Page 3 of Tangled Fates

My father had kept every single one of them.

“Fuck,” I choked out as a tear streaked my cheek.

I quickly wiped at it before pressing the heels of my hands into my eyes. I had to keep my composure. I had to keep my wits about me. The pack was under attack, Dad had most certainly been murdered, and I had to find answers. I couldn’t allow emotions of a childhood gone by wreck my concentration.

But it was hard.

“Okay,” I said with a big sniffle, “what else do you have in here?”

I reached for another big box and popped open the top. The white-and-brown box didn’t hold much. Just some letters that looked more like bills than anything else. Most of them had “paid” scrawled on the front of them, and some of them had “dispute” with a date lingering in the top right-hand corner. I dug all the way down to the box, trying to see if there was anything else that might be of use to help me piece everything together so that it made sense.

But instead, I found an unopened letter addressed to me.

“What the fuck?” I whispered.

I quickly picked up the letter and turned it around. It had my address on it. It had my father’s home as the return address. But it wasn’t stamped. Written, but never sent.

I wasted no time in ripping the damned thing open so that I could figure out what was inside.

Lovebug—

Just the first word, and I had to pause to take a deep breath in.

“Come on, you can do this,” I murmured to myself.

Then, I turned my gaze back down to the one-page letter in my hand.

Lovebug,

I know you have a lot of questions. I know you’re probably wondering why I never came to visit, or why I never reached out to you before now. But I want you to know that I never stopped thinking about you. I never stopped worrying over you. I never stopped sending people from the pack to check in on you in L.A. just to make sure you were all right and didn’t need anything.

He sent people to check in on me?

I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, but it didn’t piss me off, so that was something.

Don’t hate your mother for what happened. There were a lot of complicated things that happened between her and I. For starters, I thought we were fated mates. Despite the fact that she was human, I had that moment with her. A moment I know you’ll surely experience yourself one day. From the second I laid eyes on her, I saw our entire future together, and the wolf inside of me was happy. Pleased. Excited, even.

Oddly enough, I knew exactly what he was talking about.

I just hadn’t had that feeling for only one person.

But I was wrong. Despite what I saw, it wasn’t until later in our marriage that I realized your mother hadn’t seen the same destiny. The same fate. That’s the thing about fated mates, Lovebug. They both see the same future in one another’s eyes. And once we figured that out, it was a slow descent into the divorce that wrecked your world. I’m so sorry, Lovebug. Please forgive me for not doing better than this.

I had to pause and wipe at more tears as they threatened to flood my neck.

Don’t ever think for one second that you weren’t loved, though. There isn’t a second that goes by that my love for you doesn’t grow stronger. And trust me, I don’t blame your mother for leaving, or for her taking you in the process. With your mother being human, we had no idea whether or not you’d even have a shifter side to you. I’m not upset with her for taking you, I’m just upset that drama with the pack keeps me away from you, because all I want is to keep you safe from all of this.

So, he knew something was wrong. And by the sounds of it, something had been wrong for a while.

For a shifter, gravitating away from the pack is a sure-fire way to lose control. That’s why I could never come visit you in Los Angeles. The second I leave the state of Oregon, my wolf becomes almost uncontrollable. It wouldn’t have been safe for you, or for the city of L.A. And while I try not to think that your mother did that to me intentionally, I want you to know that it isn’t because of you that I didn’t come. It’s because I would have put the safety of the populous—and the pack—at risk with my leave.

There it was. He knew the risks. He understood what he’d be doing to a pack he claimed to love if he had left and tried to come after me. So, why the fuck did he do it, anyway? I wanted to claim some sort of fatherly-daughterly love. Something greater than any of us that had compelled him to come see his daughter, come hell or high water. That didn’t make sense, however. Wouldn’t Dad have taken someone with him on the trip? Someone to help keep him in check just in case things went south? But if he had taken another shifter with him, then there would’ve been two rogue shifters out there in the world. Not just one.

With every word, it only unveiled more questions, and I grew weary of them bouncing around in my head. Outside of everything else, I found myself angry with my own mother. I didn’t want to be, of course. I loved my mother. But I knew her downfalls. She was a spiteful person when someone pissed her off. It wouldn’t have shocked me one bit if she had moved us out of the state purposefully, especially if she didn’t agree with who my father had been at his core.

A shifter, a pack leader, and a man who had yet to meet his fated mate.

Maybe she was so upset with me that she knew it was the only way to punish me, and for that I am truly sorry. I love you, Lovebug. I love you more than anything else in this world. And should you find your way back, should you find your way home, know that you will be welcomed with open arms.

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