Chapter Sixteen #4
Patrick rubbed his eyes before any tears could fall.
“No, Kimberly. The alpha act wasn’t me. Again, I tried to put on a show for you, or that’s how it started.
I wanted to show you what a real alpha should do, what a real protector is like, so that you may look for a future mate with the same qualities.
Someone who wouldn’t be pushed around. Someone who could make the world safe for you.
What I didn’t realize, and what ended up happening, was that I took on this tough-guy persona, and it not only drove you away, but it also nearly broke apart my marriage, and it ultimately kicked us out of Warrington.
The fake power trip went to my head, and I did the stupidest thing a man could do.
I tried to be someone I wasn’t. It nearly destroyed us.
The ends could never have justified the means, and I realized that far too late.
They call it toxic masculinity today, but in my day, it was being an asshole.
Being an alpha, or an alpha type, was never about control, but service.
An alpha shifter serves a pack, not the other way around. ”
The reformed man rubbed at his face, and Kimberly couldn’t help but stare.
“So, all of that was for my benefit somehow?”
Patrick nodded and took a deep, shuddering breath.
“It was … your mother also understood that, and when you left home after graduation, she demanded that we see a counselor. A shifter counselor, of course, and they helped me to understand what I did.” He leveled a heartbroken gaze at her.
“I never had the courage to ask for your forgiveness, because as far as I could tell, you did well, despite me and my bullshit. I should have spent eighteen years making you feel like one of the pack, one of the family. You were never broken. You were always enough and always will be. I’m just so …
so sorry I’m the last to tell you this, but you grew up to be a strong woman, a strong shifter, and I couldn’t be prouder. ”
Now Kimberly was crying. For the first time in recent memory, she stood up and went to her father to wrap her arms around his shoulders. He smelled like strong coffee and sawdust, like he had already been out on the farm that morning before breakfast.
His big hand gripped her arm to return the gesture, and they both sniffled back the emotions that neither one of them wanted to show.
Some habits would be hard to kick, and she wasn’t sure she could forgive him, but there was hope in his redemption story.
Hope for them, as a family, and for her as a shifter.
One conversation over breakfast wouldn’t change a lifetime of self-doubt, but it was a start.
A tiny piece of herself, one that she hadn’t known she had been missing, drifted up from the depths and fell into place. Just knowing that her negative self-talk had been a lie from the very beginning, that no one really believed she was weak or damaged, helped to reveal who she could be.
The startling truth was, she had never changed.
Her view of herself was what changed. It was like getting corrective lenses for the first time and she saw the world and herself with perfect clarity, or shedding an itchy, tight sweater that might have fit her years ago but not anymore.
It was liberating and terrifying at the same time.
Having no dominance as a shifter didn’t make her any less of a shifter.
Her value was not anchored in her dominance, as she had been led to believe.
Maybe, just maybe, everyone else believed the same lie because she walked in it.
She lived it and projected it. The men who tried to date her might have picked up on her insecurity and dropped out because of her, not because of her lack of dominance.
Gage and Declan may have assumed she needed protection, as a lone college girl on her own for the first time.
This new revelation changed her whole perception of her struggles.
And Nathan had been looking for an easy target, just like everyone said.
He could have gone for any other single woman in Tolstone, human or shifter, but he chose her because everyone thought it would be the ultimate offense.
It was, but he paid for it, and so did she.
He reinforced the lie, gave it more life than her father ever could have.
Maybe, if she had walked with confidence since the beginning, no one would have thought less of her. They could clearly sense her lack of dominance, but that would not have made them think she couldn’t take care of herself.
Then, like a bolt of lightning, it hit her.
Shane had never treated her like that, not for one moment.
He never doubted her, never thought her too small and defenseless.
He didn’t baby her. He saw her strength, saw through the conditioning that worked against her, and he knew the truth all along.
He never saw the lie. He only saw her, and he had wanted her anyway.
Dominance never mattered, just like he said. Those words hit differently now.
It didn’t erase their fight or what he said, but it did give greater light. One moment of stress and struggle couldn’t override a lifetime of Shane battling against the dragons in her mind.
That made her understand that she couldn’t block him anymore. She had to give him the benefit of the doubt. She wasn’t quite ready to talk, but she would listen to the voicemails waiting for her. She was at least strong enough for that much.