Chapter 23
Alice
“I thought maybe the two of us could finally be happy.”
“I didn’t know your hatred of me ran so deep.”
Darian’s words haunt me. His expression, that defeated look in his eyes as he walked out the door.
I sit on the edge of the bed, my fingers digging into the mattress.
I could have stopped him. I had every opportunity to, but when he touched me, I needed it. I hadn’t realized how badly till his lips brushed my nape. My wolf was eager, needing the contact, craving the affection, and I—I gave in.
It was fast, rushed, and desperate, and having gone without for such a very long time, I suddenly felt alive and wanted. Then, when his teeth pierced my skin, when that warm sensation washed over me as the bond snapped into place, I experienced a rush of euphoria, of exhilaration. It felt like the emptiness that had been a part of me for so long was finally filled.
But those blinding emotions were instantly followed by shock and outrage. The mating bond. He marked me. How could he betray me a second time?!
Now, though, as I sit on this bed, alone in my room, I remember what he said about his wolf being in control. I felt the same way when we were together. My wolf was trying to take charge. What if it was truly a mistake?
“I didn’t know your hatred of me ran so deep.”
I clutch my head, despair filling me.
Hatred?
I don’t hate him anymore. I don’t know if I ever did.
That look in his eyes is making me feel like a horrible person. He seemed so sad as he left, so alone. I should have stopped him. I should have said something. But my voice was stuck in my throat.
Ever since he got here, Darian has been trying to fix things. Why would he ruin that and give me the mating mark out of nowhere?
The sound of the front door opening fills me with a strange hope. I rush into the hallway. “Darian?” My voice dies when I see it’s Mary and Jimmy entering the apartment.
Mary looks surprised as she takes off her scarf. “What happened? Where’s Darian?” My hand automatically goes to my neck, and her eyes sharpen. “Alice?” She strides toward me as Jimmy closes the door behind him. “What’s going on? What’s that on your neck?”
“It’s nothing.”
I try to brush off the inquiry, but Mary is quick. She leaps over the couch, suspicion in her eyes. I don’t get the chance to react before she grabs my hand and pulls it aside. For a moment, her gaze is uncomprehending as she looks at the mating mark, and then admiration and shock fill her eyes.
“You move fast, Alice.”
“It’s not what you think.”
“What is it?” Jimmy asks. “And where’s Darian?”
“He gave her the mating mark,” Mary announces, looking pleased. “I take it you two made up?”
“Not exactly,” I mutter. “Things got a little out of hand, and… Well, one thing led to another, which led to this.”
My friend turns pale. “Don’t tell me he forced you—”
“He would never do that!” Jimmy snarls. “He’s crazy about her. He’s not about to fuck it up like that!”
“Alice?” Mary looks at me, ignoring him. “Tell me the truth. Did Darian force his mark on you?”
“No.” I shake my head, finally accepting that it wasn’t forced, and it was also not a form of manipulation. I have to think past the bitterness in my heart. “He wouldn’t do that. But,” I sigh, “I blamed him. I said some things…”
“What things?” Jimmy demands, his voice filled with anger. “Can you for once stop trying to get your revenge on him? None of this was his fault to begin with, Alice! He’s also been suffering. He lost his father. He has struggled since the moment you left. I haven’t seen him smile or laugh since that night. He withered away, but he doesn’t have the option of being bitter like you because an entire kingdom depends on him. You kept his daughter from him! He didn’t get angry, but he should have. He could have taken her from you, but he didn’t. You keep trying to punish him for that one night, yet everything that happened in those few hours was orchestrated by Willow, not Darian.” Jimmy’s chest is heaving as he glares at me. “My friend has suffered greatly. But you don’t see it. You don’t see his pain. You don’t see how he’s constantly swallowing his pride to lower his head in front of you. All you want to do is hurt him. What would you like him to do, Alice? Rip out his heart and bleed to death? Will that fucking satisfy you?”
I tremble at his words, and Mary immediately leaps to my defense. “You’re acting as if he simply snubbed her. The ripples of that night have followed Alice through her entire life.”
“As they have for Darian!” Jimmy roars. “But he wasn’t responsible. It was Willow. That bitch got what she wanted then, and you’re still giving her what she wants now. She didn’t want you to be queen, and she manipulated everything when she discovered the dark witch mark. She admitted it to me.” His rage is raw. “She called the witches into the ballroom. She told them to act like Darian had summoned them. She told them to inflict the worst kind of sealing spell on you. She wanted you to suffer and be humiliated. You think you saw everything, but you didn’t notice how Darian kept trying to intervene and how Willow kept stopping him. She has dangled your life and your safety in front of him for these past seven years. He’s been living in hell. He didn’t have to do it, Alice. He didn’t have to live every day like that, but he did, for your sake. So, don’t say he didn’t suffer. The ripples of that night followed him, too. He still has nightmares. He can’t sleep. He works himself into the ground. Have you even seen how haggard he looks? But what does it matter to you? As long as you can get your revenge on him.”
