Six: Clara

Twenty Years Ago….

Being a sixteen-year-old werewolf certainly had its perks and the top of the list was not having any pimples or zits. Having flawless skin while being a teenager was the best relief because when I looked at the rare human in my school, I nearly shuddered with revulsion. Yeah, vanity is a real thing for me.

I’m more than excited today for several reasons; Beatrice, or as everyone calls her, Bea is finally coming back from her month-long vacation to one of her uncle’s beach cabins. Bea was the only human I interacted with, for safety reasons, but also because she somehow really understood me and that wasn’t something I could say about everyone. The only real friend I had was Mona; she was a werewolf too so I didn’t have to keep any secrets from her. Bea had no idea about the existence of werewolves but other than that, there were no secrets among the three of us.

I picked up my school bag and hastened downstairs to eat my breakfast. If I wasn’t on time my brother, Rob would leave me home without any guilt. What is it with older brothers trying to exert their authority every chance they get? I huffed in irritation and entered the kitchen, trying to judge what was for breakfast with my super smell.

I rounded the corner and immediately came to a halt because there at my dining table were sitting Rob’s two best friends, Aaron Strong and Samuel White. While my brother was in the lead to become the next warrior gamma, which is the warrior leader, Aaron was in line to be the next beta (the second-in-command of the pack, while Samuel would be the next Alpha of the pack. It sure as hell was a power-packed bunch.

“Hey, Clara!” Aaron spotted me first and I smiled timidly at him. He always treated me with concealed amusement as if I was extremely funny. I waved at him awkwardly and moved towards the cupboards to get my favorite cereal out.

“Thank God, you’re ready. I wasn’t in the mood to wait for you.” Rob grumbled under his breath, and I glared at him.

“You would have left me today? Even when you knew I had an algebra exam today,” I huffed and sat down at the table, across from the boys and started eating my cereal, grumbling all the way.

“Stop talking or I will leave you to walk by yourself.” Rob mocked me and got up to discard his plate.

“Then you will have to answer to Dad,” I harrumphed. Granted, not the best response when I was trying to establish my maturity but that was all I could come up with.

“Is Daddy’s little princess going to cry to him because I didn’t give her a ride to school?” Rob laughed at me, and I felt my cheeks burn at his insult. He was always like that, taunting me and mocking me in front of his friends, trying to demonstrate how he and his friends were so far above my standards. I hated how he belittled me and how much it affected me.

“Hey, cut it,” Samuel’s deep voice rang out in the entire kitchen, making me look up at him. From the moment, I had entered the kitchen I had tried to avoid looking at him even though a part of me wanted to just look at him all day long. I might have a teeny-tiny crush on him, and I had a hunch that he knew about it. He always made sure any interaction we ever had was in front of a group of people and was extremely careful about not giving me any wrong signals. I was his best friend’s little sister someone he could kid around with but could never be friends with. He was three and a half years older than me, soon to be eighteen years old, a year more than the day he was eligible to find his mate. He was as unattainable to me as possible.

Even if there had been no other obstacles, like me being his best friend’s sister and the seemingly huge age gap between us, I probably still wouldn’t have been visible to him because he only had eyes for one person and I sure as hell wasn’t her. 

***

This place had stopped feeling home by the time I had decided to leave it but as I watched several familiar landscapes, waves of nostalgia hit me in the gut. I could try to pretend this place didn’t exist, but the truth was that this place was a huge part of me, this is where I had grown up and it played a major role in making me who I am today. It had been a bitter journey but today, I am a proud mom of three brilliant children and except for having Brad beside me, I wouldn’t change anything about my life.

Not wanting to come off as upsetting or nervous to my children, I straightened in my seat and drove behind Aaron’s wolf toward the pack house. I had grown up here and still remembered all the twists and turns of this place and I had told Aaron so but he had just shrugged and asked me to follow his wolf. So, that’s what I’m doing, following orders because even though I did grow up here, it wasn’t my pack anymore. I didn’t belong here and a part of me craved to go back home.

