Chapter 14 - Mason
Honeycreek spread out around me, demanding me to slow down, to think before I acted rashly, but I couldn’t. All I saw was Cassie—Cassie, my daughter. God. How could I not have known?
All the things I had thought about her father, thinking he had abandoned Bryce and Cassie knowingly.
All along, that had been me, and I had, in a way.
Guilt and confusion wound through me, turning into anger too hot and fast to stop it.
I stormed a path to Hennesey, the bar I knew Jackson would have taken his new date out to.
I didn’t give a damn what he was doing.
All this time… he’d played dumb, indeed. Surely, he knew. He had to have known.
Giving in to my anger completely, I shoved my way into the bar, pushing past some other people heading in there. They began to apologize for getting in the way until they saw my face. I scoured the dimly lit bar, searching every pale, wood table, until I saw Jackson.
And he was there, right in the center of the dancefloor, laughing, as he twirled another girl he wouldn’t call after tonight, but made her feel special enough for a while. Snarling, I walked up to him, my steps heavy enough that he looked around.
“Mase, hey—”
I shoved him back, growling. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?”
Jackson’s face flickered—confusion, then fear, and then regret. Swiftly, it was replaced by anger as he recovered from the shove. “She finally told you.”
“You don’t think you should have done that once in these fucking seven years? You’re my best friend, Jackson. How could you?”
“How could I?” Jackson scoffed. “Because Bryce is my sister, Mason! Because I swore loyalty to her, but I had it to you, too, as the alpha.”
“Oh, don’t come to me with loyalty now,” I snarled.
“What would you have done in my position?” Jackson’s question burst out of him as he shoved me back. Around us, the dancefloor had cleared a circle. Eyes were on us, and murmurs filled the room, but I couldn’t pay attention to any of it. All I saw was my best friend’s betrayal.
“I’d have told you,” Mason spat.
“Over a little sister, you swore to protect?” Jackson laughed bitterly, getting in my face.
“You don’t get to demand answers, Mase. Not when you did that to her.
Do you know how much it's killed me to uphold her need for secrecy? I knew she didn’t tell me the whole story, and I’ve tried not to think too hard about it in favor of watching you grow and mature, become a decent alpha.
But back then, you rejected her, and it killed me to have her protect me so I could stay.
You slept with her and let her walk away when she needed you. ”
“I didn’t ask her to!” I roared.
“You didn’t fucking stop her,” Jackson yelled back. He thrust an arm towards the door. “You didn’t stop them from tormenting her. I ran after her car that night, begged her to stay, to help me fix what they had caused. I had to watch my sister leave town because of them, because of you.”
“Then why did you bother staying?”
Jackson looked momentarily stunned by my question. “Because you’re as good as a brother to me, and Bryce told me she had to do it alone. She told me I had to let her do what she had to do to keep her baby safe.”
“And you were fine with it?”
“No! It's goddamn torn me up for seven years.”
“How do you think I feel right now?” I ensnared my fingers in the collar of his shirt, forcing him back.
Jackson slammed against the bar, grunting.
He shoved back, but I kept him pinned. “You knew I had a child for the last seven years. You watched me protect Cassie, and you never once told me the truth. You lied to my face when I asked who her father was.”
“You were pathetic back then,” Jackson spat. “I was your best friend, but I was ashamed. Of you, of myself, of the pack. Of what happened to Bryce, what she went through. Cassie was better off without you back then. Bryce was, too, and that was why I let her leave and never told you.”
Shame and guilt hit me. I growled as my fist rose.
I cracked it into Jackson’s jaw. He groaned, shoving me off.
His own fist came slamming for me, catching the side of my face.
But my anger was pent up—everything was, and the betrayal lanced through me, white-hot and furious.
I no longer saw the man I thought of as a brother, as my best friend, but a man who had betrayed me.
Jackson’s face twisted into anger as he came barreling towards me. “I wanted to kill you for how you made my sister feel.”
“I deserved to know I had a child! I would have spent an eternity making it up to her—”
“Do you not realize it's too late for that?” Jackson spat. “She can’t even eat with me. Her brother! You were under pressure, and I want to understand that, but you hurt her. You rejected her.”
Her and her child. My child.
Fury cascaded over me in waves as I stormed out. The bar was too small, too suffocating.
