The Captain's Forbidden Mate

Episode 15: THE TREATY

LENA

I read the article four times on the walk back to campus, the first two times shaking all over so badly I couldn't make sense of it anyway.

It was old, an old piece of paper with text that had been scanned in from the original- handwritten, judging by the words, and using heavily archaic terms like "hereby," "aforementioned," and "territorial boundary as established." There was a signature in the second paragraph, a name I couldn't place, and a line somewhere toward the fourth about water rights in years of drought that twisted in my gut. What he said about Damien's family was true, and it wasn't that hard for me to believe him this time.

I couldn't quite place the feeling of impotence as I stared at this thing, this proof of sorts, in my hands. It would have been much easier if they hadn't been telling the truth, if my family had died for no reason at all, as another tragic family loss to be mourned. Instead I had this treaty, this drought that supposedly caused it, a cruel joke between the families because both were clearly capable of horrific acts when pushed, and it was hard to say who was at fault if you listened to either side's story.

Astra was waiting up when I got back, cards already laid out in preparation for me, judging by the look on her face as she took in my disheveled form. "You look like you found something you wish you hadn't," she said.

I handed her the paper without a word, watching as she read it at a slow, deliberate pace, her expression one of unreadable calculation. When she finally set it down between us, there was a similar caution in her features to what I'd begun noticing in both Cole and Damien when the subject of my family history came up, as if a certain amount of information had been deemed safe by them for me and that was all I was ever going to get. "Is it real?" I asked at last.

"The document is old, that much is certain." She gestured vaguely at the page. "Whether what it says is the true version of events is an entirely separate matter." Her gaze locked onto mine. "Wars rarely have a victor or a sole aggressor, Lena, unless one side is deliberately making it seem that way, and the victors always get to write the official history for the rest of time. What I can tell you for certain is that, regardless of who was truly at fault in this situation, Damien's family did finish the m******e. That is a fact even his pack will reluctantly agree to, although I rather doubt they'll be willing to admit it outright."

"Tell me about the other side, then." I picked at the torn edges of the treaty. "He said something else, that Cole's family wanted me as leverage in case the mate bond wasn't what they expected because they'd rather lose me than lose Ridgeview's treaty with Ares. He sounded like he wanted me to know that I had more to fear from the Ardens than Ridgeview, that Cole's family was just using me however they could to get what they wanted."

For a moment, Astra's carefully schooled expression didn't change, and the fact that it did manage to change at all was perhaps more telling than if it hadn't. "Do you believe his words?" she asked.

"I don't know." I hated the honesty of it, hated that it wasn't even a lie but the blunt truth. "That's what scares me, actually. Every time I find out something new about my family, it seems to be tied up in conditions. Cole's family wants me because of some dumb magic bond thing, and Damien's just as determined to use me, and neither of them cares about what I want in this situation because it's not like I have any say in the matter, do I? Neither of them have asked me what I wanted, not really, only what they could get away with." My fingers tightened around the edge of the paper as I dropped it on the bed between us. "I thought you would've at least understood that, since you're the only one who's ever actually spoken to me." I forced a wry smile. "This whole ridiculous arrangement isn't exactly a choice, is it?"

"You do have a choice," said Astra very softly, almost fiercely, and for the first time since I'd met her, there was something almost like determination in her expression. "Don't ever let either of them convince you otherwise, no matter how nicely they word it if they do. The bond between you is a leash of sorts, yes, but only if you allow yourself to be tied by it and only if you accept that the other end is meant to be held by someone else."

I sat there long after she'd gone to sleep, staring at the treaty as the shapes of the words in it swam together until they made no sense, until my phone buzzed insistently in my hand and I almost didn't want to read the message because I knew what it would say.

"I'm sorry," said the text from Cole, "I broke the promise anyway, I know. But can we talk?"

I stared at the screen for what felt like a very long time before typing out my response, my fingers hesitating over the keys as I weighed my options. You didn't just break a promise, Cole; you proved Damien's point for him, and that's much worse than I was actually expecting tonight. I wasn't really sure what else to say, or maybe I was just being stubborn, so I sent the message and waited for the reply.

The typing bubble appeared, vanished, and reappeared twice before finally settling as a permanent dot when it became clear that whatever Cole was trying to write wasn't coming easily for him, not tonight, anyway. That was perhaps an answer in and of itself, but I certainly didn't object when a new message appeared a few minutes later: Not tonight. Tomorrow.

I turned my phone off and set it on the nightstand, listening to Astra sleep for a while. It was hard to sort through the things I'd found out tonight, hard to make sense of the treaty and the m******e with two sides to it and Cole breaking his word to I and Damien being honest for once, only to have it be no less of a weapon. He'd wrapped it carefully in kindness that made it all the more obvious that its purpose was to hurt me just the same. Truthfully, I wasn't quite sure what was actually real anymore, and I was tired of people pretending to tell me what it was when it was clearly right in front of me. I could find the truth myself, thank you very much; apparently neither of these packs was capable of doing it for me without dragging everything else around it into the dirt with it first. Whatever it was, whatever had happened that was supposedly so very important, it was something I wanted to be able to uncover myself, and I certainly wanted it to be over, because sleep that night had brought no dreams at all and merely served as the closest thing to a respite I was likely to get in the foreseeable future.