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"Tina isn't my wife, Cynthia." It's time to finally put her misunderstanding to rest. "Tina is my fiancée only in name. There are some things going on…" When I see the death glare aimed my way, I immediately rectify, "Things which we should discuss right now. But before everything, let's put an end to Tina's chapter. The most important thing is that Tina has found her own fated mate. And unlike me," my voice is filled with regret, "she trusted him with the truth to avoid any and all misunderstandings. In the eyes of the pack, we're engaged. The only reason I agreed to this engagement was that my father was gearing up to accuse you of treason, Cynthia. He wasn't going to stop at anything to get you back. As Alpha, he would have been able to force me to hand you over despite our mated status if you had been accused of treason. Watson was also getting suspicious, and he was beginning to withdraw his support. Even with everything going on, my father was trying to get Norman onthe alpha seat, and I didn't know what to do. I had to break your blood debt, and the only possible way was to become the alpha, whatever the cost."
Cynthia studies me, and her voice is quiet. "I broke the blood debt myself."
That is another thing that has haunted me. "I should have trusted you, Cynthia. I should have told you everything from the moment I realized you were on my side. If I had done things differently, you wouldn't have put yourself at risk."
"You didn't intend to break the blood debt." Cynthia's eyes are heavy, and I can see the anger has faded into a quiet misery. "I heard you in your office when you said that there were ways to keep me tied to you."
"I was referring to the mating bond." I bury my head in my hands, furious with myself over my own arrogance and stupidity. "I would never have left you in that position, Cynthia. The plan at the moment had been to free you from the blood debt and then tell you everything. I predicted you would be angry with me, but I was sure I could convince you to stay by my side because of our mate bond. I never realized I would be the one to push you over the edge."
When I look up, her head is turned away from me, but I can smell the salt of her tears.
She won't even show me her tears, her vulnerability. It's my right as her mate to comfort her, to wipe away her tears, and I can't even do that much.
"I would never have used the blood debt against you, Cynthia," I swear. "Not something that has harmed you for so long."
"When did you find out about it?" Her voice is unsteady.
"Around the same time you disappeared," I confess. "I didn't even know you had left until we were attacked that very night. The same men who attacked Lydia after your first meeting. These men were more trained, and when I tried to get you out of the apartment, I realized you were already gone. I was ready to go after my father when Tony showed up. He was pissed off and demanded to know why I was treating my pregnant mate the way I was. Until that moment, I had no idea you were pregnant. It was then I realized that until I became the alpha, I couldn't protect you. The only way to protect you was to send you somewhere my father couldn't reach you. I was going to suggest a safehouse because I knew you wouldn't be able to leave this city because of the distance clause in the blood debt contract, but Tony said he had a way around it. I didn't realize then that he was helping you break the blood debt."
Cynthia turns her head to look at me, and her voice is scathing. "And what would you have done?"
She doubts me. It's obvious she has no faith in my ability to protect her. I could be the alpha or the emperor of this whole world and it wouldn't matter. Cynthia would not trust me to be able to protect her. It's obvious in the way she looks at me.
"I would have killed my father," I tell her slowly.
I'm not lying.
If I had known what she was planning, I would have chopped off my father's head and presented his head to her, freeing her from the blood debt and giving her the revenge craved. I would have automatically become the alpha, and while there would have been dissent within the pack, I would have done it for her.
Cynthia studies me, and I see a hint of sadness in her eyes before she masks it and looks down at her hands. I can tell she believes me.
"And what exactly was your plan, Adam?" she asks, and her voice is tired now. "Come here and force me to go with you?"
"No." I shake my head at once. "I was going to talk to you. I knew you would be mad, but I thought I could convince you to forgive me. I put the apartment in your name the moment I bought it. When Tony told me about the baby, I knew if you stayed here you would be in constant danger. I had to keep up the engagement with Tina to keep getting support from Watson. My father had a lot of allies, Cynthia, and money speaks. I had to get rid of them, one by one. I had to clear your name, and I had to make sure nobody linked us together. If I could have, I would have brought you back the minute I became the alpha. But my list of enemies was growing because of how tyrannically I was behaving. I was getting more desperate by the day."
"And now?" Cynthia asks.
"My father disappeared," I tell her. "I suspect it has something to do with Norman's involvement with the vampires, which was more complicated than I realized."
"What do you mean?"
"Around the time Robert assumed the Alpha position, there was a vampire clan, the Nelo Clan. They were expanding their business into shifter territory by producing drugs that had a profound effect on our kind. Robert and another alpha, whose pack was mostly affected, discovered that the Nelo Clan was trying to drive out the shifters, rendering them useless by getting them addicted to this drug. They shut it down, and a lot of packsceased working with most of the vampire clans. They considered it a breach of trust. My suspicion is that it was my father dealing with the vampire clan, the same one that committed the breach of trust and was producing the drugs. We had a few disappearances in the slums, and I was beginning to connect the dots when a major warehouse I was investigating was burnt to the ground, and my father disappeared. There are those who have spoken out in support of my father, and they are the ones I'm hunting down now."
Cynthia looks uneasy. "So, why come here now?"
I steeple my fingers together, gazing at her. "Because I got tired. I got tired of being away from the woman I love and my child. I have put off building a home for us because I wanted your touch on everything inside our home. I want to hear my daughter's voice. I want my mate by my side. It's been hell for me, Cynthia. I bore it because I knew I had to make sure it was safe enough for you two to come home. But through all of this, I didn't realize what I was putting you through. I thought because I planned it so, it should happen so."
"Yeah," she finally speaks after a couple of seconds, her voice hard, "but not everything goes according to plan, does it? If you had trusted me then, I would have gone willingly. I would have helped you. There were a thousand paths from which you could have chosen, but you chose the one that tore my entire life apart. Now, I have to question myself and every decision I've ever made. I got back my freedom, and I realized I had just been shifted from a smaller cage to a bigger one. Everything was decided for me, where I lived, where I worked, where my daughter would go to school. You just dragged me back to my old life where I was weak and had no voice."
Her words are like knives stabbing my heart.
"You think forgiveness is going to happen overnight? Or at all?" she asks harshly. "I no longer trust the people I once considered my family. In a way, I've once again been isolated. Telling me it was for my own good doesn't make a difference, Adam. All of you stabbed me in the back. Your intentions don't matter. What matters is what you did. Maya can cry and tell me she was trying to preserve my happiness, and Tony can say he was trying to protect my life here, but you all made deliberate decisions. It's about trust now. I don't know how I can trust anyone. You could be lying to me at any point. Do I have to spend the rest of my life worrying about when who is lying to me or manipulating me?"
I close my eyes, regretfully. "You're right."
"So, tell me what I'm supposed to do here, Adam?" Cynthia demands, her voice high. "Tell me how I'm supposed to move past such a betrayal because you have all the solutions, don't you?"
"I'm sorry," I murmur.
