The Alpha's Unwanted Bride

Chapter 740: A MYSTERY II

I pulled the false bottom completely free.

Dust rose into the air.

I coughed and waved my hand in front of my face before peering inside.

At first I thought it was some sort of hidden savings.

Money.

Jewels.

Perhaps enough to help with the debt.

Perhaps something that was going to be useful to us that she had forgotten over the years.

Instead, I froze.

There was a dress.

A very small and neatly folded dress

I slowly reached inside and lifted it out.

The material slid through my fingers like water.

Soft.

Delicate.

Beautiful.

My eyes widened.

This wasn’t the type of clothing found in our village.

It wasn’t even the type of clothing wealthy merchants wore.

The fabric shimmered silver beneath the sunlight.

Tiny pearls had been sewn around the neckline.

The sleeves were embroidered with intricate golden thread.

I had never owned anything half as beautiful.

I turned it over in my hands.

It would fit a little girl.

Perhaps five.

Maybe six.

No older.

My confusion deepened.

“What in the world?”

I had zero memory of such a dress.

From the looks of it, i didn’t need to be told twice that it was going to be very expensive.

Why was this here?

Why didn’t I even know of such a dress?

I checked the hidden compartment again.

There were more things.

Several jeweled hairpins.

A silver comb.

A delicate gold bracelet set with tiny diamonds.

My breath caught.

The bracelet alone looked worth more money than everything inside our cottage combined.

I carefully picked it up.

The diamonds sparkled beneath the light.

For a long moment I simply stared.

Mother owned nothing like this.

Nothing.

She wore simple dresses.

Simple jewelry.

Simple everything.

Then why hide these?

And why hide them beneath a false drawer?

A strange feeling settled in my stomach.

I looked back at the little dress.

Something about it made me sad.

I couldn’t explain why.

It felt familiar.

Not familiar because I had seen it before.

Familiar because it stirred something inside me.

A feeling.

A memory I couldn’t quite reach.

I gently touched the embroidery.

For a brief second I saw a flash of red.

Red hair.

Laughter.

Warm hands lifting me into the air.

Then it was gone.

I blinked.

“What was that?”

My heart was beating faster now.

I quickly looked through the compartment again.

Perhaps there would be a letter.

Something explaining what these things were.

Who they belonged to.

Why Mother had hidden them.

Instead I found only one more item.

A folded piece of cloth.

I pulled it free.

A handkerchief.

White.

Elegant.

The corners were embroidered with silver thread.

And in one corner was a symbol marked on the material.

A crest.

I frowned.

I had never seen it before and I had seen a lot.

A wolf surrounded by stars.

For some reason the sight made my chest tighten.

I turned it over.

Nothing.

No name.

No explanation.

Just the strange crest.

I sat back on my heels.

Completely baffled.

Who did these belong to?

Why had Mother hidden them?

And why…

Why did it suddenly feel as though there were things about my family I didn’t know?

Or was it perhaps a child that mother and father had had before me.

I had asked for a sibling when I was younger, but mother had told me that they couldn’t have any.

And that I was a miracle baby.

Unless they had one whom had died.

Or did mother come from an affluent family or?

So much raked through my brains.

I wondered for myself which was right and which was wrong.

More-so, I couldn’t simply understand why she had left this hidden here.

We needed money.

From what I looked at, if we sold these items we should be able to have the one million coins.

Or had she forgotten it?

I sighed heavily and began to fidget with my necklace.

I had it for as long as I could remember.

Mother said it was a family heirloom only passed to the women in our family.

I wasn’t allowed to take it off or it would hearing disastrous consequences to our family.

So I had stuck by it, always wearing it.

Never taking it off.

And now I considered having them sold off.

Just so we could raise some money.

A down payment to father’s debt.

That way they would let us off the hook for a while.

I considered packing up the items in the false drawer for mother, but I didn’t know how she would feel about it.

Eventually I told myself I was going to return everything back to its place and head back to the pack house.

When I got to see her, then I would confront her.

I finished gathering her things in boxes and bags whilst my mind still remained stuck on my new found pressure.

I tried my best to press down the gnawing feeling of anxiety in my tummy.

I fished through the rooms to be sure u had packed all that was needed before going to every door to lock up.

I did a double check of every door, making sure it was secure before I packed up the boxes and bags into the cart.

They were quite heavy, but I got the hang around it.

Finally I locked the main house door and looked back at our house.

Our home.

The only home I had known.

I told myself that I was going to return.

This was my home.

We were going to find a way.

I pulled penny from the barn before locking it shut.

With the cart attached to penny, I climbed on the cart and gently instructed Penny to ride off.

Penny’s hoofs and the rolling away of the cart was the one thing I could hear.

I looked back at the house one last time before finally facing my front.

This was going to be only temporary.