Daddy’s Mail Order Mate (Twilight Meadows Wolves #3)

Chapter 21 - Thorn

I stare down at my hands clenched in front of me. I have to tell her the truth, and there’s no more room to keep things unsaid. My fists clench tighter by reflex to hide the anxious shaking. The words don’t come readily—these are memories I’ve kept buried for years. Trying to open this section of my mind feels like staring into the abyss, ugly and terrible. I feel my body clench and brace as though an opponent is at the back of my neck and ready to strike. But I know there is no one there. The only threat here is myself.

And I refuse to give up, not even against myself. Even if it takes me back to the darkest time of my life.

***

It’s a quiet night in the Vata household. I’m grateful for that much at least after the day I’ve had. Gwen’s pack isn’t going to be staying much longer, and rather than getting to spend the day with her, I’d been summoned by the Alpha for yet another training excursion. There’s a square of gauze and bandage itching beneath my shirt from where one of the enemy wolves gored into my side, but I know better than to scratch. So all I can do is just brace through the pain and hope it’s healed up enough that I won’t have to be careful to hide any sign that I’m hurt when I get to spend time with Gwen tomorrow.

And as though he somehow senses the nature of my thoughts, my father speaks up across the living room.

“Son, I think it’s time you stop spending time with that Mitchell girl.”

I freeze at my spot by the window. Even though I keep looking down at my textbook as though I’m in the middle of wrapping up my mental train of thought with my studies, I’m certainly not thinking about high school level math. I try to calculate how I can safely approach this conversation, but my worry gnaws too fiercely for me to keep myself entirely stoic about it.

“I’m not sure why you’re suggesting that, Father.”

He scoffs with a nasty tone, and I fight down the bristling defensive anger as best I can by shutting the book, standing, and gripping my hands into fists at my side. It’s not tearing across the room and mauling him for trying to intimidate him like my wolf wants—but it’s the best compromise I can offer. Years of normalized bloodshed and brutality has made that part of my nature frightening to everyone, myself included.

“You know exactly why I’d be suggesting that. If you’re going to be part of the elite of Portsmill, you need to make sure you’re associating with the best of our kind. And that girl is an embarrassment. She’s well past the age most children can reliably shift. Leave her to rot at the bottom of the ladder with the others like her and focus on spending time with your proper peers.”

I’d rather be back in the outside world on the Alpha’s bidding spilling blood and be at the risk of dying again than have this conversation. They have no idea how serious things are between her and I. We’ve been quite discreet, as we decided that it isn’t anyone’s business but our own, and the more transient nature of her pack’s visits make it easier to keep it private. At least for now while we’re still stuck under our respective parents’ thumbs.

“I can’t do that, Father.”

He crosses his arms and stares sharply at me.

“And why not?”

I’ve done all I can to protect Gwen from the worst of my pack. She has no idea what the Alpha and his warriors have been doing to me all these years. I’ve had to hide bruises and scars under clothes. I’ve gotten back to the pack with someone else’s blood under my fingernails and their screams still in my ears and only had a shower to get myself ready to go and spend time with her like we’re just a pair of ordinary teenagers. I’m not even sure if my parents know that I’ve had to kill more people in the last few years than some of the fully grown warriors; the Alpha has very proudly made that remark to me several times. They’ve never openly acknowledged it. Perhaps they know and just want to keep some sense of deniability about it. But maybe the Alpha hasn’t confided in them the way he’s brutalized and weaponized me all these years. Even if he hasn’t disclosed it, they have to know something. I can see the fear in them too often for them to be entirely ignorant as to what their son is becoming.

“My son is not going to sully our family’s standing with some weakling. We already suffer enough thanks to your useless sister. It’s only by your hard work to stand out that the Alpha hasn’t completely given up on our family’s future. The humiliation we’d face if you take that useless runt as your mate—”

My father falls into a furious conniption fit, groaning and spitting with ceaseless anger. All I can do is keep my eyes locked dutifully on the floor. I know that if I dare to lift my gaze, it’ll just provoke him further.

