Chapter 253 – Mated to the Alpha and His Beta Novel PDF Online Free

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This had been a mistake. I burst through the door and out onto the sidewalk. I took in great gulps of cool night air. I needed to just get home.

That’s when I heard the shouting coming from inside.

Stella–

Every hair on my body rose as a crackle of tense energy swept over me. I honed in on the sound of the scream, which I realized hadn’t been loud enough for anyone else to notice out here on the street, even those tuning in with wolf hearing. A ripple of anxiety ran along my spine as I stopped myself mid-run.

Someone had screamed from inside The Silver Crescent, but it didn’t seem to be causing a panic. I didn’t have to respond to it. I could keep on running my sad little self right on home and leave all those people to their own tragedies.

But I didn’t. I turned around and went back through the doors. I scanned the crowd. My senses were on high alert, tingling. For a moment, I was almost overwhelmed. I could draw on so many different talents, it was hard right this second to figure out which to use and how…without giving myself away.

No more screams had come, but there was a different kind of tension swirling through the air. Heat, but also cold. A smell like rich earth, but also like metal. Like the electric zap of lightning. I’d forced the hair on my head to stop floating around me in a cloud, but the hairs on the back of my neck were still twitching.

Aunt Selena was back in the center of the dance floor. The song had gone back to something uptempo, and she moved to the beat with such easy precision that I couldn’t stop the wave of jealousy poking at me with tiny kitten claws. She moved like she didn’t care who was watching her…but everyone was.

Every male was, anyway. Even the ones with other women. Their eyes followed every move she made, tracking her like she was prey. Almost in unison, they lifted bottles or glasses to their lips anddrank, but on nearly every male mind was not the flavor of the alcohol but what it would be like to taste Selena’s lips…and other places.

A different sort of heat rushed into me, deep in my gut. I knew what sex was, not that my parents had ever talked to me about it. I’d carried the knowledge of how people joined their bodies for pleasure and procreation inside me, the same way I’d come into this world knowing so much else.

But knowing how body parts could join wasn’t the same as having experience.

Watching my aunt dance, watching all these men stare at her, I began to get a better sense of how it all worked, only it wasn’t as fun as I’d expected it to be. In fact, the growing sense of friction emanating off the men in the room was twisting my stomach into knots.

Selena kept on dancing even as a man came up to her and tried to take her hand. She shook him off with a toss of her hair and spun back around, showing him her back. A cluster of women I assumed were her friends circled her, but there was a strange feeling coming off most of them, too.

Not the same as from the men, which was all need-focused. These women were feeling more like they were pushing away. Kind of angry.

Oh, it was jealousy. Not overt. Most of them didn’t even know they were feeling it, or at least they were pretending they didn’t. They all smiled and danced and tossed their hair the same way she was, but it was so clear that Selena, in the center, was still getting all the attention. Positive or negative, pretty much everyone in this room was thinking about her in some way or another.

The more she refused them, the more fervent they got. Angrier. Denial wasn’t sitting well with any of these men, even the ones I could tell thought of themselves as “nice guys.” Maybe particularly the ones who believed that of themselves.

I knew it was a risk, but I couldn’t stand here and watch her fend off that unwanted attention. It was going to get ugly in a few more minutes. I could see fists clenching. Eyes were narrowing.What the heck was going on in here?

I shrank back against the wall, hopefully out of the way, so I could give myself a minute to close my eyes. I had to picture my mind like a vast library full of books, each of them an instruction manual of a different set of skills or talents. Because, like a library, I could only “check out” a few of them at a time. That was something I was only slowly learning, that being a Celestial didn’t mean constant access. Since I was already using shapeshifting energies, I’d have to be careful about what I pulled next.

The information filled my head in seconds. My aunt was in her first heat, and because she was a hybrid, she was drawing every male within miles. She didn’t even know it, and neither did they.

Which meant that it would be simple to ease them all off her without calling attention to myself. I pulsed out some distraction energy to get everyone to ignore Selena’s hybrid heat energies. Within half a minute, the tension eased. The men still paid attention since she was gorgeous and confident…but they were all leaving her alone.

And I’d seen enough to know I needed to get out of here.

