Page 14 of Alpha's Baby Girl
All I knew for sure was that I needed to win the next trial and spend time alone again.
I glanced sideways at Dakota. “Ready to go?”
Chapter 8 - Fenrys
A car was waiting for me outside the hotel that had been arranged earlier. My mother had made me promise to check in with her after the first trial had been won and the first she-wolves had been eliminated.
I couldn’t resent her too much for wanting the updates. Whoever my Luna would have an effect on the town, on my pack, and on my mother. The car drove the short distance from the hotel, through town, towards my family’s home. As we passed, I thought I saw Thalia and Dakota at my grandfather’s statue, but when I craned my neck to look back to confirm, they had already left.
I averted my eyes from the statue, that ever-bearing reminder of what this town remembered—and what I always needed to live up to. The Mating Games was the first start of that, I reminded myself. I was still young, especially for an alpha. I had time to follow in the Randon family’s footsteps; I had time to make my mark, whatever that was. But it needed to start with finding my mate and beginningourlives together.
My mother waited for me in her lounge room, her arms gracefully arranged on the back of the couch as I walked in. She wore a draping white dress, a shawl-like bodice that went across her shoulders, making her the picture of elegance. I kissed her cheek as I walked in.
“Mother,” I greeted, heading into the kitchen. Bottles of wine were stacked in a small wooden frame, but in the fridge, I knew, I’d find a beer. I’d drank enough champagne and wine lately to last me a lifetime. I needed something stronger.
“Fenrys, sweetheart, you can fill my glass.” Her voice was soft but commanding with the tone I knew had stood alongside my father as his Luna. While she no longer had duties to fulfill as a luna, the command had never quite left her voice.
“Sure thing.”
I grabbed her offered glass, refilled it, and joined her on the adjoining couch. The living room was decorated in muted autumnal colors, all soft throws and plush cushions littering the three couches that were arranged around a coffee table. In front of my mother, an empty fireplace took up the main focus of the wall, while a TV was mounted above it, turned off. For the first time in a while, I wondered what she actually did with her days.
“How are you?” I asked her.
“Fine. Tell me how the games are going.”
“Wow, right to business then,” I half laughed. While I’d been closer to my father growing up, my mother and I had grown closer since his death. She wasn’t the most maternal—more Luna than mother—she had been there for me, held me, and comforted me on the days that the loss of my father had been unbearable and the weight of continuing his legacy had been too much. While her words had remained stern and her grip hard, she had reminded me of exactly who I was.
“Don’t you want to know how I am?” I joked.
“I trust that Graham has been taking care of you,” she answered airily.
“He’s overseeing the games, of course,” I muttered. “But I’m not having him reporting to you behind my back. I don’t need you keeping tabs on me.”
She smiled, leaning over to kiss my cheek. She held my face in her hands. “My son, if you picked up your phone to meet once in a while, you could tell me yourself, and I wouldn’t need reports from others.”
I rolled my eyes, smiling. I lived elsewhere, with my pack, but all that would soon change, too, maybe. Or perhaps my Luna wouldwantto live with my pack. And yet… I thought of the coziness of my mother’s home, and how I’d been raised happily in it. I wanted that for my future children, not a house full of empty beer cans and sports on the TV and parties until the early hours of the morning when my pack went crazy. I couldn’t curb their life just because I wanted to settle down.
I scowled at the floor, angling my face away from my mother’s grasp.
“You’re unhappy,” she murmured.
“Just thinking about how everything will change.”
“That’s how it’s supposed to be,” she said. “You can’t live in a sorry excuse for a frat house forever. You’re a man, Fenrys. An alpha. Your Luna will—”
“I hope that she would want my pack around as much as me.”
“Yes, but she will still be a woman in a house of men, committed to only one of you. Thealpha.”
“Yes, you keep saying.” She pulled away. I gritted my teeth and talked on. “Just because my life ends doesn’t mean my packs’ should, too.”
“Oh, Fenrys. Your life isn’t ending. It’s only just beginning to be what it was always meant to be.”
He chewed on a response. He accepted his duty as a son, and as an alpha, but sometimes it was hard to carry.
“Has anyone caught your eye yet?” she asked with a sly smile, as if she already knew. Of course, she did. Graham would have reported anything: the winners, the suit I wore, the direction I looked in. No doubt my mother knew I’d followed Thalia out to the hallway at the last banquet and was already picking that apart to assess what it could mean. “You know, my father and I knew straight away.”
“You were mates,” I answered drily.
