Chapter 22 - Aurela
“Are you ready for this?” Lachlan asks, his voice low as we walk up to the front of the house together.
It feels strange, coming home as a visitor rather than an inmate.
“No clue,” I mutter, which makes him laugh.
Val and Lach drove here separately from us, but we timed it so we would all arrive at the same time. Strength in numbers, and all that.
Soren has been acting a bit fidgety since we woke up this morning and got a call from Lach, saying he’d talked to our parents and explained what he could, and that we should come for dinner tonight.
“Better to pull off the band-aid all at once, you know?” he’d said to me over the phone as Levi babbled happily in the background. “Plus, Mom is still worried about you. It’s taken a lot of convincing to keep her from tracking you down.”
“Do they know it’s Soren?” I asked, figuring that if they did, tracking me down would not have been that difficult at all.
“No,” Lach said after a long moment. Then, clearing his throat, he added, “Figured I’d let them figure it out when you guys came tonight.”
And now here we are. I’m in one of Maeve’s amazing blouses—pink, white, and yellow-checkered, like something you might wear to Easter—and a pair of white pants. Soren looks handsome in a pink collared shirt he picked to match me, his copper-colored curls flopping over his forehead.
Catching me looking, he says nervously, “I should have gotten a haircut.”
“It’s fine,” I whisper, ignoring the urge to reach out and touch his hair as Lachlan knocks on the door, careful not to wake the sleeping child in Valerie’s arms.
It’s not our parents who answer the door, but a member of the staff, and Lachlan and I look at each other in surprise.
“Mary?” Lach asks, stepping through the door and away from her, shaking his head as she reaches for his coat. “What are you doing here? It’s Sunday.”
Mary glances over her shoulder at the dining room, then smiles at Lachlan, though her eyes give a silent warning. “Your parents thought it would be nice to have everyone here for the family dinner.”
I can feel Soren’s eyes on me, and I know that all this is over-the-top surreal to him. The differences between our two family homes—his cozy and familiar one with his grandfather, and mine, palatial and chilly. The kind of building you could wander for days and not run into another living soul.
Other than the staff, apparently.
We’ve entered the dining room and seated ourselves, and Lach and I trade nervous glances as we wait for our parents to arrive. This is not normally how Sunday dinners go.
Ten minutes later, they finally walk in, and I feel the weight of my mother’s stare instantly. I stand as though she’s the queen and I’m welcoming her in.
“Oh, Aurela!” she says, hurrying over to me, gathering me up in her arms as though I haven’t been in this house for ten minutes while she’s been doing whatever—waiting to make an appearance, or planning her strategy with Dad.
“Aurela,” my dad says, “I’m glad to see you’re okay.”
“Thanks,” I mutter, then clear my throat, determined to get through the elephant in the room and the most awkward part of this thing—the entire reason I’m here right now. I reach down and take Soren’s hand, staring at my mother as I do so.
“Mom, Dad,” I say, hoping my voice sounds as strong as I think it does, “I’m sure you remember Soren. He’s a friend of Lach’s, and a friend of the Sorels.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Cambias,” Soren says when I’m finished. “Thank you for inviting me to your lovely home—”
“You were not invited,” my mother snaps, the smile falling from her face as she shoots a betrayed look at Lachlan.
It’s like up until this moment, they thought there could be some other explanation for the man at my side.
“I…” Soren starts, then he glances at me, clearly unsure where to go from here.
“I invited him,” I say, clearing my throat. “And I know there’s a history here. We were hoping to—”
“I wasn’t aware you still lived in this house,” my father interjects.
“That’s right,” my mother says, her eyes growing teary.
“Gone for nearly two weeks, and when you return to town, we’re not even close to the first item on your to-do list. We found out from Lachlan the day after you returned to Silverville that you were alive.
Do you have any idea what that does to a mother?
To worry like that? Then to find out that I don’t even matter to you? ”
Soren and I stand awkwardly around the dining table, Valerie and Lach sitting as my parents face me and Soren. I swallow down the urge to give in, to cave.
“Mom, Dad,” Lachlan says in a surprisingly cool tone, considering the way he lost his shit on Soren this past week. “Why don’t we sit down to dinner? Looks like the staff worked pretty hard on it.”
