Chapter 21 - Dorian
I hang my head in shame, toying with my fingers intertwined on my lap to get rid of my anxieties as I sit around the boardroom table in my home in Fort Smit after calling a meeting with the Alpha Council.
Someone clears their throat to garner my attention, and I look up hesitantly to see Damian watching me intently. His brows are raised in expectation, and he gestures with a tactful nod toward the rest of the table.
I clear my throat, spurred on by the encouraging words my brother left me with last night after he’d left Fort Smit. He promised he’d be back with the rest of the Council, which he’s ultimately done.
Despite his lack of faith in me before, he seems to have come around after the events of last night.
“Jackson is dead,” I announce to the gathering of Alpha werewolves seated around the small round desk in Nightclaw Pack’s den. Luckily for me, the impromptu meeting meant that the others left their mates behind. I wouldn’t have survived the torment of seeing my allies with their Lunas while mine lies comatose on a clinic bed.
A moment of terse silence falls around the room while I glance at each of the Alphas to gauge their reactions. Simon is the first to speak up, leaning folded arms on the table as he stares across at me.
“Should any of us be distraught?” he muses with a slight chuckle. “That was the plan initially—to kill him.”
A skittish sigh escapes my lips. I’d been dreading hearing the oldest member of the Council’s reproval when he learned about Jackson’s death, but it didn’t come. Instead, he seemed pleased instead of chastizing me for not following through with our initial plan.
Despite their unwavering support, I can’t help but feel guilty for not taking heed of their previous advice. The only reason I kept the hybrid alive was to find Amelia—but it only led to further destruction.
With a heavy-hearted sigh, I go on to explain what happened to the Council members. They deserve to know what happened inside that warehouse while I’d been locked away. I tell them everything—from how Jackson forced me into marrying and marking his sister as my mate, and demanding that we conceive a hybrid child. I recount how I helped her escape after nearly two months in the cage, and explain why I wanted him alive—it was only to find her.
It comes as a shock to them, and I’m not surprised. It’s almost impossible to fathom that I would find my true mate in our enemy’s sister, but the unlikely pairing isn’t something I have control of. Since marking her in a pseudo-mating ceremony, I’d been unable to keep myself from being naturally drawn to her.
Even if I had a choice and I wasn’t forced to marry Amelia, I do imagine that I would have fallen in love with her regardless of our circumstances, simply because of who she is.
Perhaps that’s why I didn’t feel the need to find a mate amongst the werewolves in the past. Fate had a different plan for me, and through the horrors, I found the missing part of my soul.
My only dilemma is that she hasn’t woken up despite our healer’s best efforts to wake her.
“So, Jackson’s sister is your mate?” Alpha Flynn asks thoughtfully.
“Yes,” I concede with a curt nod. “I wanna say I wish it could be different, but I can’t help myself. I know it sounds crazy, but she’s the only woman for me.”
Flynn sighs, chuckling lightly under his breath. “I get you. When I discovered my mate, I ripped myself to shreds trying to deny it, but you can’t fight fate.”
I smile at Flynn, thankful for his support. Soon, the other Alphas follow and assure me that as long as I’m happy, they will accept that my mate is a human. It seems that the nightmare I survived became my saving grace, with the Council respecting me with a newfound sense of honor. I’m a hero among them, but I’m just glad I have the support of these Alphas who have become my friends.
When the meeting concludes, Damian sticks around to join me upstairs. At long last, my brother and I aren’t at loggerheads with each other, and mostly has to do with having a daughter whose life he’s adamant about being a part of. That’s why he fought valiantly against Jackson, and in the end, he took the hybrid’s life to avenge the crimes he committed against me, Amelia, and our daughter.
I’ve never seen a braver act, but Damian has proved that blood is thicker than water.
Not just him, but our mother too. She’d traveled from Cedar Valley with Damian this morning, offering to take care of Damita while Amelia received treatment in the clinic. For years, she’d been at the center of our dispute and hadn’t left the Valley Walker Pack to meet with me. We’d have secret meetings in the city over the years, and the only other time we’d been together was when my father died and I attended his funeral.
