Pack Punished, page 23
part #3 of Thrown to the Wolves Series
They say lone wolves go feral, and that’s truer for us than anyone, isn’t it? Without an alpha to help them manage it, the feral energy would consume the majority of them. And with alphas, if we had no one to siphon off of, let alone anyone to care for, we’d lose all reason to exist until we were so empty inside, we withered away.
Annika might have reasons for being a paranoid bitch, but that doesn’t excuse the damage she’s done in my eyes. Even if she was attempting to keep Sabrina’s wolf fed and alive, she did far more harm than good. And if she wanted to shield her from the wolves finding her forever, then why did she kick her out when she turned eighteen?
“Doesn’t mean she doesn’t love you, it means that she doesn’t show it in any way that we can understand. Otherwise, she’d have left you at a fire station and jumped ship when you were a kid. But! We’re officially saving that topic for tonight or tomorrow when we’re back at the Slaughters’ cabin. You don’t have to give up the location of whatever hole you think that she crawled back into, but it might be nice to give Leo, Sebastian, and Merrick some stories to tide them over.”
Slade strides up on her free side, smoothing a hand over her hair. “He has a point. She may be a bitch, but they’ve spent decades wondering what happened to her. Even if they aren’t the stories they want to hear, it’d be a mercy to give them something. If it were you, I know that I’d be desperate for any scrap of information.”
She threads her fingers through mine at her collar. “I know, I guess I just feel like an asshole shattering their image of her they have built up in their heads. Or they’ll think I’m lying. I’m not sure which is worse, truth be told, because both of those options suck. But while they’re gruff assholes, so are you guys sometimes, and I feel bad that I can’t tell them anything that they want to hear. What if it’s the final straw and crushes them?”
Reaching the steps leading up to the front porch of the cabin, I let every ounce of conviction that I have bleed into my tone for her to latch onto. “Lying to protect people is a temporary bandage. The truth always comes out eventually, and when it does, it’ll hurt far worse than if they’d been told in the beginning. Let the chips fall where they may. She created this mess, not you.”
The door is pulled open before any of us need to knock, Derrick standing in the doorway. One glance at Sabrina and my arm around her has his mouth parting in silent shock, and he remains rooted to the spot long enough that Jason comes to investigate. “What are-” he cuts off mid-sentence, staring at our group and scrambling for something to say. Eventually, he manages a stuttered, “Always nice to have you drop by, Kaige. Please, come in.”
I tilt my head respectfully, guiding Sabrina into the small cabin. It’s a two bedroom set up; one for the adults, one for if the need arises with children. While it’s still crowded for a small space, after living in the communal bunks, a family cabin is a luxury that people dream of, and many will never see. Like the Slaughter’s, the main room contains the kitchen, a dining room table, and a couple of couches. But that’s as far as the similarities extend, the fanciest thing in this place the bookcase that’s filled with second hand copies of novels that Derrick, Jason, and Ryan have managed to pick up over the years, as well as the small collection my mother had before she moved in here.
“Rick? Who’s at the door?” My mother comes into view a moment later, emerging from their room and rubbing sleep from her eyes. They bug open as she takes in the large crowd, quickly skimming past us to hone in on Sabrina. “I don’t...”
As she shakes her head, caught off guard and confused, I bring a smile to my face. It’s not too difficult to make it appear genuine; that’s par for the course when Sabrina’s involved. But I do have to work at it a little more than usual, and I crank up the internal volume on the song currently playing in the background of my head. It’s become a necessary staple to function, some sort of background noise, even if it’s imaginary. Otherwise, the silence threatens to become oppressive, crushing me under its weight.
If my mind has nothing to do besides wander, it’ll focus on things I’d rather leave forgotten. My life’s too depressing to let it infiltrate my every waking moment. If it weren’t for my distractions and daydreams, reality would suck every bit of joy from me that I’ve managed to stash away over the years.
“Anni?” she whispers, covering her mouth, looking like she’s seen a ghost.
