by Regan Ure
“If another alpha like Victor gets her pack, we will be in serious trouble.”
I began to pace up and down. Cade was right. There was no disputing it. I could feel mad, upset, betrayed, but none of that mattered if another alpha took over her pack. Her pack combined with another would be too powerful for us to defend against. I felt the weight of responsibility settle on my shoulders. As much as I hated the idea and didn’t want to do it, there was no alternative. Stopping, I turned to face my friend. He watched me closely while I pulled myself together. There was no point in whining about the unfairness of it all. I had no choice.
“Fine,” I said firmly. I didn’t how I was going to do it but I would to protect the people that I loved irrespective of how I felt about her.
“I’m sorry,” Cade said. His tone was filled with sympathy.
“Yeah, it sucks, but there is nothing we can do about it,” I replied, knowing that if there was another way he wouldn’t be asking me to do this. Sometimes in life we had to do things we didn’t want to.
“How sure are you that Keri will go with it?” I asked. It would take both of us to ensure the safety of our packs.
From the time I’d found out she was my mate I hadn’t once thought about how everything was affecting her. I’d only thought about my own hurt.
“Honestly, I don’t know.”
He looked as worried as I felt. There was that chance that she would refuse and there was nothing we would be able to do about it. We couldn’t let that happen.
“She has to go along with it,” Cade said.
But what if she didn’t? There was only one way I could think of to ensure she would mate with me.
“She will only go along with it if she thinks that I’ve forgiven her and accepted her as my mate,” I stated, rubbing my forehead. He didn’t look surprised. He’d probably come to the same conclusion.
It was easier said than done. I would have to push my real feelings down and pretend that I cared for her. It wasn’t something I was sure I could do. Another thing that occurred to me was I hadn’t touched her yet. When mates touched, the connection was formed and I wasn’t sure how I would be able to deal with that. And once we mated and she could shift, it would be harder for me to walk away.
“I need time though,” I told him. The sooner I did it the sooner everyone would be safe, but I needed a little time, even if it was just a week.
“Sure,” he replied.
A few moments of silence settled between us.
“Just don’t take too long,” he reminded me.
“I won’t,” I assured him. Just when I didn’t think things could get worse, they had.
“So when are we going to release her?” I asked, sounding calm but my emotions were swirling inside of me.
"Tomorrow."
I'd been expecting it to be soon, just not that soon. I wasn’t sure if I was ready for any of this.
"Why the hurry?" I asked.
"The longer we keep her a prisoner the more agitated her pack is going to become," he explained with a crease in his forehead.
He was right to look at me with concern. As an alpha who had already run a pack, I would know this stuff.
"I'm sorry. I'm not thinking straight at the moment," I explained before I rubbed my hands over my face.
The truth was since I'd found out Keri was my mate, I'd been a mess. My volatile emotions clouded my logical thinking. I couldn't make decisions concerning her without my emotions taking over. It was a good thing that Cade was the alpha because I wasn't so sure I'd be able to do the job at the moment.
"How long do you need?" he asked.
I stood up and began to pace. I wasn't sure how much time would help me accept the reality of my situation.
"A few days," I answered, rubbing the back of my neck. The tension in my body was tightening my muscles.
"Fine," he agreed before he pushed the chair back. He stood up and walked around the desk to stand beside me.
"Thanks, man," I said, feeling relief at putting off the inevitable for a few days.
"Sure, no problem," he assured me. “Before you leave, Scarlett wants to talk to you."
"Where’s she?" I asked, wanting to talk to her as quickly as possible so as to be able to put some space between Keri and myself.
"Upstairs resting.”
I could tell from the annoyance in his voice that it had probably been a battle of wills to get her to take it easy. A smile spread across my face at the thought of Scarlett. She was strong and willful, which made her a perfect match for my hotheaded best friend.
“I’ll speak to you again soon,” I said to him before I walked to the door of the study.
“Sure,” he said.
He sat back down at the desk and opened up his laptop as I left the study. I climbed the stairs to the first floor of the house and walked down the hallway to the end. I knocked on the double doors.
“Come in,” I heard Scarlett say through the door.
She was lying in the bed with her arms crossed over her chest when I entered the room. Her eyes brightened at the sight of me. Bruises still marred her face. She’d been beaten pretty badly by Victor. Being a werewolf had it perks and one of them was faster healing, so in a day or two the bruises would be gone.
It was still hard to believe that she’d killed one of the most powerful alphas. The fact that she hadn’t grown up in a pack and until a few weeks ago didn’t even know that she was a werewolf made me respect her more. She’d worked and trained hard to get up to speed with werewolves who’d trained their whole lives.
“Cade said you wanted to talk to me,” I said, walking to the bed. I pulled a chair up and sat down beside her.
I had no idea what she wanted to talk to me about.
“Yes, I did,” she said as she dropped her hands into her lap. Scarlett rarely looked nervous but there was no mistaking it. Whatever she wanted to talk to me about she was unsure of.
