He Will Be Mine (New Horizon Book 1)

The Notebook

Tyler

After Aly’s mom showed us that Elder Gerard left her a note in his notebook, it becomes my most favorite object in the world for a bit. Not only do I want to know what it says about Matt and me, but now I can’t help wondering if he tucked any other goodies in here. So, after she leaves to go talk to her dad, I flip the notebook to the first page and start reading.

Matt is with me, but I don’t think he’s as interested in this as I am just yet. He still seems to be carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. I get how he feels in a way, but I don’t see how it’s helpful right now. I’m done trying to fight it out of him for now, though. If he just wants to sit there and stare at a spot on the wall, I’m not going to stop him. I have too much work to do.

The first part of Elder Gerard’s notes is about me, from when he conducted my trials. I kind of wish I could remember what he did to me the first day because he seemed to get a lot out of it. I chuckle when I see he wrote, “Alpha Kane terrifies him, but not enough to prevent him from fighting for Alyssa.”

All of that is true, or it was at first. I don’t know that I would say I’m still scared of her dad after I’ve gotten to know him a bit better. Actually, yes. Now that I think of it, the way he spoke to Aly during the meeting made my skin crawl. He wasn’t even yelling, but there was something about his tone that was utterly unsettling.

I’m also amused at his note that I seem to "suffer from an overactive imagination,” and then his comment about wondering what my day-to-day thought processes might be like because of it.

Dude, you don’t even want to know. I get lost on so many daydream tangents it isn’t even funny. I’m just glad I started having Aly to watch the scary movies with me because she always stays over after, and I like having the comforting cuddles. I mean, I enjoy a good scare as much as the next guy, probably more actually, but I could do without the nightmares.

Later he writes about what he perceives to be my thoughts on werewolves. All of it seems positive, which again he is exactly right about, though I find it interesting when I get to the part about how I appear to view werewolves as inherently stronger, faster, and more capable than humans to the point that I don’t seem to think I stand a chance against them in a fight. I mean, aren’t they? I feel like I’ve stood toe-to-toe with them enough just in their human forms to have a pretty good idea of that being accurate. No human can make me ache like that.

I shrug it off, though, because it mostly just seems like he’s writing what I think and feel without too much commentary about how it compares to reality. I don’t know how he figured this all out, and I get lost in the last pages of his trials notes because he uses a lot of codes and abbreviations that I don’t understand enough to make sense of his conclusions. I know the end result was the Elders thinking I’d be a suitable mate, though, so I’m guessing these are all good things.

I do have a moment where I look at all the positive things in the notes and then look over at Matt and wish for just a second that he had never factored into it at all. When it was just me, everything was great. I won over Alpha Kane, the Elders apparently loved me, and if that was that then Aly would be doing the marking thing right about now and taking over as Alpha soon. I realize pretty immediately that it isn’t fair of me to be thinking that way, and it isn’t what Aly wants anyway, but I think I get it now why Matt is taking this so hard.

“What?” he asks when he sees me looking at him.

It hurts to see how much he hurts, and how he has kind of shut down after the Elders gave us the smackdown. Though I can’t help feeling so angry with him for acting like this, I also can’t help wanting to make it better.

“Nothing, just checking on you. I’m worried about you,” I admit to him.

His face softens when he finally looks directly at me, and he reaches out to grasp my forearm. “I’m fine. It’s Aly I’m more worried about. I wish I could fix this.”

I set the notebook aside for a second and settle in closer to him in the bed, putting an arm around him. To my relief, he leans into me instead of pulling away this time. I’ll call that progress.

“Look, man, Elder Gerard already told us how to fix it. It will mean we have to talk to your dad though, I think. And probably Aly’s dad because he would know how to do the thing about finding him a pack or whatever. And then a lot of research, but I mean, if we haven’t figured out how to do that yet then what have we even been doing in college?”

He gives me a slight smirk in response to my comment, and that makes me smile. A smirk is an improvement over the gloom and doom.

“That reminds me. I need to register for my classes,” he announces and pulls out his phone.

“Just use Aly’s laptop on her desk over there,” I point it out to him. “She won’t mind.”

He takes my advice and moves over to her desk, and I turn back to the magic notebook. The next bit quickly gets interesting. He has copied over some information from our birth certificates. Matt’s seems pretty straightforward, but I learn two things about us from the notes about me that I didn’t know before. First, my name at birth was Michael Garrett Taylor. I guess it was changed when I was adopted, and quite honestly, I hate my birth name on sight so I’m not sorry about that. I am glad to know it, though. And secondly, I am just under two minutes older than Matt. He may be taller, but apparently, I’m the older brother.

“Oh, you are never living this down,” I tell him, and then laugh when he turns around with a very cartoonish surprised expression.

“I’m the older twin. Not even two minutes apart, but it doesn’t matter. You have to respect your elders,” I tease, and he just rolls his eyes and turns back to the computer.