I take a deep breath to steel myself to face the inevitable because some things just had to be done. I turned off the ignition and parked the car in the driveway of the pack house. The packed house was this huge building in werewolf packs that housed the superior ranks and other wolves in the pack who had no one else. It housed the offices of all the rank-holding members of the pack, which meant that Samuel’s office was in there too.

“We’ll get our bags later. Ariel and Ben, I need you to obey your brother and be close to him at all times, ok?” They nod and I give them the best possible smile I can muster in the moment. Since we were not in our pack, our wolves had lost the ability to mind-link with the wolves back home and with each other temporarily. It had something to do with different energy systems in different packs. Without the possibility of communicating through a mind link, I pointedly stare at Kyle, hoping he will understand that he will have to take care of his siblings and be on guard here. He nods at me as if he understands what I’m trying to say, and I smile back at him.

Aaron comes up to me, completely ignoring Kyle who’s getting out of the car too. He’s only wearing a pair of basketball shorts which he must have grabbed after shifting back into his human form a couple of seconds ago. Ignoring him, I open the rear door and gesture the twins to sidle out of the car. Ariel dutifully grabs onto my hand while Ben happily clings to Kyle.

Aaron stumbles for a second when he watches the twins. “Um, follow me, please.”

I nod and the four of us follow him as he climbs up the steps to the pack house and opens the heavy wooden doors, bursting a myriad of memories in my mind. I clench my eyes for a second, not wanting to relive them right now. I needed to control myself right then because that was the only way I would be able to get through the day.

Aaron walks through the front gallery to the sitting room on the right and I focus my eyes on his broad back to prevent myself from seeing other items in the house. Not wanting to remember. Not wanting to relive it. I had not anticipated that coming here would be so tough for me. I wished Brad was here with me right now. He would know what to do, how to calm me down, how to help me focus, and how to make everything alright.

Aaron turns around and speaks while looking at me, ignoring my children by my side. “The kids will stay here while I’ll lead you to meet the alpha in his office.” I nod and pointedly look at Kyle, hoping he would do his best to contain the twins. I smile reassuringly at the twins and tell them that everything is going to be alright and that I am going to come back in a few minutes. They nod and cling to Kyle in these unfamiliar surroundings. After making sure they’re going to be alright, I nod at Aaron to lead me towards Samuel.

Without looking back at my children, I follow Aaron up the staircase and onto the first floor, where all the official offices of the pack are. He didn’t need to lead me to the Alpha’s office; I knew where it was because of the number of times I had visited it in my youth. Aaron knew it too, but pack protocols were strict in every pack and no beta wolf was going to let an outsider free reign in the pack house. At the end of the passage, he turns around to look at me. He tilts his head towards the solid oak door on my right and gestures for me to go in. “He’s waiting for you inside.”

With a deep breath of courage, I twist the doorknob and enter the large room designed to be the alpha’s office. I had been in this room so many times that my mind skipped over all the details and instead settled on the forbidding figure of the man sitting behind the huge mahogany desk. I heard the door close behind me and with shaky legs, I walked towards the desk to look closely at Samuel, wanting to see what effect time had on him.

The last time I had seen Samuel White, I had been his mate, and every time my eyes met his, a sharp and pleasurable zap of electricity traveled down my spine but now, ever since Brad had marked me and broken the mate bond, I didn’t feel any remains of the mate bond between us, no zap of electricity, no breathlessness, no increase in heartbeat and no flush rising in my cheeks. It was as if I was meeting a friend after a very long time.

Even before I knew Samuel was my mate, I had been in love with him and so were half the girls my age. His chocolate brown hair always looked silky, and his sparkling blue eyes were always so intense that they always left me a stammering and stumbling mess. He was always polite to everyone, respected the elders, never preyed on the weak, and stood up for everyone who needed it. He was the kind of alpha anyone would love to have. At least he had been. I had no idea what these two decades had done to him if they had changed him favorably or made him a tyrant.

