He Will Be Mine (New Horizon Book 1)

It's Not Over Yet: Aly

“Come on, Matt. Do you see her?” Tyler gestures to where I’m sitting on my bed. “That’s your mate. You know, everything your parents had that you’ve always wanted, the love of your life? Your mate. So, stop with this nonsense and go to her.”

They’ve been at it like this since we got back to my room, Matt all mopey and withdrawn and Tyler cycling between anger, hurt, and concern for Matt. And concern for me, though it’s his brother who seems to need it most.

“I can’t,” Matt pulls his arm from Tyler’s grasp and turns away from him. “I can’t do this again, hurting the people I love. Being selfish. You heard him. He said there’s a chance for you, but none for either of us if you include me.”

“That's not what he … Jesus, Matt! That’s not at all what I heard!” Tyler shouts. “I heard him say that if you keep it up with this nonsense then we all lose, that’s what I heard.”

“Matt, what do you even mean by that? Being selfish. Since when?” I demand, trying to keep my tone level and approachable.

“Since … agh!” he throws his arms up in frustration, and then flops into my fuzzy chair. “Since always. Since I get everything, and he gets nothing. Since I make stupid decisions that feel good and hurt people in the process. Just everything! You, Jess, my parents. Everything.”

“You’re being such a drama queen right now, and it’s seriously pissing me off,” Tyler grits out, giving up on trying to physically make Matt turn and look at me and coming to sit down next to me instead.

“So, you’re telling me that you don’t even care that because of us, she doesn’t get to be the Alpha or whatever? That because I care I’m being too dramatic? Why don’t you look at your mate right there and tell me you don’t see how that hurts her.”

“Of course I see that,” Tyler sighs. “But it’s so aggravating that you think that making this decision for us, or pretending to know how I feel about your parents and my life, is not the very definition of being selfish. Because it is, for the record. It is. And if you give up on this,” he gestures emphatically between the three of us, “then we all lose out on it. I don’t know, maybe it’s just that you don’t seem to understand what a mate bond even is …”

Matt lunges out of his chair at Tyler and knocks him back on the bed, pinning him with his knee and his hands on his shoulders. “Don’t act like you know everything and I’m so ignorant just because you had a little extra time to think about it. You don’t know anything either, just admit it!”

Tyler forces him back and flips them over, and then the two of them start wrestling in a way that knocks them to the floor. They’re still arguing through all the grunting and slapping and pulling of clothes, but I’ve lost track of what they’re even arguing about anymore.

Stop them, Mari pleads, getting upset at seeing them fight like that. I should say more upset, since we’ve been experiencing pretty much every emotion in the last half hour.

I think they might need to get this out of their systems, I argue, knowing that every pair of brothers I’ve ever seen fights like this, and these two have been through it lately. And then there’s all the unresolved feelings they probably still have about finding out that they’re brothers in the first place.

So, I let them go at it for a few before finally I reach down and pull Matt off Tyler, since he’s the one on top at that moment.

“Just stop,” I say, exasperated, and realize that I sound completely exhausted and like all the fight has gone out of me. “I already told you both where I stand on all this, so I don’t even fully understand what you’re fighting about, or what you think you’d be accomplishing by leaving us, Matt. Assuming you’re both agreed that you want to be my mates, then that’s all there is to it. If not, well then, I suppose we need to talk. Later, not now.”

I turn and make my way back over to the bed and start tossing the throw pillows on the floor and pulling down the bedding. “Right now I just want to crawl under the covers and not come out for a while. I’d prefer if you both join, but I don’t even have the energy to fight if you choose not to. So, go if you’re going, Matt.”

I can’t see him because I’m deliberately turned away from him, but I can picture how he looks from how he sounds when he says, “No, that’s not … I don’t want to leave. I just -”

“Then don’t,” I cut him off with a shrug. “I don’t want you to, either. So don’t.”

