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Hello guys, I know of the fact that uploads on this platform are a bit lagging. This is a non-exclusive book and it's currently on many platforms. If you like this book and you would like to read the whole of it, please follow me on fac*book under my pen name Rachel M Nyambu and you'll see the links as to where you can read it. Please, follow me here as well and don't forget to vote for my book.

"Hello Larrisa." Ash faked a smile on his face, looking at the girl behind him. She was beautiful. Long hair that flowed down to her ass, small plumpy red lips, sky blue eyes, a small nose, and a broad smile on her face. She had full curves that fit perfectly in the body-hugging blue dress she was wearing, a thin waist, and long, slender legs that would make any man drool for them. She was a dream any man would want to live with, but not him and maybe half of the men in their entire pack.

She was a bi*ch and very rude. She was so cold-hearted that even the kids knew it. She was known for using her father's position to get what she wanted. It was too bad that he would be stuck with her for the rest of his life.

"Hello Ash!" She smiled sweetly, flashing her pair of white teeth at him. "The moment Kaden said you wanted to see me, I came here as soon as I could," she said.

"What?" Ash was shocked. He hadn't asked Kaden to go and call her. Kaden just went into his room, ranted, and walked out.

"You didn't?" Larissa asked with a tinge of sadness clouding her eyes and face. Not wanting to make her sad and make his father lose his job, he smiled and said, "I did." He saw the girl heaving a sigh of relief and then flipping herself onto his bed. Ash sat, cursing his stars for bringing nothing but bad luck into his life. There was no way he could run away from her. Now that his elder brother had lied to her, she must have thought that he had accepted her proposal.

"So, why did you call me here?" She smiled shyly. Ash wanted to yell at her and tell her if there was a need for her to pretend with him because he knew her real self, but he shooed away those thoughts from his head and looked at her.

"Have you thought about what to do if your mate comes?"

Larissa chewed on her lower lip for a while before responding, "I'll reject him."

"Why don't you wait for him?" He asked.

"Because I feel like he's taking forever. All my friends have their own mates, but I don't. My twin sister's mate came as well, but look at me. I don't have a mate yet. Whenever I go out with my friends, I always feel like a third wheeler," she complained.

"Now I get it," Ash smiled bitterly, "you want to marry me just because all your friends are married, right?" He asked, swallowing the lump in his throat.

Larissa froze for a while and smiled shyly, chewing on her nails. "No, that's not what I meant." A shadow passed past the hallway, and Ash raised his head to meet face-to-face with his stepbrother, who had a smirk on his face. All that time, when they kept glaring at each other, he felt like jumping on him and giving him the beating of his life. He still couldn't believe that his brother, who was supposed to think carefully before doing anything, had acted really badly. As the firstborn son, he was supposed to act maturely. How could he go ahead with something like that without consulting him?

He had never wished to see Larissa; all he wanted was to be as far from her as he could.

It's like Grill knew what had happened because the next thing he knew, he barged into his room with a worried look on his face. It seemed like he wanted to tell him something, but after he saw Larissa sitting on the bed, he cleared his throat and asked if he could have a word with him. Ash was led by his dad to his study, where he found his mother and elder brother sitting there already waiting for him. "Are you sure you want to go on with this?" His mother asked worriedly, a sad expression evident on her pretty, small, round face.

"Mmh." Ash hummed, bubbling his head up and down in agreement.

"You should know that you'll be spending the rest of your life with her. If you don't like this, you better say it, son." His father advised.

"And then?" he asked, finally raising his head to look at them. "So that we can all wander all over the city with nothing to do? Or so that we can be banished or suffer for the rest of our lives? This is the only way that we can get to live in this pack; let father be in his position and have a roof over our heads, so be it." He said this, rising from his chair and making his way out of the study.

"This is not how we raised you, Ash!" His father's harsh voice stopped him dead in his tracks. His hand, which was about to grab the door lock, dropped to his side, and he turned around to look at Grill. "If you are agreeing to this just because I took you in when anyone else didn't and raised you as my own son despite you not being the one, please, I don't need your favor!" His father yelled, his eyes shooting red. Ash had never seen his father that way. He has always been a calm person and very composed. He has never yelled at him, his brother, or his mother.

"I am not doing you a favor, dad." Ash sighed, staring at everything present in the office but not his father's sharp gaze, which he could feel freezing his innards. He felt him reading through him, so he blurted out, "It's true, at first I wanted to get married to her because I didn't want you to lose your respect in this pack as a repayment for taking care of me for these years, but after thinking for a while, I knew I would have to get married to her whether I liked it or not," he explained.

"And what the hell is that supposed to mean?" His father asked again, signaling him to sit back in his chair.