“It was a cesarean birth, so chances are that you’re older because you were on top, which means if we had come out naturally, I’d be older,” he says flatly, though I can hear the smirk there.

Touché, Matthew. He’s probably right about that. The notes didn’t say anything about what type of birth, but he’s probably seen the scar on his mom’s belly.

Some of what I come across next is so hard to read that I have to fight to see through the tears in my eyes, but I get through it. I’m not even a third of the way through his notes so I know it is too soon to draw conclusions yet, but it stings when I see his comments about the memories he dragged out of a nurse who was working when we were born. He writes that according to her recollection of the event, the parents rejected the smaller twin on sight and abandoned him there at the hospital.

But later he writes that her perception of what she saw doesn’t match what he saw in her memory. He saw two very broken up parents grieving at the sight of the smaller twin, and overheard them worrying about what life would be like for him back home, if he would even survive since it is so difficult for humans to get approved for medical care. He saw the way the mother so desperately wanted to touch and hold their tiny, struggling infant, but that the father cautioned her against letting herself get attached since there was no way they could keep him.

I realize in that moment that I’m probably an i***t for fleeing my chance to learn about my birth parents and how they really felt about me. Mr. Taylor had been trying to explain, and I just bolted like a coward. If the part about the limited access to medical care is true, then yeah. They probably saved my life by leaving me there. Now I wonder what Mr. Taylor did or didn’t say to Matt, because he left there in a hurry too. And then I wonder if there’s any way our parents could come here to Aly’s pack. I feel safer here. But I really, really want to talk to them now.

I continue reading Elder Gerard’s notes until Aly comes back. She bursts into the room as though she is angry, but once she crawls up next to me on the bed, I can see that she is devastated about something.

“What happened?” I ask, pulling her into my arms and setting the notebook aside for now.

“Not now. I’ll tell you, but I just need this right now,” she says softly, turning her face into my neck and holding onto me.

I hear the snap of Matt shutting the lid on her laptop and then he comes and joins us. I can forgive all his theatrics from before because of how he shows up when he’s needed. We smush her between us, which ends up being more like a weird three-way hug because of how close he gets. I don’t mind, though. Honestly, I’d rather hug him than fight him, and I think we all need this.

-

-

Aly

After a full night of just cuddling and relaxing with my mates, the three of us determined to ignore the world outside for a little while and focus on us for a bit, I finally feel ready to face Alpha Kane again. I’ve decided that if that’s how he’s going to treat me, then that’s all he is to me now. I was feeling betrayed by my own mother for taking his side like she always does, but then I notice at breakfast that even she is giving him the cold shoulder. Good. That means she might still be an ally for us.

Tyler, Matt, and I follow Ryan to the training grounds like it’s just any other morning. I expect Alpha Kane to have something to say about me still insisting on parading my mates around, but he doesn’t seem to have anything to say to me at all. Not that he’s ignoring me, just that he doesn’t make a point of singling me out or coming over to tell them to leave or anything. I would give him credit for that, but he doesn’t deserve it. That is literally the least he can do right now.

Though Ryan would normally have his own group to work with, he lets his dad take over both of their teams and comes to work with Tyler one-on-one. I haven’t seen a smile that big on Tyler since before reality dropped on us while ice fishing. Meanwhile, Matt and I work on his version of strength training. Though he started off quite out of shape a few weeks ago, I have noticed lots of rapid positive changes since I’ve been working with him, and I can’t help beaming with pride about that. He is my mate, after all. I just hope that all this working out is for him, and not because he thinks it’s what I want.

After we’ve finished our morning workout, I leave the guys with Ryan at the coolers and seek out Alpha Kane. I wouldn’t choose to speak with him so soon, but it’s important. My mates and I decided we need him to help with Matt’s parents, and I just hope he is in the mood to cooperate.

“Alpha Kane, I need to speak with you,” I say to him flatly.

His back is turned to me, but I notice when it registers that I am addressing him formally. Good. I hope that stings even a fraction of how much it hurt for me when I realized that’s all he is to me anymore because my father certainly wouldn’t have treated me like he did yesterday.

He turns around to face me, and I flinch slightly at how broken he looks. I try not to let him see, though. He deserves that.

“What is it, Aly?” he asks. His tone is neutral, not cold or warm, just professional.

“I don’t know if you’d rather do this here or in your office, but I need to talk to you about Matt’s parents, the Taylors.”

He looks down into his cup of water as though it contains all the answers he seeks and purses his lips as he thinks for a moment. Finally, he looks up and nods.

“My office after you get cleaned up.” And then he crumples up his cup, tosses it in the bin, and walks away.

*************************

I meet him in his office a short while later, both of us freshly showered, changed, and hopefully checking our attitudes at the door. I know that applies to me as much as to him since my attitude often inspires him to c***k the whip or deny me on principle. I take a breath and try to clear my mind of all emotions before I face him, hoping that if I can keep cool and professional this will go more smoothly.

He is just sitting in his desk chair when I come in. I’ve never really seen him just sitting before, but I shrug it off. Nothing is normal anymore.

