Pack Punished, page 24
part #3 of Thrown to the Wolves Series
Voice soft, Sabrina asks, “Then why’d she kill her parents instead of Ash?”
Please, no. If there are any gods left in this world, don’t let it be because Annika was in love with Ash. They’re both awful enough people I could see how they’d be drawn together, but if Adrian was obsessed with Annika to the point he took out his frustrations on Sabrina in her place, what would someone as cruel as Acheron Wilder do to hold onto a piece of the woman he loved and lost?
Or a more horrific possibility, what if Annika ran because Ash is Sabrina's father and she was actually trying to keep things from devolving into an all-out war?
Mom releases a cruel, incredulous laugh. “I take it you haven’t met the man yet, sweetheart. Many men have tried to kill Acheron Wilder over the years, and you know what they’ve gotten for their attempts?” She finally meets my eyes, unflinching, and allows me to see every bit of resentment in them. “Their families killed.”
Holding her gaze, I take her condemnation and hatred like it’s my due, because... she’s right. Damian, Hunter, and I thought we could break the cycle by refusing Ash’s commands, and all we managed to do was make everything worse. For our families, for Sabrina. No matter what we do, it’ll never be enough to change something that better men than us have failed to accomplish.
“Excuse me for a second.”
Sliding Sabrina off of my lap and onto Damian’s, I stride directly out the door, needing to get some fresh air and my head on straight before I do something I’ll absolutely regret. Letting the door slam shut behind me, I lean against the cabin and thump my head back on it, closing my eyes. One breath turns into ten, and if anything, I feel less in control than when I came out here.
“You left her,” my other half condemns.
I didn’t leave her, I’m saving her from getting caught up in more stressful drama, taking a second before I do something that I’ll regret.
“Like defend yourself?” His words are a taunting purr, getting deeper in my head than he already is. “Remind her that she takes her security for granted, thinking she’s free to say anything she wishes without consequence?” My chest lurches as he writhes around.
Like letting you take over so I don’t have to deal with it anymore, I admit, even the thought whispered like I’m afraid someone will overhear. Sighing, I pinch the bridge of my nose. I don’t want to hurt her, I just want her to stop hurting me. It’s my fault for continuing to come here and expect it to ever be better than the last time. I’m done, though.
The door opens, Cinjin preceding Sabrina onto the porch, and the cool declaration she shoots over her shoulder can be heard clear as day. "You’re not the only one who lost them, you know. But either you’re so caught up in your own misery that you don’t realize how you’re hurting everyone around you; Kaige and your mates, or you don’t care. For someone pushing me to have kids, you’d think that you’d at least act like you cared about yours.”
The door slams behind her, yet, rather than join me, she sits down on the top step. Resting her elbows on her spread knees, she ducks her head and runs a hand through her hair with a sigh. Cinjin tosses me a quick, grim look before settling in at her side. A few seconds pass, but the others don't emerge from the cabin, and I furrow my brow, staring at the door.
"They're giving us a minute," Sabrina answers my unspoken question, "since we weren't sure if we were storming out of here in a huff, or cooling off and coming back inside." Grimacing, she adds, "But I can't imagine it going better after some of my comments; sorry."
Smiling softly at her back, I take a seat behind her, caging her between my legs, and reclining back on my hands. "Sorry? Are you kidding me? I'm thrilled you said something; gods know I couldn't."
My smile fades as the air steadily takes on an electric charge, and I crane my head for a better view of the sky. "Fuck, this is going to be a long night of putting out fires."
Cinjin cants his head. "What are you talking about?"
Extending my arm as evidence, I show off the fine hairs standing on end before gesturing to the pale gray clouds. It's still daylight, but there's an ominous air of foreboding quickly building, the calm before the storm. "Lightning storm. With as dry as the trees are around here, all it takes is a couple of strikes and they go up like matchsticks. If we don’t act fast, it’ll spread like wildfire."
