Page 133 of Claimed By the Rival Alpha
54
BRYN
While Night was away, I was left to prepare myself for both the Alpha ceremony and the binding ceremony. I couldn’t keep myself from wringing my hands every few seconds as I paced in the living room of the Alpha’s cabin.
I knew why I was unsettled—Night was gone, I was alone in this huge cabin, I was on the Kings pack lands, I had a meeting with the Elders in a few hours, and even though Night and I’d had sex in the bedroom and many of the other rooms in the house, the place still stank of Troy a little. It made me queasy every time I got an unexpected whiff of him, and it caused my thoughts to jumble together when I needed them to be linear.
I wished I had Night beside me again. Sure, he would distract me with those wonderful little kisses and the wicked things he could do with his fingers and tongue, but he also grounded me. Alone, I felt like I was being sucked up in a tornado. I hadn’t even been able to leave the cabin I was in such a state.
A knock on the door brought me up short.
For a moment, I worried that Troy had escaped from the cells and come to drug me and kidnap me all over again. But as I approached the door, the familiar scent of earth and lavender greeted me.
I threw open the door, exclaiming, “Mom!”
She grinned and pulled me in for a tight hug. Mom was just as I remembered—long, silky white hair, laughing brown eyes, and an embrace that was just as warm and comforting as it had always been—and I sighed into her shoulder.
“Hey, baby,” she said, rubbing my back. “I figured you would be in need of a distraction. Care to come with me to the garden?”
“Yes!” I couldn’t imagine a better place for me to be right now.
It was mid-morning as we walked to the community gardens, and my eyes widened at the sight of the weeds and shriveled growth. Mom, seeing my surprise, nodded sadly.
“Troy’s evil did a number on the land, Bryn,” she said. “All the blood he spilled, all the terrible things he did in the name of this pack…” she trailed off, shaking her head. “There is little he can do to make amends for this damage. I tried to do what I could, and I saved a lot of what we cultivated, but without my girl at my side, I couldn’t save all of it.”
I looked up at her. “Mom, I’m sure you did better than I could ever have done.”
She gave me a smile. “I’m not so sure, baby. I have a connection to the land that lets me sense the way it feels and the things it wants, but Bryn, you’ve always had an affinity for plants and growth. Even when you were just a toddler, you were tugging onmy leg to tell me when a plant was thirsty or hungry. You were always a little prodigy.”
I blushed under her praise. “Mom, you never told me any of that.”
“I know.” She took my hand. “It never felt like the right time.”
We walked together into the garden, and she handed me my old gardening gloves, apron, and rain boots. I donned all of my old stuff, savoring the way the fabric gloves tickled over the backs of my hand as I grabbed my usual trowel and small shovel. Mom suited up, and we both crouched low to the ground to begin weeding.
“You know,” Mom began, “I had a feeling you would be safe with the Wargs.”
I glanced at her. “But Mom, every time the Wargs came up in the past, you would tell me about how dangerous they were.”
She nodded. “I’d always believed that was true. But after Troy came through the village, stuttering about how you were kidnapped by the Wargs’ Alpha and taken prisoner, I started to suspect that there was more to the Wargs than I’d given them credit for. For one thing, as much as I missed you, I wasn’t worried about you as much as I thought I should be. Something was telling me that you were somewhere safe and secure.”
“Really?” With the Wargs, I’d worried so much about Mom and how she was taking the news of my being gone. It eased some tension to know that she’d at least been able to sleep at night. “I’m glad there was something telling you I was okay.”
“Me too.” She shot a mischievous look at me. “I guess you can’t pretend anymore that this mystical stuff doesn’t exist, huh?”
I laughed at the tease. “Well, Mom, I guess I can’t deny that. When I consider all the stuff I’ve found out about myself, I have to agree.”
She smiled and dug out another weed with her trowel. “Could you…tell me about that night? I’ve been worrying myself sick about what kinds of awful things might have happened to you.”
So, I told her the truth about the day Night had saved me. I admitted that I had been planning on leaving the pack to get away from Troy, and I told her about him drugging me and keeping me in his bedroom. I glossed over the most intimate, scary bits, not wanting her to worry about me.
“So, you were planning on running away that night,” she said to herself. “I worried you might do that, and I know I did a lot to talk you out of staying.” She stuck her trowel into the soil and wiped the dirt from her gloves. “I should have run away with you, Bryn.”
It surprised me to hear her say that. “I wouldn’t have asked you to do that for me, Mom. This place, this land…you have roots here. I could never have asked you to come with me.”
“I know you wouldn’t have; that’s why I should have insisted on going along, too. I realize now that I was so shortsighted. I was sure that there was a place in the pack for you, one that neither of us were aware of, but all I did was make you feel like you had to hide your plans from me. I pushed you right into harm’s way, Bryn.”
“Oh, Mom, don’t say that.” It made my chest ache to see how sad she was. “You had faith in me when nobody else did. You were always in my corner, and I know that if you suspected even for amoment that Troy would chain me up in his bedroom to do who knows what to me, you would have gone with me in a heartbeat.”
