Gainey

Public speaking is not my forte. Not even a little. I'm more of a choke them out, not chat them up kind of guy. More hands on than words out. And although this room only contains four people, two of whom I consider family, it's still a few too many members of the public than I care to stand in front of. Especially when I am about to spill forth the sordid details of our twisted family.

No thank you. I really feel like I might be physically sick. But I don't let my feelings show. On the outside I am stoic. Controlled. Silent and still like the eye of the storm. No one but Benji would know that I am about to lose control.

He knows that on the inside, I am a wreck.

If internal sweating was a thing, I would be leaking from every single pore. But I have warrior training. Longridge training. I have been taught to keep all of my emotions undercover, shoving them down deep into the reserves where they won't be discovered. Perhaps ever.

It's something I have always done when things became overwhelming.
It's become a habit, even when I am not working. And at this present moment, I'm eternally grateful for the skill. I'm about to open a can of worms. Pandora's fucking box of horrors. In front of them. In front of her.

We may be nothing, but she is still my fated. She is someone to me, whether I want to accept this fucked up joke or not. Whether I want to recognise it or not. And unpacking all of my craptastic life history before her feels a little like having surgery whilst I am awake.

Painful. And an inevitable bloody mess.

I haphazardly shift side to side, nervously changing the weight of my body from foot to foot. I run my hands through my hair time and time again. I scan my eyes across the room but I don't make eye contact. I can't. To get this all out, what I need to say, I need to stay as detached as possible.

I don't know where to begin so I just pick up where Benji left off. The beginning of the end really. As macabre as it sounds, it was the darkest of my days but it was also the start of a new dawn for me. A shift so complete, one tiny moment in time changed the entire future for my home pack.

For my family. And for me.

It was also the day that I swore I would never have a mate or take an Alpha role. I decided I would never complete the mate link, never choose a mate or have a significant other past anything other than physical need and perhaps to procreate. But that's it. I don't even care if I have any pups. No pups mean no name to carry on. No damaged lineage. No drama.

Alice needs to know this.

My parents downfall was the weakness that stemmed from their mating. Amorette's bitterness was born of her desire to mate an Alpha. Her failures breathed life into her quest to mate a high ranking wolf, so much so that she destroyed matings of other wolves, namely my parents.

So no. It's not for me. Having that bond, something that controls you, succumbing to the numb ideal of the mate ship, it only causes weakness.

And as much as I feel a biological pull to Alice, something I cannot describe,  attempting to fight it's way into my black heart, I will not allow it to happen.

It's for our own good. Hers and mine.

I will keep this part of my thoughts to myself though. For now. Benji knows how I feel about mates and I also know how he feels. He still has the untouched, ridiculous, boyhood hope that he will be one of the lucky ones. The blessed few who find their destined mate and remain untouched by the tragedy that follows us like a plague. He wants to live happily ever after.

He is a fool.

I am not.

It's how we have always been. One a dreamer and one a realist. One a peace make and one a fighter. One a thinker and one a doer.

In every way but blood, he is my brother. We are bound by shared blood and duty to stop our deranged half brother. But we could not be more different as individuals.

Benji still has hope whilst I have none.

It's only the joint issue we need to solve that keeps us on the same path, United. The disastrous duet we dance, always in circles around our crazed brother and their nut job mother . We are joined by events so dark and scarred so deep, other people have never recovered.

But when Benji looks at Alice he sees a future. When I look at her I see doom and gloom, the downfall of all we have worked so hard for. We are so close to the final curtain call. The last thing we need is a troublemaker female shattering it all to pieces.

Again, I won't speak any of this aloud. Not to her anyway. And not to Ellena. The woman has stars in her eyes. She has all but married us off and planned our lives for us, shoving Alice in my face every chance she gets. Benji is almost as bad, except I know that he harbours some personal attraction to the female.

That he would never act on. But still, it's hard to believe that he is completely objective when it comes to her.

I shake my head of the internal dialogue and turn to face the three sets of eyes attuned to my every move. I stride towards the corner of the room where a small bar cart stands and pour myself three fingers of whiskey that I throw back immediately without hesitation.