Stella–

I wanted to belong with the crowd in a place like The Silver Crescent, but I didn’t. Not yet, anyway.

Nor would I, not without some help I couldn’t get from the library in my head or even from the Moon Goddess. I didn’t even bother reaching out to her. She couldn’t possibly be bothered with something as mundane as my stupid little yearnings.

I guessed there were some things no supernatural talent would ever be able to give me.

As soon as I was sure my aunt wasn’t going to get kidnapped and brutalized, I ducked out of the bar. The night air was wonderfully cool against my face, which still felt puffy and hot from the weeping fit I’d had in the restroom. I let the breeze waft over me with my eyes closed for a minute, until the doors opened behind me, and I heard people coming out.

Their laughter still made me envious, but I kept myself in the shadows so I didn’t catch their attention. A couple helped each other down the sidewalk. The pulse of their sexual energy was so strong I didn’t need to use any special skills to feel it. I could practically smell it.

The doors opened again, letting out another courting couple and a surge of music that thumped all through me. It didn’t make me want to dance anymore. All I wanted to do was get home, sneak back inside the house without anyone seeing me, and crawl under my covers.

This time, I took the risk and let myself fly.

Not up into the air, like a bird with flapping arms in the place of wings. I just drew on the ability to make myself weightless. My body rose a few inches, so the tips of my toes barely skimmed the road, and I pushed myself along by manipulating the air currents. It was much faster even thanrunning as a wolf would have been, but it wasn’t very fun. It made it hard to hold onto my different face and body, too, but that made sense.

Stella Constantine was the Celestial, not Elleah Whitehaven.

My first night out had been an utter failure, but I didn’t have any more tears left by the time I made it back to the mansion grounds. There were still a lot of lights on. I paused on the very edge of the lawn, among the trees, and opened myself up to see if I could sense my parents. They were all still awake. Dad and Abba were in the dining room, having a very late dinner. Papa was in his office.

Mom was checking in on the twins, who were asleep.

Guiltily, I realized I hadn’t even seen Alaina or Isaac today. The distance between us felt so much bigger than it had before. They were still very much children, but what was I? Something caught in between two places…I hadn’t been alive long enough to call myself an adult, but I’d never really ever been a child.

Inside that house, my family was settling in. They were happy to be in the place they considered home. Even Abba was feeling more at ease. The pack had accepted him.

I was the only one who didn’t really belong here, and I had to accept that it was possible that I never really would.

Abba’s idea had been a good one, but the experiment had failed.

I didn’t feel like taking the risk of running into any staff or—worse—my parents, so instead of letting myself in through any of the doors on the ground floor, I let myself get even more weightless. I drifted upward to my bedroom window. I considered letting myself keep on going, up, up into the night sky and then just…flying away. Somewhere, anywhere, to a place where nobody knew my face as I usually wore it. Maybe all the way up to the Moon’s broad silver face.“You are loved. Do not despair.”

The sweet, soft whisper tickled my ears as I used a pulse of strength to unlatch my window from the inside. I slid it open and floated into my room. My feet touched down lightly, but I was breathing as hard as if I’d run up a mountain.

“Moon Goddess?”

But she didn’t answer me or send a vision. All I had was those six words imprinting on my mind. I knew I was loved. That had never been the issue. What I wanted…what I needed…was more than the love of my parents, though.

I needed to know my purpose. Until then, until I knew why I was here and what lay ahead for me, everything else was only going to feel like a placeholder. For tonight, though, the comfort from the Moon Goddess would have to be enough.

It was all I had.

Stella–

I slept late the next morning. By the time I got up, morning sun was slanting brightly through the window of my attic room. I watched the dust motes dancing in the beams for a long time. If I concentrated, I could see right inside them, like each was a tiny little planet all on their own. I imagined each one filled with civilizations, rising and falling. Maybe on one of them, a tiny Celestial, all alone in her bed, was looking at the dust motes in her own sunbeam…

“Gah.” I sat up, shaking off those feelings. I was about to get lost in my mind. Maybe so deep I wouldn’t be able to get out.

