Chapter Seventeen #5
Was that why he rarely saw his family? I’d lived in this house for three months, and other than Aaron and Tobias, I never saw any of them.
His pretty little beta assistant popped in from time to time, favouring his phone over doing his job, though I figured they weren’t related since he wasn’t at the mating—at least, I hoped not, given how blatant the beta’s crush was.
As I’d already established, the mansion didn’t feel lived in.
Was it because of what his father had done?
Or did he have no choice but to separate himself because of the scents of their omega partners?
At the reception, Caine had only interacted with them long enough to show politeness.
Was that the extent of their contact? No warmth. No kinship.
What a lonely existence if that were the case.
“I know I don’t leave my side of the house much,” I started, my mouth a little dry. “But I’ve seen no one else here. The staff, yeah, and your guards, but do you live alone?”
If the sudden topic change met him unprepared, he didn’t show it. “Mostly,” he responded blandly. “But how alone could I really be with all those staff and bodyguards?”
“You know what I mean,” I sighed. “Does none of your family live here?”
“Tobias and my brother stay occasionally,” he admitted.
“Typically when they’re too drunk to make it to their own homes.
Or if there’s pack business to discuss. My mother prefers his chateau in France, and my cousins have their own places to live with their mates.
We’re a pack, a family, but we’re not joined at the hip. ”
My brow furrowed.
Why was I sad?
Pack and family was important to me when I’d had it, those unmistakable bonds of security and love.
We’d been small, but we were close, and it was the greatest feeling ever.
I had it with Minnie now, but since I was only part of the Devereuxes by contract, I didn’t share the same sensation of belonging to a unit that she did.
Being from such a large pack as Caine, having so much family, it was disheartening to hear he didn’t care. That he had the means to relish the feeling I’d yearned to get back for so long, the closeness, but he just didn’t crave it the same.
“Do you feel them?” I prodded, almost mindlessly. “Your pack, I mean?”
His eye narrowed slightly. “Of course. There are tethers in my chest; if one breaks or connects, I feel it. It binds us, makes us strong—tied together as one force. We’re powerful because we’re so many.”
“Power . . .” I tilted my head. “Is that all you feel?”
“What else is there?”
I dropped my gaze, kneading over the joints of his knuckle. “What about love?”
“Love?” He repeated the word as if it was foreign on his tongue. Or poison. “What does that have to do with anything?”
I huffed wryly, glancing up again. “Are you saying you don’t feel any love for your family? Or feel their love for you in return? Like, at all?”
“I feel respect,” he clarified. “I am relatively fond of my mother, but love is a fantasy. We all know this.”
“Your mother will love you. Surely. It’s very common.”
“Not for us,” he emphasised. “Matings are arranged, children are a product of that. It’s nothing special.”
An incredulous laugh gasped from my throat. “Are you seriously saying because your pack still follows the whole arranged marriage thing, none of them have ever had a love match, or fallen in love later on? That they don’t love their kids because, what . . . they’re just ‘what happens?’”
“It’s not difficult to comprehend,” he said flatly.
I ignored the jibe. “What about your cousin?”
He frowned again. “What about my cousin?”
“I literally saw her at our mating,” I relayed. “She’s sickeningly in love with her mate. They snuck away to snog each other’s faces off. I saw it!”
Still not a spy.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he scoffed. “It’s an arrangement. Any love that develops is purely because of the mating bite. It’s not real. It could never be a natural love under those circumstances.”
“That’s . . .” Not right.
I deflated.
Did he honestly believe that was the case?
That mating meant you lost all free will?
Sure, the bites locked a pair together forever.
They felt each other more keenly—their emotions, their pain.
They sensed one another if they were in danger, were able to track them easier, and they’d never have any inclination to be with anyone else.
It was permanent. Unbreakable. I could potentially understand his assumption that under arranged circumstances, any feelings growing from it were fabricated because of the forced proximity and a sense of duty, but it couldn’t be true.
The bite intensified attraction that was already there; it would be heightened by the bond and projected between each other.
It couldn’t build off nothing. There had to be a foundation.
