Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
These lazy mornings in the pack house have become one of my favorite things.
Waking up, shut away from the rest of the world with just my pack and Marcus, is peaceful in a way I never thought breakfast and coffee could be.
Ian and I linger a bit longer before going to train the omegas, while Cassian gamely tries to follow Simon’s rant about his collar-searching algorithm.
Luca considers another lump of raw quartz for his next transmogrification project, something to keep him busy over the summer, and Marcus lounges against the counter, drinking his daily green smoothie.
I adore these quiet moments with my pack.
Even Simon’s ranting has become part of the background chatter to these slow mornings.
My phone rings, disturbing the relative quiet, and I pull it out of the pocket of my leggings, checking the number. Half the people in the world who would call me are in this room with me. No… It can’t be.
Forwarded from my old family phone, a call from my father is currently ringing through.
Ian looks over my shoulder. “Don’t answer it.”
Cassian comes to attention. “Who is it?”
“Redwood Rose,” Ian mutters, his blue eyes darkening.
I pick it up on the last ring, too curious to let it go to voicemail.
“Daughter,” he greets me in that brusque way of his.
“Hello, Father,” I reply hesitantly. What could he want now? Is he calling to gloat about his new teaching position?
“I’d like you to join me for lunch tomorrow. I’m in Fairhaven finalizing some paperwork for my teaching position this fall.”
No ‘I’d like to see you’ or ‘I’ve missed you’ or anything fatherly. He just wants me to join him for lunch. I know it’s not a request; it’s a demand. It’s one I can deny now. I have the protection of my pack, and I’m no longer beholden to my father, and yet…
My snap decision is to say no, but I hold it in, calculating.
“Say no,” Cassian hisses.
I shake my head and wave a hand, shushing him.
This could be an opportunity to get more information from my father about his current schemes. If I can’t get him to talk, I can try to use my affinity on him, plumbing the depths of his mind for information on the experiments I believe he’s conducting.
“Yes, Father. I’d love to,” I tell him.
We quickly make arrangements for him to pick me up outside of All Saints Hall. Though I’m certain he knows I don’t live on campus anymore, I’m not letting him anywhere near the pack house.
When the call concludes, my pack turns to me, similar expressions on their faces.
“Juniper,” Ian begins slowly. “What could possibly possess you to say yes to your father?”
I narrow my eyes at him for questioning my choices. “Information, that’s what. I courted Rad to pull information about Halcyon out of his head. I can go to lunch with my father to do the very same.”
“I don’t like it,” Luca says, looking up from the lump of quartz he was turning over in his hands. “He’s cruel. He’s only going to hurt you.”
“It’ll be worth it if I can get information out of him,” I argue, though my confidence wavers. My father is cruel, and I have no doubt he’ll turn that cruelty toward me during our lunch. Saints know he loves to break me down at any chance he gets. Still, I have to try.
Ian hauls me into his lap and presses a soft kiss to his bite. “Promise me you’ll be careful?”
“I promise. Besides, I’ll have Marcus if my father tries anything, which I doubt he’ll do in a crowded restaurant anyway.”
My father sets into me the moment I slip into the back of the town car he’s arranged.
Though my father protested that Marcus would be unnecessary, I told him I’d be the judge of that, not him, so Marcus sits in the front seat beside the driver, hand grasping his knee so tightly his knuckles are white.
“I have a surprise for you, daughter,” my father says, a note of dark glee in his voice.
I want to lash out, to tell him everything I think of him and condemn what I’m sure will be an awful surprise, but I have to be on my best behavior today to keep him from suspecting the real reason I’ve joined him.
He knows he can project thoughts into my mind.
He may even know I can read minds, but if that’s the case, then he’s walking right into the trap I’ve laid for him.
I sit demurely beside him, my hands folded in my lap, as he flicks through something on his phone.
I center myself and let my affinity flow, but when I try to read him, it’s like encountering a brick wall. With a frown, I try again, but his mind is utterly sealed off to me. Fuck. I’ll have to keep trying.
When we reach the restaurant in downtown Fairhaven, I understand my father’s sick surprise.
It’s the same restaurant Rad took me to in a collared dress, the same restaurant where he slapped me in front of the restaurant’s patrons.