I pour another and take it back with me to my place by the window.
Taking a deep settling breath I begin;

"My father was a decent man. A great Alpha. Powerful. Just. A strict but fair teacher. And a kind and gentle father." I say, forcing my breath to remain even, falsifying my voice so that I don't portray the feelings of dread and sadness, trying hard to seem like I could care less about any of this.

But it's the opposite of how I truly feel.

I continue slowly;

"He only made two errors in his life, two bad decisions and those mistakes ended up costing him his life. And everything to do with life as we all knew it."
I breathe out aloud, keeping my eyes downcast, not daring to catch the attention of any of the three gazes boring into the top of my head like lasers.

"The first mistake he made was not trusting his gut and his upbringing. Whether it was natural or assisted by something else, his trouble began by letting himself be overtaken by something stronger than many a young male has the willpower to withstand. Lust. Though he was raised to believe in waiting for a mate, he could not resist the charm and advances of the statuesque form of one small female. He fell for her tale of woe and pitied her. He truly believed he loved her. He was willing to risk his future mate for her. He was besotted by this female, even though she had a young pup. Even though her own father warned him against her. He couldn't resist her, and so, he took her to his pack, planned to make her his Luna, the beautiful but wicked Amorette."

I say her name with a snarl, not missing Benji's slight cower as I do. Fury is all but dripping from my lips. My father taking her to our home pack was the beginning of the end. He had been away for a few months, things at home had changed, females had come of age, namely one, my mother and his destined mate, Marianne.

Clearing my throat, I begin again;

"When he returned home, earlier than expected and with Amorette and young Benji in tow, his father was not sure what to do. He allowed the female and pup to stay while he tried to sort out the mess his son was creating." I say, preparing for the part of the tale that still hurts me the most.

"In the meantime however, my father reconnected with his pack over a weekend of pack celebrations where the whole pack came to see him and greet Amorette. On the second night he was home, my father recognised the scent of his destined mate in the form of the Alphas second daughter. She had turned eighteen just the week before."
I swallow down the bile threatening to creep up my throat at the thought of talking about her. My mother.

"His shock and confusion affected the whole pack. My mother was destroyed, her future dreams upended by my fathers foolish choice. Amorette parading around the pack ground every day only helped to rub salt in the wound. Still, my father stuck by his choice. He planned to make Amorette Luna by the end of the year after he took his post as official Alpha. To further cement her place, she made sure that she was pregnant as soon as possible, putting further hold on her role as Luna with a legitimate heir this time."

Or so she thought.

She underestimated the bond of true mates.

She didn't understand true love. She only knew lust and lies. Advantageous ambition. Scheming. Destruction.

I sigh out loud;

"Despite trying to avoid each other, my mother Marianne and my father Mikel could not stay apart. She was as kind as he was naive. Their bond gently grew as the year went by, first only as friends. My mother was careful to always include the seething and jealous Amorette in events and tried to remain amicable with them both. Respectful to her future Luna. Innocently, they both aimed to remain friendly. Cordial. Marianne tried to move on and Mikel tried to stay true to his word. But by the time Damon was born, my parents were already secretly deeply in love and even deeper into a mess they couldn't have foreseen."

The next part of the story is the darkest. The conclusion for my parents. And the birth of a Demon.

I cast my eyes over Alice, she hasn't made a sound but my wolf and I can tell she is nervous. We can scent the sweat on her.

Her long dark hair glistens with a dampness around her forehead as the dim lighting in the room makes it seem a dark, damp blue rather than the raven colour I know it to be. Her dark eyes do not meet mine but as I shift my gaze to the other side of the table, I meet Ellena's worried look head on.

She nods softly to me and I clear my throat and continue;

"Damon as born in the middle of a major thunder storm. Fitting really. Born in the middle of a chaos that tore the pack grounds apart. It's almost poetic if you think about it now." I say with a slight scoff, acid rising in my throat as I sink another drink before speaking on.

"Amorette birthed him alone, her young son in the next room as she brought another into the world. Her mate to be was not there. She assumed he was out helping the pack as the storm ravaged the town. She would later find out that he was doing another sort of ravaging. When he returned to her early the next day, to meet his newborn son, he brought with him the scent of another female and a fresh mark on his neck. From a very familiar female. My mother. The night of the storm, Damon was born and I was conceived." I bite out, flicking my eyes to Benji quickly and then back to the empty glass in front of me.