It wouldn’t shock me if many of the couples Caine knew were in loveless matings because of their situations, and their principles.
If there was nothing there to blossom into more, then that was that.
They could still spend heats and ruts together, and have children if the environment was safe enough for the omega, but there wouldn’t have to be love involved.
They might feel possessive, protective, mutual respect?
Lust? But true, unconditional love couldn’t be forced, even if it developed later on, years down the line.
At least, I hoped not.
What had given him that impression? Was it his father, beating his own ignorance into his head?
Was it because he rarely interacted with mates and only saw their surface-level pretences?
It linked back to his earlier question about omegas being defiant.
It was as if he genuinely had no clue what was going on, and it gave me pause.
Was he so detached from existence outside his aloof bubble that he only credited what was directly in front of him?
Was that the real reason he hadn’t bitten me?
“You’re just holding my hand now,” he remarked, a note of teasing in his voice.
My focus drifted back from my thoughts. He wasn’t wrong. I’d stopped massaging his fingers fuck knows how long ago. I was just clasping his hand, touching him for no other reason than a subconscious need for the consolation of skin on skin.
I withdrew, but didn’t get up. There was nowhere to sit anyway, and it was comfy enough. Warm, next to the fire. “You enjoyed it, don’t lie.”
He hummed, neither confirming nor denying it. There was a pause again, but it wasn’t quite as awkward or melancholy as the last. He seemed more at ease now. Or he was distracted from whatever was stressing him out.
That worked for me.
“In the spirit of honesty . . .” he started after a while, as if he’d spent the silence debating whether or not to speak again. “Since you’ve successfully wheedled everything else out of me, there’s a fact you should know.”
My pulse quickened, and I swallowed. “What is it?”
“I wasn’t aware you had a child. I was not informed.”
My brain screeched to a halt, launching a factory reset. “What?”
He gazed at me, though my eyes were unseeing. “I didn’t receive word of your phone call. Either of them.”
My mouth opened and closed. It was as if he’d just reached into my head and rearranged all the storage, plied me with new lore and changed the narrative. “Why didn’t you say anything before?”
“You’d already made up your mind,” he said, his voice taking on a cold and guarded cadence again. “Regardless of whether I intentionally abandoned you or not, you felt abandoned. It wouldn’t have made a difference knowing the truth.”
It makes so much difference. “Maybe not, but . . .” I scowled. “So, when the guy at the Den said you weren’t interested, he was lying?”
“No,” he stated firmly. “He was fed information without my knowledge. He disregarded protocol to reach out to me, to inform me of your visits, but I was not the one to receive the calls. Or to respond.”
“Who was?”
He gritted his teeth—I’d hit a nerve. “No one you need concern yourself with now.”
I only accepted his vague answer because I couldn’t conjure up a single probing question.
Fuck. My feelings were disoriented. Finding out the reason I’d despised him so much didn’t even have merit was throwing me for a loop.
It shouldn’t change anything. He was still an arsehole.
I was still contracted to him, stuck in a gangster-wife existence and committed to a life I hadn’t chosen for myself whether I liked it or not.
But knowing he hadn’t abandoned me, that he hadn’t abandoned our baby, settled a tempest in my chest.
A weight had lifted.
But what did it mean?
“How would you have responded?” I asked. “If you had been the one to answer the call that I was having your kid?”
“The same as this time,” he declared without hesitation. “I won’t insult you by professing my intentions would’ve been because I cared. It would have been for honour and obligation, but I would not have turned you away.”
My chest was unbearably tight, my throat burning. “I want to believe it.”
He expelled a sharp breath, and it was almost soft. Indulgent. “You do what you want despite anything I say. I don’t expect another outcome.”
It was all a projection. The snug climate.
Caine being marginally vulnerable. It was muddling my thoughts and making me ruminate too much.
It was nothing. A piece of information that only altered the factors of the event, but didn’t affect the consequences.
We’d spoken more in an hour than we had in the past few months combined.
An exaggeration, but whatever. His shield was down, and in turn I’d lowered my own—something I never would have done before—and it was creating this fog of confusion.