There’s a knock at the door as I’m crawling up onto my bed. Tyler makes his way to the door to answer it, and I catch a glimpse of how disheveled he looks after scuffling with Matt. Apparently Matt has more fight in him than you’d think from looking at him.

“I wanted to give you guys a minute because it sounded like you had a lot to work out,” I hear my mom say. “But I need to tell you what Elder Gerard showed me.”

“Come in,” I call out to her. “You can come in.”

Tyler backs away from the door and lets her in, while Matt joins me in the bed. I want him near, but I am still a little upset with him so I don’t reach for him the way I normally would. I’m kind of with Tyler on everything he said, and hopefully we can talk more about it all later when everyone calms down and can have an actual discussion.

“Where are the notes Elder Gerard gave you?” Mom asks Tyler.

He steps over to where he tossed them on my desk and retrieves them for her.

“When he handed them to me, he grabbed my arm. I don’t know if you noticed that,” Mom tells us. “He has exceptional gifts, though. I’ve heard about it, but not seen it in action before now.”

“I have,” Tyler comments, shaking his head.

Mom smiles at him, grasping his arm comfortingly. “I can only imagine. I don’t know what it was like for you, but in this case, he showed me an image. It took me a bit to piece together what he was telling me, though. It’s these notes. He left a special note in here for you, and I think you will want to see it.”

She flips through the notes until she gets to a page that is pretty far back in the notebook. “Here, I think it’s this one. You three need to read this before you decide or do anything.”

“Okay,” I say uncertainly, reaching for the notebook she is holding out to me.

“That’s all I came here for, so I’ll leave you to it. It’s not my place to make your decisions for you,” she adds as she heads back toward the door.

If only my dad could acknowledge the same thing. That would make my life so much easier.

I turn my attention to the page she flipped to as Matt and Tyler lean in to see the note too. I don’t know about them, but I’m immediately impressed by Elder Gerard’s handwriting. It’s incredibly neat and orderly, but in an artistic way. The note is addressed to me, but in my opinion that means it’s for all of us.

Elder Benjamin was outraged by the turn of events during our discussion, and his passion has inspired me to action, the note begins.

Well, I guess we know now that there were probably three who voted in favor of us, judging by Elder Norissa’s and Elder Gerard’s comments earlier and now this revelation that Elder Benjamin was upset. I’m not sure whether it makes me feel better or worse to know that the vote was so close.

It is a violation of protocol for me to contact you directly with my individual advice like this, however, so I would appreciate if we could keep this between us. Elder Stirling was already concerned that if he let Elder Benjamin accompany us to deliver the news, then we would abandon protocol and stir controversy, which was why he decided to come himself. Under his watchful eye, this is a risk.

I just cannot permit myself to let you leave without realizing that this is not over unless you allow it to be. All our decisions can be appealed. Nothing is ever final. You just need to present a case that will show that your circumstances have changed in meaningful ways in order to be granted an appeal. For example, if a rogue wolf were to be accepted into a recognized pack, that could be considered a significant enough change in circumstance to grant an appeal.

Once you have that hearing in place, then you need to make sure not to squander it. A situation involving an Alpha with two mates is not one that the majority of our council views favorably, and changing the family relations of those same two mates will not change that. Your task will be to craft an argument that even those predisposed against your relationship will not be able to refute.

To accomplish that, you will need to take the time and put forth the effort required to study your history and scour through the records to find what you will need. I know that it is there, and it can be found. I also know you are clever enough to know what to do with it. So, the way I see it, you can either take the decision you’ve been given, or do something about it.

“I knew I liked that guy,” Tyler comments enthusiastically once we finish reading the note.

“He’s quickly becoming one of my favorite people too,” I agree.

“Aly!” My dad yells up the stairs.

Knowing that I should not keep him waiting after my outburst in front of the Elders, I holler back, “Coming!” and quickly start unwinding myself from the bedding.

“Feel free to go over that notebook without me, but I think when Elder Gerard said ‘between us’ he means not to tell my dad, either. So, don’t lose track of it. It’s precious goods now,” I tell them, before turning and hurrying out of the room.

