the stall.

“Hey. You okay in there?”

“I bet it’s Candace. She’s always drinking too much and having to throw up,” said one of them.

I could hear the roll of her eyes in that tone.

I struggled to my feet and pushed open the stall door. I didn’t wait to look at any of them, just ran out of the restroom. Through the crowd, I headed for the bar’s front door. I didn’t care if I spilled drinks or stepped on toes.I had to get out of here.

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