The Captain's Forbidden Mate

Episode 13: RIDGEVIEW TERRITORY

LENA

Damien chose the location, which, in hindsight, should have said it all. Not the training facility this time, but a restaurant in the city - an upscale establishment with cloth napkins and a maître d' who eyed my thrifted coat like it was a personal affront to the establishment. Public, civilised grounds - the kind where a boy like Damien would choose to make his stand, all pretence of deniability stripped away, with nobody to accuse him of anything either.

if he chose poorly.

Cole was waiting inside the restaurant with Noah, using the cover of the menu to hide his jaw-clenching scrutiny of the area. He'd wanted to be closer. I'd practically begged him to stay at the facility, telling him it was safer, but it was mine to lose, and he knew it. Now he was seeing exactly what I was forced to. Damien stood when I reached the table, all polished courtesy and expensive cologne, guiding me to a chair with the air of a man who thought the evening was already under his control. "You came," he said.

"You said you had information about my family."

Direct to the point, business-like; Damien approvingly. He sat back down again after showing me to the chair, steepling his fingers together and regarding me with an intensity that was almost frightening. "You know what you are, I think. Cole told you, most likely." "He told me some things." I hesitated, then continued. "Tell me what you know."

"Careful, Lena."

He gave me a warning look this time, almost gentle. "Careful what you believe Cole told you, because every story has a beginning, middle, and an end, and yours doesn't begin or end with the m******e, not really. My grandfather did not wake up one day and decide to commit g******e against the pack of Silverclaw, however cruel and disgusting the circumstances may have been." He paused to watch me carefully; I wasn't sure why I expected a lie out of him, but I had. "The Corwins broke the territorial truce and poisoned the wells in Silverclaw's territory, in the middle of a drought that claimed half of the pack's pups for the winter. The m******e was an act of revenge, not cruelty, and I think you should know that."

My stomach twisted painfully at the words. Just barely restrained, I would've knocked over the entire table in a wave of disgust. "You're saying my family deserved to die?"

"I'm saying that history is written by the victors, not the dead, and you've only ever heard one side of the story," replied Damien evenly. He leaned forward and murmured the next part so that only I could hear. "I'm not here to hurt you, Lena. I'm here because I want you to know the whole truth before you allow an Arden to dictate the terms of your future to you. He needs a mate by his father's deadline or he doesn't become Alpha. Isn't it convenient that the universe provided him with precisely what he required at precisely the time he needed it?"

The words were like a blow to the gut, or maybe a bullet to the heart; whichever was preferable at a time like this, I wasn't sure. "You think it's a coincidence that the mate bond is what it is?"

"I think," said Damien, folding his hands together on the table between us, "that I don't know what it is yet, and neither do you, and until you do, you should be careful not to hand him your future on a platter based purely on something neither of you understand."

He slid a folded square of paper on the table in front of me. "This is a copy of the treaty the Corwins broke. It's an unpleasant bit of business, but it's entirely factual. I think you should read it for yourself some time soon." I stared at the paper he'd given me as if it was something filthy, my hand hovering over the cloth napkin as if it might scald me. "Why would you do this, Damien? What, exactly, are you hoping to achieve by giving me this?" There was something almost like amusement on his face, though I could also see respect there - the look of a man who'd been forced to reconsider his strategy because his opponent was proving unexpectedly clever. "A fair question, really, and one I intend to answer in full when the time comes, but suffice it to say, for now, that I want what any Alpha's son would want, I think; stability. More territory that doesn't come at the expense of other packs every few decades, so that my own doesn't always spend half its time defending and repairing. If the last of the Corwins were to ally herself with Ridgeview, that sort of feud would no longer be an issue, would it?"

"I'm sorry?" I blinked up at him in astonishment, my mouth opening and closing once or twice before I managed to find my voice. "What are you saying? You want Cole to have me?"

"I'm saying that whatever terms keep you alive and keep this stupid little pack war from continuing, in whatever order you prefer, are the terms I'm willing to live with, more or less," interrupted Damien smoothly. He gave me a long, steady look and continued, just as calm. "Cole's family is using you, Lena, whether he knows it or not. They're throwing you at each other like a bone, and that's not any different from a wolf pack throwing an outsider at a rival's territory to start a fight. You should ask him outright what he means by this 'mate bond' and what happens to you in the meantime if it happens to be inconvenient to his family for some reason. You should ask him what he really means by "leverage"

and then decide for yourself whose side of the story you believe. Until you do, I'm asking you to stop pretending that he's the good guy simply because his family got to you first.