“Honey, look at what this is doing to your father, to your family ,” my mother urges beside me in a sickeningly coaxing tone.

Acid churns in my gut and I have to grit my jaw to keep myself from snarling. I know that she’s not including Paige in that, and it fills me with such disgust and hatred to know that these people are our parents.

“It's a fated bond,” I grind out between my teeth. “I thought the family and the pack paid heed to our nature as wolves first and foremost. Or is the will of Seluna that unimportant?”

I see the punch from my father coming, but I don't block it. It collides with my cheek and even though I briefly sway, it's just counterbalancing out the impact. Aggression sparks in my blood and I see myself in that same instance swinging back. I'd catch my father in the sternum, then as he fell, I'd grab him about the head and crash his face into my knee. I wouldn't even give him the courtesy of turning his head to avoid the risk of driving the bridge of his nose back into his skull.

But I don't do that. I just stand there as a silent wall. I can overpower the both of them, and they know it. They're terrified of me yet they feel like they have complete control over me. And in a way, they do. They hold the leash but I'm just waiting for the chance to gnaw myself free.

“Don't you dare talk back to me like that. Ungrateful little shit.”

“Our duty to the pack is to make Portsmill as strong as it can be. And you'd comden our family to humiliation by bringing such a weakling into our fold. Regardless of how we feel about it, do you think the Alpha would let that happen?”

My blood runs cold at that question from my mother. And it drops a few degrees when she gives my father a meaningful look.

“Darling, I know you'd prefer to not mention this to the Alpha, but I think this could help him climb the ranks.”

My father looks at her with reluctance, but is clearly listening at the promise of my advancement. It makes me sick to see the two of them conspire like this as though I'm just an animal they can trot out in front of the judges.

“Just think about it. Our son would clearly show the willpower and purpose that the Alpha wants in our children if he rejects his mate bond to someone so inferior. Don't you remember the stories of proper wolves he puts into some of his speeches? This is exactly the sort of thing that he's looking for. He’s already taken a clear interest in Thorn, what with personally training him the last few years. This could be what ensures he’ll be taken into the Alpha’s inner circle once he’s an adult.”

I watch the realization unfold across my father's face and feel a sense of horror run through me. It'd be one thing if they keep it to themselves to save face, but if they tell the Alpha, the only way I can protect Gwen is if I—

“I won't—”

“You will ,” Father interrupts me viciously. “You will because it is what is expected of you. You are meant to be one of the best of our kind and I will not watch you throw that future away because of some beanpole of a girl who can't even shift.”

“She can .”

“Then why has no one ever seen it?”

“She just... It's difficult for her. I've helped her shift before. I know I can teach her if you'll just let me—”

It's my mother this time with a slap across my cheek.

“Snap out of it, Thorn. Listen to yourself. You’re making excuses for her. You’re taking her weakness onto yourself when you have no reason to. Why would you waste your time on someone like that? You need a mate that is worthy of you. You’re young and have feelings, and I know how exciting those can be… But you can move on. Especially when you have the pick of the litter of any good woman you’d like. If you don’t like any of the girls in Portsmill, I can make an arrangement with another pack for someone far better. You’ll forget all about that girl in no time when you have someone you can truly depend on to be a good mate and mother to your children.”

But she's the one I love , I want to cry out. But I know that love means nothing to these monsters. All they care about is prestige and their own comfort. They hate my sister for the derision she warrants from the rest of the pack, and they just want to use me to get as high up the totem pole as they can.

All I know for them is hate, and that is a dangerous emotion for me. It’s what I’ve learned to weaponize to endure the ‘training’ the Alpha puts me through. I hate my parents, I hate this pack, I hate the Alpha, I hate this bullshit world I’ve been put in. There are only two things I love: Paige and Gwen. And now I’m being forced to sacrifice one of them.

