Chapter Fourteen #3
He let his dominance explode from his chest to blanket the entire clearing, the entire forest. A heavy, dense energy cascaded around his enemy, demanding submission.
Wyatt, for the first time since he had come to Tolstone, cowered beneath Dominic.
With white fur stained by deep crimson blood, he dropped and exposed his neck to the Prime Alpha.
Dominic took it between his teeth and bit down just enough to make him squirm and fear for his life like Kimberly had feared for her own earlier that night. Behind him, he heard the victor of the first fight stand victorious.
Gage’s tawny pelt was plastered with more blood than Nathan’s, but the alpha-in-training had proven his mettle and administered his punishment without the aid of the Prime Alpha.
Nathan was breathing, but just barely. Dominic waited until Wyatt was done sniffling and writhing before he released him.
Golden eyes swiveled to Xavier and those wolves who dared to support Wyatt after what they had just witnessed.
With tails of various colors tucked between their legs and ears folded against their heads, they backed away and gave the victory to Dominic and Gage.
They all witnessed that Dominic’s authority could never be questioned, never challenged.
Tolstone was supposed to be a place of peace, of rest. If women like Kimberly couldn’t feel safe in their own homes, then what was the point of being a sanctuary for shifters?
Dominic would remind them that this was not a vacation from the rules and pack structure.
Order must be maintained, and he would do that at all costs.
*
It almost seemed unfair how cheerfully the birds sang outside her window that morning.
The sun streamed through the curtains, and Erica basked in it, still naked under the soft downy comforter.
She always loved natural lighting. Perhaps that’s why she adored Victorian homes with their tall and numerous windows.
But right now, of all times, Erica couldn’t rejoice in the ambient light.
Not fully. Dominic had left some hours ago, and she wished she hadn’t left her phone downstairs.
Maybe he’d called to say he’d be late returning.
As much as she understood that he had to go, Erica wished he could have just stayed and let the betas take care of it.
Last night was terrifying and amazing in so many ways. The news that shifters were real, and that Dominic was some head alpha in charge of all the werewolves in Tolstone, was a lot to take in, but even this was overshadowed by a greater discovery.
Erica loved Dominic.
Somehow, between the moment that their fingertips brushed when she took the Rolleiflex from him and last night when they kissed for the second time, the seed had been planted in her heart.
It steadily grew from the inside, watered by the constant thought of him, his kind words, and that look in his eyes that made her tummy tingle in the best way.
It dug its roots deep into her soul, and the branches busted through the high walls that prevented her from feeling too much.
Now, it was a tree, an unmovable oak that would take a hurricane to knock over. This love was staying.
Was this how her mom felt with her dad? Was this how all couples felt when they tumbled into love for the first time?
This nervous, blissful feeling, like she was fully alive and yet dying at the same time.
It made her happy, and yet while Dominic was away, she felt she couldn’t be completely happy.
She could, however, be hungry. After all that incredible lovemaking, Erica at least wanted to reheat the coffee that Dominic had made the night before and have some toast to replenish her energy.
She slipped out of bed, changed into a fresh pair of clothes, combed her hair, and re-braided it.
As she walked down the stairs, she smiled and remembered how Dominic had carried her all the way up to her bedroom.
A few moments later, she had a mug in hand and buttered toast on a napkin, walking into the living room with a sense that she wasn’t the same Erica as the night before.
Light, almost joyful, she wasn’t as conflicted as she had been before.
Things were finally falling into place. The house was still sparsely furnished, her business still needed to be marketed and promoted, and her mother was still dead, but she had Dominic now.
They understood one another. She didn’t necessarily like the fact that he would constantly need to leave to take care of pack business, but she supposed there were things she would have to sacrifice for him as well.
Wasn’t there a line that said love was a game of give and take?
Oddly enough, she was ready to treasure every moment learning about this strange, supernatural society, and how Dominic fit into all its workings. Maybe, one day, she could be part of it too. Sipping her coffee, she thought it so laughable that her life could have changed so much in just one night.
Erica glanced up at the mantel and stared at the old photo of her and her mom on the church steps.
When she looked at that picture, she didn’t feel the need to fight back tears or the flood of memories.
Instead, she smiled. She was actually able to smile without feeling like she had somehow desecrated her mother’s memory by being happy.
It was time.