"We have no choice, dad. You may say that I shouldn't get married to her because she isn't someone I love, but what about our future? No pack is ready to take us in, and where should we run to? We have no choice, dad; just let me get married to her because there is nothing holding me back."

"What of your mate? What will you do when she comes? You should know that some packs have the tendency to break mate bonds, but not ours. You should know by now that the mate bond is important as the future beta of this pack." His mother warned sternly, clearly not agreeing with what he was saying.

After thinking for a while, Ash sighed and decided to tell them the truth. He never liked talking about that because two years had passed, but it still hurt. The wound in his heart got pierced again and again whenever he thought of that ugly day. "She rejected me," he said under his breath, but his father's sharp ears caught every word he said. Clearly.

"What? When? How come you never told us?" His father asked.

"Two years ago," he muttered.

"What?" Both Grill and his mother gasped at the same time. His brother had his hands on his mouth, looking at him as if he hadn't heard what he had just said.

"I didn't see any need to tell you. Besides, she is the only daughter of Alpha Kepha, so there is nothing you could have done." He told them, sighing and then resting his head on the back of the chair he was sitting on.

"We know that, son, but you could have told us. There was no need for you to go through all the pain alone. Right now, I wonder how many things you are keeping from us." His mother said and then whispered out the last sentence, but he had heard her.

"I am not keeping anything from you guys. It was just that, I swear." He swore, but Grill's side eyes made him swallow his words. Grill was never fond of people who liked swearing because, according to him, they were liars and rarely spoke the truth. "Sorry." He muttered, pulling both earlobes to show guilt.

"I don't like that girl." His mother said that after some time.

"Me neither. Everyone knows how bad-mannered she is, and right now I am wondering why you called her over here. Having her as our daughter-in-law will not only make us lose respect from our neighbors but from the whole pack in general. It would have been better if we were banished." Grill said this while taking off his glasses. Larissa was a she-devil. He recalls vividly how she once tarnished his reputation. There was a party at her father's house, and while in the restroom, he heard a commotion from the other end.

He quickly zipped his pants, washed his hands, and walked out of the washroom as soon as possible so that he could offer help to whoever was groaning in pain. He found a middle-aged woman sitting just outside the toilet, wailing in pain. She was seven months pregnant, and the baby had come earlier because her water had broken. Being the beta of the pack and well trained, he asked the lady to open her legs widely so that he could help with the baby because, as he had seen, the baby was coming the opposite way.

Instead of the baby coming out head first, it was the legs, and he knew by the time he called the ambulance he might end up losing both of them, something he would regret for the rest of his life. Larissa came from nowhere. Judging from the smell of her skimpy clothes, he knew she must have come out of the male toilet, probably after screwing some random man. She was known for that. After seeing him in the middle of the lady's legs, she didn't bother to look and see what was going on. She ran back to the palace, and without any shame, she told the people that the beta of the pack was outside the toilet screwing some bi*ch.

His wife came as soon as possible because she couldn't believe what she had heard, and after a short while, the whole pack was flocking towards the toilet to witness for themselves how their beta was busy ruining their pack's reputation.

The first group of people to arrive shooed the rest away, telling them that nothing of the sort was being done but that their beta was helping some random lady give birth. He was really angry with Larissa. Many people were, but they couldn't say anything because she was the alpha's doted and pampered daughter.

Two days later, Alpha Cameroon summoned him, asking him not to keep any grudges against Larissa since she was concerned about the ladies' lives and that she doesn't tolerate men and women getting intimate in public. He had wanted to scowl and tell him that it was Larissa who was fond of screwing people in public, but he swallowed his anger and lied to Alpha Cameroon that he had no grudge against his daughter because he knew that was a trap, and if he had confessed to being angry with her, only God knows what could have been done to him. But since he knew that his family depended on his beta position, that was what he would have stripped him of.

'I always thought that you'd be paired with Camila," his elder brother said after some time, grinning at him when he turned to face him. He really liked making fun of him, since he heard that Alpha Killan was Camila's mate. "Sadly, it's Larissa." He grinned when he glared at him harshly.

"She is not my mate, for fu*k's sake," Ash growled," and don't forget the fact that it was you who went to their house and lied that I had agreed to the alliance and that I wanted to see her." He glared at him, trying to calm down his wolf, who wanted to take over and rip Kaden apart. Ash growled out the truth, forgetting the fact that he had hidden from their parents that it was his brother who had said yes on his behalf.

"What are you talking about?" Grill asked. His brother made him walk out of the room, but he was forced to sit down.

"What have you done, Kaden? Do you have any idea what you have done to your brother? What would you have done if it were you? I have always thought that you are rough and wild, but today is the day I realize that you are the most stupid kid I have ever raised!" Grill spat.