“I’m here, so talk,” I said, waiting for her to tell me what was on her mind. I had a lot of respect and affection for her. We’d come a long way since the first time I’d met her. In the beginning she hadn’t been able to stand the sight of Cade or me but now we’d risks our lives for each other.
“It’s about Keri,” she said, her sharp eyes watching me for a reaction.
I wasn’t ready to talk to anyone about Keri. It was only because I really cared about Scarlett that I gave her a chance to finish what she was going to say.
“I spoke to her earlier,” she began to say.
I pressed my lips to keep myself from snapping at her. It was hard enough trying to figure out where to go from here but now I had to listen to what she had to say about Keri. At my visible agitation she reached out and placed her hand over mine.
“I know you’re angry. We’re all pissed at what happened,” she said. “But I was the only one that was there to see Keri with her father.”
I wasn’t sure how this was going to change anything for me but I continued to listen to her.
“At first when I found out she’d betrayed me—us—I was angry. But I saw how scared she was of Victor. He didn’t treat her like a daughter. He treated her like a pack member to do his bidding.”
She paused for a moment.
“I had two loving parents and I couldn’t imagine how horrible it would have been to only have a father like Victor. She’s never been loved.”
Her words made my chest hurt. I rubbed my forehead with my free hand.
“She was scared of her father,” she told me. “Not just a little scared, she was petrified. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes I would feel like the rest of you do. But I saw it.”
I let out a sigh.
“The thing that I can’t understand is if she was so scared, why did she stay with the pack?” I asked softly. I wanted to believe that there was some good in Keri but from my point of view I couldn’t see any. “Why stay if it was so bad? Nothing was keeping her there so why would she endure that day in
day out? What if, despite everything you’ve said, she is the power-hungry villain that her father was?”
She bit her lip and remained silent. She knew I was right.
“I don’t want her to be the villain,” I added as I held her gaze. “But she is.”
I closed my eyes briefly and took a deep breath. Scarlett’s hand squeezed mine.
“You don’t know how badly I want to believe that she isn’t a replica of her father…” Talking about it was making the pain in my chest worse and I rubbed it with my hand. “…that the evil inside him lives in her.”
I let go of Scarlett’s hand and stood up.
“I know how badly you want to believe that there’s good in her but I think you’re setting yourself up for more disappointment,” I said, finishing my argument. “She’s hurt all of us and you’d be naive to think she won’t again.”
“There are things that don’t add up but I saw the fear in her eyes,” she said, standing firm on the fact that she didn’t believe Keri was the evil that her father had been.
She probably had no idea what Cade and I had just agreed to do to keep our pack safe. I wondered how Cade was going to tell her because there was no doubt about it, she was on Keri’s side. I would have to start pretending that I was able to forgive Keri but for today, I didn’t have to. Today, I could feel the anger and betrayal of being mated to someone I couldn’t stand the sight of.
“I have to go,” I said to Scarlett. I needed to get out of there and I didn’t want to waste any of the time I’d been given to get myself together.
“Okay,” she said, sounding a little defeated. I wasn’t sure what she had hoped to achieve by having this conversation with me but it hadn’t worked. I still hated Keri and nothing anyone said was going to change that.
“Take it easy and I’ll see you soon,” I said as I bent down to give her a slight hug.
“I will.”
I left as fast as I could. Time was what I needed to get my head around what I had to do. It wasn’t going to be easy. I wasn’t a deceitful person but I had to be good to be able to fool Keri. I didn’t want to think about what would happen if I failed. When you touched your mate, a connection was formed. I wasn’t sure if I would be able to turn my back on her and leave once that happened.
That was what scared me the most. What if my head was clouded by the emotions that joined us and I couldn’t leave her? Would the destiny that joined us together be stronger than my sense of what was right and wrong?
CHAPTER FOUR
Keri
I was agitated at the lack of progress in the last twenty-four hours since I’d last spoken to Cade. I’d expected to be released already but I was still pacing the white cell that I’d been in for the last two days.
The door opened and Cade walked in with someone else. I vaguely recognized the second person as Kyle, Scarlett’s cousin. The similarities left no doubt that they were related. He had midnight black hair that reached to his ears and the same silver-gray eyes that Scarlett had. I’d never met him in person but I had seen photos of him. Victor had ensured I knew our enemies and Kyle had been noted as one of them.
Both of them stood powerfully, with their legs slightly apart as they surveyed me.
“You needed two of you to do this?” I asked sarcastically. One female alpha against two male alphas didn’t seem fair. I was tired and agitated. All I wanted to do was get back to my pack. I wasn’t a very patient person and with all the free time I’d had it was enough to start driving me a little crazy.
Kyle arched an eyebrow at me.
“We’ve decided to send someone to oversee your decisions until we are able to trust that you’ll keep the peace,” Cade said, telling me their terms without wavering.
I hadn’t expected that. He watched me for a reaction but there was none. There was no hidden agenda on my part so I had no reason to fight him on that condition and at this point I’d agree to anything. I just wanted to go home. The alpha blood in my veins refused to allow me to give in too easily, though, so I decided to play them for a little while and put up a bit of an argument.