The clip of him hitting me, recorded by one of the other diners, got out and helped lead to Rad’s downfall, but I’ll remember the sting of his strike for as long as I live.
I don’t even remember what I said to incense him so, just the excruciating pain of his blow, the bite of the collared dress he made me wear around my neck.
My father won’t hurt me the way Rad did, but he has his own ways, and his own devious methods.
I squirm, fear spiking and souring my scent.
My father merely grins that shrewd smile of his as he stalks ahead of me.
Marcus sets a light hand on my shoulder and squeezes, his pine-and-winter-wind scent surrounding me.
I let my eyes flutter shut and draw in a deep breath, finding my courage.
When we enter the restaurant, Marcus takes the same spot he took beside Blair when Rad brought me here, heavily scrutinizing my father as he does.
My father orders pork medallions marsala for me, something he knows I detest, just as Rad once ordered for me. It makes me bristle; I have a voice of my own, but people like my father want to silence me, even in matters as trivial as ordering in a restaurant.
“So, daughter, how are you enjoying pack life?” He sneers the word ‘pack’ just as he’s done before, and it’s like an arrow to my heart. “I’m sure the Leclerc boy will come to regret buying you at some point.”
I shut my eyes for a second, refusing to let my father see the pain in them. I know it’s not true, but Cassian did wire my father a handsome sum of money to buy out my mating contracts. Cassian didn’t see it as buying me, but I did, and the accusation makes my shoulders pinch together.
“You, Juniper, are only as worthy as your affinity,” he says in a low voice, so he won’t be overheard by the other diners.
“Nothing else. Only that. Now that I can’t make money off you anymore, that’s all you’re worth to me and to society.
One of these days, your pack will realize the same.
I know you saw what I wanted you to see at the Lunar Ball.
How inconvenient your affinity must be if you can be taken down so easily.
At least your precious pack came to your rescue.
You must be dying to know what it all means. ”
I am, but I don’t tell him that. Instead, I push my food around my plate and try reaching out with my affinity again. Reading people like this has become as easy to me as breathing, but my father stonewalls me again. How?
“It will come to pass,” he promises me. “All of it and more. And your pack won’t be able to stop it. They won’t be able to save you.”
Our ride back is stiff and quiet, and I try to keep my tears from falling, fighting the way my eyes burn. Saints, my father still knows how to hurt me, to pierce my heart and weaken me with every mean-spirited barb he can think of.
I’m glad to escape the town car and my father, but his words follow me, repeating over and over in my head.
They won’t be able to save you.
As soon as we’re out of sight of my father, Marcus takes my hand as we walk across the empty campus.
He bore witness to all of that, to my weakness in front of my father, to my pathetic inability to fight back.
What will he think of me when I tell him it was all for naught?
That my father laid into me until I reached the point of tears, while I achieved nothing at all?
I couldn’t read my father. I’ve failed. The moment we reach the omega residences, making for the SUV parked just beyond, I throw myself into his arms, letting out a sob, my tears soaking his dark gray henley.
He strokes my hair, letting me weep. “Oh, Juniper. Hey. It’s all right. You’re safe now. I promise you’re safe.”
He holds me so sweetly, even after we fought, even in this tenuous place between us. He runs his hands up and down my back and presses my head into his neck where I can breathe in the comfort of his scent, just like an alpha would do for his mate.
“I didn’t get anything from my father,” I say hoarsely. “I couldn’t read him at all. Marcus, I failed.”
He takes my hand in his and brings it up to his lips, pressing a gentle kiss to my knuckles. “None of that matters right now. All that matters is that you’re free from him. You’re safe with me.”
“Can we go back to the cottage before going home?” Because it is our home, not just mine.
“Of course, sweet-tart.”
I don’t recoil at the term of endearment now that our fight has passed. Now it brings me the comfort I so desperately need.
We make our way into the cottage, passing through Ian’s expert wards, and Marcus immediately bundles me up in the nesting materials I left here for moments like these.
“I thought you hated this place after what Rad did to it.”
“I didn’t hate that it was ours,” I reply, my voice still watery with tears.
“Stay put,” he says, going to the kitchen cupboards and rummaging around in them. Finally, he brandishes two cups of spicy instant ramen he must have found at the very back of the cabinet. “You barely ate lunch.”
I give him a dull nod, tears welling at the corners of my eyes again.