"The rest as they say, is history. Our history. My mother was marked and was made the next Luna. Amorette was not asked to leave but she eventually did anyway, fleeing with her two sons back to her home pack, much to my fathers dismay. She wanted to be Luna. She wanted Damon to be Alpha but the mark on Mariannes neck meant that neither of those things could ever happen."

I stop speaking long enough to make my way back over to the table, pulling out the chair next to Benji and slumping down into it, fisting my hands through my hair and pulling them down my face.

"My father had no idea the hell he had unleashed. Life went on for a while, he travelled to see Damon each month and tried to make amends with Amorette. But it was not to be. He had no idea the plans she had been making, the path she was preparing to follow. Or the evil she was feeding Damon. No one but Benji knows the extent of it all." I say, looking to my brother, the emotion clear in his eyes.

We four sit in silence together for a while, each locked in our own minds but with the same theme running rampant.

Damon. The Demon.

The how and the why. And what comes next?

I gesture to Benji to speak up but it is Alice's voice that breaks the comfortable silence around the table.

"This is... a lot to process." She says quietly, her head turning to face each of us quickly before settling on Benji.

My heart races a little, an odd sensation pulling at my subconscious before I shake it off and wait for him to respond. But before he does, Alice continues;

" Would you like to hear how this all involves me? And Rox? How we came to be here?" She asks hesitantly, the most demure tone and look I have ever seen coming from her. It doesn't suit her. She never shows this much weakness. Not around me. My story tonight must have rocked her more than I assumed.

Benji moves in my peripheral and I realise I have been staring at Alice for a while, maybe longer than is comfortable for her.

"I think we should have a break, maybe let you check on Rox and perhaps retire for the night? We can pick up again tomorrow, if you can stay here?" He questions, looking between Alice and Ellena who seem to be having a conversation without words.

"Ok, yes sure." Alice responds, not bothering to look my way and stepping out of the room as fast as she can, Ellena close behind her.

Benji comes around to stand beside me, his hand on my shoulder in a comforting manner.

"I know that must have been, uncomfortable for you.
Talking about all of this, especially with Alice here. I appreciate it. And I think it's important we all know where we stand." He says, his Alpha tone not evident. Not with me.

I know where he is heading but I'm not doing this. Not now. Not after I just opened the flood gates in front of Alice. I shut it down before he can try again.

"It's what needed to be said. Nothing more. The girl needs to know what we are up against if she decides to stay, especially as she is already involved." I say blankly, heading for the door, my back already to him.

"That's all? And if she decides to stay? Are you hoping to give her a reason to?" He adds quietly before I can leave and I feel my body immediately tense up at his suggestion.

Not subtle at all Benj.

I turn to face him before I speak. I need him to see that I mean what I am about to say.

"Benj, whether she stays or not, will not now or ever, have anything to do with me. I want nothing to do with that female, for any reason at all." I say flatly, no emotion in my voice and heading out the door before he say anything else and before I see the disappointment on his face.

I turn to head down the hallway but stop in my heavy tracks as I see a red faced Alice standing just outside the door.

She doesn't meet my gaze but I know by the way she shakes where she stands, she heard every second of my parting words to Benji.

She passes quickly back into the meeting room without a word to me.

As I make my way down the opposite hall to my room, I know I should be feeling glad. Glad that she heard me. Glad that she knows where I stand.
Glad that I don't have to have this conversation with her. Glad that I cleared things up after that disaster of a conversation at her apartment where I effectively confused us both. I know now that I underestimated the bond and what it does to me. Clouds my better judgement. Makes me doubt what I have always known about mates.

Danger. Mates are a danger. A weakness.

I know I confused her as much as I did myself. So this is good. Better she knows now. Right?

But all I feel as I reach my room and shut the door is sick. A feeling I have never had pounds at my head and a strong, unrecognisable emotion beats a forced fast pace in my chest. I feel a tight constriction in the place where my heart should be, thinking of the sight of her fallen face, her pained expression as she took in the meaning of my words.

As she realised that I don't want her.

And as I realised that maybe, it's all just not as simple as I thought.