That woman haunts everyone she’s ever been in contact with, doesn’t she?
“Mom, I’d like to introduce you to Sabrina; my mate.”
Beneath her salt and pepper hair, her eyes water as she shakes her head. “How?”
Meeting Jason’s eye, I pretend that he’s my first choice to address. “While the public story was that Damian, Hunter, and I were gone this past month working a new angle to open up more job avenues for our packs, that wasn’t exactly true. We just didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up until we were able to confirm what we were dealing with, and see where it went.”
He quickly glances from me to Sabrina and back. “You were able to convince another pack to come to an agreement?”
He then looks to Hunter and Damian, wary, and his hackles only continue to rise as he takes in the Hawthorne’s presence, as if preparing himself to fight. I suppose that is what it looks like from the outside, that I came here under a peaceful guise to have some form of backup to deal with an issue I couldn’t deal with on my own while also keeping her safe. For the first time since my mother took on her second set of mates, my regard for them actually rises. It’s always been hit or miss where the four of us stood in this uncomfortable relationship, but to know that they’d be willing to go to bat for me means a hell of a lot in my book.
“Not exactly. We actually went out there to slit her mates’ throats and bring her home, but the plan went off the rails quite a bit.” Seeing my mother wince has me internally kicking my own ass.
Stupid, careless slip. What the fuck was I thinking, talking about killing men and taking their mate in front of her? No wonder she can’t stand to look at me. While I may look like my father, she has me on par with the man that killed him.
The air seizes in my lungs, my other half stretching languidly in my chest as he awakens, and with it comes the heart dropping reminder that every technique I’ve used to deal with him up until now will be utterly useless now. For the most part, I don’t struggle like the others, him leaving me to my own devices. But when he decides to make himself known, it’s usually followed by a show; a bloody one. Now that Sabrina’s set him free, though?
There’s no leash keeping him in check. I can’t even remember shifting after we left the hotel, waking up in the car on our way here.
Not right now. Please.
Naturally, he doesn’t respond to me. He simply finishes stretching and rising as fully as he can beneath my skin, making my stomach churn. Where before he was a tight pressure, occasionally taking over to the point it wasn’t unusual that I blacked out and woke up surrounded by an obscene amount of carnage, now, I can feel him pressing against my skin from within. He spreads throughout my body, writhing just beneath the surface, and sends goosebumps across my arms. Invisible claws rake across my flesh as he taunts me, proving that he could tear his way out with such little effort, and there’s nothing I could do to stop him.
Deep breaths. Not at odds with each other, we have the same goal. Ripping me apart serves no benefit when he needs me as much as I need him, and we both need Sabrina. He’s trying to get in my head, throw me off, but for what purpose?
“Kaige?” Ryan asks, and I shake my head, plastering a smile on my face.
“Sorry, lost in thought. What did you say?”
He repeats himself, looking me over with a critical eye. “I asked what you meant about the plan going off the rails.”
“Right.”
Clearing my throat, I drop my arm from Sabrina’s shoulders to take her hand. Stroking my thumb over the back of her hand, I internally hiss, Don’t do this now. We can shift tonight, you can roam free and terrorize the Slaughters’ pack and make all kinds of new problems for us, but let me have this time to see if this might fix things between me and Mom.
“If you think Sabrina can fix things between you and your mother, she was right about you. It’s a bitch move to expect her to solve everything that you can’t, and the more pressure that you put on her shoulders, the more she’ll subconsciously resent you for it. The only thing that can change things is if your mother decides to get past her own hang ups and stop punishing her son for existing when his only crime was genetics.”
I attempt to reply, but he cuts me off with a guttural snarl. “It’s why Sabrina is perfect for us. She understands what it means to wear the face of someone that torments her. She’s everything, and if you fuck this up for us, I’ll make the rest of your life a living hell.”
What has my life come to?