Anyway, my stomach was rumbling. It seemed impossible that I could be hungry with my heart so heavy, but…no matter how many supernatural talents I could use, I was still in this body, and apparently, this body needed to eat on a regular basis.

I’d left my clothes from the night before in a pile on the floor. They stank of sweat and spilled beer, with the faintest hint of the other odors that had filled The Silver Crescent. I wrinkled my nose but tossed them into the hamper. I wasn’t sure what to do about washing them.

Here was another thing I was having to learn about skipping from childhood right to adulthood—was I going to have to do my own laundry?

I showered quickly, brushed my teeth, and dressed in a pair of flowered leggings with a long tunic top. I paired this outfit with the same ballet flats from the night before. The mirror told me I looked cute, but I didn’t feel it. I looked tired.

Not feeling like putting on makeup, I used a little bit of energy to pink up my cheeks and darken my eyelashes. Nothing too obvious, but at least I didn’t look hungover anymore. I didn’t want to have toexplain to my parents why my face was so haggard and drawn.

I could smell something good wafting from the kitchen as I went downstairs. I followed my nose along the corridors, past closed doors, pausing to peek into any rooms with open ones. I could’ve dug into the minds of the various staff members passing me on their way to their duties, or even into my Dad’s or Papa’s, but I was trying not to overextend myself. Using powers on people without their knowledge felt icky, but especially when it wasn’t for their benefit, but only for mine.

Was I ever going to figure out how all of this was supposed to work? Shaking my head, I peered into an open room that featured floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. It also had a nice fireplace, no fire lit now, and a set of cozy looking armchairs facing it. Tall windows let in a lot of light, but sheer curtains diffused it, making it soft. I stepped inside to take a closer look and let out a slow breath.

It was the library from inside my head. Right down to the scrolled woodwork on the arms of the chairs and the floor lamp with the stained-glass shade. With my mouth open in wonder, I went to the shelves and studied the books. I ran my finger along the spines.

The books here were different, anyway. Which made sense, since in my head, the books were a construct I’d imagined as a way of helping to catalog and coordinate the myriad of supernatural powers I could access. Here, they were just books. Novels, non-fiction, even a few photo albums.

Intrigued, I pulled an album off the shelf and flipped through it. I recognized my grandma Gabriela right away, even though she looked so much younger. She was smiling, happy, her arm linked through a man’s. That must be my grandfather, Orion. I studied him closely. He didn’t look evil.

Frowning, I flipped through more pages. Pictures of my Daddy when he was a pup made me giggle.

I could see myself in those pictures. I traced the lines of his face for a moment, imagining what it might have been like if I’d been born a normal pup.Strangely, the photos comforted me in a way the Moon Goddess’s words from the night before hadn’t quite managed. I might stumble through social encounters, but these pictures and the resemblance I shared with my father showed me that I did belong here in Constantine. It was my lineage. My home.

“Oh, shit. Sorry. Didn’t know anyone was in here.”

I turned at the rasping female voice and saw Aunt Selena in the doorway. She carried a carafe that smelled like coffee and an empty mug. Dark sunglasses covered her eyes, and her hair was wet like she’d come right out of the shower. She wore a plain T-shirt and a pair of fuzzy pajama bottoms emblazoned with cartoon characters, along with a matching set of bunny slippers.

“I was trying to hide from my sister,” she said.

Quickly, I moved around her to close the door. I locked it. Turned back.

“Yeah,” I said. “Me too.”

Stella–

“I only brought one mug,” Selena said.

I shook my head. “That’s okay. I don’t really like coffee.”

“Huh.” She moved past me to one of the comfy armchairs. She put the carafe on the small table between them and plopped herself in the chair, her legs sprawling. The mug dangled limply from her hand. She didn’t pour anything into it.

“I mean, it’s okay. I just don’t…I mean, I don’t need a mug, that’s all. I can get one if I want to,” I hastily amended myself. Drinking coffee was an adult thing to do, right? Only littles didn’t drink coffee.

“You’re talking way too fucking loud,” Selena said.

“Sorry.” I coughed into my hand. After a second, I locked the library door, but I wasn’t sure if I should sit in the chair next to hers.

Or leave. I could leave. Maybe I should. She clearly didn’t want anyone around her.

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