Mated To The Crippled Alpha
Chapter 483: Young Girl
The woman scared me so badly that I stumbled backward and hit the floor. I scrambled away on hands and knees, my heart hammering, convinced she was going to come after me next. In my panic, I crashed straight into something solid and warm , Vito. The moment I realized it was him, I froze, because now there was fear tangled into everything I felt about him too.
He steadied me before I could fall again. "Stop running around. The snakes are everywhere outside. Didn’t you already hurt your knee?"
The scolding was wrapped in something that almost sounded like worry, and that was what broke me. Tears I hadn’t planned on came rushing up.
"Vito!"
I threw my arms around him and buried my face in his chest. "I knew you wouldn’t leave me. You wouldn’t, right?"
He let out a slow breath. "Just rest and stop wandering. If you come out again, even I won’t be able to keep you safe. Everyone in my family is a little out of their mind."
I loosened my grip just enough to look up at him. "Who is that woman? The one in there?"
"That’s my mother."
He crouched down in front of me, offering his back without another word. I climbed on, looping my arms over his shoulders as he carried me back to the room.
He set me down on the bed carefully, then crouched again to look at the scrape on my knee. The look on his face wasn’t cold anymore. "Does it hurt?"
"Yes. Blow on it."
He bent down and did exactly that, his breath soft against the wound. Then, without looking up, he asked, "Are you still mad at me?"
I thought about it honestly. "I know you didn’t have a choice. If you actually wanted to hurt me, I’d already be dead. You wouldn’t bother treating my knee if you wanted me gone. And you took me to see Elena before all of this started." I watched his face. "You knew, didn’t you? That it might be the last time."
Something shifted in his expression. He hadn’t expected that. "You’re right," he said after a pause. "You probably won’t get to see her again."
I wanted to argue, but I asked instead. "Why? Why all of this?"
"The people you knelt in front of today , they’re our pack. They’re gone because of the Sanders. That’s the debt your family carries." His voice was steady, but not cruel. "That’s why we’re here."
"Then why haven’t you hurt me?"
He met my eyes. "Because neither of us chose this, Anna. I don’t want you caught in the middle of something that was never yours to carry. I’ll protect you the best I can, even when it doesn’t look like protection."
My eyes went hot and wet. "So I’m never leaving?"
"Not yet. But this island is the safest place for you right now. When my father is gone, I’ll make sure you have teachers, things to keep your mind busy. You can learn whatever you want , except the way back to the Sanders. But you’ll be taken care of. You’ll be okay." He reached out and patted the top of my head, just once. "Grow up well, Anna."
From that day on, I had my life, but not my freedom.
I understood what it meant. If I ever wanted to see my family again, I had to be patient. I had to survive. And survival on this island meant staying on Vito’s good side, so I did exactly that. He brought teachers , schoolwork, dance, music, finance. I didn’t always see the point. I was trapped on an island. What did it matter if I could read a balance sheet? But he seemed genuinely determined not to let me sit idle, and somewhere in that I found a reason to keep going.
Dominic was cold to me, but he never touched me. He seemed to tolerate the lessons Vito arranged, even if he never acknowledged them. As for the woman chained in the lower level, I went to see her a few times out of a strange, helpless curiosity. She was beautiful in the way that felt dangerous , the kind of woman who looked like she’d been born knowing exactly how much power she held.
One day she offered me a deal. If I stole the key, she said, she’d take me with her when she left.
I was tempted. I was eight years old, and I dreamed about going home almost every night.
But three years had already passed, and the faces of the people I loved had started to blur. I could feel the shape of them , not the details. I only knew for certain that I was Anna Sanders, and that someday I would find my way back to that name.
Time moved the way it does when you have no control over it , quickly and quietly, until you look up one day and realize things have changed without your permission.
Vito grew into a teenager. The softness of his face sharpened, and he got tall fast, the kind of height that came with a new kind of presence. He was away more and more often. Even little Yael didn’t need to be held constantly anymore, though that never stopped him from climbing into his mother’s lap whenever she was close enough to reach, wrapping his small arms around her neck and pressing kissy, babbling affection all over her whether she wanted it or not.
She usually didn’t. She called him a little monster, bared her teeth at him, tried to scare him off. He laughed and hugged her tighter every time.
Dominic came and went. He always brought things , for her, mostly. Jewelry, flowers, sweets. She smashed the jewelry against the wall, shoved the pastries in his face, and crumpled the flowers and stuffed them in his mouth. And he loved her for it, or in spite of it, or both. Something in him refused to stop.
On one visit, he brought me a pink butterfly hair clip. I turned it over in my hands and thought, I still don’t understand you at all.
Then came the sunny afternoon he unchained her. He dressed her in something beautiful, and for one strange, suspended moment, the four of them stood together , him, her, Vito, Yael , and someone took a photograph. It looked like happiness, frozen.
And then she kicked him, hard, and ran.
"I will never love you. Never."
She didn’t stop at the trees. She ran past them, past the shore, and threw herself into the sea.
"Mom!"
Both boys cried that day. I stood back and watched, and I understood something I hadn’t had words for before , that a person could be loved completely by people who meant everything to them, and still feel nothing back. That love didn’t always move in both directions, no matter how hard you wished it would.
Dominic pulled her out of the water. And then he took her away, and after that came the news that he was gone too.
I thought, at least she’s free now.
But what about me?
I was twelve. Vito was nearly as tall as his father had been, lean and angular, quieter than he used to be. He spent less time on the island. When he came back, something in me still lifted, because at least it meant a chance for news , any scrap of information about the Sanders, about the world outside this stretch of water.
I still resented the Carlins for everything. But I kept that buried where it couldn’t get me in trouble.
The day Vito came back from his latest absence, I ran to meet him the way I had when I was little, the way my body remembered even when my head tried to be careful.
"Vito."
He caught me easily, one arm wrapping around my waist like it was nothing. He looked down at me, something fond and unreadable in his face, and ruffled my hair.
I held onto his neck. "Do I get a reward for being good?"
"What do you want?" His voice had changed , lower now, with a roughness underneath it that was new.
I grinned up at him. "A photo of Elena. It’s been so long. I can’t remember her face anymore."
His brows pulled together slightly.
I pressed my luck, leaning into his arm with my best smile. "Come on, Vito. Please? Just let me see her, just once."
I didn’t realize, not then, that I had changed too. The way I moved against him without thinking , easy, unconscious, the instinct of a girl who had grown up needing him to be safe. But something in that moment shifted the air between us. His ears went red at the tips, and he looked away, and for the first time in a long time, neither of us knew what to say.