A Bond Too Close: My Stepfather Is My Mate

ROMY Goodbye forever, Dad. Words I never thought I’d say, until the coffin lowered six feet under. The cold wind brushed my cheeks, but couldn’t touch my tears. My hero was gone. Forever. And his burial? Ha. What a joke. The only people there were Mom, the priest, and a couple of funeral attendants. For a werewolf, this was a sad excuse for a farewell. Pack burials were sacred, honored, but my father never had a pack. He was a lone wolf. Mom was, too. And now… me. You’d think on a day this heavy, tragedy would take a break. But you don’t know the Ashfords. We were cursed. “Debra, you have to go. He’s coming,” a panting voice cut through the silence. I turned. Micky. My dad’s best friend. The same man who couldn’t bother to show up for the funeral. “What?” Mom choked, her voice raw from hours of crying. “Don Dmitri. He’s close.” Micky’s scarred face twisted with urgency. “I had men tracking him. I knew something was coming sooner or later, but I didn’t think he’d act on Jerry’s burial day. Debra, you have to take Romy and run. Now.” Mom shook her head, lost, broken. “Where do we even run to?” Their voices blurred. Static filled my head, drowning out the world’s cruelty. All I saw was Micky shoving a black bag into Mom’s hands before rushing off, leaving us stranded in grief and panic. Mom grabbed me hard, dragging me away. Her words spilled fast, frantic, but my brain only caught one sentence: “The man who murdered your father is coming for us.” “The forest…” I whispered. She ignored me, yanking me toward the church gates, pulling me through the back entrance. “The forest,” I repeated louder. Still, she ran. I stopped dead, planting my feet, jerking her to a halt. She spun on me, eyes swollen and red. “God, Romy, why now? Please just listen. I already buried your father today, I can’t…I can’t lose you, too.” Her words cut deep, my chest tightening as I stared at her tear-stained face. My shoulders sagged. She was breaking. And I couldn’t add to her pain. So I took the lead and started running, forcing her to chase after me. But as mom rounded the first curve, her hair was yanked back violently by a towering, broad-shouldered beta male who slammed her against the church pews. “Where do you think you’re running to, b***h?” he snarled. “No one escapes Don.” More men poured in, all dressed in black. Their skin carried crude tattoos, the same symbols I once saw scribbled across papers in my father’s office. They had bats and machetes, looking more like mercenaries than mourners. I almost laughed. All this for two women, one a true omega, the other only pretending to be. Before the beta could lay his hands on me, a metal canister clinked onto the church floor and rolled between the pews. A second later, white gas exploded across the sanctuary, hissing through the air. The shouts came instantly. “Tear gas! We’re under attack!” The air thickened, biting my throat and clawing at my lungs. My eyes watered, but I could still see enough. My mother wasn’t so lucky; the gas blinded her almost immediately, leaving her clutching at me in panic. It was now or never. I pulled her through the haze, back the way we had come. The smoke swallowed the chaos around us, familiar men running forward, colliding blindly, they were the people who came with Micky. No one stopped us. By the time we stumbled out into the cold air, gas still burning in our lungs, Micky was waiting. His face was grim, his smile too heavy with sorrow. “Just go,” he told us, voice steady despite the madness behind us. “Thank you,” my mother whispered through tears, though she couldn’t even see him anymore. And I led her into the same forest she had rejected. I can’t explain it, but westernized wolves always seemed to fear the wild. Maybe it was too raw, too untamed. But I knew we’d be safer there than anywhere else. That was the start of the darkest chapter of our lives. The black bag Micky shoved into my mother’s hands carried nothing but money and our IDs. Money that paid for motels with peeling wallpaper, for bitter meals on the road, for suppressants that kept me hidden. But no matter how far we ran, no matter which pack borders we slipped into, Don Dmitri’s men always seemed to find us. Until one night, my mom finally broke. “We have to go north,” she said as we collapsed into another motel room in a new town after a day of running since our last hideout was discovered . Her voice was low but certain, her hands trembling as she checked the window. “That’s the only way we can be safe.” “Why north?” I asked, peeling off my oversized, dirt-streaked jean jacket and tossing it onto the bed. “What’s there that could protect us from that monster?” “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” she whispered, not looking at me, only staring out into the dark as if shadows themselves carried teeth. Defeated, I leaned back against the squeaky headboard. I didn’t care anymore. If safety meant running to vampires, demons, or worse, I was ready. Anything was better than living every day with Don Dmitri’s shadow breathing down our necks. It wasn’t even the crack of dawn when Mom shook me awake. She made me change into the neatest clothes I’d owned since we started running, and dressed herself in the same. We left everything behind, carrying only my suppressants, as if she already knew we wouldn’t need anything else. As if she was certain this was the beginning of a new life. Or so I thought… We traveled the entire day before reaching the so-called North… a pack. Moonclaw Pack. It was so vast it felt more like a city than a pack, yet somehow, despite their tight security, we were welcomed in without question. From there, we were led straight to the pack mansion. Mom nudged me forward toward the most titan-like man I had ever seen. His presence filled the room like a dark cloud on a sunny day. “Don’t be rude,” she whispered sharply. “Greet your new father.”