Page 66 of Daddy's Mail Order Mate

“Darling, I know you'd prefer to not mention this to the Alpha, but I think this could help him climb the ranks.”

My father looks at her with reluctance, but is clearly listening at the promise of my advancement. It makes me sick to see the two of them conspire like this as though I'm just an animal they can trot out in front of the judges.

“Just think about it. Our son would clearly show the willpower and purpose that the Alpha wants in our children if he rejects his mate bond to someone so inferior. Don't you remember the stories of proper wolves he puts into some of his speeches? This isexactlythe sort of thing that he's looking for. He’s already taken a clear interest in Thorn, what with personally training him the last few years. This could be what ensures he’ll be taken into the Alpha’s inner circle once he’s an adult.”

I watch the realization unfold across my father's face and feel a sense of horror run through me. It'd be one thing if they keep it to themselves to save face, but if they tell the Alpha, the only way I can protect Gwen is if I—

“I won't—”

“Youwill,” Father interrupts me viciously. “You will because it is what is expected of you. You are meant to be one of the best of our kind and I will not watch you throw that future away because of some beanpole of a girl who can't even shift.”

“Shecan.”

“Then why has no one ever seen it?”

“She just... It's difficult for her. I've helped her shift before. I know I can teach her if you'll just let me—”

It's my mother this time with a slap across my cheek.

“Snap out of it, Thorn. Listen to yourself. You’re making excuses for her. You’re taking her weakness onto yourself when you have no reason to. Why would you waste your time on someone like that? You need a mate that is worthy of you. You’re young and have feelings, and I know how exciting those can be… But you can move on. Especially when you have the pick of the litter of any good woman you’d like. If you don’t like any of the girls in Portsmill, I can make an arrangement with another pack for someone far better. You’ll forget all about that girl in no time when you have someone you can truly depend on to be a good mate and mother to your children.”

But she's the one I love, I want to cry out. But I know that love means nothing to these monsters. All they care about is prestige and their own comfort. They hate my sister for the derision she warrants from the rest of the pack, and they just want to use me to get as high up the totem pole as they can.

All I know for them is hate, and that is a dangerous emotion for me. It’s what I’ve learned to weaponize to endure the ‘training’ the Alpha puts me through. I hate my parents, I hate this pack, I hate the Alpha, I hate this bullshit world I’ve been put in. There are only two things I love: Paige and Gwen. And now I’m being forced to sacrifice one of them.

The world fades away around me. I know my parents keep talking, but I am deaf to them. My ears are full of a silent suffocating roar and all I can hear is the storm of my own wild thoughts. A thousand different emotions fight to be heard. Hundreds of possibilities flail like some rabid mob against each other, to the point where I feel mentally nauseous trying to even think about what to do.

I can’t lose Gwen. But if I try to keep her, she will suffer even more. The Alpha is far too sadistic and ceremonious to let this stand. Knowing him, if I don’t handle this on my own, hewill force my hand in the worst of ways. Thekindestthing he might do is force her parents to arrange her off to someone else in a different pack to get her out of the picture. However, I know with a grim and terrible certainty that it is not like him to be kind.

My eyes dry of the tears that threaten to flow, and my heart fractures apart like charcoal. I look up at my parents and know that tonight, I am not being asked to kill another person for once. I am being asked to murder my own heart, and if I do not comply, it will only bring more suffering.

“Fine.”

The word leaves me with the hollow finality of a gunshot.

From this moment on, my reality is some sort of disjointed nightmare. I am not myself. I am the person who I have to be. My body does not feel my own even in my private moments. My mind is both silent and screaming.Iam silent, because I fear that if I speak, all I will do is scream. There are strangely vivid snapshots of sensation among it all as though fragments from some fever dream. There is the distant silver glow of the moon outside of my secretly repaired window through the trees that I must have stared at for hours. I hear a song over the radio that even though it’s sung in English, I can’t understand it or remember anything enough to properly find it again, but for some reason it burns into my soul and refuses to ever feel real. I count the folds of skin on my knuckles and wonder if I can break my teeth if I clench my jaw too much.

I can only force myself into short bursts of lucidity by causing myself pain. I’m grateful for the open wound on my side the following day, because then I can disinfect it with alcohol and buckle my brain into my body long enough to do what needs to be done.

I don’t know where I find Gwen. I don’t know how I greet her. I don’t even know how I get her back to my house.

All I know is that we arrive and I have to do what must be done. I have to kill our bond, our love, in the same way I’ve learned to kill others.

I can feel my parent’s judgment piercing through my back, looming like a pair of executioners in the doorway. At this moment, all I feel for them is the blackest hatred. If it wasn’t for the fact that it’d endanger Paige, I’d sooner turn around and tear their throats out than do this to Gwen. But I’m still too young and powerless, even if the rule of violence that this fucked up place abided by might allow me to get away with it if I was sufficiently convincing to the Alpha and let myself be on his leash for the rest of my life. I can’t destabilize Paige’s life any more than it already is, and I need to be able to get out of this hell to pull her out of it. I can’t leave the pack until I’m eighteen.

But those practical considerations only happen in some distant corner of my skull, like a ticker tape being read off in a backroom office, some flimsy group of synapses trying to keep myself sane. All the rest of me is just a weapon of someone else’s will.

I watch her cry.

I can’t cry.

I watch her leave.

I can’t leave.

I turn back to my parents smiling at me with satisfaction, and walk back into the house that has never been my home.

***

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