“Mother…” I greet her when I enter the bedroom that Ingrid helped set up for Damita.
My mother turns from the window with Damita sound asleep in her arms. Her gentle brown eyes are warm with joy, and I can tell that she’s glad to finally have a grandchild she can take care of.
That was one of her deepest regrets when I left Valley Walker and decided that I’d never take a mate or have offspring of my own. Now that things have changed, she seems happier. Our entire family is reunited once again, even if the most important piece of the puzzle is missing right now.
“How is she doing?” I ask as I cross the room and peek into the bundled blanket. Damita’s angelic face glows as if kissed by the afternoon sun, her lips puckered with contentment.
“She’s a darling,” Mother smiles. “She must have recognized who I am, and wouldn’t stop giggling and murmuring when she was awake.”
Damian groans beside me as he stares at my daughter’s face. “I hope she’s that friendly when she finally meets me!” he muses. “I wanna be known as the cool uncle!”
“Of course, you will be,” I chuckle as I pat Damian on the back. “You are her only uncle, you know that, right?”
Damian throws narrowed eyes of disdain at me. “Not funny, Dorian,” he snorts. “You’d better not say shit like that in front of Amelia.”
“How is your mate doing, Son?” Mother asks, to which I sigh, the smile falling from my face.
“I need to go check up on her again. Doc said we’ve just gotta wait.”
When my shoulders slouch, Mother places a comforting hand on my shoulder and her maternal love radiates from her palms. For years, I’d been adamant about punishing myself for what happened with Finch Lycoan, and I’d rebuffed the one thing any Alpha needs to thrive.
Family.
I thought I was strong enough when I left Valley Walker. I thought I was strong when I was rescued from Jackson’s clutches and healed. I even thought I was stronger when Amelia and I were reunited at that lakehouse. But now I can see that true strength is in numbers, and I don’t have to do everything alone.
For years I was weighed down by my guilt, by the inability to face my family after what happened to Finch. It was a failed attempt to do things differently and unite all of the Oklahoma werewolf packs after lifetimes of being pitted against each other.
What happened to Finch was an accident, but I bore the brunt of the consequences of wanting to change our history. Who would have thought that I would be at the core of that change, uniting our packs as allies when the greater threat was a human?
Now that the threat is gone for good, we can finally breathe again, and the weight I’d been shouldering for years is lifted in the wake of our reunited family. All thanks to the angel who was conceived from a human and a werewolf.
“Go,” Mother nudges. “I’ll be here to watch over her.”
“Yeah, man,” Damian encourages with a pat on my back. “Mom and I will both be here for as long as you need us.”
I stare at my brother and mother in awe, almost unable to believe my shift in luck. With their assurance that they’ll take care of Damita for as long as it takes Amelia to wake up, I head to the clinic and have a quick word with Doctor Edward Pierce.
He’s the resident healer, who doesn’t rely on modern medicine, but rather the ancient traditional medicines our forefathers used. He’d been my uncle’s life-long friend, and the first to join the Nightclaw Pack when Uncle Elias began picking up strays from all across the States.
“... She’s stable, but her healing isn’t as quick as a werewolf’s,” Doctor Pierce explains.
“Is there anything we can do, Ed?” I ask as I stare through the frosted window at Amelia as she lies comatose inside the room. The machine she’s hooked up to beeps to the beating of her heart, but it’s the only indication that she’s still alive.
She hasn’t blinked an eye or twitched a finger since I carried her from Fayetteville to Fort Smit last night.
Doctor Pierce sighs, and the foreshadowing of bad news leaves an acrid taste in my mouth.
“Unfortunately, no,” he admits sadly. “Like any human who suffered the injuries she had, it might take her weeks or months to wake up. Her bones were too badly fractured, and there’s only so much horsetail I can administer without it having adverse effects.”
