Page 33 of Bred Mate
“Get to do what?”
“See you getting married.”
My stomach turns. “What do you mean? I’m not getting married.”
“Of course you are, sweetheart,” she says. “That’s what you need, a marriage. To a solid man who doesn’t entertain your fantasies about acting like a wild thing and living in a forest. You need someone who can keep you grounded and ensure that you live a good and healthy life.”
She’s talking like someone who cares, but the words are hollow. She’s like an animatronic of a mother, playing the role without feeling a thing.
“I’m not going to get married, Mom. Who would be stupid enough to marry me?”
I want to follow up with another question: who would be stupid enough to try to force this?
But I don’t, because the hair has been standing up on the back of my neck since I woke up. Bad things are happening to me, and there’s nothing I can do about it.
“Don’t worry. I’ve found someone who wants the job,” she says. “And if you’re a good girl, you might even find that one day you’re happy. I know this isn’t what you want, but a mother has to make decisions for her children that they don’t like sometimes because she knows what’s best.”
The fucking audacity to say that after she left her practically newborn baby to be raised by me a decade ago is astonishing.
“Do you have Connor too?”
“Who?” She frowns slightly, as if she almost recognizes the name she gave her third son, but doesn’t quite put two and two together.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “Nothing for you to concern yourself with.”
I’ve got to get the hell out of here. “I need to go to the bathroom,” I say.
“Don’t try climbing out the window. It’s nailed shut. There’s no getting out of this house any way except through the front door.”
“That’s a fire hazard,” I tell her.
“Yes. Well, we like to live dangerously sometimes,” she says. She’s enjoying this, because she’s getting to exercise power. She needs some kind of outlet for her animal self, but she doesn’t have anything besides whatever the fuck is happening now.
“Why are you doing this?”
“For you, sweetheart.”
“Don’t those words just make you feel sick saying them?” I ask bitterly. “You haven’t seen me since I was twelve. You’re not doing anything for me. You’re doing this for you. I bet you put Rainer up to the task of developing the forest so you could eliminate it. Because you want to erase what happened there. If you can get rid of the place, and if you can get me married, and if the boys scatter to the wind because they don’t matter, just like you intended for them not to matter, then it’s like you were never evil.”
She slaps me across the face. Faster and harder than I thought. I catch the brunt of it.
“Don’t you talk to me like that,” she says. “I am your mother!”
She says it with perfect offense, as if she’s done nothing wrong. She doesn’t want to be reminded of what she is, not of her wolf nature, not of the way she abandoned us. She wants me to shut up and play my role in this little game of hers because some little part of her, some twisted, gnarled little nut of it is telling her to keep me alive. I don’t know where that comes from, but I know there’s no way I can trust it.
“Mom, just let me fucking go,” I say, my hand pressed to my cheek. I could hit her back, but I won’t. Because there’s still respect in me somewhere. Because I’m not evil like she is. I’m still a real, full person. I’m still all together. I’m still intact.
“I’m not going to let this happen,” I tell her.
“Yes, you are. Because the other option is being dead. Ellie, I know you don’t think I love you, but I can tell you right now, this has to happen. So for once in your damn life, do as you’re fucking told.”
The nerve she has to give me this attitude, as if she has some real connection to me. I marvel at it, but the slap already told me not to challenge it. She’s deadly serious about whatever the hell it is that’s happening here.
I want to run, but she knows that. That’s the problem with being at odds with the one who made you. I’m part of her. She’s part of me. We can’t make a move without the other feeling it. I can feel myself being outplayed.
I give it one last attempt. I try getting angry, showing her that I’m not going to back down. There’s still some chance she’ll give up. After all, the one thing I know about this woman is that she’s a quitter.
“Let me fucking go!”
