Chapter 2
921 Words
Chloe’s pov
I shoved through my father's study door without knocking, and he looked up from his desk like I'd interrupted a business meeting instead of walking in on the wreckage of my own life. The room smelled like the same pipe tobacco it had smelled like since I was a kid.
"Dad." My chest heaved from the run across the training yard. "I need to talk to you. Now."
He capped his pen and set it down on the ledger in front of him, the lamplight catching the gray at his temples he refused to let anyone comment on. He didn't rise from his chair or offer me the seat across from him, just watched me stand there breathless on his rug.
"I just caught Edith in Hudson’s bed." The words spilled out of me. "He marked her two nights ago. And now everyone's acting like I'm the one who's supposed to marry into the Red Moon pack, but that's not right. I'm not marrying into the Red Moon Wolves."
My father raised his hand and slapped me before I got the last word out.
My head snapped sideways, and heat bloomed across my cheek, spreading into my jaw until the whole side of my face rang with it. The room tilted for a second, the shelves and the fire sliding sideways with it, and I pressed my palm to the burn and stared at the rug while my breath came in short, uneven pulls. My ears were still ringing when I lifted my head and looked at him.
He wasn't even winded. He straightened his cuff like I was the one who'd wronged him.
I stared at him, my mouth open on words that wouldn't come. In nineteen years he'd never once raised a hand to me, not through every disappointment I'd handed him.
"Your two sisters are already married." He scolded me, folding his hands on the desk in front of him. "Edith's been marked by Hudson. Who else is left, Dad? Who else but you can marry into the Red Moon?"
I thought of my sisters, both settled two territories over with men who at least looked at them like they mattered. Neither of them had ever had to stand in this study and argue for the right to say no to anything.
"But Hudson was my boyfriend." My voice came out smaller than I wanted it to, and I hated that, hated how easily he could still shrink me down to this size. "For two years."
"Not anymore."
I stared at the man who'd raised me in this house on the edge of the pack lands, who'd never once let me forget I didn't belong in it, and a cold, slow understanding settled into my chest that had nothing to do with the slap still burning on my cheek.
"You already knew about them." I accused him, watching his face for a flinch. He didn't flinch. "This isn't new tonight. You've known about this for a while, haven't you? You planned this."
"Does it matter when I knew?"
"It matters to me." My hands curled at my sides, nails biting into my palms hard enough to ground me in the room. "You're talking about handing me over to a man who kills the wolves who cross him and doesn't lose sleep over it."
"Watch your tone." He said it without heat, "I don't answer to you, Chloe."
"You're my father."
"I'm your Alpha first."
"You're nothing but a lowly, wolfless bastard." His voice didn't rise. It didn't need to. "Bringing you back to Twilight was already a great favor. Now it's time for you to repay the pack."
The word bastard hurt me harder than the slap had. The slap had already faded to a warm ache. This word settled in and stayed, curling into every quiet moment over nineteen years when I'd wondered why he looked at me like a bill he hadn't finished paying off.
"I do not want to marry that man?"
He laughed, short and without warmth, "Do you think you have the right to refuse?"
"Whether I'm a bastard or not," I said, and my voice didn't shake even though everything else in me did, "I have the right to refuse. I'm still a person, Dad. Not a debt you get to collect whenever it's convenient."
He leaned back in his chair, and the wood creaked under him, the only sound in the room besides my own breathing and the fire snapping low in the hearth.
"You're still fond of your old teacher, aren't you? Lisa." He rolled her name around like he was turning over a card he'd been holding all night, "She's been living in the house I provided her, hasn't she? Six years now, I think."
My stomach dropped before he even finished the sentence.
"Leave her out of this."
"I own that house." He shrugged, "I also have the right to kick her out of it."
Nineteen years of being invisible in this house, and it took threatening an old woman to finally get his full attention. There was a bitter joke buried in that somewhere, one I'd have laughed at if it belonged to anyone else's life but mine.
I opened my mouth to argue, and nothing came out. My hands were still curled into fists, but the fight drained out of them, and a cold, creeping dread pooled low in my stomach instead, spreading fast enough that my knees threatened to give out under it.
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