I sit down heavily on the couch, his words having pierced me.
“That’s not fair,” Mary begins fiercely. “You didn’t see the mess she was in—”
“Mary…” I stop her, my voice quiet.
“How can you listen to him blame you for—”
“He’s not blaming me.” I rub my hands over my face. “I just—I need to go look for Darian.”
I get up and grab my coat, but Jimmy steps in my way, his face hard. “I’ll go. God knows what you’ll say to him next. I can’t see his heart break any more.”
“I appreciate your loyalty to him, Jimmy”—my eyes flash at him—“but he’s my mate now, and thus my responsibility. So, get out of my way.”
He hesitates for a moment before stepping aside and letting me leave.
I rush out, pulling on my coat.
It’s eleven p.m., and since my building is in a residential area, the streets are empty, everyone tucked into their beds for the night. I look around in the darkness, thinking. Jimmy and Mary went out to dinner, and Jimmy took the car he drove Darian in, so Darian must have walked. But where?
His phone was left on the kitchen table, so calling him would be pointless. Darian’s scent is imprinted within me, I realize, and I try to follow it. It’s been a few years since I’ve been able to shift, and aside from Mary, there’s been no one to teach me how to embrace my wolf. I’ve never had the opportunity to run wild in the woods, learning how to track, hunt, and do all the things young shifters are taught from an early age. But there’s always a first time.
Once or twice, I get his scent mixed up with other smells, but I keep at it. I don’t know what I’m going to say to him, but Jimmy’s angry words keep coming back to me, as does Darian’s weary voice.
When I do find him, he’s sitting on a park bench, alone. There’s a coffee shop across the street that is still open, and I get two cups before approaching him.
Sitting down beside him, I hold out one of the coffees. He stares at me. “You left Mira all alone?”
“Jimmy and Mary are with her.”
“Right.” He accepts the cup but doesn’t drink from it, using it to warm his hands. “Why’re you here? Is there anything left to say?”
When I look at his face, the guilt overwhelms me, and suddenly, I know exactly what to say. “I’m sorry.”
He glances at me, taken aback. “Excuse me?”
I wrap my hands around my cup, studying the plastic lid on it. “I know you didn’t give me the mating mark on purpose. I shouldn’t have implied that you did.”
After a prolonged silence, he says heavily, “It doesn’t matter though, does it? You didn’t want my mark to begin with. I was presumptuous when I thought I could fix things. Some injuries simply can’t be healed.”
“That’s not true,” I sigh. “You’ve apologized several times. You’ve shown me the proof that none of what happened was on you. I just—I needed to be angry with someone, and despite everything I now know, you were still the easiest target.”
Darian is quiet, sipping his coffee. When he sets it down, he looks away. “I often wonder how I could have handled things back then, and several solutions come to mind. I could have done more. I could have prevented it all had I simply gotten you away from there. I never thought Willow would do what she did.”
“Because you didn’t know her.” I realize as I say it that this is very much the truth. “You never could have estimated the depth of her viciousness and cruelty. To have the girl she always looked down on and belittled as the queen of the Wolf Kingdom?” I chuckle humorlessly. “It would have killed her. It would have eaten away at her from the inside. She couldn’t stand the thought, and if she hadn’t seen the dark witch mark and been able to use that against me, she would have done something else to show me that my place would always be beneath her, beneath everyone.”
I hear the soft growl escape Darian’s lips, and I feel a tinge of dark amusement.
“She won, Darian. She got what she wanted.” I take a gulp of coffee, letting it burn my mouth. The next part of what I have to say is harder, because it means putting aside my injured pride and accepting reality. “There is no one aside from Willow who holds the blame for what happened that night. Perhaps you could have done more, but I now see that you were just as terrified as I was, Darian. You were young. And you feared what the white witches would do to me. I understand that. I guess I understood it when I saw everything on your flash drive, but the hurt wouldn’t go away. The humiliation, the manner in which I was so utterly dehumanized that night—it still haunts me.”
His body is stiff. “If I could go back in time—”
“But you can’t,” I say simply. “Neither one of us can go back and change things, and that’s the truth of the matter.” I sip my coffee again, struggling with my emotions. “It’s hard to let go of seven years of anger and hurt, Darian. But I want another chance at a happy ending. With you. And with Mira. And I don’t want Willow to get in the way of that again.”
Darian jerks, and when I look at him, his eyes are filled with emotion. “You mean it?”
