Fated to the Alpha by Jasmine White
CHAPTER NINE
The pups were starting to play a little rough. It had been amusing at first, watching them jump and tumble around with that squeaky little rubber alien with the big googly eyes, but now two of them had the squeak toy in their jaws and were playing a little tug-o-war with it, threatening to tear it in two, while the third was eagerly coming up to snatch it away from both of them.
It was at that point that I decided to step in and mediate the game. “Hey, now,” I said, getting up from my lawn chair and stepping over to them. “If you can’t play nice, I’m going to have to take your toys away. No more fighting,” I said as I knelt down and took hold of the little green thing in their jaws, which they calmly released and let me take, looking up at me with meek eyes. “What did I tell you all?”
At that question, the three little furry, four-legged creatures before me rose up on their hind legs, which began extending into human legs. Their shoulders reconfigured to allow their front legs to move to the sides and reshape into human arms. Their fur disappeared to reveal human skin, and their little snouts shrank away, as the faces of three little children emerged on them, standing naked before me with humbled looks.
“Fighting is bad,” said the seven-year-old girl with the little brown curls. “Fighting gets people hurt.”
“That’s right, Lisa,” I nodded. “And what do people who fight get?”
“No dessert,” said all three of them in the same monotone expression.
“That’s right!” I said, pointing a finger at them. “So what are you all going to do now?”
“Play nice,” they drawled.
“Very good,” I smiled. “Maybe I should get some more toys out for each of you, so you don’t have to fight over them. Is that okay?”
The kids smiled and nodded. “I want my sparkly ball, mommy!” said little four-year-old Audrey.
“I’m gonna get my Nerf gun!” said six-year-old Cody.
“Only if you don’t shoot your sisters with it,” I said.
As the pups ran to retrieve their playthings, I lifted my head and sniffed the air, catching Jeremy’s scent approaching. I turned around to see him appearing from around the house, which prompted the youngest of the pups to suddenly change direction and come running for him. “Daddy!” Audrey cheered, opening her arms to him as he bent to pick her up.
“Hey, there!” he beamed. “How’s daddy’s little bumper?”
“Mommy take me swimming today!” she chirped. “I swim better than Cody!”
“You do?” he grinned.
“She’s lying!” Cody protested. “She didn’t want to go in!”
“I swim good!” little Audrey insisted.
“I’m sure you do, sweetie,” he nodded, setting her back down. “Why don’t you go play some more, and let me talk to mommy.”
Our little girl ran off to join her brother and sister, while Jeremy stepped up and greeted me with a short, chaste kiss. “She only got in the water for about two minutes,” I whispered to him. “But she was really proud of herself when she did. I may have let her embellish the story a little.” Jeremy chuckled, and slipped an arm around my waist, pressing himself to my side as we watched the kids playing some more.
Eventually we started up the steps to the back door, while I called to the kids to say, “Keep playing nice, pups. Remember, Mommy knows!”
“Yes, Mom,” they drawled.
We moved through the back door into the kitchen, and I shut the door behind us to say, “My father doesn’t know if he’ll be able to make it to our Thanksgiving feast,” I said.
“Is his health any better?” Jeremy asked.
“Mom says he’s up and moving again, but she’s keeping him on a strict low-sodium diet. And apparently she’s facing a daily struggle keeping him from working himself too hard.”
“You sure he’s not still just trying to spite me?” Jeremy offered, his head tilting. “You know he’s never been too happy about you marrying a Morgandorf, even after our packs made peace.”
I smiled, and shook my head. “Trust me, he’s over that by now. Believe me, I’ve worried about it often enough to check.”
“Well that’s good to hear,” he said, taking me into his arms. “Andrea’s a sure thing, though. She can’t wait to see the pups again.”
I grinned wider. “Oh, and they’re even more excited to see their ‘Auntie Andie.’”
Jeremy rolled his eyes with a dry smirk. “I still think that sounds like a stutter.”
“But the pups just love calling her that,” I said. “And I get why.”
“Well,” he said, getting a wicked twinkle in his eye, “there’s a few things I think I’d enjoy calling you tonight.”
I narrowed my eyes and smirked at him. “Are you thinking dirty thoughts again?”
“With you? Always.”
I giggled and kissed him.
This was it. This was what I always wanted. Life couldn’t have turned out any more perfect than this. After all the pain we’d endured, all the fear of losing each other, of losing our families to the war between our packs, of being forced into marriages with people we didn’t love, we’d ultimately gotten everything we could have dreamed for.
I had Jeremy. I had my pups. I had my happy life.
I held onto Jeremy tightly as I kissed him, as if I wanted to make sure he never slipped away.
And then in the next moment, he did.
He was suddenly gone from my arms, his body removed from my touch, his lips disappearing from my kiss. I opened my eyes to find him simply gone, leaving no trace. I reached out to grab at the air where he had just been, but nothing was there to grab at but air. Suddenly panicked, I looked out the window where my pups should have been playing, only to see them fade away like smoke. And then the walls of my house started falling away like the plywood walls of a cheap film set, disappearing into shadows and mist, until all around me was nothing but darkness.