I find myself incredibly pleased when I notice that Samuel looks just as he has always looked. There were subtle frown lines on his forehead and his hair was starting to grey but other than that, he pretty much looked the same. I smile hesitantly at him, but it slips away when he just looks blankly at me, his face set in stone. I cross my arms across my chest. If he had been a little more friendly, I would have felt free to occupy one of the armchairs across from him. As he wasn’t exactly eager to see me, dictates state that I stand submissively and let him demonstrate his superiority to me.

“Why are you here?” Samuel’s voice seemed to boom in the office, and I visibly flinch at his unexpected outburst. His voice was different; it had become heavier and gravelly. It had been so long since I had faced an Alpha’s power that it made my wolf restless. Back home, I was a respected member of the pack and had never been on this side of Richard’s anger.

“Um, that’s a little difficult to explain,” I chuckle nervously. How do I explain everything to the man who had practically rejected me and Kyle two decades ago for someone else? He wasn’t very sympathetic to me then, who’s to say he would be more sympathetic now? But I’d come this far, and I had to try. For Kyle’s sake. If he decides to flip out and wants to do nothing with Kyle, then we can just reverse the jeep out of the pack and head back home. At least, then we will know it wasn’t for nothing.

“Remember when I told you eighteen years ago that I was pregnant with your child and you rejected both of us? And I ran away as a result? Well, um Kyle is that child.” I fidget nervously, trying to figure out what Samuel was thinking. His face remains blank as if the revelation of his living, breathing son didn’t make any reason whatsoever to him.

“Yes, I did reject you. Why are you here, then?” Samuel regards me closely and narrows his eyes at me. This interrogation would be easier if I was sitting; at least, then my shaking legs wouldn’t threaten to give out from under me.

Shock waves travel through my body at his careless interrogation. I had never really expected him to be so callous about everything. I wanted to see some emotion from him, surprise at having a son, regret at not being there for him, and maybe joy that he finally had the chance to be with his son. Did this not matter to him at all?

“So, um after leaving this pack I went to another pack and started a new life there. Long story short, Kyle’s wolf even though was born there doesn’t exactly recognize that pack as his own. Alpha Richard explained to me that since he was the son of an alpha, his wolf needed to be close to the pack land of his father, otherwise he would slowly lose his mind. I didn’t know what to do, or how to help him. So, I brought him here so that his wolf could be closer to the pack he considers his own.” I explain and refuse the urge to jump about in frustration at Samuel’s expression of boredom as if he couldn’t care less about what has been happening to his son. To be clear, he did reject us.

“What do you want from me, then?” Samuel spread his hands on the desk while he waited for me to answer.

With a sudden burst of courage, I walk forward and settle down on one of the armchairs across from him, bringing us at eye level with each other. For the first time since I entered the room, I feel that we are on the same level. “I know that me showing up here with my kids today throws you off. I’m sure it will also be very uncomfortable for Lily and any children you might have with her, but I can’t just take Kyle back. He belongs here and you are his father. Does that mean nothing to you?”

“What about your other children? Should I expect your chosen mate to enter my pack borders within a few days, eager to move with his family?” I flinch at his casual and insulting manner of speaking. How dare he speak about my family that way? Brad was ten times the man he seemed to be. As soon as my thoughts move to Brad, I involuntarily move my hand to the mating mark on my neck like I have been doing since he passed away. Samuel’s eyes follow my movement, and his eyes harden when they land on my mating mark.

“No one is going to follow us,” I whisper.

“What do you want from me, Clara?” Why are you here? That story was nice and everything, but what do you want?” Samuel asks and I lean forward so that he knows that I’m serious about what I’m asking of him.

“I want you to let us stay here, in your pack. I want to see if being here does help Kyle rein in his wolf. I want you to let me and my children stay here for six months. By that time, I hope I will know if there’s a change in Kyle’s wolf. If he does need to stay here to keep his wolf sane, I will ask you to please let him join this pack and stay behind, while me and the twins will move back home. If there’s no change in Kyle’s behavior, all of us will pack our bags and you will never hear from us again.”