Damian saves me as I get so caught up in fighting with myself, I forget to answer again. “He means we were planning on saving her from the men that she’d unintentionally bound herself to since she claimed them before even realizing she was one of us. Offer her a do-over, if you will. But then we realized she actually loved them, we got to know them and decided they weren’t completely awful, and one thing led to another. So we wound up bringing all of them back here, and we’re currently shacking up in the Slaughter alphas’ cabin while we figure out what the fuck to do from here so they can get to know their long-lost daughter.”
My mother releases a pathetic squeak. “No wonder you’re the spitting image of her. You are Anni’s daughter then?”
Gritting her teeth in a weak smile that’s transparent as hell, Sabrina attempts to play nice. “Yep. Sabrina, spawn of Annika. Bear with me as I mess all of this up since I didn’t know about any of this wolf nonsense until a little over a month ago and I’m still getting up to speed, but it’s nice to meet you.”
She extends a hand to shake that my mother immediately takes, dragging her in for a hug and getting teary eyed. “I can’t believe it.” After a moment of blubbering, she holds her out at arm’s length, looking her over before going right for the jugular, “Where the heck have you two been all of these years? Why’d she leave in the first place; pregnant, no less? Is she going to return now that you’re here?” Briefly, she glances at me. “Things will be better now, right? Everything broke when Annika left, but if her daughter returned, surely that’ll even things out?”
Her gaze is there and gone before I can even assure myself that I remember the color of her eyes. “We’re hoping, of course, but if not, that changes nothing. Sabrina is here, and that in itself brings hope. Maybe not in the way you’re thinking, but some much needed change nonetheless.”
I’d forgotten how confrontational and tactless my mother could be after all of these years of shooing me out the door as quickly as possible. “So, the seven of you then?” Gaze flitting over her, she addresses Sabrina with an assessing glint in her eyes. “They waited to bring you home until they knocked you up so your fathers couldn’t deny their claim, I presume?”
Choking on her spit, Sabrina sputters, “Hard no on that one.” Tapping her inner arm, she clarifies, “Birth control may be fighting for its life, but it’s hanging in there like a champ.”
She furrows her brow, turning to Derrick, but he pointedly finds a spot on the wall incredibly fascinating. The others don’t help her out either, so she’s left with no choice but to focus on me, and dear gods, while I wished for her attention for years, I never expected it to be for this hellacious of a topic. No grown man should have to take point on giving his mother any branch of the sex talk, but seeing as no other woman on the mountain has left besides Annika...
“Human women have a few different medical options that keep them from getting pregnant when they have sex.” Damian snickers behind me, and I shoot him a quick glare before elaborating. “So until her implant expires or she chooses to, Sabrina won’t be getting pregnant.”
My mother looks at my mate like she has three heads. “But you’re not human.”
“No,” Sabrina concedes, “but I was until recent events. Regardless, my value extends beyond that of being treated as a broodmare, and with food as scarce as it is, do you really want more mouths to feed out here? Maybe I’ll change my mind in the future, or my birth control will lose a year off its lifespan because of my newly activated shifter healing abilities and I’ll have a surprise baby, but that’s not really a driving factor for me. I get enough meaning out of life as I am without needing a kid to validate my existence.”
Wincing, she backtracks, “That came out wrong, but you know what I’m trying to say. I mean that even if I never have kids, that doesn’t lessen my life in any way. But as it stands, the fact that everyone is pressuring me to repopulate a dying race is exactly the reason why I shouldn’t. That’s a recipe for falling into the trap of girls getting used their entire lives for the sake of the ‘greater good,’ and to be completely blunt? That’s gross, probably why all of you guys are in this mess in the first place, and generally just wrong on so many levels. If you’re only looking at someone’s life as valuable for what you can wring out of them, you’re on the wrong side of history.”
Shrugging, Sabrina sums up, “There’s enough stress in my life without having someone completely dependent on me when we can hardly take care of ourselves. I don’t want a baby right now; maybe not ever. You guys auction off girls like they’re some rare prize to use and abuse, and the guys are worked to death and miserable. Doesn’t really seem conducive for a happy, healthy life, and one might argue it’s a mercy not bringing someone into this shitshow.”