“No!” I cried to the void. “Give them back! Please!”
But there was nothing out there to give a response. My perfect life had simply evaporated, replaced with a great black hole of nothingness.
But no… there was something there.
I heard Leon’s voice echoing in the darkness. “It will never be yours,” he thundered. “You’ll always be mine. The only future you have is what I give you.”
“No! It’s my future! You can’t take that from me!”
I saw Leon’s proud face, with his dark eyes and his slicked-back hair, looking back at me from the darkness, shaking his head. “Nothing you have is yours. I’ll always be there. Everywhere.”
And then he was reaching out to me. But it was like his hand was enormous, getting bigger and bigger the closer it came to me, as if it was all around me, encompassing everything. There was nowhere I could go where I wouldn’t be in his grasp. No matter what I did, I would always be in the palm of his hand.
And now his hand was closing around me.
My world was encroaching on me with his grip. I curled up, bringing my knees up to my chest, holding my hands up to my sides as my space to move grew tighter and ever tighter. I started gasping for air; it was getting harder for me to breathe. Before long, there was nothing left in the world but Leon’s hand, wrapped around me, and beginning to squeeze…
I heard the sound of a door opening. I blinked my eyes open and lifted my head off the cold floor beneath me. As my vision slowly cleared, my surroundings became familiar again. I was still in the basement where Dad had locked me, curled up naked on the floor against the wall. Soft sunlight was streaming in through the narrow window up at the top of the wall to my right. And I heard the sounds of my dad’s footsteps descending the stairs to my left.
He appeared coming around the end of the stairs, holding a steaming bowl of pasta in his hands. “You hungry?” he said.
I didn’t answer verbally. I just silently glared at him. It was how I had regarded him ever since he put me down here. I’d lost track of how many days it had been by now. There were no clocks down here; the only way to track the passage of time was by the daylight coming in through that little window.
Dad had gotten used to my cold, silent stares by now. He kept hoping I’d open up to him this time, but so far it hadn’t happened. “Still nothing?” he said.
I kept quiet again.
“Fine then,” he said, and set the bowl down in front of me. “I can keep waiting for you to come around. You’re not going anywhere.”
He got up and started back toward the stairs. As I saw his back shrinking away from me, I finally decided to open my mouth and say something to him. “Are you enjoying this?”
With his hand on the rail, he turned look at me earnestly. “Not for a second. Despite what you might think of me right now, you’re the most important thing in the world to me. That’s why your betrayal stings me so deeply. And that’s why I have to resort to these measures.”
“If you really cared about me, Dad, you’d have respected my choices and what I wanted, instead of trying to make all my choices for me.”
Dad frowned at me. “I want what’s best for you, Evelyn. Sometimes that means having to administer some tough love, when your choices are leading you down a bad path.” He started back up the stairs again. “I’ll be back to check on you again later.”
After the door shut behind him, I poked absently at the bowl of curled noodles in front of me with the fork that stuck out the top of them. I wasn’t that hungry just now. I hadn’t felt all that hungry for a long time, honestly. Yes, I ate the food that Dad always brought down to me. Eventually. But in the time I’d been down here, I was guessing I’d probably lost at least three pounds already.
I pushed the bowl aside and got up, and walked to that little window. I had to get up on my tiptoes to see through it, and even then the angle didn’t allow me much of a view. I could see several members of my pack going about their business, some of whom I couldn’t see well enough to identify, and I couldn’t get their scents from down in there either. But I could see some of my old friends going about their day. I saw Charlene talking with Becky and Trina out by the circle, and I could see Terry’s rusty pickup driving through the village, still alive and sputtering as it returned from town. I could see several members of the pack going about in their four-legged forms, sitting about sphinx-like or trotting into the village with fresh-killed meat in their jaws. And I could see Leon leaning against a wall, talking shop with James and old Tobias.
My pack. My friends and family. The wolves who had been part of my life for as long as I had lived.
And now I was a prisoner to them.
A pair of small, feminine feet walked by the window in front of my face, and then stopped. She bent down to look at me, revealing the face of sixteen-year-old Samantha, one of the growing pups in our pack. I smiled softly. “Hi, Sam,” I said.
She looked back at me blankly for a moment—and then hawked and spit a big gob of loogie at the glass in front of me, making me recoil.
Then she got up and continued on her way.
*
Time moved at a snail’s pace in that basement. The only things I had to keep me company were that window, the occasional meals that Dad brought me, and a bucket to do my business in. So long, long hours were spent just pacing around or sitting in the corner.
I slept a lot while I was in there. With nothing else to do, I ended up nodding off pretty frequently, curled up against the wall. And honestly, I liked sleeping down there. Sleep was my only means of escape. For brief periods I could forget about where I was, and I could dream about still being with Jeremy.
