MY STEPBROTHERS, MY MATES

THE DECISION

CHAPTER TWO

VIOLETTA

The first thing I saw was a white ceiling.

I stared at it for a moment, blinking slowly as the sunlight crept across my face from the window to my left. I groaned and turned away from it. My body felt like someone had filled it with wet sand overnight. Heavy and slow and completely uninterested in moving.

I tried to remember what happened and got nothing. Just a blank wall where the memory should have been.

I shifted and tried to sit up and a chair clattered somewhere to my right and then my mother's face appeared above me, her eyes wide and her hand immediately going to my forehead.

"You're awake. Are you okay?"

I blinked at her. "What happened to me?"

"You passed out, sweetheart."

I lay there for a second. And then the memory came back all at once like someone had thrown a bucket of cold water over me.

I turned my head slowly and looked at my mother. "I'm going to assume you've been told what caused me passing out."

She pressed her lips together and said nothing.

"Mum." I raised my eyebrows. "I'm listening."

She looked away toward the window. "This wasn't how I planned for you to find out."

I sat up so fast my head swam. "You knew?" I stared at her face. "You knew what that was?"

She nodded slowly, just once. "Rafael and his sons are werewolves. The town is ninety-five percent werewolves." She paused. "And Rafael is the Alpha. The leader of the pack. When he steps down one day his sons will take over after him."

I sat there with my mouth hanging open and let all of that settle somewhere in my brain.

It didn't settle. It just sat on top of everything else making a mess.

"Mum." I looked at her. "Did you just hear yourself?"

"Yes."

"So you knew what Rafael was." I could not keep the disbelief out of my voice. "You knew all of this and you still agreed to marry him."

She turned and flashed me a look that had some heat in it. "I don't care what Rafael is. I care about the love I have for him. That is what matters to me."

I rolled my eyes to the ceiling. "I pray no amount of love ever makes me make this kind of decision."

Her eyes narrowed. "Excuse me. Do you think I'm stupid for loving him?"

"I didn't say that—"

"Because that is what it sounds like."

"Mum, I just—" I stopped and pressed both hands over my face and took a breath. She had already made her choice. We were already here. There was quite literally nowhere to go. I dropped my hands. "You've made your decision and we're here already so I suppose we can't go back, can we."

She studied me for a moment and then stood up and smoothed her top. "Go and freshen up and come downstairs. Breakfast is almost ready."

She walked out and I sat on the edge of the bed and looked at nothing for a while.

A werewolf town.

Ninety-five percent werewolves.

Brilliant decision mother!

*****

I came downstairs twenty minutes later with my hair pulled back and a face that I had arranged into something neutral.

Rafael was at the stove and my mother was beside him and the kitchen smelled of eggs and toast and coffee and looked entirely too domestic and normal for a house full of people who turned into wolves.

Rafael looked up when I walked in and smiled. "Good morning. How are you feeling?"

"Fine, thank you," I said and went to find where the glasses were kept.

An arm dropped over my shoulder from behind and a voice said, "Hello, little sister."

I spun around and removed the arm in one movement without thinking. The man standing behind me was grinning. That same slow, unbothered grin I had seen last night right before I hit the floor.

I said nothing. I turned back to the cupboard.

"That's the second time you've ignored me now," he said from behind me. "That's quite rude, don't you think?"

"We've only just met," I said flatly, still not looking at him.

"Have we?"

Something in his tone made me stop.

I turned around slowly and looked at him properly for the first time in daylight and the recognition hit me all at once.

"You." I pointed at him and my eyes went wide.l as realization dawned on me on who he's.

His smirk deepened.

I pulled my eyes away.

Rafael looked between us. "Have you two met?"

"I don't think so," Jace said easily.

I turned and stared at him. The absolute nerve. "We met last night," I said, looking directly at Rafael. "In a very beautiful and magnificent way. A truly proper welcome from a stepbrother to his stepsister."

Rafael put down his spoon and looked at Jace. "Jace."

"Mm."

"How many times have I told you to stop approaching people in your wolf form?"

Jace lifted one shoulder in a shrug. "Can't help it."

I hissed through my teeth and turned away because I genuinely wanted to punch the smile off his face and I was ninety percent sure that would not go well for me. I started setting the breakfast table just to have something to do with my hands.

I was arranging the plates when I felt yes on me and glanced up and found Jace watching me from across the kitchen with that same expression, patient and amused and entirely too comfortable.

He was tall, well over six foot, with dark hair that sat slightly messy in a way that looked deliberate. Black eyes that caught the light and gave nothing away. A jaw that was almost offensively sharp and a mouth that seemed to default to that smirk whether he was trying or not. He was wearing a fitted singlet and his arms were bare from shoulder to wrist, hard muscle and dark tattoo ink running in thick patterns up both arms and climbing his neck. His chest pressed visibly against the fabric of his shirt.

