Ch. 6

CHAPTER SIX:

~Drake:

This is outrageous. I would not do this. No matter how many times I let my Alpha hand me my a** out here in front of the packhouse. I wasn’t going to disgrace the mating bond by just getting with someone else. No way.

A kick to the head. I wince.

“YOU WILL OBEY BOY!” Alpha Rafael yells at me.

I know I’m covered in bruises and blood that will start healing soon. I don’t fight back. Just pray to the Goddess that my parents don’t hear about this and come running. 

“Please, Alpha!” Too late. My mom is on her knees in the mud and leaves calling for mercy.

He looks at her and I flinch, thinking he will hurt her next. But my dad stands between them, and I tell myself that if he goes for them I’m blowing my cover. He will not lay a finger on my parents, or I will kill him.

Alpha Rafael howls and marches back to me, spitting at my body laying all twisted on the earth.

I’m okay mom, I link her. 

“Pathetic. You both raised a pathetic wolf,” Alpha Rafael says to himself more than my parents as he marches back into the packhouse.

Da*n dude, are you okay? Archer asks in a link.

I’ll be fine, I link him back.

“And if I hear that ANYONE wastes medical attention on him I’ll banish you from this pack!” Alpha Rafael yells at the door before slamming it shut.

My parents run over to me and I’m already rising.

“Drake, what’s happened?” my dad asks, worry in his gaze.

“Alpha ordered me to take a mate of his choosing and I refused,” I told him, holding my mom’s hand. “I won’t do that.”

My parents nod in understanding and Archer walks up. I notice the other random wolves have started to walk off.

“We should get out of here,” he tells us and we don’t glance to the packhouse, where I know someone must be watching for him to have said that.

“Drake, come home with us,” my dad says with no room for argument. 

The four of us walk off towards my parents’ small cottage on the outskirts of the packhouse area.

I spent the next few hours negotiating with my mom about how much I should rest after my beating. Washing my face in the sink, I noticed the blood and bruises were nearly gone. I looked like a horror show earlier. My nose had been broken and every inch of my head and face had broken skin. Alpha Rafael really liked to cruelly beat up one area of the body over and over. He was precise. He could have been lethal if he had wanted. Well lethal for a regular Beta. But I knew it wouldn’t come to that, he needed something from me.

We should go out, Archer linked me.

Out? Weren’t we just out yesterday? Wasn’t that you who gave me a lecture for being ‘out’? I linked him back.

That’s not the same and you know it. Come on. We’re going to have a little harmless fun and not beat anyone up, he quipped back.

Well then how could that be fun? I asked him.

Oh shut up, just get outside. I’m coming up with a jeep, he snapped back.

Dane laughed in my mind and added to me, You know, pretty soon you might not need me to be the sarcastic one. You’re getting pretty good at pushing buttons.

I walked out to the kitchen to tell my parents I was leaving.

I do have an excellent teacher, I linked Dane back. He chuckled.

Outside, Archer had a jeep running. I asked him why we weren’t just running.

“We’re going as humans, D. We need a human way of transporting,” he said simply.

“Okay…” I said in confusion. 

We normally didn’t take the jeeps far. But here he was getting on a road out of the territory.

“Want to tell me where we’re going?” I asked him when the wheels hit the asphalt.

“You’ll see,” was all he said in reply. “Want to tell me the whole story finally?”

“There’s not much to it. I met with the Silver Lake Alpha and his kids, a few others. I thought maybe his son was going to be married off to Kylie. Then this morning, Alpha just ordered me to sign this paper. I read it and it's all right there. He wants me to marry Silver Lake’s Alpha’s daughter, Brenna,” I explained to him.

“Goddess,” Archer says, turning down the music. “Do you think you can fight him on it?”

“She’s 17, Arch! Seventeen. She could have a mate out there!” I wail aloud.

“And so could you, Drake,” Archer adds.

I brush off the idea with a hand wave. “I think that’s passed. I’m nearly 30.”

“You’re 25, dude,” Archer corrects.

“Same thing. You know as well as me - werewolves find their mates by 25. They go across crazy distances and find themselves in weird places, but they find them. It’s too late for me now,” I say back. “You’re almost there, I bet any day now you are going to disappear or maybe some shewolf will appear by our territory. Besides, even still. If she’s not my mate, I’m not taking just anyone! The Goddess has plans for mates. I would never interfere with that.”

“I wonder what he is getting out of that? You think she would come here, or would you go there?” Archer thought aloud.

We stay quiet the rest of the ride. 

I watched the sun disappear over the mountainside as we drove North. Soft rock playing in the background, Archer left the radio low. After nearly an hour he pulls into a parking lot. 

‘Promises, Promises’ - kind of foreboding for a human bar huh?, Dane linked me.

He wasn’t wrong.

We got out of the car and I rolled my shoulders, trying to let go and be present. I would give Archer’s suggestion to come here a real shot. He’s always had my back and I didn’t have a reason to distrust him ever, especially not now.