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“I’m not sure if you noticed, but nobodyletsyour mother do anything. I didn’t even know she was going. She decided my presence would make things too tense.”
His tone is clipped in a perfect impersonation of my mum’s tone when she’s made up her mind about something, and I have a feeling this is a conversation he remembers vividly.
“She probably wasn’t wrong,” I concede.
If I met another wolf who I knew was actively pursuing my mate behind my back, I doubt I could keep control of my emotions. Even now, at just the thought of it, I itch to race back to the packhouse to be nearer to Maya. I should have had more sympathy for Cooper when he met Hayley. It must have been torture not to be able to speak to her for weeks.
Dad grunts and pushes to his feet. Now I know this is about to get good. Or really, really, bad.
“He took her. As soon as she arrived, he bundled her into the back of a car and set off for his pack. He knew if he could get her onto his territory, his pack was so fierce and their borders controlled so tightly, nobody could get her back.”
Woah. I was not expecting that. Poor Mum.
“How did we never hear about this before?”
Now I’m on my feet too. Someone kidnapped my mother. My stomach churns as I imagine how scared she was. I'm incredulous. I thought our family was an open book. What kind of man would do such a thing, and just because she met her mate?
Dad ignores my question and continues pacing.
“Marie got away before he could get her across that bridge. She never told me how, but she escaped, and I was able to come and find her. She wasn’t hurt, and that's all that mattered. But he was furious his plan hadn’t worked. And I was furious he thought he could touch my mate.”
What happened while she was captured? I can’t believe they kept this secret from us all these years.
"I joke that she probably talked so much they tossed her out of the car before they were stuck with her forever.”
I can’t help smiling at that. My mother is no pushover, and she’s smart as a whip. I’d say she made their lives hell. There was no way they were going to get away with that.
“When the council found out what he had tried to do, they blacklisted him. It was only supposed to last a few years, and if he was contrite, they probably would have lifted the sanctions. But he refused to admit that he did anything wrong, arguing right until the end that she was his mate, that we had wronged him.”
He leans back against the railing, arms folded across his chest, and sighs, sounding weary, like reliving all these memories has exhausted him.
“As the years went on, his behaviour got worse. The council was glad to see the back of him when he stopped leaving his territory and cut his pack off from the world. We should have done more. His pack didn’t deserve to be left with a madman and no outside help.”
My dad is a good guy, and I can tell this weighs heavily on him. I can feel his guilt.
“Do you know what life was like for the pack?” I’m afraid to ask, but I have to know so I can figure out why Maya is denying the bond.
“Nothing concrete the council could act on, but we heard stories. Lots of them. He found his fated mate and had Dean and Maya, but he refused to acknowledge her and make her his Luna. Rumour is that he was cruel to her because she was the real-life embodiment of how wrong he had been.” Dad hesitates, “He wasn’t a well man, Nathan. I dread to think what they witnessed or endured on his orders.”
My heart hurts for the younger version of Maya I can see in my mind. An unhinged, nasty father abusing her mother. A pack with no outside connections or help. My father is still grimacing, and I know that’s not the worst.
“Their mother passed away, very young. Nobody knows what happened, but apparently there were suspicions it was sinister rather than illness.”
Oh, goddess. Their father killed their mother. How do you get over something like that? My jaw drops open, and I stare at him in stunned silence. I go to speak, but he cuts me off.
“No, no. It gets worse. Let me finish. They have a brother who’s much younger, Jax, conceived to Alpha Reynolds and his second chance mate. She also passed away at a very young age.”
Dad lets that hang out there between us for a second as I try to consider how on earth a man like that could’ve deserved a second chance in the first place, but then to have killed her, too?
“Dean was 21 when he had to kill his own father, right in front of Maya. Both Maya and Jax had been badly injured.”
I can’t wrap my head around what he’s telling me. How was this man allowed to stay in his position for so long?
“You’re telling me that’s the example Maya has of what it’s like to have a mate?”
Thinking out loud, I realise just how fortunate I am to have been raised with supportive parents who love each other. Maya had none of that, by the sounds of it.
Does she genuinely have no idea what the bond feels like? How it will affect her?