He grimaces. "Have I told you lately how much of a hypocrite you are for talking shit about our home when yours is the epitome of Hell?"
Sabrina leans back, resting her head on my shoulder and watching the small flashes of lightning high in the clouds. "Bright side, Hunter's fireproof now, so if he gets stuck again, I could take my good sweet time rescuing him since he’s conveniently forgotten about those foot rubs he owes me."
A muffled, "And you keep calling me an asshole," can be heard as Hunter calls out a retort, bringing a smile to her face.
Wrapping an arm around her waist, I kiss her temple before following her line of sight. "I'm okay with a dramatic exit, but you didn't need to get that upset on my behalf. I told you, love, I did this to myself and I know it."
Cinjin cracks his knuckles. "I vote for leaving. Pretty sure we've all reached our limits of parental interaction for the day."
Sabrina wordlessly reaches out to take his hand, and it finally clicks what's been going on with him today. From what I've gleaned in my time with them, it sounds like not only did the Hawthorne's parents keep them in the dark about anything supernatural outside of Shadow Ridge, but they were abusive bastards that drove Cinjin into ceding control to his wolf for the majority of his life. After expecting them to be a similar kind of assholes, seeing the Slaughters able to still be brutal bastards, but ones that embraced their kid with open arms and act like fathers should? That'd hurt like a bitch and bring plenty of old memories to the surface while still needing to make peace with the conflicting fact that he's genuinely happy for Sabrina. Add in my mom endlessly prattling on about stories of Annika, then throwing barbs at me wherever she could? It's been an agonizingly long day, and it's not even five o'clock.
"Yeah, I think you're right. Can't do anything about the next round of questions Sabrina will be having to deal with when we head back to the Slaughters’ cabin tonight, but we could at least take a couple of hours to-"
A massive crack of thunder drowns out the rest of my words, and for a brief moment, I’m convinced that it was another warehouse explosion. It’s loud enough that the others actually emerge to investigate with varying looks of wariness. Standing up, I take Sabrina with me as I step out of the cover of the porch, extending a hand palm up. Seconds pass without anyone taking so much as a breath, nothing happening. But just as I begin to shake my head, lowering my hand like the hopeful idiot that I am, I feel it.
One small raindrop lands on the pad of my finger.
Around us, the dry dirt becomes speckled with dark spots, and more and more raindrops land on my skin. With another eardrum-shattering crack of thunder, the sprinkle turns into an all-out deluge of water, pouring down in earnest.
With an incredulous laugh, I look back at the porch, taking in Damian and Hunter’s stunned faces. “I knew it.” Unable to stop grinning, I grab Sabrina by the hips, lifting her up and spinning her around. “I fucking knew it!” The second her feet touch the ground again, I slam my lips against hers in a hard kiss.
Sabrina mumbles against my lips, “Coincidence.”
Palming her cheeks, I pull back enough that she can see the conviction in my eyes. “Fate.”
Chapter 15
Sabrina
"I don't get it." Leo tosses down the wet shirt in his hands and flops down to sit on one of the boulders that creates a border for half of the lake, left over from an old rockslide.
Sebastian grunts, following his lead. "I know she didn't love us, but we tried, were good to her. And why take Sabrina away from us to save her if she was going to treat her like that?"
The faux tranquility of the lake does nothing to alleviate the sorrow hanging so heavily in the air it becomes suffocating. All morning I’ve filled them in on various stories from my childhood, and while I didn’t lie or attempt to paint Mom in a better light, I downplayed some of the worst of it. Naturally, that’s when one of the others would interject, ensuring that even if Leo, Merrick, and Sebastian hated them for talking shit about their mate, they had the full picture. Damian and Kaige finally took mercy on me, dragging the others away to help with the endless work that needs to be done around here, but Hunter stayed behind as my shadow, none of them comfortable with the idea of me alone with the Slaughters.
