Hated By The Alpha-Chapter 146: Emptiness

"Your face will always be in my mind, Lake, and my soul will always recognize yours. I wish you all the happiness in the world. Be happy, Lake, and I hope you find the right love for yourself. For me, I’ll always love and cherish you because you will always be the only one for me.

From someone you once loved."

Lake folded the paper neatly and placed it back inside his drawer. Five years he’s been reading that same letter every day, for five good years.

And each time he read it, he felt more empty, his brain and wolf struggled to connect with something unknown, but in the end, they turned out with nothing.

Lake sighed and shoved his hand into his hair, looking over the piles of work on his desk.

This has become his routine for five years, work, work, and work.

Ever since he found himself waking up from what seemed to be the longest sleep with the weirdest dreams ever, he’d lunged himself into work.

He had asked everyone why he felt as if he was missing a huge part of himself, but they just told him that it was because of the prolonged coma he’d woken from.

His memories were disorganized; he could remember that he had won a war with a dark witch, but when he tried to remember a certain face, the face always seemed to move far away from him, causing him to feel pain whenever he pushed harder.

The frustration from everything caused him to delve into work, he started renovating everything in his pack as if changing everything would ease his unease.

For five years, he’s gone cold like an ice, treating everything and everyone with an arm’s length, he didn’t want to let anyone close, afraid he’ll end up getting more thrown off in life.

But, three years ago, he had done something stupid and regretted it immediately, and till now, he didn’t know how to change what he’d done; he just decided to move on with it.

He was brought out of his thoughts when he heard his phone ringing on top of his work desk.

"Hello," he answered, uninterested.

"Hi, Alpha, I’m downstairs, and your little beta has refused me to come up to meet you," A voice said from his speaker.

"Do you have anything worth my time, Baker?" He questioned in a low voice.

"Oh, come on, Alpha, I’ve got what I know would pique your interest, try me," the voice replied excitedly.

Lake sighed quietly, "Come in," He ended the call and sent a mind link to Andrew, asking him to let the man up to his office.

He went back to his documents, reading through and signing.

He knew it would take a few minutes before Baker got up to his office. He had built a medium skyscraper beside the packhouse. He had thought of demolishing the packhouse and building the skyscraper there instead, but something was stopping him; he renovated everything in his pack, apart from the Packhouse. He left everything exactly as it was, he felt like one day he would find his answers inside the building.

So, currently, he moved part of his office into the Pack, which caused him to build the skyscraper, he no longer felt like driving the long minutes or hours to his company, so he brought his work and a few production teams home instead, and his office was at the very last floor, the view of the pack and outside city had somehow become his solace each time it got too loud in his head.

He heard a soft knock on his door and knew that Baker had arrived.

"Come in," He muttered quietly.

Soon, the door was slowly pushed open and Andrew walked in, followed by an elderly man with scarce grey hairs.

"Alpha, Baker has arrived," Andrew bowed, his voice low.

Everyone was cautious around Lake these days, he was like a ticking time bomb, ready to explode at you at any given time or place.

"You may go, Andrew," Lake replied without lifting his head.

Andrew nodded but hesitated to leave, "Alpha, Melody wanted-"

"Leave, beta," Lake’s voice turned chilly; he emphasized Andrew’s status to make him understand the seriousness of his order.

Andrew knew when to halt. He bowed his head and closed the door to the office as he left.

Baker slowly carried his suitcase over to Lake’s table and bowed before him.

"Alpha, may I sit?" Baker asked quietly.

He was a chatty man, but he knew how to read the handwriting on the wall. And right now, he knew that the Alpha wouldn’t appreciate his chatty nature.

"Sit down, Baker," Lake replied, going back to his work. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

Baker lowered himself in front of Lake’s desk and placed his small suitcase on his lap.

"Um, so about what I said earlier, found something very interesting, and I know you would like it," Baker reminded.

"Mm," Lake responded without taking his eyes off his document.

"You know how I’m the biggest ambassador of your wine company, so I’ve just returned from one of my trips, and you wouldn’t believe what I found," Baker sounded excited.

"Go ahead, Baker," Lake nodded without looking.

Baker sighed when he saw Lake’s disinterest. But he didn’t waver, because he knew that the next information was going to blow his mind.

"Alright. I attended a commercial gathering during my travel, and you know how classy those things can be, we got served food and wine, of course. The food was awesome by the way, but when I tasted the wine, I felt heartbroken," Baker paused, watching Lake’s reaction.

Lake frowned, anger starting to breed within him.

"Baker, you can leave if you have nothing important to tell me; as you can see, I’m very busy," Lake furrowed his brows, trying to calm himself from losing it with the elderly man in front of him.

"No, no, no, let me finish. What I meant by heartbroken is, when I tasted the wine, I thought you got to supply your wine to another country without my knowledge or services, but then, I checked the bottle and saw that it was a completely different design from your popular gold-rimmed bottle design, so, I thought someone had just gotten your wine and poured it into a different container, but then, I saw the name beneath the bottle and recognized it immediately, it turned out that the most popular company in Paris was producing the same wine as your popular gold-rimmed wine!" Baker explained.

Lake finally looked up from the documents, narrowing his eyes at Baker.

"What do you mean?" He asked slowly.

"Two companies can’t produce the same drinks, maybe there might be some similarities, but never the same," Lake sat up on his chair.

Baker chuckled. He knew his information would interest the Alpha, that’s why he had brought evidence.

"Well, I knew you’d not believe me, so, I had to reach out to the owner of the company Via email and proposed a business deal with her, and luckily she scheduled a meeting with me by next Monday, and I thought, maybe, you’d also like to go see who this copycat was," Baker smiled.

Lake shook his head, "I have no such time. And besides, you might have just tasted wrong," Lake said dismissively.

Baker chuckled, shaking his head, "Ah, ah, ah, I just knew it’d come to this, and I needed to make sure I was able to convince you."

Baker brought up his small suitcase and placed it on top of Lake’s table, he opened it and took out a crystal bottle of wine with gold writings.

"Maybe, when you have a taste, you’d understand what I’m talking about," Baker placed the bottle of wine in front of Lake.

Lake frowned at the design; yes, the bottle was crystal, but why did they have to use gold on it, too? Almost as if this person was trying hard to hide the fact that she was copying him.

He was getting angry, whoever it was that thought they could mimic his products without legalization, he would let them know that he wasn’t one to be toyed with.

But he wasn’t going to conclude until he tasted the wine.

He pointed to the wine cellar by the side and Baker immediately went over there and retrieved a glass for him.

Baker opened the wine and poured some into Lake’s glass, gently placing the bottle beside the glass of wine.

Lake stared at the wine, frowning harder. It was golden like his wine, too, the same shade of gold, but still, he wasn’t going to conclude until he tasted it.

He slowly lifted the glass to his lips and took a sip.

He paused, then took another sip, swirling the wine around his mouth to make sure he didn’t miss any flavor.

"It’s the same," He whispered, his curiosity instantly heightening.

He now wanted to find out who the owner was.

Baker laughed, "I told you so, Alpha, this person is very good at what she does...I mean, at copying others," He cleared his throat as he saw Lake giving him a death glare for praising the owner of the wine.

Lake carefully picked the bottle up and searched for the name of the wine, but what he found instead made his wolf jump for the very first time in five years.

"Lake’s Vine?" He slowly read out the company’s name.

Baker smirked. "Yes, Alpha, I left that part for you to find out yourself."

Lake was thrown into thoughts of many possibilities. Why did this person name her wine after his vine? He believed that this was no coincidence, he needed to meet her.

"When’s the next flight to Paris?" He asked Baker with a determined voice.