7
1096 Words
“It’s difficult to know where to start with this. There are a lot of people, I don’t think I ever even knew all of their names back then.” Sawyer seemed to have accepted that Elizabeth needed to know about the members of his old pack, but it didn’t mean he had a clue where to begin.
“Why don’t you start with the woman you apparently left heartbroken?”
“Cordelia?” He laughed, “you’re assuming she ever had a heart to break. She’s an unpleasant woman, that’s all you need to know.”
“How did she end up thinking she meant something to you, then?”
“She’s…” he paused, trying to think of the right word, “ambitious?” It was uttered as a question, like he was testing out the word before he decided if it was the right way to describe the woman, “yeah, I would describe her as ambitious. She’s attractive, she comes from a fairly decent standing, she’s naturally rather domineering, and she had her sights set on being my mate. I f****d her more than some of the other people I used to sleep with for a while, and she took it to mean I saw what we had as more serious. She thought she was more suitable for me than the other people I might choose instead. But I didn’t like her as a person, I didn’t have any kind of emotional connection with her. Perhaps I wouldn’t have bonded with you if I had cared enough about her.”
“Will she try to hurt me?”
“Only verbally. I’ve seen you snap back at people who tried to slight you, I don’t think she will get to you and I can tell you’re already thinking of how to get at her if she even attempts it.”
“Did your father have a Beta? Should I know about him if he did?”
“Before I left it was a guy named Andrew. He’s a little younger than me – maybe your age. My dad had decided he was going to be my Beta, and so he gave him the position early. I didn’t trust him, and I would have replaced him. He was not even close to Robin in terms of skill and strength.”
“Robin wasn’t supposed to be a Beta, though. Not every Beta can be an Alpha that lost their position, surely that would make for awful dynamics and people vying to take over.”
“Yeah… I guess I just didn’t ever trust Andrew. Robin was honest about how he felt and what he thought at any given time, and I knew I could put my faith in him. Andrew… I just never thought he would help if it really came down to it. He wouldn’t have sacrificed himself for his mate; he wouldn’t even have stayed when we gave him the chance to leave. f*****g hell – I honestly think that he would have been the one to phone Tobias and reveal everything if we were in that situation with him instead of Robin. He’s self-serving and weak-minded.”
“Why did your father choose him, then?”
“He didn’t have a problem with his Beta using underhanded methods of achieving when he needed. Andrew made it known that he would do whatever it took to achieve the goal if that goal rewarded him.”
“Now I know to watch out for a heartless b***h and a cowardly jerk… anyone else I should be wary of?”
“All of them. Literally all of them.”
He tried to answer more of her questions, but she saw he was having trouble focussing with the way she smelled mixing with the scent of his father and the stress of anticipating seeing these people again so she stopped asking him things for a while.
She fell asleep again at some point, and it was only by chance that she woke up in time to see the large old mansion as it loomed into view on the horizon.
“Is that…?”
“Yup.”
“You cannot be serious. This is where you grew up? Your childhood home?”
“Yes, I am serious. My childhood home; and technically now our property to do what we like with assuming my father had reinstated me before he left.”
“And the other buildings are…”
“… homes, where other wolves live.”
“But the big one is…”
“:..where we will be staying tonight.”
“It’s so huge. Are we seriously going to have that entire building to ourselves?”
“I truly love the way you said that as if you already have a lot of things planned when you haven’t even seen the inside of it yet. But if we even do decide to stay, it probably won’t just be us. It’ll be whoever he called a primary mate – if he even had one – along with Andrew, and his mate and any children they have if he settled down after I left.”
“This is insane. It’s no wonder your family are treated like royalty, this place looks like an actual palace.”
“I am very glad you got to know me for who I am before learning any of this kind of stuff about me.”
“Yeah? Well, it was pretty weird finding out my boyfriend is pretty much an A-list celebrity in the Werewolf world from Selene, I won’t lie. But… I would still love you even if we turned up there now and were told he’d left it to his Beta or something.”
Sawyer laughed, “you’re kidding, right? There’s no way Tobias would have let this slip from our family, even if it meant leaving it to Francesca. If it isn’t ours, it’s hers.”
The huge old building seemed to grow increasingly more imposing as they approached it, but Sawyer didn’t seem intimidated by it at all. When they finally arrived, the mansion and surrounding buildings were fenced off from the outside world and entry could only be gained through a large electric gate. He pulled up close, then fiddled around with the keyfob until the huge metal gates swung slowly and ominously inwards and they drove past them.
She noticed that the few people she could see outside had frozen immediately when they saw the car approaching, and that none of them seemed to know what to do. He didn’t intended to make a grand entrance, but that is the only thing that was ever going to happen; the moment they had arrived it had been obvious to everyone living in the secluded but exclusive compound the pack inhabited who was driving the car, and why it wasn’t Tobias.
Elizabeth noted that the way people were looking at her was with curiosity and not disdain.
‘They don’t realise who you are.’ He didn’t say it aloud because he didn’t want anyone to hear. ‘They don’t realise you are even partly human.’
- Writer
