Denied Mate by Roxie Ray
Liv
My dad had called me into his room, just days before he’d passed away. The mattress had sunk as I sat on the edge of the bed, my feet dangling off the frame like they had my whole life. Being in my parents’ room made me feel like a little girl, no matter how grown up I was.
Dad’s hand was clammy in mine, but I held it tight while he stared at me with love. Mom—or…whoever she was to me—hovered by the door. He waited, silent, until she left to get the phone.
His voice had been barely a whisper and I’d leaned close. His breath already smelled like the forest floor under the big oak where we were going to bury him. He’d picked it out himself. “You’re special, Liv.”
I shook my head, a self-defeating habit of denying any compliment coming my way. Isn’t that what every father told their only daughter? He squeezed my hand as tightly as he could but his fingers shook and his thick knuckles creaked with every movement.
“You need to believe in yourself. Especially when you think you have no reason to. Remember…” He paused to catch his breath, every word a monumental effort. “Everything I did was to protect you.”
I pulled back and frowned. I knew I was his favorite but, damn, it seemed extreme to make such a statement. Delirious, maybe. But his eyes shone with clarity and his stern expression told me he was serious. He parted his dry lips to say more, but Mom slid back into the room and all he said was, “I love you.”
“Alpha?”Maren’s high-pitched giggle cut through the tension and brought me back to the moment. We all spun to look at her. She almost sounded drunk.
Ben growled a warning and she simply raised her eyebrows in challenge.
“You’re no alpha, Ben.” She stepped toward him with sudden confidence in her stride. “Big muscles but no authority. You can barely control your men because you haven’t come into your power. There are no alpha powers for you to come into.”
He growled and pushed me aside to meet her, glowering down at the elfin woman.
“All of this”—she gestured to his bulk—“is the product of a witch’s brew.”
I gasped at the sound of a firecracker, but no—it was Ben’s palm slapping Maren across her face. She spun, whiplashed, and I cried out in shock as I caught a flash of blood. He’d broken the skin of her cheek.
“Power is power!” Ben roared, spit flying.
“Maren!” I cried, still shocked he’d actually just struck her.
I moved toward her but Ben spun, grabbed my arm and yanked me toward the door.
“You’re coming with me, bitch,” he snapped.
“No!” I pulled away, but whether it was alpha powers or witch’s brew he’d been chugging, it was working—he was strong and I couldn’t break his grip. I writhed a little harder.
So much for my overprotective brother who’d do anything to keep me safe. The illusion was shattered. My mom had always kept me at arm’s length, and he’d always been hovering, but they were on the same team all along. He’d been keeping close to me for surveillance and nothing more. I was being protected, but not for my own safety. To keep information from me. To keep me safe and harmless. Safe for him.
Cal was right there, wrenching Ben’s hand from my arm and shoving him back. My brother snarled, his wolf’s growl bassy enough to make me believe he had at least a little alpha in him. Cal didn’t back down. He growled just as loudly and shoved Ben toward the doorway.
“Back off! She’s not going with you.” The certainty in Cal’s voice sent a shiver up my spine as I dashed for Maren.
She waved me off but I insisted she show me how bad the cut was. Blood dribbled down her pale cheek and something in my chest snapped. I spun around to confront my brother — cousin — whatever he was — for hurting my friend, and saw Cal shove him backwards through the threshold.
“Okay! Fine.” Ben held up his hands in surrender. “I’m going.”
But as my brother turned to leave, Cal dropped his guard. I winced, knowing what would happen before it did. Ben was faking. He swung and smacked Cal’s head sideways with a right hook, then landed a heavy fist to his gut.
“No!” I cried out and rushed him as Cal doubled over.
“Use your powers, Liv!” Maren cried out.
“Use yours!” I said back to her and slapped at Ben, clawed at his arm, and tried to pull him off Cal—but he wasn’t budging.
My brother yanked Cal’s head up with a fistful of his hair and slammed a fist to the side of his face, making a horrible, wet noise. He shoved a knee into Cal’s gut. No air escaped his lungs—they were already empty. Cal crumpled, and I screamed.
Maren whined in desperation, and suddenly the lamp flew in front of me and smashed against the doorframe by Ben’s head. Now only dimly lit, Ben’s eyes took on an incandescent orange glow I’d never seen before. Maren’s claim about a witch’s brew was making more sense by the second. Why had I never seen it before? When he set his eyes on me, a cold serpent coiled around my guts and squeezed. It felt like pure evil.
I stumbled backwards but he grabbed me by the throat. His fingers squeezed right where the attacker in the apartment had—it was so familiar, like he’d never let go. Holy shit. My own brother had tried to kill me…
Cal suddenly thudded into Ben’s gut with a shoulder, and the other lamp came hurtling through the air in front of me. Hit on both sides, Ben staggered backwards but he kept his grip around my throat. Everything started to sparkle red and white. I kicked his shins, clawed at his arms, and tried to summon any of my power—human, wolf, or fae—to get out of his stranglehold.