Heavy silence follows her words, and it hits me hard. I was so caught up on the thought of getting Sabrina to notice me, hoping that she’d choose to claim me, I never gave any thought to the fact that she might actually never want kids. In my brain, it was the default. If you were lucky enough to find a mate, you cemented the bond, had as many kids as you were blessed with, and lived happily ever after. It was the picturesque life that people dream about... or at least, I thought.
I’m an idiot, aren’t I?
My other half doesn’t deign to answer me, but I feel him writhing around, taunting me with the fact that he’s integrated himself throughout my system to the point that he could take over at any moment without warning, and with very little effort.
Not only is my mother staring at her, but so are my step-fathers. Everyone in the room is caught in Sabrina’s web, helpless to escape the hard facts that she spits back into our faces, and I can’t find a single counterpoint to argue. She’s completely right. You shouldn’t have kids simply because it’s expected, or someone thinks you should, you should have them because you want to. Otherwise, you wind up in situations of people like Annika being parents, and as someone that’s been miserable the better part of his life, I’d have to agree that being born isn’t the de facto blessing that people like to pretend it is.
But there’s still a part of me that’s able to envision Sabrina carrying my child, or any of my packmates’, and I can’t deny that it satisfies something deep within my soul. While I want that, though, I can’t ever imagine coercing Sabrina into it if she wasn’t nearly as excited about the concept.
These are the things normal people discuss before they get into a long-term relationship.
“We’re not normal, and it’s not a make or break factor for us. We love Sabrina; hard stop. Nothing else matters.”
He has a valid point, but regardless, the entire topic has my stomach twisted up in knots.
“Either way, I’m happy to have you here,” my mother diplomatically decrees, ending the tension before it can continue to grow.
Breathing easier, we follow them deeper into the cabin. There’s barely enough room for us all, needing to drag the chairs from the table closer to the couches, while Bo and Reid wind up leaning against the walls. Tugging Sabrina down onto my lap as I sit on the couch, I thread my fingers into a makeshift seatbelt around her waist, keeping her trapped on top of me. Squirming a bit, she settles in more comfortably, reclining against me as we carry on the conversation that I’m seriously struggling to focus on.
The biggest downside of my mother always reluctant to look at me; she ignores all of my pointed looks as she brings up story after story of Annika since they grew up together.
“Such a stubborn thing, Anni,” she says with an amused huff. “Always giving her mother lip, sneaking off at any chance she could before someone would drag her home for her fathers to deal with. She made everything so much harder than it had to be.”
Slade mutters under his breath. “That’s the understatement of the century.”
Waving him off, she continues, “But I’ve got to hand it to her, she could keep up with Acheron better than any of them.” My ears perk up at that, Sabrina stiffens, and nobody interrupts her this time. “If it was a matter of selection instead of the luck of the draw, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d chosen her as the first female beta.” Tapping her finger against her chin, she shakes her head with a chuckle. “Scratch that, Anni would never be able to follow orders without pushing back. I suppose it’s a good thing we don’t need to worry about making those sorts of decisions.”
Preparing to go off on another tangent, I cut her off. “Wait, Annika was part of Ash’s pack?”
She looks at me for a brief moment before the familiar flash of pain darkens her features and she glances away. Though she’s staring at Sabrina, she answers, “Of course. Her arrangement to be given to the Slaughters was what kept them in line when they had that big scuffle with him all those years ago.”
Jason clarifies, “You’ve seen the sort of carnage the Slaughter’s are capable of, and that’s without even factoring in their pack. Sure, Wilder has numbers, but his men act on his orders out of fear. The Slaughter’s men are bitter enough that they’ve attempted to overthrow their alphas several times. That sort of drive is dangerous. Ash may be able to wipe them all out if he so chose, but not without taking a massive hit to his ranks, and with as few wolves as are left, it’d take a hell of a long time to recover from that blow. Sacrificing Annika to them was a political move to get the Slaughter’s to back down.”