He was so irritating. Genuinely irritating. And handsome in the most inconvenient way possible, the kind of handsome that you noticed fore you could stop yourself and then felt annoyed at yourself for noticing.

"Stop eye-f*****g me, princess."

His voice came out low and close and I jolted and nearly dropped the fork in my hand. He was right there, a foot away, close enough that I could smell his aftershave and the warm layer of something underneath it, something clean and dark that I was not going to think about.

I met his eyes.

He held my gaze for exactly one second with that smirk sitting on his face and then walked away to his seat like nothing had happened.

My heart was going considerably faster than it had any right to.

I finished setting the table and sat down and focused very hard on my orange juice.

The door to the kitchen opened and another man came in. Same height as Jace, same dark hair and black eyes and sharp jaw, same broad build. He sat down at the table without a word to anyone.

"Jason," Rafael said, not looking up from the pan. "Are you not going to say hello to your sister?"

Jason looked up. He looked at me the way you look at a piece of furniture you have not yet decided where to put. "I don't talk to humans."

I clicked my tongue and smiled at him sweetly. "That's funny. I don't usually talk to people with the social skills of a houseplant either, so I suppose that works out nicely for both of us."

There was a pause.

Jason looked at me. I smiled back.

Jace made a sound into his coffee that was definitely a laugh that he was trying very hard to swallow.

***

After breakfast Rafael asked Jace to take me and show me around the town. I opened my mouth immediately.

"There's really no need," I risjednkrn. "I'm happy to stay in my room."

"Violetta," my mother sing-songesfrom across the table.

I sighed.

Jace leaned back in his chair. "I'll take her," he said, "but I've got practice first. She can watch."

"I'm not interested in watching practice," I looked away. "I don't even know what you play."

"Hockey."

"I'm not interested in watching hockey."

My mother's voice came out softer. "Violetta, love. Jace is actually very good. I promise you'll enjoy it."

I looked at her face. She had the expression she used when she was asking me for something she actually wanted and was trying not to make it feel like asking.

I gritted my teeth.

"Fine," I agreed.

***

The rink was about fifteen minutes from the house. Jace drove and I sat in the passenger seat and looked out the window at Lunadora going past. It was a small town.

Old stone buildings and narrow roads and trees that grew close to everything, and even in the daylight there was something close and watchful about it that I could not quite put my finger on.

We arrived and he pointed to a row of seats in the stands. "Sit there."

"Yes sir," I muttered, and went to sit.

A few of his teammates were arriving at the same time and two of them spotted me immediately and veered over.

"Oi, Calloway." The taller one grinned at Jace and then looked at me. "Is this your new human pet?"

The other one laughed. "Didn't know you'd brought a little human home."

I felt the heat climb straight up my neck and into my face. I sat there and said nothing because there was nothing to say that would not make it worse and I was in their rink surrounded by their teammates.

Jace laughed. He actually threw his head back and laughed like it was the funniest thing he had heard all week.

I smiled tightly and made a promise to myself that I was going to make his life very difficult the moment we were out of this building.

****

He was good though. I will give him that.

Once practice started, I forgot to stay annoyed for a little while because it was difficult to look away from. He moved on the ice differently from the others, faster and more direct, like he had already decided where the puck was going before anyone else had worked it out.

He was rough when he needed to be, shoulders dropping low when he went in, not slowing down for anything. He took a hit from a teammate twice his size in the second half of the session and barely shifted before he had possession again and was already moving.

He scored three times before they wrapped up.

I sat on my hands and did not clap.

****

We left the rink on foot to walk into town. I stayed two steps behind him and said nothing.

"Are you mad at me?" he asked after about thirty seconds.

I did not respond.

He laughed quietly. "You're mad at me."

I hissed through my teeth loud enough that he definitely heard it.

"You're a little cute thing when you're angry," he touched my cheek. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry I pissed you off."

I looked at him. He was already holding out a chocolate bar toward me without even looking, his hand just extended in my direction like it was an offering and he already knew I would take it.

I looked at the chocolate. I looked at him. I took it.

We walked through the town and he pointed things out as we went. The bakery that had been there since before his father was born. The memorial in the square with names carved into dark stone going back further than I could count. The road that led to the pack's meeting ground, which he said without elaborating further, And I did not push.

I noticed the people.

Every few metres someone looked at me. Not rude exactly, just very assessing.

I kept my chin up and said nothing about it.

We got back to the house as the evening light was going amber over the stone walls. I went straight to the kitchen and found my mother already starting dinner, moving between the counter and the hob with the comfortable efficiency of someone who had been cooking in this kitchen for years already.

I went to the sink and started washing my hands. "Do you need help?"

"Thank goodness you're here," she said and smiled at me over her shoulder. "I actually have some good news."

I reached past her for the dish towel. "What good news?"

She turned to face me properly and folded her hands in front of her with a little smile that told me she thought this was going to land better than it was.

"You'll be continuing your education here in Lunadora," she paused contemplating her next words. "In the Werewolf Academy in the town."