MATED TO THE BIG BAD ALPHA - CHAPTER 145&146

If Alpha Knight was surprised at Dr Lance’s statement, he was doing a good job of hiding it. But Walter felt he saw a muscle flicker in his jaw before it turned rigid again.

Walter turned back to his father, his heart thumping hard against his chest.
“Mother… Mother said he would come?” he asked.
“Melissa said a lot of things. Most of which I know you’ve forgotten or never thought mattered because she was…” he trailed off and shook his head.
“Yes, your mother always mentioned to me that her first child would come. I just didn’t’ know why or how.”

The silence in the living room after that statement was deafening. No one moved, or made a sound.

Dr Lance looked back at Wayne whose eyes never left him.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“To know everything there is to know about the side of my mother only you saw,” Alpha Knight answered, his voice raw and menacing.
“And what do I stand to gain from telling you about the only woman I’ve ever loved?”

Something contorted in Alpha Knight’s face. Pain or rage, no one could tell.
He took gentle steps towards Dr Lance, the sound of his boots meeting the floor were the only things heard.
Dr Lance took two steps backwards. He walked with a black walking stick after an accident des-troyed his knee— and steadied himself on it, looking up at The Big Bad Alpha.

“I do not care what you felt about my mother. Nor do I care about what you feel at all. Her de–ath des-troyed me, even as a little boy. And to think she stayed alive eight more years with wretched humans makes me want to break your ne-ck. Now, give me the answers I seek and I’ll spare you and forget you even exist,” he spat out. Dr Lance turned pale but to his credit, he didn’t move. He kept looking Alpha Knight in the eye.

“You have her eyes, just like Walter,” he uttered in a broken voice, like he could cry. The statement took Alpha Knight aback. He took two steps away from the man and looked to Beta Jake for help.
“Dr Lance, we’re running out of time and not here for a family union. We need information regarding Melissa Lance and what you know of her as Isabella Knight,” Beta Jake stated.

Dr Lance looked to his son and sighed.
“Come with me then,” he replied Jake and turned around, walking with his stick back towards the stairs.
“He doesn’t walk well yet he keeps the stairs in his house. Does he like punishments that much?” Shem whispered to Walter.
Wayne shot him a look. He shrugged and began walking with them.

They followed the slow man up the stairs and through hallways until they got to a black door. Black as obsidian. Walter flinched at the sight of it.

Wayne glanced at Walter and saw his face had turned pale, his breathing becoming rapid and veins were being pumped fat with bl00d. He was panicking.

“This is… This…” he gulped down pa-infully and clenched his fists tight.
“Your mother’s room. Yes. The room she di-ed in your arms,” Dr Lance stated.

Walter took a step back. His greatest traumas came about because of the events surrounding this room. He never even saw that door after she di-ed.
“Walter, you’re going into shock,” he heard Wayne’s voice beside him. Surprisingly, it wasn’t harsh. It was calm and bothered.
Wayne palmed both his shoulders and pressed down on it.
“Calm down… Breathe,” he said and massaged Walter’s shoulders.
“Look at me… Look at your brother,” he said again, though his voice wasn’t so soft this time. It was like a soldier’s entreating his colleagues at battle.
“This is hard, even for me. But… You can wait for us downstairs like a frightened pup or march in there with us like the alpha you have in you,” he tabled.

Walter stared deep into his eyes then nodded. Wayne patted him twice on the shoulder before turning to Dr Lance.
“Open it,” he said with a nod. Dr Lance looked to both him and his son, reading something or gauging something. But he rapidly looked away into the supposed pinhole of the door. A whirring sound was heard, then a click sound. Dr Lance then pushed the door open.

“I haven’t… Been here in a few weeks. So, it’s a bit dusty,” he informed and stepped inside first. Alpha Knight followed in, then Walter before the men.
“You call this dusty?” Wayne spoke up as he walked deeper into the very big room. It was more of a chamber and not just a bedroom. Photographs lined a section of a wall, books filled a top-to-floor shelf on another wall. There was a glass cabinet with different materials in it… Things like what Mufasa would use.

