Hate to Love

9

Alice

I woke up to a sound that I did not know but, as I was not a morning person, it took me some time to register where it was coming from and what it was. I opened an eye but before I could move, a big muscular arm reached for the phone on the nightstand. Why was there someone in my bed?

I opened my eyes fully and the man was looking at me with tired blue eyes. Funny, he looked like Julian but that was impossible...

Then I started to gradually emerge from the haze of sleep. Oh. Wait a minute. I did move in with Julian so we could reconnect.

"You're still not a morning person." Julian said amused his voice still heavy from sleep.

I repressed a shiver and chose to use sarcasm. Always my best defence against Julian.

"Good morning to you too." I frowned before standing up.

"Don't be mad..." He sighed. "I didn't mean to upset you. I was just... Happy that things didn't change much even if we drifted apart."

"We didn't drift apart, Julian. You did this to us." I stated, picking up clothes and going to the bathroom to change.

I closed the door behind me and wanted to slap myself so hard. He did not deserve that from me, well no, he did but I accepted to try so I needed to be better than that.

"I'm trying to make it right." I heard behind the door.

He seemed truly upset about it and I hated myself to make him feel like that. I understood that we were both upset when my brother left and he tried to deal with the situation his way. I remembered well that I felt dead inside and I could not deny that my rage towards Julian for his betrayal was what kept me going.

He had been right on that even if it had been stupid and he should have never done it since he knew we were mates. I wanted to kick my brother for doing this to us because I was sure he knew exactly how things would go down between us. Maybe if I could just come to terms with it all...

I exited the room and Julian was dressed as well. His back was to me and I could see that he wanted to explode but he was keeping it all in to show me that he would take it all if it meant that I forgave him eventually. I was not sure I could ever do that but I would never know if I did not try.

"I'm sorry." I said slowly. "I'm always in a bad mood when I wake up, that was uncalled for."

He turned around, visibly shocked that I would apologise. If I wanted us to get better, I needed to meet him halfway here. He had done something big by letting me come here so we could fix this together so I needed to do my part as well.

"It's all right. It's not like it's not true anyway, I did do this to us and... We should probably talk some more about it. About what I said exactly two years ago and what I did. I just hope that... We can both forgive me one day." He said.

I knew that it was still eating him and frankly, it truly must have been Hell since it can be painful to hurt your mate this way. He either did it because he truly loved me and wanted me to get better or because he needed someone to blame. I always thought it was the second part so it would be hard to convince me otherwise.

"I agree." I nodded. "We need to get it all out so we can... Start fresh. Let's talk about it tonight, after work."

He nodded his agreement and we left for the Pack house. Every wolf was free to either live in the Pack house or live on his own. The Pack house also held all the offices for the leaders, a kitchen big enough for the entire Pack and the cells underneath. Hard to punish a werewolf when it went berserk so we had cells reinforced with silver for it.

As the Gamma, I should have been working with my father today so he could have passed the job on to me but since I did not reject Julian, I was going to work with him as his Beta mate. It meant that we would share the work of Beta and basically, the Beta did all the paperwork together with the Alpha to make sure the Pack was running fine.

We had our own office but I knew that Julian and Jasper liked to work in the Alpha's office. That was probably better too considering our Pack was large and needed a lot of work to be running smoothly.

Jasper was already there and I could see that he had made three piles of papers. He seemed happy about it because he was smiling proudly, admiring his work. Geez. That made me smile as well. He turned around and finally noticed us.

"Good morning." He said. "I hope that you're ready because we have much to do."

"Good morning." Julian frowned, seeing the papers. "Didn't we finish it all yesterday?"

"We did but those are today's requests. Come on Betas! Cheer up." Jasper said joyfully.

Perfect. We sat at the desk together and started taking each a pile. Most of my paperwork was about the arena and the food supply for the kitchens. Very interesting... It still took us all morning to fill them all in. Julian had to leave at some point because he needed to go ask for the border patrol reports from my dad.

"Alice, can you go deliver this paper to the chef in the kitchen? We need his approval before I can order the food." Jasper said a bit before lunch.

"Sure." I said.

I got up and left towards the kitchen on the ground level. When I arrived in the hall, I saw Veronica there. She looked sorry but my wolf was snarling in my head. She had made a move on our mate behind our backs. I decided to ignore her as I continued towards the kitchen.

"Alice, I'm sorry." She said. "You know how much I love him... I had to try."

"That's not good enough to make me forgive you." I said without turning back.

"Well... Maybe hearing what he said about you to your dad this morning would?" She asked.

Should I listen to a word she said? Probably not but my curiosity got the best of me so I turned around and joined her so we could talk.