Dad opens his mouth as if to say something, but Mom puts her hand on his wrist and tugs him down to sit with her. Soren and I take our seats, and I find his hand under the table.
The only way out of this is through.
I can only hope I still have my mother and father on the other side.
The staff come flooding in, bringing in an array of food that’s more like Christmas Eve than a random Sunday night.
Soren blanches at the sight of it all—a roast duck, baked Alaska, potatoes au gratin, ratatouille, prime rib, vegetables, and gravy.
It’s like they told the chef to make anything that would look resplendent on our table.
Soren shifts uncomfortably, but doesn’t glance at me. I squeeze his hand reassuringly, and he squeezes back, but it’s like I can feel his insecurities coming back to him. The way my parents made him feel like he wasn’t good enough.
And I think back to that first time Valerie came over here with Lach, the way our parents spoke to her then. The gotcha moment they seemed to savor when they remembered who she was. Their nasty way of making people feel like they’re not good enough.
I realize with a start that although this has most recently been directed at our romantic interests, their making us feel like we’re not good enough is precisely what they do to us, too.
My mom with the constant food monitoring.
Both of them are trying to pressure Lach into stuff he doesn’t want, hinting that fighting fires is somehow beneath him.
Forks clink, and ice jostles in glasses. Dad disappears and returns with a bottle of wine, wordlessly pouring it only into his and our mother’s glasses, as though they’re the only ones who could possibly need it tonight.
The longer we go without talking, the harder it feels to open my mouth and break the relative silence.
I keep waiting for someone else to talk, for Lach or Val to step in, but each time I glance at them, they give me the look of an older sibling, like they’re trying to urge me to handle this one myself.
All at once, I don’t feel like I can.
This table is huge, and my parents’ influence over this town is huge. Soren doesn’t want to leave Silverville, I know that, but if we decide to do this, that might be my only option for escaping the cloud of their presence in my life.
“We were over at the Roches’ last night.”
When my mother finally speaks, her voice twinkles through the space, sharp with disdain. The Roches—Caspian’s parents. If anything, his parents are probably secretly thrilled that this fell through.
“Apologizing to them for the attack on their son,” my mother adds tartly.
“The supreme was there,” Lachlan says simply. “And he oversaw the challenge. Calling it an attack is an affront to his honor. Is that what you’d like me to tell him? That you think he sat by and watched two members of his pack get into a pointless brawl?”
My mother goes quiet, making a face down at her plate, and instead, my father speaks. “Be that as it may, Lachlan, Caspian was severely hurt. He might never walk again.”
Then, to my absolute horror, Soren snorts from beside me.
“Is something about that funny to you?” my mom snaps, pointing her fork in Soren’s direction. “Of course it would be, what am I saying?”
“Did they tell you their son pissed himself?” Soren asks, sitting up taller beside me, and the tenor of his voice sends chills down my back.
My father shakes his head, clearly affronted by the language. “That’s—”
“Shameful? I know,” Soren laughs, stabbing his fork roughly into a piece of meat and lifting it to his eyes, turning it before taking a bite.
“Imagine,” he goes on, after chewing and swallowing, “setting your daughter up with a man who would soil himself if it ever came down to defending her honor.”
I’m horrified, but when I glance at Lachlan and Valerie, they’re staring at Soren with proud expressions.
“You listen,” Mom hisses, starting to stand from her seat.
“No,” Soren says, “you listen. I’m the right-hand man to the supreme, and one of the best gods-damned fighters in this pack.
I know that nobody on this planet is worthy of your daughter, but I’m the shifter who comes closest. Now, you can either offer us your blessing, or I can take her and walk out of this house right now. ”
He reaches for my hand, and, stunned, I take it, rising to my feet, too, turning to face my parents as he voices all the things I’m too cowed to say.
“I would never try to keep Aurela from her family, but I also won’t encourage her to come back here.
I know you don’t like me, and you’ve meddled with our relationship before.
That stops now. I know you’re a businessman, Mr. Cambias, so you might want to take a second and really think this through.
I may not be the son-in-law you want, but I am the only offer on the table. ”
Silence hangs for a moment, all of us just a little too stunned. Then Soren stands up tall, looks at my parents, and says, “So, what will it be?”