AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Yeah, Dad, tell Mom what you did. How many times? Since when?” Evie demanded to know, and I saw much more than the anger visible in her eyes, I could feel genuine hurt. I wish I could ask Adrien to explain, because I was still very much lost.
“I did it to protect you,” he said, looking from Evie to Valeria, who was slowly realizing something serious was going on.
“What did you do, Evergreen?” Valeria asked.
“He did background checks on every man I’ve dated or even remotely shown interest in. Some of them I didn’t even date,” she huffed, turning back to the monitor and looking through the files. “These three I worked with or for, which begs the question, what the fuck did you do, Dad? Did you hack my accounts to look for any guy that I was in contact with? And this one. Billy Erickson. He was the boy who asked me to the homecoming dance and then suddenly decided he wasn’t going. Was that you, too?” The tiny frisson of jealousy at realizing the files were a list of people Evie had dated evaporated when I realized Evergreen hadn’t just looked into the men she dated, but had breached her privacy to do it. I took a small step away from Evergreen and moved toward Evie in silent solidarity.
“He wasn’t good enough for you. He was in and out of detention, and he had no plans for college.”
“That wasn’t your decision or your right. Evergreen, what were you thinking?” Standing in front of her mate, Valeria was angry now, while Adrien was trying to make himself invisible near the corner. I think he would have ported out if he thought they wouldn’t notice. I kind of wished the same thing right now. This was a private family matter between the three of them. Evergreen’s hands were fisting open and closed, looking at the two most important women in his life staring him down with so much anger.
“I—” he started and stopped, then began pacing, running a hand through his hair.
“Why, Dad?”
“Because you stopped talking to me!” Evergreen finally exploded with a look of anguish on his face. “Because I could see how much you were hurting, but you wouldn’t speak to me about it. You stopped hanging out with all your friends. You were shutting me out, shutting your mom out. I didn’t know what was happening. I felt like I was losing my little girl. You used to tell me everything, even talk about the boys you thought were cute. Then suddenly, you’re thirteen, and you closed that door with me standing on the other side. How the fuck was I supposed to protect you while I knew nothing of what was going on in your life? I looked into everything, okay? Everything. I watched videos of your days in school, walking the hallways alone, trying to figure out what made you shut down to the people who loved you.”
“That was my problem. My issues. I was dealing with them in my own way,” Evie tried to tell him, but I could see the anger in her words was draining.
“I’m your father, Evie. I wanted to protect you.”
“That’s not how you go about it, Evergreen,” Valeria said quietly.
“That’s the only way I knew how. She wouldn’t let me in, so I let myself in. I checked every person she dated to make sure she was safe. When she left the pack for MIT, I made sure to keep an eye on who was around her, making sure she was safe. I checked her teachers, her classmates. I even checked into Zi when they moved in together.” Evergreen sat down on the steps of the basement, putting his face in his hands, the fight leaving him.
“Were you the reason Billy Erikson changed his mind?” Evie asked, wrapping her arms around herself. I was going to take a step toward her, hating the pain I could feel through the bond, but Adrien caught my eye and shook his head slightly, telling me to stay put.
Let them talk this out, or they won’t be able to mend this, Tenoch agreed, his ears and tail down at seeing our mate hurting.
“No,” Evergreen said, looking up at his daughter. “I wanted to, but I didn’t reach out to any of them. I just looked from the sidelines. The only time I did anything was on a potential contract request you received from a seedy man I knew wasn’t trustworthy, and I didn’t even find out about it because of you. I was already looking into him for a contract with another alpha who had issues with him getting involved with his daughter. I erased the email he sent asking for a meet-up to talk about a supposed contract, so he simply thought you ignored him.”
“Did you hack my phone conversations? My files?”
“Just your email. Any new contact or email with dates and time. I did a background check on any new person in your life, and then I let you live it. I kept an eye on a few, but I never interjected. I wouldn’t have without your knowledge.”
“Did it never occur to you that I was doing the same?” Evie asked, causing everyone to focus on her. She sighed and sat down on the desk chair. “I was well aware that I was alone in MIT and New York. I know I was young, but you should have trusted me; trusted everything you taught me about being safe. I never took a job without doing my due diligence on people. I took on a few seedy ones, yes, but I always had a fail-safe plan when I did. You needed to trust me, Dad. The same way I trusted you.” She shook her head.
“I trusted you, Munchkin. I don’t trust the rest of the world. I’ve seen too many nightmare-inducing things happen to innocent people in my life to trust anyone outside of these three packs. I didn’t want to end up watching you through some monitor being tortured like I did with Helios and some of his pack, or being hunted down like his siblings have been for the last two decades. I’ve had to watch it all happen through those screens, and I would rather die than see you like that.” Evergreen stood up, walked to his daughter, kneeling in front of her. “I’m not a fighter, Evie. I can hold my own a bit, but my power lies in using that machine, same as you. I knew there was something going on that you didn’t want to tell me, and your mom kept telling me I couldn’t push you because it would just push you further away. So, I waited. I waited, and I watched from those screens and tried to keep you safe to make sure that you got the chance to let me back in someday. I know it sounds like bullshit excuses, but all I’ve ever wanted to do was keep you safe. If I had to blackmail or destroy anyone that tried to hurt you, I would have done it without an ounce of regret. I even looked into Jo, Cory and James when you stopped hanging out with them to see if they’d done something to you.”
Hey! Tenoch protested indignantly in the back of my head at the prospect of someone thinking we could ever hurt Evie. As if knowing what he was feeling, Evergreen turned to me somewhat apologetically.
“Sorry, Alpha, but she’s my little girl. I can’t take you in a fight, but I would’ve made sure you were in every spam email list in existence, ruined your credit score until you couldn’t even buy a junk car, and added you on every no-fly list if you’d hurt Evie,” he said, getting a tiny sniffle-giggle from Evie.
“No hard feelings,” I assured him.
“I have hard feelings,” Evie said, glaring at me, but I could feel the anger had left her. She looked over at the sorrowful look on Evergreen’s face, and her scowl softened a little. “If you could have done that, why couldn’t you have done that to Traci and her posse?”
Evergreen threw his hands up in surrender. “Because I didn’t know it was them! I watched hours of hallway footage. I never saw them harassing you.”
“Yeah, well, they never outright harassed me,” Evie relented and pulled Evergreen into a tight hug. “I’m still mad at you, though,” she mumbled.
“I know, Munchkin,” he mumbled back.
“Well, Evie may have forgiven you, but you’re still sleeping on the couch tonight for pulling this shit, Evergreen. And if I find out you didn’t do it to Everett, only to Evie, you’re sleeping there for the foreseeable future.”
Evergreen sobered up and looked at his mate. He moved Evie out of the seat and fiddled with the computer until he found what he was looking for. When he motioned for us to look, I laughed when I saw a much more robust file on Everett.
“The boy was a bit of man whore until he started medical school,” he explained with a face, making everyone laugh.