I open my mouth to fill them in on what Mom said in the elevator, but Hunter catches my eye and subtly shakes his head before indicating the dense copse of trees. It's possible when I siphon dropped Merrick and Leo yesterday that people were watching and figured out my designation, or heck, since that’s unheard of, they might have just assumed they dropped to their knees in relief or grief. But handing over every piece of information in our arsenal to men that would happily use it against us would be idiotic, so I let the subject drop for now.
Leo sets off a chain reaction and the laundry is swiftly abandoned in favor of dipping our feet in the water, toeing the sand; anything to avoid having to look at one another while they absorb everything I threw at them. “Did you hit her?” They’re heads whip my way, but I pretend not to notice.
“Never,” Leo replies softly.
“Force her to consummate a marriage she didn’t want, lock her in the house and tell her the only thing she was good for was child rearing?”
A low growl escapes Sebastian. “Of-fucking-course not.”
Leaping onto the boulder beside Leo, I begin scaling the small mountain of rocks as an excuse to continue avoiding eye contact. “So she didn’t completely hate you, or she never would have slept with you. More likely she took out all of the hatred she had for her circumstances on you guys while wrestling to accept her fate. From what Kaige’s mom said, Acheron let her go against your societal norms and she was close to him, keeping up with whatever he did around here well enough that it was noticeable even to other packs that had no business on his land. For someone that watched every other woman get married off and thinking she might actually have a different life, only for the person she respected to sell her off to his enemies like a sacrificial lamb? I’d be pissed off, too. I doubt she even let herself get to know you, too caught up in her hurt and hating everything you stood for on principle.”
Most of the rubble in front of me isn’t good for a foothold, so I leap for the next largest boulder to the left. Landing in a crouch, my foot slips, but I manage to stick the landing. Hunter’s displeased rumble is followed by the sound of shifting pebbles, so it looks like I’ve officially reached the end of my leash. Glancing around from my modest vantage point, it hits me hard. If this is the epitome of freedom someone could hope to have in their lives, here? Bitterness and resentment would consume me as well.
Taking another step, I call back, “Did she ever let you siphon from her?”
“No.” Several tense moments pass before Merrick admits, “We had to a few times anyway, though, because she was clearly drowning, but we only forced the issue when we were worried she might,” he trails off, and I nod to myself, able to fill in the blanks.
“She didn’t want help, she wanted to be angry. When the only thing you know is how to be miserable, eventually it becomes the norm; comfortable in its familiarity. At that point, anything that makes you happy feels wrong and you look for ways to destroy it before it has a chance to hurt you,” I declare with conviction, feeling a small weight lift off of my shoulders with the revelation. “You can’t fix someone that would rather stay broken, even if you don’t understand their perspective. All you can do is your best, but when it reaches the point that they’re dragging you down into the toxic pit with them, there’s no shame in saving yourself.”
Tilting my head to the sky, I stare at the endless expanse of blue, dotted with the occasional wisp of a cloud. “Why kill yourself trying to save someone that wouldn’t lose a night of sleep if you died?”
A heavy hand lands on my hip, Hunter threading his thumb through the belt loop of my shorts. “You’re going to give me a heart attack, don’t go so high.”
With a sad smile that he can’t see, I argue simply for the sake of arguing, starting to understand why Annika insisted on raising me the way she did; inexcusable and shitty as her methods may have been. “Five more steps.”
“One,” he counters.
“Seventeen.” Shooting him a smirk over my shoulder, his unamused face only makes my smile grow.
“Negative five,” he deadpans, not giving me so much as a lip twitch as I slowly slide my foot forward a step. Finally breaking, he rolls his eyes. Following behind me as I scale another few rocks, he acts as my anchor so that I won’t fall and break my neck if I slip.
When I’m close to cresting the peak, Merrick releases a volatile, guttural sound. “Get. Down.”