I know I’ll probably find my dad still in his office, so I head there. He is behind his desk when I enter, which is my signal that this will not be the sort of meeting where I can get away with treating him as anything but my Alpha.

“You called for me?” I greet him tentatively.

He drops the pen he’s been writing with on the desk and sighs. “Yes, we need to talk options now.”

“Before we get into that, I feel I need to apologize for …”

I stop mid-sentence when I see him waving me off impatiently.

“I know you know where you went wrong, and I hope the daughter I raised is smart enough to know better than to ever try something like that again. So, we’re past that now. We have bigger problems.”

“What sort of problems?” I ask, now confused.

It may seem like a stupid question considering the meeting with the Elders, but the way he is acting leads me to believe that there’s something on his mind beyond just my mates.

“Is that a joke? Because I’m not laughing,” he grumbles, picking up and handing me the paper he was just writing on. “The way I see it, those are your best options. It’s a short list, and it’s only getting shorter, so let’s not waste time with more arguing about this.”

I look down at the list he’s handed me, it not registering at first what I’m seeing. It’s a list of names and pack affiliations. Then I realize they are all male names. And then I see Nick’s name.

“Are you serious?” I can’t fight back the urge to shout. “This is what you called me here to talk about? No. Just no. Not happening.”

“Alyssa, I would advise you to watch your tone,” he warns me, not even flinching from my outburst, his own tone flat and controlled.

Then his face softens slightly as he continues to explain, his voice coming out sounding more tired than anything.

“Look, I’m sorry about how things turned out with the Elders. I have grown rather fond of those boys and had even started rooting for them. But the fact of the matter is you only have three years until you must present yourself to the Elders with an approved mate so that they can sign off on your becoming Alpha. Three years, maximum, because if you are not approved to become Alpha before your 25th birthday so that you can have your ceremony no later than your 25th birthday, the position goes to someone else. Riley has a mate and offspring and probably looks pretty desirable right about now. Argue all you want, but as the Elders just demonstrated, they are sticklers for tradition. And you have made it so that you are not Elder Stirling’s favorite person, which is unfortunate, because his opinion carries a lot of weight with the others.”

I absorb everything he tells me as I sit quietly, breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth to try to keep my temper in check. I cannot believe that he would sit here so soon after I just received the worst news of my life, and after I have spent months getting close to my mates, and try to tell me that I should just move on.

“Look, Dad,” I mimic the way he spoke to me, “The fact of the matter is that you gave me a year. One year. Not four months, not six months, a year. You told me that if I was not standing before you after that year with my mate, then you would choose one for me. I intend to hold you to that, and in return, you can hold me to it as well. If I fail, then you get to choose. But my year isn’t up yet, and I’m not finished fighting.”

It felt right in the moment, but now I regret it a little. I just told him that if I fail, he chooses. What I meant to say was if I fail, then I just don’t become Alpha … but no, I know why I said it. I said it because there’s no chance he would agree to that. Aly the Blurter knew what she was doing. She knew he’d agree to it because then he can take his little list and pick his favorite and force me to mate with that guy when my plan inevitably fails, which will then give him plenty of time to suck up to the Elders and get them to accept me as the next Alpha.

And I can tell that my plan worked when I see him nodding to himself. He’s not smiling, but he’s not yelling either. He’s just cold and calculating.

“Alright, we’ll do it your way. I don’t know what you intend to accomplish with the rest of your year other than giving yourself more time to get close to those boys and break all of your hearts that much more, but if that’s what you’re going to insist on, then so be it.”

I realize as I walk away from his office and back to my mates that though I bought us some time, my heart is breaking a little anyway. I realize that instead of choosing to support me, my own father is still clinging to his dream of me becoming Alpha and prioritizing that over me being happy. He was ready to separate me from my true mates all over a job title. I feel myself already starting to distance myself from him in my mind. The tired arguments we’ve been having for years are now so much more than that. That wasn’t just stubborn, that was cruel.