Chapter 28 Anders’s Past
Anders’s Past
JESSICA
PRESENT DAY:
My father sits next to me and squeezes my hand.
“I remember that day as if it was yesterday,” he says, eyes shiny with unshed tears.
He looks back to the camera. “I must admit, I wasn’t sure what it would be like adopting a child, especially an older one.
Both the twins and my mate were so adamant that I would love her like she was my own.
Even though I agreed to it, especially since she won the hearts of the three toughest men I know, I was still apprehensive.
Maybe some of it was my ego, and I worried that she and I wouldn’t bond as well as she did with the others. ”
He looks down at our intertwined hands and smiles.
“At the end of that day, when my mate and I left your room that first night, all my reservations and fears evaporated. My heart swelled with so many emotions, the same ones I felt when I laid eyes upon my boys—love, fear, excitement, and protectiveness all rolled into one big ball. When you hugged me good night, it hit me right here.” He brings his hand, still holding onto mine, and rests it over his heart.
“That’s when I knew—even though I didn’t create you—you were mine. ”
I let go of my father’s hand, lean over, and give him a hug before wiping the tears from my eyes.
Carmen lifts her hands, forming a T for time out. “I have a few questions.” She glances down at her notes and then at Anders. “For you.” She points a ballpoint pen in Anders’s direction.
He frowns. Somehow, Carmen convinced him to join us for this portion of the interview. She wanted all of my parents, including Anders, to be present. He protested at first, insisting that he didn’t need to be involved.
My mother wouldn’t hear of it and insisted, along with my father, that he join us.
I agreed with them. I hadn’t known all these years who he really was to me, but he has always been there, just like a father, legal papers or not, blood or no blood.
I always thought of him as a father figure.
I want him by my side, secrets and all, because that is where he belongs.
Carmen raises her pen to her lips and hums. “I think giving the viewers a more in-depth look into your position as a head guard and how is it that she is your biological daughter is a more intimate approach. We already covered the relationship and the bond she made with the Luna Queen and Alpha King. I want to learn more about you, Anders.”
Anders sits stiffly next to me, hesitating. He stares at Christian, who in turn watches Anders. Do they know each other? He finally takes his eyes from Christian and looks at me.
“You don’t have to. I know that you like to keep your personal life private. Carmen, I don’t want—”
Christian interrupts, “I think Jessica should hear your side of the story. You never really gave her much of an explanation from the sound of it. You can’t just drop a bomb, a big one in fact, and then expect her to fill in the blanks on her own.”
Anders remains silent. Finally, my father speaks. “Anders, it’s time. I have been telling you for years that your secrets will eat you from the inside and will catch up to you one day.”
Anders squeezes his eyes shut and sighs. “Fine. What do you want to know?”
Carmen beams like she won a prize. “How did you become the head guard? It’s obvious from the history books that a Black Obsidian guard was the original head guard, but now he’s second lead. How did you earn your position?”
Anders turns his head to look at my father.
He nods, giving him permission to share his story.
“In order to tell you that, I have to start with the beginning.
After the great war, many of the white wolf shifters fled the LS territory.
Some stayed under the protection of some of the packs, and some became rogues.
My grandmother, Alpha Agnus, was a baby at the time.
She lost her mother in the war. It was her father who fled the LS territory, raising her in secret.
“The resistance formed a white hunt after the great war, searching for any survivors and killing them. Then, they killed anyone who showed signs of either magic or white wolf characteristics. Even though the history books claim this period passed, it didn’t.
The Resistance just became more secretive in their dealings, especially after the new monarch was established.
When my grandmother was a young adult, she met her true mate, another white wolf shifter, and they had a daughter.
The white hunt caught up to them. Her mate was killed, and my grandmother, protecting her only child escaped.
“The risk was too great to keep her child and stay hidden and alive. She had met a family in the Asian territory and sent her daughter to be raised by them to keep her safe. My grandmother set out to find the white wolves in hiding to figure a way to return home.
“Her daughter grew up and met her true mate, another white wolf shifter raised in the Northern A territory.
They also had a daughter, and a couple of years later, they had me.
I was two, maybe, at the time—too young to remember any of it.
Our home was broken into, and my parents were murdered.
My sister, just five years old, was killed in her sleep.
“I was taken and spared. I’m not sure why. My grandmother eventually tracked me down by discovering the group of men who killed my family and saved me. Instead of bringing me to her new pack, she sent me to live with the family who raised my mother.”
He pauses, glancing first at me and then back at Christian. My father squeezes his shoulder.
“I was an angry kid. I felt abandoned and hurt that my own grandmother wouldn’t take me in, so I acted out.
I started fights and even joined an underground fighting ring.
My adopted family didn’t know what the hell to do with me.
Finally, my grandmother sent for me to return home.
By then, she mated with an Alpha who had children from a previous mating, and together they returned to the LS territory.
I was still so angry with her, more so because she mated a man who had children.
She raised them as her own, yet she didn’t raise me or my mother. ”
My heart breaks for him. I picture a young boy with anger and hurt from feeling abandoned.
He runs a hand down his face. “I didn’t make it easy for her.
I hated her facade of being an older woman who mated a younger man, of being weak.
I wanted revenge on the ones who killed my family, who killed her mate.
She tried to talk me out of it and said that things would fall into place, but I refused to listen.
I left our territory. Not caring if I put myself at risk, I went in search of the Resistance.
Instead, I found a group of rogues with the same goals as me—to take down the Resistance and the monarchy so that the white wolves could return and seize what was taken from them.
“I was almost seventeen at the time. On one of our runs, we encountered a fight. From my standpoint, I immediately recognized the guards—outnumbered and losing. I didn’t know who they were fighting, though.
But I knew for sure it wasn’t the rogues, even though people usually blamed us for every random killing that occurred.
“I was tired of it—tired of being labeled as the bad guys—when we were the ones searching to defeat the Resistance. I made the decision to assist the guards, to prove everyone wrong about us. I motioned to my group to help.
“As we approached, I saw three shifters in wolf form surrounding a woman huddled on the ground, using her body to protect a little boy.
I ran, zeroing in on the three shifters.
I attacked them, using my magic to build a wall of ice in front of the woman to shield her and the boy.
I killed the shifters, ripping out their throats with my teeth, and more of them attacked me and the other rogues.
When the guards realized we were on their side, they changed tactics and focused on the ones they were there to protect.
“The rogues and I killed many shifters that night. Slowly, the others understood they wouldn’t win, so they retreated. I brought my wall of ice down, but when I got close enough…”
Anders closes his eyes briefly and clenches his free hand into a fist. Turning toward my father, I read grief and sadness in in his expression.
“I was too late. The woman died protecting her son. We were also too late to save the head guard. He was killed in the attack. We helped the guards collect their own party, and without a word, we disappeared into the night. For days, I couldn’t rid myself of the image of the mother huddled around her son, bleeding to her death.
I replayed my actions, my decisions, over and over in my mind.
If I had reached them sooner, if I hadn’t delayed in my decision to join the fight, I could have saved her.
Her son would still have a mother. That boy was now like me, without a mother, all because of the Resistance.
After that, I pushed and trained my group of rogues harder.
I was even more determined to take down the Resistance. ”
I clear my throat. “How did you know it was the Resistance?”
“One of the rogues investigated them. He learned of the origins of the attack. They planned on overtaking the Alpha King and his family.”
I gasp and clap my hand over my mouth. “That little boy you saved…”