The world fades away around me. I know my parents keep talking, but I am deaf to them. My ears are full of a silent suffocating roar and all I can hear is the storm of my own wild thoughts. A thousand different emotions fight to be heard. Hundreds of possibilities flail like some rabid mob against each other, to the point where I feel mentally nauseous trying to even think about what to do.

I can’t lose Gwen. But if I try to keep her, she will suffer even more. The Alpha is far too sadistic and ceremonious to let this stand. Knowing him, if I don’t handle this on my own, he will force my hand in the worst of ways. The kindest thing he might do is force her parents to arrange her off to someone else in a different pack to get her out of the picture. However, I know with a grim and terrible certainty that it is not like him to be kind.

My eyes dry of the tears that threaten to flow, and my heart fractures apart like charcoal. I look up at my parents and know that tonight, I am not being asked to kill another person for once. I am being asked to murder my own heart, and if I do not comply, it will only bring more suffering.

“Fine.”

The word leaves me with the hollow finality of a gunshot.

From this moment on, my reality is some sort of disjointed nightmare. I am not myself. I am the person who I have to be. My body does not feel my own even in my private moments. My mind is both silent and screaming. I am silent, because I fear that if I speak, all I will do is scream. There are strangely vivid snapshots of sensation among it all as though fragments from some fever dream. There is the distant silver glow of the moon outside of my secretly repaired window through the trees that I must have stared at for hours. I hear a song over the radio that even though it’s sung in English, I can’t understand it or remember anything enough to properly find it again, but for some reason it burns into my soul and refuses to ever feel real. I count the folds of skin on my knuckles and wonder if I can break my teeth if I clench my jaw too much.

I can only force myself into short bursts of lucidity by causing myself pain. I’m grateful for the open wound on my side the following day, because then I can disinfect it with alcohol and buckle my brain into my body long enough to do what needs to be done.

I don’t know where I find Gwen. I don’t know how I greet her. I don’t even know how I get her back to my house.

All I know is that we arrive and I have to do what must be done. I have to kill our bond, our love, in the same way I’ve learned to kill others.

I can feel my parent’s judgment piercing through my back, looming like a pair of executioners in the doorway. At this moment, all I feel for them is the blackest hatred. If it wasn’t for the fact that it’d endanger Paige, I’d sooner turn around and tear their throats out than do this to Gwen. But I’m still too young and powerless, even if the rule of violence that this fucked up place abided by might allow me to get away with it if I was sufficiently convincing to the Alpha and let myself be on his leash for the rest of my life. I can’t destabilize Paige’s life any more than it already is, and I need to be able to get out of this hell to pull her out of it. I can’t leave the pack until I’m eighteen.

But those practical considerations only happen in some distant corner of my skull, like a ticker tape being read off in a backroom office, some flimsy group of synapses trying to keep myself sane. All the rest of me is just a weapon of someone else’s will.

I watch her cry.

I can’t cry.

I watch her leave.

I can’t leave.

I turn back to my parents smiling at me with satisfaction, and walk back into the house that has never been my home.

***

I feel like dry bleached bone, brittle to the touch. At this moment I feel scattered in broken pieces across the years of my life; I’m not here, I’m not there. I’m nowhere at all and trapped in the terrible oppressive shadow of my traumas being unearthed. And just like before, whenever I attempt to approach them, it consumes me. But at least this time I was able to force my way through enough to tell Gwen. It even poured out of me at points, spilling into places I had no intention of sharing, as though part of me has been waiting years to finally speak these words aloud.

There’s an urge to cry; that’s been such a foreign feeling. Saving Gwen and Rowan was the first time I’d cried since all that had happened.

And I let it happen. I sob and bend over, hiding my face in my hands in shame. Not only for crying, but for everything. All of the guilt and grief and shame open themselves up again, rotted and necrotic from years of me neglecting these memories.

There are no words that come to form in my mind. All I am is sorrow and tears. There’s the sensation of her hand on my leg, but the comfort it might provide turns sour in me. I don’t deserve her care or affection. But I so desperately want it. So I don’t pull away or stop her from touching me. All I can do is cry.