The room was very tidy and only a little amount of dust coated some surfaces. This was not what any of them was expecting from a room whose occupant di-ed over two decades ago.
“You didn’t change anything,” came Walter’s voice as he walked towards the canopied bed.
“The only thing that got out of here was the dust and the only thing that got in was a duster and vacuum cleaner,” Dr Lance answered as he shut the door.

Wayne turned back to look at him.
“You cleaned this place yourself?”
“Well, only I have stepped foot here since that night so… Yeah,” he answered casually and blew dust off a mug display shelf.
“Dad, you kept this place intact for 16 years?” Walter asked with disbelief.
“You know your mother. I was afraid her ghost will come sink claws into me if I threw so much as a scrap paper out into the trash,” he joked and chuckled.

Suddenly, Walter was hit with a guilt wave. He had deserted this room. The room he had the most memories with his mother.

“Which one of you is Dolores?” Dr Lance suddenly asked while looking at a pink mug on the mug display. Everyone looked to him where he stood.
“That’s Dolly,” Shem spoke. Wayne’s face darkened.
“Well, this one’s for her,” Dr Lance said with a shrug and left the mug display. Shem hurried over and picked the pink mug. It had a portrait on it. A perfectly drawn portrait of a little girl. A younger version of Dolly. Underneath it was the name Dolores written in neat calligraphy.

“She was a very good painter. The best. She would see something in a brief second and paint every edge and curve of it within minutes,” Dr Lance said as he continued to walk, his stick making clunky noises. His voice held pride, like the father of the best graduating student of an ivy league school.

Wayne took the mug from Shem and gazed at the portrait of a five year old Dolly. He looked up at the display and saw his face on a black portrait. Wayne was written underneath it in white. His eyes darkened even more at the sight of it.

“At one point, she said she was looking into the future for days. She wouldn’t eat, or even let me talk. She said the noise was in her head. Walter was seven then. He would laugh and run off whenever she glared at him for making a sound. It was so bad I had to soundproof her room. I knew she couldn’t look into the future but turns out she was trying to imagine what you all might look like in the future. A week later, she stepped outside and handed me this picture. She said she successfully looked into the future and guessed what you all might grow to look like. Here,” he stretched forth a picture frame to Walter then walked further.

Walter took in a sharp breath. In his hands was a hand drawn full painting of Wayne, Dolly and him standing in a picture-pose. Underneath it, just at a small corner was Ten Years Later written.

Wayne walked to Walter and gazed at the picture. Ten Years Later was already eleven years ago, and this was exactly how he and Dolly looked. He was 19, Dolly was 18 and Walter was definitely 17.

“That painting of you looks like that one over there. Is he a relative?” Dr Lance asked. Wayne didn’t have to look up from the painting to know who he was referring to.
“Step brother. My father remarried a year after.”
Shem walked over to see the painting.
“Even I can’t tell if that’s me or you,” he joked and ruffled Wayne’s hair.
“We’ve got different eye colors, moron. Your eyes are too light a brown,” Wayne stated then he looked up at Dr Lance who was staring at three of them.

“I am waiting for your questions.”

Wayne cleared his throat and gulped down the tsunami of emotions that had flooded him since he stepped into the room.

“Who were the enemies after my mother and what was responsible for her death?”
Dr Lance exhaled.
“When she confided in me at the beginning, she said she had enraged a certain vampire family by doing something extremely wic-ked to their bloodline. They traced her to her pack when they found out and sought to just terminate her. She ran away after escaping them narrowly and I found her in a pond behind my home. I took her in and fell hard. It was then she told me…what she was. That we could never be. It never stopped me from loving her.”
The man paused and gazed around the room.

Walter’s heart constricted.
“So you knew then… You knew I was never your son,” he spelt out brokenly.
“I knew. And that never stopped me from loving you, Walter. It never did.”

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To Be Continued