“That’s it,” Jackson shouted. “Walk away again. That’s what you’ve done to Bryce, too, right, now that you know? You’re only proving that she was right to leave you first. You’ve left her heartbroken, alone, somewhere, just like before.”
I had two seconds to process how I had mirrored our timeline from all those years ago before I hit the street and the shift took over me. By the time Jackson burst out of the bar, I was already a wolf, growling down at him. Without hesitation, Jackson shifted, pouncing on me, a challenge I met.
The man in me knew I was angry because Jackson was right, and he was giving the fight Bryce had lost the energy to have with me.
But the alpha in me demanded respect and power.
I lunged at him, the two of us meeting in midair, only to crash to the floor.
My canines bared, and I bit at Jackson, catching him with a swipe of my claws along his flank.
He yelped, but his back legs kicked out at me.
I let out a vicious snarl as his jaws snapped close enough to my muzzle that I reared back.
I leaped for him again, sending us crashing over and over one another to come to a stop in the middle of the street.
Back on my paws in a second, I growled, trying to force Jackson to back down.
But he didn’t—he kept swiping for me, claws trying to gouge into me.
I fought back and dug my claws into his shoulder flank hard enough that he yelped.
I knew I was angry—but I was angry at myself, and it was all spiraling out towards Jackson. I was a coward. My need to control everything and gain my pack’s respect, and keep my position as their alpha before I was overpowered, had led to this.
Distracted, I didn’t notice Jackson snapping for me. I was on my back, claws digging into me.
I had never realized how deeply abhorrent I had acted. Bryce had needed to hide my own daughter from me, and that had me punctured deeper than any blow Jackson landed. Jackson’s eyes, even in this form, blazed with anger, and I realized just how much he must have harbored for me all these years.
And yet he had been loyal to us both, even if I felt betrayed.
He could have walked away—should have walked away. But he had stayed.
I kicked Jackson off with a snarl and, before he could attack again, I moved away. I was done, defeated. I couldn’t keep doing this, not when my anger wasn’t wholly aimed at him. Jackson just stared across the street at me as everything built up in me.
Turning around, I ran again. Away from Bryce, away from Jackson.
The only man I couldn’t run away from was myself.
I barely made it back to my own house before I shifted, yanking on shorts from the basket I always left by the back door.
I walked into the living room, my breath shaky.
Control was slipping out of my hands. I should have gone to Bryce, apologized to Jackson, done everything but been a coward once again.
My fist pressed to the wall, but I didn’t let the punch through.
Instead, I let the emotions bubble over, and I choked out a pained, distraught noise.
It was caught in my throat, as if I had repressed my ability to be so unguarded so far down that I couldn’t even access my own tears.
I thumped my head against the wall, pressing my two fists to it.
It all crashed down—right there, in the house where my father raised me to be the perfect alpha.
“Well, I goddamn did that!” I shouted, shoving back from the wall. “I was the perfect alpha, and look where it got me.”
I paced restlessly, my body wracking with those unshed tears as I broke and broke.
Every frame on the wall contained the memories of my father, my mother, the parents who had never let me just be a normal child or teenager.
Who always had to be in control, perfect, and ready to take over as alpha.
I had been molded so fiercely that I had never seen what was in front of me.
I loved Bryce. I always had done, and yet I had let the pack tear her to shreds. I had let them push her out until she had stood before me, begging to be accepted, wanting me, loving me, and I had laughed along with them. How could I have done that?
So horrible I had been that she’d left town, that she had needed to protect our own child from me.
She had been so hurt that she had no reason to think I wouldn’t do the same to Cassie.
God, Cassie.
My daughter.
My baby.
My cub.
I had wanted to hunt down the man who had abandoned Bryce and her daughter, only to realize the only man I needed to fight was myself.
“Why?” I asked myself through gritted teeth, laughing sadly, bitterly. “Why did I do that to her?”
I knew exactly why, and I despised myself all the more for it.
I needed—no, wanted—to be the alpha everyone also wanted.
I had wanted utter domination and control over everyone.
With the pack that came with disrespecting Bryce, but she had been the one I should have always respected and loved.
Cherished. Taken care of and protected above all else.
More shame spread through my gut, grounding me so hard I collapsed onto my bed, staring at the wall. For a long time, I just stared at the ceiling, the weight of my failures sinking in.
I had failed Bryce, and I had failed my daughter.