My heartbeat ratchets up a notch, yet I can’t seem to stop myself. Every step feels like a win, and while I’m aware that it’s simply my subconscious one-upping them, it’s... exhilarating. So much of the past week has been depressing as hell, and even our reprieve wound up being stressful. This, though? It’s stupid and pointless, but it makes me feel better than I have in days.
Ignoring his command, I raise my voice to be heard easier with the distance. “Do you even like her?”
At that, they’re rendered speechless for so long that I think they might choose not to respond. Eventually though, Merrick asks, “What do you mean? Of course we do; she’s our mate.”
Hunter beats me to the punch, far more confident than when we arrived. “Even after hearing how she treated your daughter? Does Annika really get a default exemption from all faults just because you were sleeping with her?”
It’s not quite how I was going to phrase things, but it results in the same general point, so I remain silent. Wriggling free of Hunter’s hold while he’s distracted, I take a few quick steps and leap over a small gap to the next highest boulder. My knee scrapes on impact, and I have to awkwardly haul myself up the rest of the way, but still; I made it. His pissed off growl reaches me immediately, but not him. The narrow platform I’m on means that he can’t follow until I move, so naturally, I pivot on my heel to smirk down at him.
No matter how brief my reign, or how decimated the kingdom beneath my feet is, I get to be the queen of the castle for a few minutes, even if it’s only as the queen of ruin.
Sebastian’s nearly imperceptible voice carries on the breeze. “How can we hate her if she gave us Sabrina? But how can we love her after everything she’s done?”
Neither Hunter nor I reply; there’s no point. Everything we wanted to convey, we already did. It’s up to them what they choose to do with the information.
Selfishly, I want them to pick me, and by the same token, I hate that they have to choose between us at all. But there’s really no alternative, is there? If they think she was justified in everything she put me through, then it undermines my suffering and I’ll never be able to trust them, knowing they’d have stood by as she neglected me under the guise of ‘tough love.’ And if they’d have stood up for me, they’d have been standing up to her, which would have driven an even bigger wedge between them than there already was.
Annika made all of us suffer in different ways, starving us of what we needed to thrive because she was struggling to breathe, and would rather we suffocated with her than be free when she couldn’t.
That woman was a mother in name only, and I’m going to have to make my peace with the fact that nothing I do will ever give me back the life that I should have had.
It’s a hard thing to accept, but I can feel something shift in my soul as it settles into place in my foundation. With it, a little of the pressure in my brain subsides, and the desire to keep pushing farther just to annoy Hunter fades alongside it. After a few steady breaths, I’m able to muster up a smile that doesn’t make me feel like a complete fraud.
I’m okay, always, because the only thing I can count on other people for is to let me down. But as I look at Hunter’s hostile face, his worried gaze flitting between the ground far below and how close my toes are to the edge, I question the golden rule that’s kept me going all of these years.
And I jump.
He catches me before my feet can touch the rock, dragging me close to his body with a low rumble vibrating his chest. As he opens his mouth to tear me a new one for pulling a suicidal, idiotic move, I wrap my arms around his neck and press my face against the side of his throat. His tirade dies off before it can gain traction, and for once, he doesn’t give me any shit or demand an explanation. He simply tightens his hold and lets me ignore the world as a whole for a few precious moments.
Eventually, I untangle myself from him, and look down at Leo, Merrick, and Sebastian, much farther below than I realized. Dropping my voice until it’s so quiet there’s no way even they can hear me, I ask, “Give it to me straight, okay? Is this all an act? Because they’re... they’re awful, right? It’s what you guys have harped on about for weeks; the infamous Slaughters and the carnage that they leave in their wake that’s kept the three of you in check all of these years. How can they go from that to suddenly acting like... decent people?”
Swallowing, I meet his forest green eyes and whisper, “Is she right? You’ve seen how they keep scrubbing the heels of their hands over their hearts, and my counterpart pulled a one-eighty and is acting like the past week of her sulking never happened, is perfectly at ease being here like there’s nothing to be concerned about. It all feels like some cruel game, like none of this is actually real.”
