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BEATRICE
The air wasthat oddly humid warmth you sometimes got in a summer’s early evening, but it was better than the stagnant air of the house. Evening. Had so much time passed? Where were my alphas? I wanted them… Knew what I truly had with them.
The silence that followed me was all in my head. Around me, men and women walked, spoke. Carriages rumbled. I hung suspended between the world before and the world after. My decade of insecurity, believing that he had left on his own, now took on another form.
I returned to the house, helped up the stairs by Meeker, and into the drawing room.
“Please don’t mention she was here,” I asked him.
“No m’lady. But they might smell her, and I won’t lie.”
“Thank you.”
With my box in hand, I sank to the floor and rested my head against the window, relishing the feeling of the cold glass against my hot cheek.
Memories, old and new, clouded my mind’s eye.
A part of me hated him for submitting to my mother and running from me all those years ago. It was a harder pill to swallow than the thought that he had rejected me. Rejection, out right, felt better than the knowledge that my alpha had given in to another.
The world righted itself when I heard his footsteps on the stairs.
Pax’s tread was heavy and steady, but Jack moved with a quick purpose that belied his size and his personality.
“Trix? You there?” He called out.
“Here.” I wasn’t even sure if I’d spoken loud enough to hear, but he came anyway.
“Meeker, of all people, was waiting at the door to say you were up here.” He took in my face, red and swollen from crying. “What happened?”
My heart ached at the sight of him. Ten years had changed us both, but better than anything, I loved that the alpha I’d wanted as a girl was still the alpha I would have chosen for myself now. I’d have him to mate and marry again.
“Where?” I asked. Cleared my throat and held the box out for him to look at. “Where did you get this?”
“Your father. As I was… He gave it to me.”
“As you were leaving?”
His expression turned stoney.
“I spoke with my mother. She confessed,” I said with an icy stillness creeping into my body.
“I could have, should have, stayed.”
“What were her threats?”
“I thought you said she confessed.” I shook my head. I needed to hear him say what happened. As my mate he owed me the truth. “She threatened that I’d be arrested for raping you. I should have held my ground. I knew that you would stand by me and deny the charges, but what did that matter? You were just eighteen. The probability of a judge not upholding your mother’s claim—“
“Please,” I put my hands up to stop him. What more did I need to hear? That woman had threatened my mate with rape of an omega. He would not have been put to death, but the punishment and ensuing trial would have ruined his family. “I am so… That bitch. She threatened your family?”
“Trix, nothing should have kept me—”
I snarled. “You were the junior. She… She was a powerful alpha who threatened to tell the magistrate you’d raped me. An accusation alone! Oh Goddess, and I was so angry… And my father never once hinted… That bitch.”
“Trix, I had ten years to return and claim you again.”
“No. No more of that or ‘what ifs’ or speculation. That we are here, now, and complete with Pax. Would we have found him otherwise?” My mate’s eyes flashed hot. “Don’t be at war with yourself. Don’t blame yourself or see the past as anything but what it is. The past. The Goddess works in mysterious ways and our paths twist and turn, but as sure your mate bite on my shoulder is a lovers’ circle, we were always meant to come back together.”
“Trix.”