Nothing worked. The sounds of Cal and Maren fighting him off me faded into a dull roar, like the sound of the winds in the pines overlooking Landsedge. Everything went dark.
Knock-out number three… As I slipped away, I wondered if I’d ever wake up again.
“Benjamin’squite useless at times, isn’t he?” A snappy New England accent brought me back from the abyss. “Men.”
“Mom?” I blinked into the light and made out the dishwater blonde hair of the woman who’d raised me. Or…had tolerated me living in her house.
“He got a little queasy and couldn’t dispose of you himself, so he brought you here for Mommy to take care of it. And my goodness, he told you all of those little ideas of his.” She laughed briskly and slowly came into focus, a blur of business as she tidied her sewing table.
I was in what was left of my childhood bedroom, slumped in an armchair. A pincushion, a thimble, and a printed-out embroidery pattern were on the seat, wedged between my hip and the arm. Mom, or…I guessed I should have called her Lisa, was fussing in a drawer.
“Telling secrets. Spreading rumors.” She tutted and took out a large pair of fabric scissors. “How unseemly.”
My limbs felt heavy like I was whiskey drunk, and my wolf was silent inside me. Sedated. Again. I didn’t know shit about witches’ brews, but if they could make my brother into a raging hulk then I was certain they could cook up something to knock out a werewolf. Was colloidal silver hard to come by? Could they grow wolfsbane in a garden? Probably. Whatever it was, I felt slow and vaguely queasy; whatever Maren had given me had worn off much more quickly. I tried not to panic and took in my surroundings.
Newly painted in a pale lemon yellow, the room was almost unrecognizable from where I’d lived almost my entire life. The window above the desk where my bed used to be was still the dark blue I’d painted the whole space, and I saw the top curve of a C and the pointed cat-ears of the M Cal had carved into the underside of the wood. I bet my mother—Lisa, I told myself again—had never seen it. It gave me a little thrill to know it was there, right under her nose.
Lisa rolled toward me on a stool, the scissors in her hands. “I never wanted anyone to find out about your father’s tacky affair. Quite embarrassing and worse for having a child as a result.”
She wrinkled her nose like someone had made a crass joke.
If this wasn’t my mom, then who was? A fae? Really? My mind struggled to accept it, but every other part of me knew it made sense. Lisa and I had never seen eye to eye. As much as I’d craved it, I’d never felt loved by her. Not even a bit.
But surely she felt a little affection for me. Surely she’d softened to me over decades of caring for me. I wasn’t that unlovable, was I?
“Mom…” My voice was croaky, like the way Dad’s had been on his deathbed.
Oh, shit, I didn’t want to die in the god-awful ugly wingback sewing chair with its red and pink polka dot upholstery. I willed movement into my limbs. My fingers started to wriggle. Good… There was hope. I just need more time.
“Oh, please. Don’t call me Mom. I’m not your mother.” Lisa laughed again, shaking her head quickly and making her perfectly straight locks flutter. “I’ve put up with it for twenty-eight years. No more, please. I’m not your mother, I never wanted to be, and the sooner we stop pretending, the better we’ll all be for it.”
Ouch. My heart ached with longing for the type of mom I’d always wanted, and I grimaced with embarrassment at how much love I’d thrown at Lisa. I was pretty sure I’d found a way to love her; I certainly tried hard enough. She’d eaten it up like a black hole. And I still felt soft when I looked at her. What the fuck was wrong with me?
I rotated my wrists and wriggled my feet in my shoes. My legs were weighed down with sedation but I was able to bounce my knees a little. Okay, more movement was good, because the glare she gave me made me feel like I was going to need to run for my life.
“Why?” I managed to push the words out. I needed to keep her talking.
“Why what, darling? Why did your father sleep with a fae?” She laughed manically. Alarming. “Or why did I agree to take you in? I’ve been asking myself the same thing for a long time. What else could I do? I couldn’t let your father get away, he would have been swept up by the fae slut who tricked him. End things with the pack alpha? Lose every prestige I’d worked so hard to earn?”
She laughed at the absurd idea and thumped the scissors against her palm as she edged closer. “I didn’t think your father’s plan was particularly good… Adopting a son to take the place as next-in-line. Didn’t seem like it was enough to ensure the continuity of the pack and break the prophecy. I really thought taking your life would be the only solution, but he disagreed. Wasn’t one for drowning pups in the river.”
A shot of bile rose to my throat. And so did the scissors. Lisa lunged at me with the sharp edge brandished like a knife. I barely ducked in time and scrambled out from under her, the shot of adrenaline pushing the last of the heaviness from my limbs.
As I dashed for the door, Lisa screeched and yanked the scissors from the back of the chair. The sound of tearing polka dot upholstery followed me as I raced out of the room.
I knew the house like it was part of me. I raced down the stairs and leaped over the smooth-worn railing before the last three steps. The front door was bolted shut, and I threw the first two locks open with practiced ease, but the last one was new. And digital. I hurried to the wall and punched in numbers special. Dad’s birthday—nope. Ben’s birthday—also no. I tried mine, despite knowing it wouldn’t do any good. Sure enough, it buzzed a ‘hell no.’