She finished off her toast, and with the coffee mug only halfway empty, she went back up to her room, to her closet. Beneath a pile of scratchy blankets was the only box to remain unopened, untouched for years. Scrawled across the side in permanent marker were the words Do Not Open.
It was her mother’s box and the only thing Erica reserved from the estate sale. She remembered the first time she laid eyes on it as a little girl. Her mother had warned her against ever opening it, and the clear tape that sealed it shut had never been stripped off.
Erica’s first thoughts about the box had been childish.
Perhaps it held a superwoman outfit or something that would give away some deep, dark secret her mother was trying to hide.
As she grew older, she thought maybe it was something personal, like old photos or memorabilia from life before motherhood.
With her mother gone, she had procrastinated in ripping the tape off that box lid.
If it held what she thought it did, she hadn’t been ready for it.
Maybe now, after the night she’d had, and after she realized that she could stand a tiny bit of her mother’s memory without bursting into tears, Erica could handle it.
She set the coffee cup on the floor beside her, dragged out the box, and sat down in front of it. Heavy, battered by the move and years of dust caked into the cardboard, this box had been the only secret between her and her mother. She just hoped it was worth the wait.
Carefully, she pulled off the tape and opened the flaps.
Photo albums.
The leather covers held together thick black pages, lined with sticky plastic sheaths that kept the photos in place.
Tucked in the crevices between them were trinkets and scrapbook souvenirs of movie ticket stubs, restaurant receipts, gum wrappers, and other paper paraphernalia from a life before Erica was born.
She opened the top scrapbook and found a young woman staring back at her, a beautiful face in chromatic colors, a face that looked familiar, and yet foreign.
It was the same face she saw looking back at her in the mirror.
Her mother, as a child, a baby, and then a teenager, filled the pages of the album.
Ancient photos of her roller-skating at the rink in Decatur, prom poses with a man she didn’t recognize, with braces and a big hairdo.
Her grandparents were featured in a few of the pictures, her mother sitting between them on a flower-print couch in a home she had never visited.
Mobile homes, trips to the beach, and a German shepherd licking her mother’s grinning face.
Erica smiled at each of them, transported back to a time that Mom had never talked about. High school graduation photos, clippings from old newspapers, a proud woman holding up a college diploma with a dark green cap propped crooked on her head.
It felt like her heart would break under this pressure, but she didn’t cry. She didn’t regret all the times they could have talked about those school days or the men leaning up against vintage cars, the men her mom must have dated.
One page into the second album made her freeze. With the page tilted between her fingers, she saw the face of a man beside her mother’s. Her heart rose into her throat as hazel eyes stared at her. Each quickened thump could be felt against her breastbone.
She knew this man from somewhere. The hairstyle was a little different, but she knew his face.
She turned the page again. Romantic photos of candlelight dinners, of a wedding, of a reception with a towering cake and a gorgeous white dress.
A new home, their home in Decatur, the one she’d sold before moving to Tolstone.
The old blue Mustang was alive again and in mint condition in the driveway, with that man leaning against it like the others had.
This time, they were together. Him and her mom.
Then, her mom was pregnant. Pages upon pages of ugly maternity dresses flew before her eyes as her mother’s stomach grew bigger and bigger.
Then, a hospital front. Erica had never seen her baby pictures because they were all here in this box, stored away from the light of the world, away from her eyes, because it wasn’t just her mother holding the pink bundle in the pictures.
Her father sat on the edge of the hospital bed with his arm around her mother, gazing down at Erica’s wrinkled, puckered face.
Erica couldn’t breathe. This was her father, the man who had abandoned them when she was just a baby.
Onward, she turned the pages with trembling hands, though she willed them to be steady.
Pictures of people she didn’t know, people she didn’t recognize at all.
A few pages more of intimate moments where she ate for the first time in her high chair, and started to walk, her father holding her up by her tiny hands as little pudgy legs tried to hobble across the living room carpet.
The last picture of the album, the one that finally pushed the tears out from the corners of her eyes, was the one of her and her father taking a nap together on the floor.
They lay on her old yellow blanket, the one she never went to sleep without until she was at least ten years old.
Her father had touched this blanket, and suddenly, it became something sacred and scorned at the same time.
Erica stared at the man in the pictures, the man whom she had never known the name of. Not until now, and that was only because she recognized him. She knew who her father was.