Chapter 3 #2
Like he’d said, this information wasn’t news to me now, but a few minutes ago it was the most incredible, impossible thing I’d ever seen. Regardless, his announcement was no less shocking than when I’d seen him unexpectedly change before my very eyes.
“How is that possible?” I demanded, my hands gripping the sides of my thighs as we accelerated onto the highway.
“There’s so much you don’t know about this world, Millie,” Ethan began in a roundabout way. “Supernatural beings have always co-existed amongst humans. We just don’t advertise that fact, as we’re afraid of retribution from those who might misunderstand us and threaten our way of life.”
Digesting his words, I breathed slowly into a whole new reality and nodded. “Was my dad one of you? A wolf-shifter, I mean?” The name felt foreign and strange on my tongue as I said it.
“Yes,” he flatly answered. “Your father and I were once in the same pack, though that was a long time ago.”
“Pack?” I repeated. “Does that mean you lived together like a family or something?”
“Yeah, back in Alaska, where we were both born and raised,” Ethan divulged.
“I know your father told you about him being raised in a group home. And he was,” he explained, “but it wasn’t a group home like you’d think.
Not like one humans would live in. It was a shifter pack filled with orphaned boys.
Boys who’d lost their families due to pack disputes and the like.
As I’m sure you can tell, wares are pretty violent.
They don’t settle personal scores with words.
They settle them permanently in hand-to-hand combat. ”
I shivered at his brutally honest reply. A bigger question formed in my head then. One that could change everything I’d thought I knew to be true.
My father had died saving me from a wild animal attack two years ago when we were visiting Alaska.
We’d been walking some old trails he’d used as a boy when we’d been accosted by wild wolves.
My father had fended off the animals before they could maul me and I’d managed to escape back to our cabin unharmed.
I’d called for help, but before that help arrived, my father, overrun by the seemingly rabid pack, had been killed.
He’d died saving me. Knowing what I did now, there was zero chance that was a coincidence.
No matter what Ethan had told me, it was obvious the man was killed by shifters and he’d rescued me from the same fate.
A slight tremble entered my voice then. “My father didn’t die from wild wolves, did he?”
Ethan shook his head and his full lips thinned as he pressed them together. “No, Millie. He didn’t. Your father was killed by a pack of shifters who were settling old scores. Calvin was collateral damage in a war that’s been going on for a long time.”
My brain felt like it was on fire with unanswered questions. “Why did these shifters hate my dad?”
Switching lanes, Ethan kept his eyes on the road when he answered, “That’s a more involved question than you realize, Princess.”
The old nickname caught me off guard. It wasn’t meant to be derogatory.
Ethan had called me that the first day we’d met.
I was dressed like Belle, my favorite Disney character, and had handed him a make-believe cup of tea from the set I’d gotten for my fifth birthday.
He’d told me that I was my father’s greatest treasure.
That I was loved more than any daughter had ever been.
The reminder of the pet name now both stung and soothed me in equal measures.
“Give me the cliff notes version,” I returned, a little heat in my tone as I pushed for the explanation I deserved. “If my father was killed over this dispute, the least you can do is tell me why.”
“Calvin was eight years older than me, so we didn’t know each other before we became close in Montana,” Ethan carefully explained. “I wasn’t living at the group home when the feud started, but I heard about it years later when we reconnected.”
“Okay,” I slowly spoke. “Tell me what you know.”
“Your father fell in love with your mother, who was from another pack, one that didn’t get along so well with ours.
” When Ethan saw I was about to ask why that was, he held up his hand to silence me.
“Pack relationships are complicated, Millie. Because we’re so dominant, we often war over territory and, as you can see from tonight, women.
The Tupilaq Pack, your mother’s pack, is especially territorial over both. ”
I quietly swallowed the lump rising in my throat.
The idea of Ethan fighting over me, the chance to keep me as his very own, was making my tummy flip-flop with excitement.
Not to mention what it did to my naughty bits.
My pussy fluttered at the thought of him winning the fight between him and Garrett.
Of him roughly taking what belonged to him in the end.
My virginity. Just the thought of his calloused hands tearing away my clothes and exploring all of me caused a shutter of ecstasy to course through my innocent, shivering body.