I dreamed we were still back in his room in the Morgandorf village, where we had all our best sex in the comfort of his bed, cradling each other in our arms, with four walls to separate the rest of the world from us. I dreamed we were back out in the forest, just the two of us, running about in our four-legged forms, hunting and eating raw meat and sleeping under the stars. I dreamed I was still Elena the stray, living as a guest of the Morgandrof pack, making friends with all of them, swimming in their lake and joining Andrea for more of her teenage hijinks. I dreamed of a time when there was no conflict between our packs, when we could come and go as we pleased, when no one would threaten us and tell us we were wrong. I dreamed I could introduce Jeremy to Mom and Dad, and they would smile and shake his hand and invite him over for dinner and cherry pie. And I dreamed some more about that beautiful house we might have, and those three beautiful pups, and that beautiful life together.
But invariably I would always wake up, and I would be back to that dingy, lonely, stinky basement, locked away from all of that.
When I woke up again, the half-eaten pasta still sat in front of me, having long since grown cold. I had no idea if another day had passed or if it was just later on the same day. I rarely did anymore.
I heard the door open again, and immediately thought that Dad was coming back to check on me again. But the footsteps I heard coming down the stairs were lighter than Dad’s heavy footfalls. And it wasn’t his scent that I smelled approaching.
Instead it was Mom’s. She appeared leaning cautiously around the end of the stairs to see me. “Evelyn?” she said.
I didn’t say anything at first. I blinked a couple of times, not entirely sure at first that she was really there. She hadn’t visited me once in however long it had been since Dad threw me down here; what had suddenly changed? Or was the isolation finally getting to me?
But I finally decided she was real when she walked toward me, knelt down and placed a gentle hand on my head. “How are you doing?”
I could only respond by giving her a look that silently said, “How the hell do you think I’m doing?”
She frowned, and sighed. “I’m sorry about this. I really am. The worst thing in the world when you’re a parent is to see your child in pain.”
“Then why are you letting Dad do this to me?”
Mom grimaced uncomfortably. “I wish I could do something to help you. But it’s not just your father I’d be going against. Leon is also sanctioning this. If I let you out, he would severely punish us both.”
I laid my face down in my arms, getting that feeling of helplessness that had become so familiar lately.
“I came down here because I want to try to understand. I want to know what you were thinking this whole time.”
I lifted my head, giving my mother a nasty look. “I was thinking I found someone who made me feel like I was in a romance novel or John Hughes movie. Remember you saying something about that, when we were talking about my engagement to Leon?”
Mom paused. “I remember telling you that love wasn’t always like those things. I said it didn’t always happen in one big moment, and that it takes time to build.”
“But sometimes it is like that, isn’t it?” I said. “And you can still build it after that, can’t you?”
Mom looked uncomfortable. “Evelyn… I know it’s easy to think you’re in love with dangerous boys when you’re young, but it’s not real—”
“Mom, shut up!”
She blinked, jerking her head back in surprise.
“You don’t know anything! Jeremy is the least dangerous guy I’ve ever known! If anything, Leon is way more dangerous than he is! He’s never been anything but good to me! He actually listens to me, which is more than I can say of anyone here. And he protected me when someone else tried to hurt me. It’s not just some thrill I get by running around with a forbidden lover! It’s real with him!”
Mom looked like she was about to cry out of pity. “Evelyn… did you ever think that maybe he was just using you? It’s what a Morgandorf would do.”
“That’s all that matters to you, isn’t it?” I snapped. “That he’s a Morgandorf. You think that’s all you need to know about him. You think they’re all the same. We’ve all demonized them, and made them out to be killers and thieves. Well you know what? They say the same things about us. You should’ve heard some of the things they accused the Caldour pack of while I was there! Out of the mouths of their pups even! I mean it was like being in a mirror world over there. They all live just like we do. They have families that love each other just like us. And their pups are beautiful. Just like ours. If you’d just give them a chance, you’d see there’s nothing to hate about them at all!”
Mom looked like she didn’t know what to say anymore. “I… well… you…”
“Now everyone’s treating me like a traitor, because I couldn’t bring myself to love someone who treated me like a trophy, who told me he was going to marry me like it was a done deal and never bothered to ask what I wanted, and instead I chose to love someone who actually respected me, instead of hating him just because he was born to the wrong pack.”
“Evelyn…”
“When Dad and Leon made that whole arrangement, you told me I should just accept it and learn to like it. So that Dad could use me to bandage his wounded pride, and so Leon could have me as a prize. You tried to tell me there was nothing I could do but accept that their needs were more important than mine. That’s what Dad thinks being loyal to him means; he wants me to put my wants aside for his. Well, I’m sorry, Mom, but I don’t accept that!”
Mom just looked all kinds of uncomfortable. “Evelyn, please listen…”
“If you’re not gonna let me out of here, then just go away!”
Mom tried reaching out to touch my shoulder. I scowled and slapped her hand away. “JUST GET OUT!”
There was nothing more she could say, and it seemed like she finally realized that. With a pitiful expression on her face, she finally stood up and backed away toward the stairs, pausing to look at me sadly before ascending back into the house.
Once she was gone I curled up on the floor and laid my head back down.