The Alpha Behind The Mask-Chapter 58: Took Her

Alpha Oliver’s POV

​For a moment, I didn’t say a word. I waited for him to laugh and tell me it was just one of his ridiculous jokes—the kind I never find funny. But he didn’t. Instead, he had a serious, challenging look on his face.

​"I’m serious, brother," he said, as if he already knew I thought he was lying.

​I scoffed bitterly. "You must be joking, Oscar..."

​"I’m not. I’ve liked her since the night I saw her at the ball," he said.

The world seemed to stop spinning.

Not Aurora. Anyone but Aurora.

​I didn’t wait for him to finish. I rushed him and grabbed him by the collar, slamming him against the wall. "I will forget we shared the same womb," I snarled, my voice vibrating with a primal, animalistic rage. My eyes were no longer green; they were glowing with the gold of a wolf pushed to the edge of a kill. "I will kill you, Oscar. I will bury you so deep the moon won’t find you."

​My wolf snarled inside me, ready to tear him apart.

​Oscar didn’t even look bothered. He stayed calm and said, "You have Cassey, Why are you so worked up? You have your perfect, high-society arrangement. And besides..." He tilted his head, a flash of genuine pity crossing his face—a look I hated even more than his smirk. "Aurora is too innocent for your kind of life, Oliver. Or for ’Raymond’s’ life."

​"Shut up," I breathed, my grip tightening until his face began to redden.

​He looked me dead in the eye and continued, "You just want a submissive to satisfy your dark fantasies. But Aurora isn’t made for that world. She needs a stable, normal relationship. That is what I’m going to give her—something you can’t. You’re too broken to ever give her anything real."

​The truth in his words felt like a silver bullet to my chest. I lost it. I swung and punched him hard in the face, but he didn’t strike back. He just wiped a trickle of blood from his lip, staring at me with a hollow intensity.

​"You took mother from me!" I spat, my voice cracking with a decade of suppressed trauma. The jealousy I felt wasn’t just about Aurora; it was the old, festering wound of our childhood. "You took her love, her attention, everything! And now you want to take Aurora too?"

​Oscar looked at me, his eyes filled with a cold, sharp pity.

​"No one took Mother away from you, Oliver," he spat. "She didn’t leave because she hated you. She chose my father. She chose her fated mate, the man she loved, and she followed her heart. That was it."

​I swallowed hard.

​"Mother loved us equally," he continued, "but you couldn’t accept it. You wanted your own happiness more than hers. Because if you truly wanted her to be happy, you would have accepted that being with my father was what made her whole. Live with it, Oliver. Mother did you no wrong."

​I let out a low, pained growl, but he didn’t stop. He was tearing open wounds I had spent years trying to cauterize. 𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦

​"You were the one who avoided her," Oscar hissed. "You refused to see her. Even on our birthdays, she would call you. She begged to see you, but you never picked up her calls. You blocked her mind-links. When you graduated from the Alpha Academy, she was there in the back row, crying with pride. When you were crowned Alpha King, she was in the crowd, but you never acknowledged her as your mother. To this day, only a few people even know she’s still alive because you treat her like a ghost."

​My chest felt like it was being crushed.

​"I’ve spent years watching mother look sad because of you," Oscar said, finally shoving my hands off him. "So, leave Mother out of this. This is between us."

​He straightened his jacket and looked back toward the club. "As for Aurora... I am going for her. I won’t play games like you do, hiding behind a mask. I’m going to show her a version of a man that isn’t broken."

​He stepped closer, his voice dropping to a final, deadly serious tone.

​"Let’s make a deal, brother. If she chooses you, I will back away. But if she chooses me? You will back away. Do we have an agreement?"

​I stared at him, my heart heavy with a fear I hadn’t felt since I was a child. I was the Alpha King, but in this moment, I felt like I was losing everything.

​I didn’t respond to Oscar’s deal. The silence between us was suffocating, filled with the ghosts of the mother I had rejected and the woman I was terrified of losing. I turned my back on him and walked back into the club, the heavy bass thumping in time with the headache blooming behind my eyes.

​I went straight to the bar and sat on a high stool.

​Aurora appeared in front of me. She looked tired, her face still slightly pale from the incident in the Playroom, but she held herself with that stubborn grace I admired. She served me a glass of whiskey without a word. I didn’t look at her. I kept my eyes fixed on the amber liquid, ignoring the way her scent—sweet and alluring—settled over me.

​I could feel her eyes on me, searching for something behind my mask, but I remained like stone. I drank the whiskey in one go, the burn in my throat a welcome distraction.

​Then, I felt the air shift.

​Oscar walked back in and took the stool right next to mine. He didn’t look at me. Instead, he leaned forward and said something to Aurora. I couldn’t hear his words over the music, but I saw the result. Aurora didn’t flinch or pull away. She responded in a friendly manner, a small, genuine smile tugging at her lips—a smile she had given me in the office.

​Jealousy, hot and toxic, surged through my veins. It felt like my wolf was trying to claw its way out of my throat. Seeing them like that—my brother, the one who had "taken" our mother’s heart, now charming the only woman I wanted—was too much.

​I stood up so abruptly that the stool scraped harshly against the floor.

​The manager was standing nearby, watching the VIPs with a nervous eye. I stalked over to him, my presence radiating a dark, suffocating power that made the man stumble back.

​"Master?" he stuttered, sensing the kill-order in my aura.

​"Bring a submissive to my private room," I barked. I didn’t look back at the bar. I didn’t want to see Aurora’s reaction. "Now."

​I needed to feel in control. I needed to drown in something other than this pain.

As I walked toward the VIP corridor, I felt a pair of eyes burning into my back. I hoped it was Aurora. I hoped she was watching me walk away with someone else, just so she could feel a fraction of the agony I was feeling right now.

​