While Doctor Pierce goes on to tell me about the concoctions of herbs and roots he’d used to try and heal her, my mind goes blank as dread sets in. My heart slows down and it feels as if it might give up altogether.
Just when I thought we could have our happy ending when I found her in Lugert and brought her and our daughter to Fort Smit, Jackson had to go and crush our entire lives. His death was in vain if he didn’t go down without ruining everything for me, as if he didn’t do enough already.
With a disgruntled groan, I ignore the doctor and push through the door leading into the room, fists curling at my sides with determination as I stand towering over her almost lifeless form and withhold my tears.
“Amelia… If you can hear me… I need you to wake up.” I take her hand and lift it to my lips, pressing a trembling kiss on her paled knuckles. “Damita needs you. I-I need you…”
I can’t be as strong as I’d hoped I would be when her face right now resembles her face every time that gas entered the cage we were locked in and she was knocked unconscious. Every time I watched her in that state before the gas took its effect on me, she steadily became the reason for my survival.
As tears cloud my vision, I catch a glimpse of the one part of her body that remains lively. It glows in a faint, golden tinge, and I’m suddenly reminded that it was our mate bond that returned my strength for me to fight through the rogues to get her out of the warehouse.
I sniff back these inconsolable tears, reaching out to trace the mark on Amelia’s neck with a fingertip that ignites with a fiery passion that sets my pulse alight. Allowing myself to bask in the magnetic feeling of touching her skin where I hadn’t been able to since finding her, I compose myself as the logical side of my brain starts to run through all the possibilities that could come from the idea that just entered my mind.
My bite mark pulses and beckons me forward with the energy it feeds the finger that traces it, so I take the leap of faith and distend my canines to sink them into Amelia’s skin.
The mate bond we share was powerful enough to return some of my strength before, and now that I have the full strength of my Alpha, I can only pray that biting her to mark her works the magic I’m hoping for. When Jackson forced me to bite her the first time, my wolf was subdued and weakened by all the wolfsbane and silver.
My Alpha is in full force now, allowing me to extend my sharp teeth even further than the first time and press into a vein that draws blood while extracting saliva that seeps out and fuses with Amelia’s blood and solidifies our mate bond the way it would confirm the bond between two werewolves.
I feel it coursing through my veins—that electrifying feeling of being whole from claiming my Luna while my heart doesn’t beat anymore. Instead, it flows like the waves crashing gently on the shore, so effortless and natural, that I’m convinced that the notion of fated mates exists, even if it’s not a known phenomenon amongst the Valley Walker and Nightclaw werewolves.
When I step back with anticipation, I’m disappointed to find that Amelia is still unconscious. The only difference now is that the bite marks on her neck are brighter, tiny pebbles of blood poking out from the punctures I’d made with my teeth.
Tears haze my vision again as I fold her hand in both of mine and press a firm, unyielding kiss on her knuckles. “Please, my angel…” I whisper sullenly. “... Please wake up. Please come back to me…” I can’t lose her again. I lost her once, and it killed any will I had to survive. I won’t survive without her again.
Amelia remains frozen in time, stuck in the paralyzed state she’d succumbed to when she was brutally injured. Maybe I was too hopeful when I thought I could bring her back and quicken her healing by marking her properly this time. But then again, she’s only human and it wouldn’t work the way it would on a werewolf. Sighing defeatedly, I hang my head and grab a tissue from the box on the nightstand to clean up her neck where blood trickles from the bite. I decide that I’ll stay by her side for as long as it takes for her to wake up, even if it’s breaking me apart inside.
Bringing her with me to Nightclaw wasn’t meant to end in tragedy. We’d just been reunited, and there was so much we didn’t get to speak about. Shouldn’t have offered her a chance to speak to her brother again—I should have buried the hatchet of the past the moment I found her.
I was only trying to do what she somehow did for my brother and me—our relationship has been somewhat fixed ever since she came into my life. With a sulky sigh, I begin wiping at her neck when I hear the faintest voice say my name.
“Dorian…?”