“So, the Taylors,” he leads, gesturing for me to sit. “I must admit I don’t know a lot about them. Mostly just what Tyler told me yesterday morning, and what I’ve gleaned from hearing you kids talk about them before you left for there. Point is, you may need to fill in some blanks.”

Good thing I brought Elder Gerard’s notebook, which is filled with details about them. I removed the page with his personal letter to me before coming here, though. Especially now, I don’t know that I could trust Alpha Kane not to report it to Elder Stirling just to try to gain some goodwill with him.

I begin by telling him as briefly as possible about their troubles with Silver Crescent, the difficulty Mrs. Taylor had receiving appropriate medical care during her pregnancy and how they snuck away to have the twins in a human hospital, and the factors that seemed to go into their decision to surrender Tyler to the hospital. Then I tell him about the trouble they had with the pack after bringing Matt home, and why his dad decided to leave unauthorized.

“So, you see, he isn’t your typical rogue wolf. His pack leadership failed him and endangered his family multiple times, which if I’m not mistaken, is a direct violation of our pack’s alliance with them,” I state pointedly.

“I’m aware,” Alpha Kane responds flatly, though I notice the tell-tale signs of him being angry. I’m fairly sure it’s what I’m telling him that he’s upset about, not me, but I can’t be certain anymore.

“What is it you expect from me, then?” he cuts to the chase.

“First, Tyler and Matt reacted pretty badly to all the news and just wanted to get out of there. They didn’t really get a chance to talk it through with their parents or make peace with any of it. I was wondering if there was a way, despite Mr. Taylor’s rogue status, that he could come here to speak with them. Regardless of your feelings toward them, they are still my guests, and this is where they feel most at home currently. We also only have mere days before we have to leave for school again.”

He mulls that over quietly for a moment, gently rocking his chair back and forth as he thinks. Then finally he says, “My feelings about those boys have not changed. There just isn’t anything I can do about it. They’re still welcome here, though I suppose in your mind I’m such a monster that you would expect they wouldn’t be.”

I give him a look that I hope expresses what a ridiculous statement that is. Of course I think he’s that kind of monster. I resent that he makes it seem like I’m the one with the problem for thinking that.

“Well, that’s the second thing I wanted to talk about, because there actually is something you can do about it,” I continue, though he hasn’t addressed my first question yet.

He sits forward, urging me to go on. He looks interested in what I have to say, which seems encouraging.

“I’ve been looking into how things work with the Elders and have discovered that they sometimes grant appeals on their decisions, if you can manage to show that circumstances that led to the decision have changed in some significant way. If, say, a decision was made in part because of a connection to a rogue wolf, and then that wolf was no longer considered rogue, that might count as a significant change that would get us an appeal.”

The corner of his lips turns up as if he is suppressing a smile, and I don’t know if that means he’s happy to hear that or just amused that I seem to think I can change anything.

“And I suppose you’re wanting me to be the one to welcome Matt’s rogue father with open arms,” he surmises.

I nod. “Well, yeah. It seems an obvious solution, especially considering that our pack is trying to protect the humans at Silver Crescent. Wouldn’t you have tried to help back then if you had known this was going on, maybe offered the family safe passage or something? It might seem like it’s too late, but it’s not.”

“You’re not wrong,” he agrees, the smile completely disappearing again. “It might be a bit tricky to accomplish all that you’re asking, but now that I’m aware of the situation at Silver Crescent, it’s something I’m looking into anyway. I suppose it couldn’t hurt to agree to meet with Matt’s father and at least get his side of the story. I can’t promise you the rest.”

He sits forward and captures my gaze with the intensity of his own, his mouth set in a determined line as he continues, “I will promise you this, Aly. I will do what I can to help you, but in a lot of ways, my hands are tied. I can’t act outside of certain … restraints … but where I can find a way, I will. I will also not stand in your way where your mates are concerned if I can help it. If you need something, just ask.”

Uh, yeah, I do need something, Alpha. I need you to get off my back about the mates you like better than the ones I’ve been blessed with. I don’t say that, though. I’m tired of that argument.

What I do say instead is, “I appreciate that you are willing to meet with Mr. Taylor. I’ll leave you his contact details.”

I didn’t do it intentionally, but my voice has taken on that flat, professional tone again. Perhaps it’s that I don’t care for the way he’s making promises and trying to make it seem like he’s being supportive.

He nods and hands me a pen and his notepad so that I can scribble down Mr. Taylor’s name and number. I also leave Grandpa Gabe’s contact information since he still lives at Silver Crescent. I don’t know if or how that is helpful, but it feels like it should be, so I run with that gut instinct. Alpha Kane can do whatever he feels like with it, since that’s what he seems to do anyway.

I can tell that our conversation is over, so I thank him for his time and excuse myself. It’s painful for it to be like this with him now, but at least he seems cooperative. After leaving his office, I make my way to the rec room where I left my mates so I can give them the good news.