I pull down my coat collar, revealing the still-healing mating mark. “My wolf wouldn’t have accepted this if it didn’t care about you. I guess a part of me had forgiven you, but I needed to be angry. I don’t even know why. Maybe I wanted you to hurt the way I hurt all those years ago. But I also want to be happy. I want a new beginning for us. A new start.”
Darian sets down his coffee, coming to kneel before me. “Do you mean all this?”
“W–What are you doing?” I stammer. “Get up!”
“I need to know, Alice!” He’s trembling now. “You’re not saying this to mess with me? Because I can’t live without you. I can’t survive without you and Mira. So, if you’re saying this to build up my hopes just to crush them later—”
“Do you really think I would do something like that?” I ask, affronted. “Get up, Darian. You’re the king, for heaven’s sake!”
“Not in front of you.” He seizes my hands. “I’ll always be Darian to you, Alice. When it comes to you, I don’t mind kneeling. I never will.”
“Darian, please!” I stand, pulling him up with me. My cheeks are wet with tears.
“You forgive me, then?” he demands, and when I nod, the fierce joy in his eyes is like the first touch of a healing balm on my wounded soul. He takes me in his arms, his kiss hard and fervent. I melt into him, my heart finally shedding that last lingering anger that I held inside me for so long.
*****
“I want the divorce to be finalized before anything else happens between us.”
Darian is sitting cross-legged on my bed, watching me pace. “I already served her the papers.”
“Yes, but I don’t want to cross that line until every ‘i’ is dotted and every ‘t’ is crossed.” I turn to look at him, serious. “I won’t be a mistress, and I won’t allow Willow to paint me as one.”
“Technically, since it’s the royal family who approves all divorces, mine has already been finalized,” Darian points out.
I feel a ball of tension form in my chest. “I don’t want to be queen, Darian. I worked hard to become a lawyer. I like my job. I like my life.”
He is by my side in an instant. “We can discuss all this later.”
“No, we can’t.” I shake my head, my resolve firm. “These aren’t things that can be put off for future discussion. We both need to know where we stand. Our worlds are far apart, Darian. They don’t intersect in the slightest, and I’m not willing to give up my career or Mira’s freedom.”
He studies me. After a moment, he says softly, “I have to take a queen, Alice. And I won’t have any female other than you.”
“I have no interest in ruling the kingdom with you.”
“What if I change the laws?”
Stunned by his words, I stare at him. “To say what?”
“You can still be a lawyer. You can remain registered in the human world. But you will also be a wolf shifter. I’ll let you have one foot in each world. Mira, however, is a different story.”
I go rigid. “What do you mean?”
“She is my heir. She will be queen of the Wolf Kingdom after I die. She has to take classes from the royal tutors.” I open my mouth, but he holds up a hand to stop me, his voice serious. “But we can space them out. She can receive the royal education during the summer, but the rest of the year, she’ll go to one of the best private schools run by and for wolf shifters. She will be among her peers, those who can understand and admire her intelligence.”
“But—”
Darian takes my hands. “She’s special, Alice. She’s smart. You can’t hide the fact or ignore it.”
“I don’t want her to be bullied! I don’t want other children to—”
“You were bullied and ostracized, Alice. But she’s not you.”
My jaw tightens. “That’s not—”
“What I mean is, you had no one to protect you. We will be there for her. She has us to protect her. Besides, who do you think would dare bully the heir to the royal throne? And the school I want to send her to is for gifted students. She’ll be allowed to be a child there and explore her gifts at the same time. She’ll be around children who are just as gifted and intelligent. She will make friends who understand her.”
I lower my gaze for a moment, pondering his words. “Is it one of those boarding schools where she has to live apart from me?”
“From us,” he corrects me gently. “But no. It’s a day school in LA. They do have student dorms, but it is usually up to the older students whether they want to stay there or not. Mira is a royal. She’ll live with us. It’s a good school, Alice. And for her, it’s one of the best. The friends she’ll make will admire her gifts. They’ll be like her, smart and curious. She’ll learn how to control her wolf, how to fight, the skills of a diplomat and a leader. Shouldn’t we give our daughter the best life has to offer? That’s what every parent wants, isn’t it?”
I move away from him and sit down on the edge of the bed, my voice soft. “You’re right. I’ve been so scared of her standing out that I’ve been holding her back from reaching her full potential. I’ve always known I was, but I thought I was helping her. I could have sent her to a good private school, I suppose, but—”
“You were doing what you thought was best at the time,” Darian finishes simply. “There’s nothing wrong with that. She’s a happy, confident child, Alice. She’s sweet and thoughtful. You did that.” He kneels by my side, urging me to look at him. “And you can continue to be a lawyer, but I really want you near me.”
“I’m so close to making partner,” I whisper, hearing the yearning in my own voice. As soon as the words leave me, though, I realize how empty they sound in the face of everything. I take a deep breath. “But it’s fine. There are plenty of law firms in LA, and many have already tried to poach me.”