The fast patter of Lisa’s feet on the stairs made my fingers shake and I fumbled her birthday. She was coming for me with the scissors and I had one last chance to get the door open—their wedding anniversary. The day she’d become the richest, most enviable woman in Bridgehaven. The door clicked open and I was two seconds from freedom when she grabbed the back of my hair and yanked me, screaming, into the living room.
I kicked at everything I could and toppled the hall table, smashed the vase with the dying chrysanthemums I’d brought her, broke the low mirror, and overturned the rugs. Finally, I wrenched away from her grip and dove across the stark white four-seater sofa, the oversized version of the one in my apartment. Lisa squealed in disgust at the handful of hair she was left with. She shook out her fingers, sending a tuft of my blonde hair fluttering to the floor.
I scrambled over the back of the couch and grabbed the first thing I could from the mantelpiece—a family photo I was nearly cropped out of to fit in the frame. But hey, it was a heavy frame. Solid. Wood. I held it like a baseball bat and dared her to come closer.
“Oh! A weapon!” Mom—Lisa, fuck I had to get it right—laughed condescendingly and wiped the scissors along the side of the couch as she approached. “I thought you’d come into your little fairy powers after David died. But I guess not, huh? Something else you failed at... ”
She raised the scissors and dashed for me, fast on her feet. I yelled in anger and shattered the picture frame over her head, shards of wood and glass going everywhere, but she kept coming. Years of her torment burned through my blood—her judgment chipping away at my self-esteem; her snide remarks making me feel so small. And the lies she’d held onto. It must have given her such a sense of power over me, to know I wasn’t hers. To accept Mothers’ Day cards with a saccharine smile and condescending laugh, silently mocking me for being so naive. So stupid.
But I wasn’t stupid. And I wasn’t mean. I wasn’t her daughter.
The scissors were inches from my throat when I realized the freedom in the truth. I wasn’t her blood! I wasn’t a bumbling, spoiled rich girl at the top of the pack whose parents doted on her. I was a fucking prophesized alpha who needed to step into her power, like, now.
A flash of emotion lit up every blood vessel in my body with an electric charge I’d only felt briefly before—when I’d made things float, and when Cal and I had kissed. But now it pulsed through me as an unending current.
Lisa leaped back or, no, she was jolted back by it and smacked the far wall. As she went, the scissors still in her hand nicked the skin by my jugular and blood trickled down my neck. The heat of it powered my rage and I barked so deep the crystal cabinet shook.
“Just fucking die!” Lisa screamed, raising the scissors back over her head and charging at me from the other side of the room.
My wolf was awake now but something else pushed forward, eager to protect us. I had no idea what it was, or how to harness it. My wolf met it with equal parts anticipation and concern. The lights in the entire house seemed to dim, like a heavy blanket had been thrown over every single source of light in the entire house. For a second, I thought I saw smoke. Maybe I saw my life flash before my eyes. Who knows?
Lisa hurled herself at me, and I gave myself up to my wolf. I didn’t have time to shift. I didn’t have time to think. All I could do was react.
I raised my arm, barely managing to dodge my not-mother as she tried to strike me with the scissors. She dragged the sharp point across my forearm and I hissed, almost too startled to do anything. I reached out with my right hand and fumbled for the nearest object. It didn’t matter what it was. I swung with in a wild frenzy. I went wide and whipped it back again. Lisa was too busy trying to get in close to land a fatal blow and I caught her across the temple, slamming the heavy metal vase into her perfectly chiseled face with a dull thump.
She went down like a sack of bricks. And then everything was quiet.
The wall was there for me and I dumped my whole weight against it. I panted, let the vase to the floor, and waited for my pulse to settle.
Lisa’s feet, still in beige stockings and nude pumps, stared back at me from where I slumped. Beige pumps, I realized, dull, identical to the ones she’d been wearing her whole life. The ones I’d put my tiny feet into when I was a kid, playing dress-up. Back then, I’d wanted to be just like her. Now, I could think of nothing worse.
A hole opened up in my chest, ripped with frayed edges, and the ache was almost unbearable. A grief-soaked sob burst from my throat before I could stop it and I doubled over from the pain. Oh, god, I’d killed my mother. My father was gone. I didn’t even have a brother. My family was gone. My family was fake. My family was…nothing.
It ripped through me and I struggled to breathe through the sobs. But I didn’t have time to process. I’d killed the head of the Burns family. I had to run. I had to get a bag, as much cash as I could find in the hidey-holes of the house, and leave. I’d get as far away from this awful town as I could. Prophecy be damned, I wasn’t going to bring my pack together with the fae. The fairies didn’t deserve to become entwined with the fucked-up history of the Bridgehaven wolves.
I straightened. Swallowed my emotions. Closed my eyes and stepped over the now still feet.
I froze when I saw the shadow in the doorway.
The horrified voice punched right through my gut. “What the fuck have you done?”