Ethan’s gaze momentarily kicked over in my direction. Their cool grey depths caused me to blush over my dirty thoughts like they were projecting right there between us in all their lewd, technicolor glory.
“After things went bad between Calvin and the Tupilaqs,” Ethan continued, “Calvin decided to start over again in another state with your mother.”
That was a lot of information to process. “Did my mom know about the dispute and why the Tupilaqs were angry with him?”
“Yes,” Ethan replied, a frown marring his handsome face.
“Your mother had been raised in the pack. She didn’t want anything to do with them after she left Alaska with your dad.
In fact, the feud had been so ugly, your parents kept their whereabouts a secret from nearly everyone they knew to stop them from ever learning of your existence. ”
“That worked well, didn’t it,” I snarked, angry and hurt that I’d been lied to all of these years.
“I might have disagreed with Calvin’s decisions,” Ethan said then, “but I never disagreed with his intentions. You and Jenny were his first and most important priorities in life.”
My mother, Jenny, clearly didn’t agree. Maybe she’d left over the feud. Maybe she’d left over something else entirely. Whatever the reason, it didn’t explain why she’d abandoned me, her innocent, young daughter, when she’d run back home to Alaska.
Guilt and shame washed over me then. My dad had stayed when my mother had bailed.
The man had literally given his life to save me from blood-thirsty wolves.
I shouldn’t be so judgmental of his methods or motives.
His ware-shifter secret was a big one, and not easily explained.
I’m not sure what I would have done in his position.
It was hypocritical and sanctimonious of me to even assume my choices would have been superior to his
“Do you think Garrett was a part of the pack that killed my father?” I asked, trying to make sense of a crazy situation, the rules of which I had no idea.
Ethan looked uncomfortable, and his chest rose and fell as though he’d taken a deep, bolstering breath. “No, I don’t think so.”
This time, it was my turn to frown. “Why would he attack me if he wasn’t from the Tupilaq pack?”
“Millie,” Ethan spoke carefully, his blue eyes reaching into the very depths of my soul, “wares can tell their own kind from humans in a multitude of ways.”
His implication shocked me. “I’m not a ware!” I denied, with a vehement shake of my head. “I think I’d know if I turned into an animal on the full moon, Ethan!”
Hands tightening on the wheel in frustration, Ethan said through gritted teeth, “We aren’t werewolves, Millie. We’re shifters. We have control over our shifts. The moon has nothing to do with it, and we don’t turn into some wolfman hybrid.”
“We don’t turn into anything,” I angrily argued, unreasonably enraged. “I’m not a shifter. Surely, I would know by now if I was.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” Ethan persisted.
“The ware gene is very strong, Millie, stronger than human genes. Even if you’d had one parent who was a shifter, you’re more likely to be ware than not.
With both parents being ware, it would practically be unheard of to be born human.
I’ve never even heard of it happening before. ”
I shrugged and looked out the window at the speeding lights going by. “I don’t care how it’s supposed to work. I’m obviously not a shifter.”
“Why do you think that creep Garrett was following you, Millie? Do you think he was just trying to sell you an extended warranty on your car?” Ethan spat out in absolute frustration.
“Beats me! Who knows why rapists attack their victims,” I dismissed with a lot of frustration of my own.
Pinching the bridge of his nose between his forefinger and thumb, Ethan sighed dramatically. “He could smell you, Millie. That’s why Garrett followed you into that alleyway tonight.”
“I beg your pardon?” I said, a blush setting my cheeks on fire. Was he insinuating I smelled bad?
“Female wares have a special scent that male wares can detect from miles away. Especially when they are… fertile,” Ethan delicately explained.
If my face wasn’t already flaming red, it was now. “That’s absurd!”
“That’s the truth,” Ethan bluntly returned. “Male shifters become very excited when they’re near a fertile female. That’s why Garrett lost control in the alley. Your scent, it’s… well… it’s incomparable to anything else in this world. To say the least, it can drive a ware mad with need.”
“You seem to be doing just fine,” I groused, pissed off that I should inspire that kind of lust from an unwanted source like Garrett, where Ethan, the one I wanted to lust after me, was seemingly unphased.