“Is that really necessary?” I asked while I held Cade’s gaze.
“Your actions spoke volumes,” he argued with a steel gaze. “You’re the one that helped your father try to wipe out our packs and start a war.”
I tried to keep the guilt from showing on my face.
“You helped Curtis kidnap Scarlett and…God only knows what would have happened if she hadn’t managed to kill Victor,” he stated, trying to keep the emotion out of his voice but I heard his voice waver for a moment. He would have been devastated.
He was right; I’d done all of those things. I was guilty as charged and there was no arguing that. In his shoes, I wouldn’t trust me either. He was doing the right thing but there was no way I would tell him that. I had to make it seem as if I was putting up a bit of a fight on the subject before I relented and did as they said.
As an alpha of my own pack, I needed to make it clear from the beginning that, despite the fact that I was a female, I wasn’t a pushover. There would be future run-ins with them—that couldn’t be avoided—but I wouldn’t allow them to think they could dictate to me. Their impression of me as leader counted now. It was all about first impressions.
“What if you never trust me?” I asked with my hands settled on my hips. I had to mentally stop myself and I let my arms drop to my side. Victor had always taught me to never display female reactions. He always told me if I wanted to be respected I had to act like a man.
“Then we have a big problem,” he stated, his hard eyes on me. I didn’t want to know what that entailed. I wasn’t interested in a war so we wouldn’t have that problem. They would send someone to watch over me and he would report nothing unusual, and then they would move on and leave me alone.
We continued to hold each other’s gaze.
“Doesn’t he have a pack to run?” I tried to argue before I flickered a gaze to Kyle who was trying to suppress a smile.
“Yes, he does but he’s sacrificing his time to do this for all of us.”
With just that sentence, the line was drawn; it was them against me. I’d never felt so lonely like I did at that moment. Trust me, I’d had plenty of lonely moments in my life, more than I could count. But the fact that my mate didn’t want me and it felt like everyone was against me… It felt so overwhelming. I didn’t let it show, though. I pulled myself together.
“Fine, let him babysit me,” I shot back and Kyle grinned.
Cade turned to Kyle.
“She’s all yours,” he said, sounding exasperated before he stalked out of the room and leaving me alone with Kyle.
Kyle let out a sigh as I watched him pull a pair of leather gloves from his back pocket.
“I really hope I don’t regret this,” he mumbled before he opened the door to my prison and stepped back to wait for me. I eyed him for a moment before I walked out.
“Come on, Cinderella,” he said as he opened the door and looked at me.
I arched an eyebrow at the nickname he’d just used for me. I’d never been given a nickname before.
“What?” he said with an innocent shrug. “Don’t you get it?”
I narrowed my gaze as I remained silent. No, I didn’t.
“You know…the girl with the evil stepmother and stepsister,” he explained.
“I know the story,” I said in a clipped tone while I held his gaze. How did that have anything to do with me?
“Well, you know, instead of the evil stepmother and stepsisters, but in your case you had the evil father,” he tried to explain. I shook my head at him and passed him as I walked out of the room that had been my prison. Wasn’t Cinderella a good person that got treated badly? I wasn’t good, so that didn’t make me a Cinderella.
This guy was going to annoy the hell out of me and we’d just met. I wondered how I was going to cope with him being around all the time and breathing down my neck. The whole exercise was going
to impossible to get through without wringing his neck.
“Hey, don’t forget about me,” the annoying person reminded me from behind me as I stalked forward. I couldn’t wait to get out of here and back to where I belonged.
“You know this might go quicker if you could be friendlier,” he muttered, but I didn’t acknowledge him.
I didn’t do friendly.
As we made our way from the basement into the garage, I couldn’t stop my eyes from wandering, looking for glimpses of Blake. Just the thought of him made me relive the pain of my rejection.
Hang in there, I told myself. When I was at home and in private I would be able to mourn the loss of something I’d never had, nor ever would.
It was a good thing I had a good memory because I remembered the way out and when I opened the front door of the house and stepped outside I saw Scarlett standing beside a couple of SUV-type cars. I wanted to roll my eyes at her and tell her to stop but instead I played the indifferent card. If I showed her no reaction she might get the hint quicker.
She stepped forward and I halted.
“I just wanted to see you off,” she explained while she gauged me for a reaction. I remained tight-lipped and her gaze flickered to her cousin.
“You’d better be right,” he muttered to her.
“I am right,” she said before her eyes settled back on me. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that she was wasting her time.
“I’ll speak to you soon,” he said to his cousin as he gave her a brief hug.
“Let’s go, Cinderella,” he said, opening the passenger door of the first SUV for me. I stepped past Scarlett and got into the car. When Kyle got into the driver’s seat I turned to him.
“Where’s my father’s body?” I asked.
“In the back,” he answered.
“Let’s go,” I instructed. I had everything I needed.