“Or you could open your own firm,” Darian suggests. “You have the experience and a network in place. It can’t be that hard. A new adventure.”
“For all three of us.” I smile, my heart feeling light. Losing the potential partnership doesn’t seem that bad, in retrospect. It’s not easy to let go of all my plans and dreams, but maybe this isn’t letting go of them. They are simply transforming into something else. Expanding.
There are still questions and doubts within me, but a few things I know for certain: I want to leave the past where it belongs, in the past. I want Mira to have her father in her life. And I want to be happy.
Forgiveness is not easy. My therapist used to say it was like unburdening the soul. To me, however, it feels like a strain on my soul as it slowly lets go of the years of hate, anger, and bitterness. But I want to do this, and my feelings for Darian are still there. Maybe they are amplified by the mating bond; maybe a part of me has missed him. Either way, I don’t want Willow to take him from me a second time. So, I will work through this and rebuild our relationship.
I look into Darian’s eyes and take a deep breath. This is the right decision.
He smiles, the corner of his eyes crinkling, but there’s a hint of sadness in his eyes. “You’ve forgiven me, but do you love me, Alice?”
His question doesn’t surprise me.
“I did,” I admit quietly. “Back then, I did. A lot of time has passed, Darian.”
He lowers his head into my lap, sighing. “I guess the difference is that I was still in love with you when you left. But your feelings were tainted with betrayal and hurt.”
My fingers comb through his hair. “Maybe you’re right. But we are mates now.”
“I don’t want you to be with me out of some mating bond obligation.”
A bark of laughter leaves me. “Obligation? Believe me, I feel no obligation to do anything. I want to be with you. I want a second chance with you. I doubt I would be wanting that if there weren’t some feelings involved.”
“Feelings, but not love.”
I look down at him. The lights in the room are dim, creating an atmosphere of intimacy. “I told you before, Darian. My heart is badly scarred. The idea of love is terrifying. It made me vulnerable before. Even though my brain understands, it’s hard to let go of the fear. It would be easy to convince you that I do love you, but I want us to start with a clean slate. Lies should not be the foundation of a relationship.”
Darian straightens up and folds his arms across my knees. When he looks up at me, determination is shining in his eyes. “I understand. I wasn’t expecting you to still be head over heels for me.”
I scoff, embarrassed. “I was never head over heels for you.”
“So says you.”
I grab a fistful of his dark hair. “They’re my feelings, so I think I qualify to be the best judge.”
“No, you don’t,” he replies dismissively. “You were head over heels for me. You couldn’t get enough of me.”
I reach out to grab the pillow behind me, proceeding to slam it down onto his face. He’s stronger than me but doesn’t resist. His laughter annoys me enough to keep it there.
“You can’t suffocate me. I’m your mate, the future love of your life.”
I push harder in retaliation, and he just laughs even more before ripping the pillow from my hands and tossing it onto the bed. “That’s not very nice.”
“I had to try.”
He takes my hands and kisses the center of my palms. “It won’t be that easy to get rid of me. And I’ll win back your heart.”
I smile at him, not knowing what to say. Life’s cruelties, constant hardship, and motherhood have driven out every last speck of romantic fantasy if I ever had any, replacing it with a sense of practicality. Deep inside, I’m happy, but I don’t know how to express it. There are feelings for this man in my heart, feelings that no amount of anger was able to squash, but I don’t know if they are love. I don’t know what love feels like anymore. Darian was the first man I thought I loved. Now he is my mate, and that intense pressure of emotion I used to feel for him isn’t there. What I feel now is something lighter, an emotion that centers me.
I don’t know what to call it.
Darian seems to understand. After getting to his feet, he picks me up in his arms.
“What’re you doing?!” I demand, flustered.
“Taking you to bed.”
“I told you—”
“Yeah, yeah. No hanky-panky, I swear. On my life,” he vows.
I give him a suspicious look. “I’m just saying, if you try anything, I’m not above suffocating you. I’ve raised Mira as a single parent for many years. I don’t mind continuing to do that.”
He grins at me. “That’s dark. It shouldn’t turn me on, but it does. Talk dirty to me.”
He has dumped me on the bed and is leaning over, clearly teasing me. I laugh, my hand on his face. “Stop!”
“Go on! Say something else that’s mean!”
Hysterical laughter bubbles out of me. “No! I don’t want to! Get away from me, you perv!”
“We’re mates now,” he informs me with that wicked grin of his. The one that has butterflies in my stomach fluttering. “You’re stuck with me for life. There’s no going back now.”
He kisses me. It’s a chaste kiss, but the warmth in my chest overflows. As he gathers me into his arms, I don’t know what this is, this feeling of safety, comfort, and happiness.
Could it be love?
I’m simply not sure anymore, but I like it.