Curse of the rejected

CHAPTER 3

“Don’t do this,” I whispered, standing behind Ethan, but there was no stopping him and I knew it, just the way there was no stopping my father whenever he wanted to hit my mother.

“I will ask this one more time, and I won’t ask again,” he said, his wolves now standing up, growling in alarm, “Who is the war general of Silverbane?!”

Now, my father stood up with a frown on his face as he stared at me.

“That would be me,” Dad said, and Ethan walked towards him.

I turned towards my mother, my eyes pleading for her to do something. She rushed out of her seat and headed for me as she asked me, “What happened? Why is he—”

“I didn’t mean to tell him, I swear. I just…I didn’t think he would react this way.”

“What is going on here, Alpha Ethan?! There has been enough drama on your end tonight. We’re here to celebrate. What business do you have with my war general?” Alpha Logan questioned, drawing Ethan’s attention to him.

“Have you been in this whole pack, keeping quiet, while your war general made several attempts to kill his mate and his daughter?!”

Alpha Logan stood up at Ethan’s challenge, turning to look at my father with a raised eyebrow as he asked him, “Fred, are the accusations true?”

“Who do you think you are?” Dad challenged Ethan, stepping away from his seat just as Ethan’s wolves surrounded us and gave warning growls to my father, as if daring him to attack.

“Is that what she told you?” Dad asked, pointing to me with a chuckle. “She told you that I had tried to murder them? If I wanted to do that, wouldn’t I have done that a long time ago?!”

“Just drop it, Ethan. Please,” Mom pleaded, but Ethan stood his ground.

“Of course, you wouldn’t kill them because that would land you in trouble. To all the members of Silverbane,” he called out, looking towards the space where all of our pack members sat, “raise your hands if you have witnessed the war general committing an act of brutality against his mate and his daughter.”

A lot of hands were raised, making things even worse for me.

“I really shouldn’t have told him,” I mumbled to myself in regret, but Ethan must have heard it as his body tensed, and he looked at me in concern.

“Do you want this to end, then?” he finally asked me, and I raised my head to meet his eyes with a nod.

“Yes, please,” I answered.

He looked at me for a while, then he sighed in defeat, telling his wolves to stand back.

“We will have to solve the rest of this in private,” Alpha Logan said as he turned to the crowd and urged them to eat and drink as much as they wanted, as we would be taking a break.

Ethan took one of my hands in his while I held my mother with the second, all three of us following Alpha Logan and Dad to Alpha Logan’s meeting room.

“I understand that you handle things with a little bit of grandiosity,” Alpha Logan said to Ethan, “but we are a different pack. You should have handled this calmly from the start.”

“If I didn’t open up about it in public, how do you think he will be ashamed to put an end to his primitive behavior?” Ethan countered, glaring at my father, who was staring intently at my hand, which was entangled in Ethan’s.

Consciously, I removed my hand from Ethan’s hold and sat closer to my mother.

“I would like to take my mate to my pack with me without having to fear that her father will kill her mother,” Ethan voiced.

“I can’t bring myself to fathom that you truly treat them poorly, Fred,” Alpha Logan admitted, looking at Dad with nothing but disappointment.

“I don’t…” Dad paused, not quite sure what to say in his defense. “My apologies, Alpha Logan.”

“Don’t apologize to me, Fred. You know very well who that apology belongs to, and you are going to give it to them.”

Dad turned to me and Mom with a sigh.

“I’m sorry for what I have done to you two. I don’t know what comes over me in moments like that, and I regret my actions right after. I’m sorry it took this long for me to admit it to you.”

I almost scoffed at the ridiculousness of every word he had just said, almost as if hitting us was the only thing he had done wrong and had not made us feel unwanted by taunting my mother about her rank as an Omega. He had told us just earlier that he didn’t want to be seen with us.

“Now, make an oath to me as your Alpha,” Alpha Logan suggested. “Swear with your blood that you will not hit your mate or your daughter from this day forward.”

Dad hesitated for a moment until Ethan asked, “Prove to us that you mean your apology, come on.”

Dad pulled his arm up to his elongated teeth and sunk them into his wrist, drawing blood and letting the blood fall to the ground.

“I swear to you that I will not raise my hand to my mate or my child from this day forward. The minute I do, you can have my head.”

There was a bit of relief that came upon me as he uttered those words, and I could hear my mother sniffling beside me as she wiped her tears. I gave her a side hug, kissing her on the cheek and assuring her that she would be okay.

“Go with him,” she encouraged, referring to Alpha Ethan. “He’s a good person. You don’t have to worry about me anymore.”

“Are you sure?” I asked her, still worried that Dad could do something horrible and get her to keep quiet about it because he had the power to.

“One hundred percent, Blair. You don’t have to give up on your happiness because of me. I can take care of myself,” she assured me.

I looked on to see Alpha Ethan staring at me with raised eyebrows, silently asking the question that only I could understand. I nodded at him in response – I would go with him.

“Let’s go home so that you can pack your bags,” Mom said, leading me home, where we shed tears and hugged, giving each other reassuring words when we heard the door of the living room slam shut.

Mom and I glanced at each other in alarm, realizing that that was the moment of truth which would determine whether Dad would keep his word or not.

We sat in silence for a while, but we didn’t hear him stomping upstairs or opening the door to meet us. There was silence which told us that he was downstairs.

I slung my bag over my shoulders as Mom and I walked downstairs as carefully as possible.

“It’s okay,” she whispered to me, and I knew that she was talking to herself as much as she was talking to me.

As we reached the door, we froze as we heard my father clear his throat.

We turned around to see him walking towards us from the kitchen with a glass of water in his hand. He reached where we were, and I stared at him in complete silence. He only had a few words to say to me, and none of them were good:

“You are a wild beast, and he’s only going to realize that when you have killed half of the people in his pack.”