Alpha's Legacy (Black Moon Saga Book 3)

6. Parting Ways

Sitting at the dinner table that night, I can’t help but take what feels like the last opportunity to really look at my family. I’ll only be gone a couple months, but for someone who has never been gone for more than an afternoon, it feels like an eternity. And for the most part, I’m glad for that. My time here recently has been miserable. But there is a small part of me that worries what I’ll miss while I’m gone, and a part that I do my best to keep buried that worries that no one will even miss me.

After all, I’m taking Tian with me, and he has always been the one to pay me the most mind. It’s not that I feel unloved per se, but more that I don’t know whether a couple months will be long enough for these people to feel my absence. My presence is barely a thing of note to begin with.

Not when there are so many other powerful Alpha personalities in this household. There’s Margot, my older sister and the future Black Moon Alpha, a stunning raven-haired beauty who could have any man she desires but chooses to remain pure for when she finds her mate. And then my younger brother Davie, named after our grandfather, but standing tall and broad like his own father and looking so much like his older brother, Marc, Adam’s eldest child from a previous relationship.

Davie’s twin sister, Bethany, is the tallest of the Brentwood girls and a bit of a mischievous troublemaker, though nothing even remotely comparing to the trouble Emerick likes to cause. Tommy is newly a teenager and seems to have grown a foot in the last year, now towering over me with shoulders that will soon compete with Davie’s. He’s loud and thinks everything can become a joke, though he’s still learning about appropriate timing for humor.

And finally, our youngest sister Kalissa, who insists on being called Kali, not yet a teenager herself but already looking like an adult. She’s taller than me, but still has some growing to do to compete with Margot and Bethany. Well, of course I haven’t mentioned Emerick, but he’s neither here at the table nor deserving of my consideration. I miss the boy he once was, but the young man he has become can remain where he is indefinitely for all I care.

And that just leaves me, the shortest of all the Brentwoods, not to mention the quietest and most compliant. I don’t recall ever being punished for anything, and until the other day with Adam, I’d never been scolded for anything either. Well, unless you attempt to count all the countless times that I’ve been told to settle down when I get some idea in my head and want to chase after it, or when I’ve been gently reprimanded for using my magic to my own detriment.

My eagerness to please my parents, and everyone else for that matter, runs so deep that I wouldn’t dream of disobeying them, and I try as hard as I can not to disappoint them, though it often feels like my best efforts just aren’t enough. They tend to hold me to such a high standard that I can’t help wondering if they can’t see that I’m not even tall enough to reach it. Although, I already know what Tian would say if I told him that. He’d say that the only one holding me to that standard is myself, but he’d be wrong.

“Where are you going to go, anyway?” Tommy questions me, seemingly out of the blue, though that’s my fault for allowing myself to get so lost in my thoughts when I’m supposed to be soaking in these last moments with the family.

“I don’t entirely know,” I answer him honestly. I had originally intended to take some time and think about it to come up with a plan, but it turns out that Tian already has one, and it involves leaving immediately.

“Then why do you want to go so badly?” he challenges me.

“Well, think about it. Where have you been besides here?” I question him in answer.

“To Spirit Moon to see Marc. That’s in a whole other state,” he answers proudly.

“Fair enough, but it’s still a werewolf pack. It’s a lot like here. I may not have a specific idea of where I want to go, but I do know that I want to go to places that are different. I want to experience new things.”

That may even be the most consecutive words I’ve ever said to him. Our conversations are usually him doing most of the talking and interrupting me whenever I try to respond.

“We’ve also been to Tall Pines and to Luna’s Grace,” Bethany reminds us, though it’s not entirely accurate. She’s been those places, and maybe Tommy has, but I’ve never been to Luna’s Grace.

“Those are more werewolf packs,” our mother chimes in. “Anna Jade is right that there is a whole world out there outside of the life you know. It can be a scary and dangerous world for young werewolves, though, which is why we’ve always made sure to take you places where you’ll be as safe and protected as if you were home, but Anna Jade is old enough and mature enough to leave the nest, under the supervision of her overprotective mama bird of course.”

She turns and pinches Tian on the cheek teasingly, and it’s moments like this when I can really tell how much love and affection he has for her. No one else would be allowed to do or say something like that to him.

“I don’t know that I appreciate your metaphor, love,” he complains, but it’s hard to take him seriously when he’s smiling at her like that.

“And there’s no better tour guide for the world out there than someone who has seen so much of it,” my father adds in his two cents. “In fact, I think Tian built most of it with his bare hands.”

Ah, there it is. The friendly rivalry between Tian and my father never stays buried for long, my father always seizing the low-hanging fruit of Tian’s age and experience whenever he can.

“And it was no easy feat either, with the Terrible Twins out there trying to burn it all down,” Tian shoots back at him. He means my father and Aunt Lizaine, who were once world-renowned criminals and mischief makers.

“Alright children, that’s enough,” Adam steps in, scolding them but also fighting to suppress his own laughter. “You can save your bickering for some other time. Tonight, we’re enjoying this dinner with our family, and celebrating the lovely Miss Anna Jade and how quickly she’s grown up on us.”

He tries to make eye contact with me but I look away, returning my attention to the food on my plate. The way his smile falters slightly does not go unnoticed, and despite my anger toward him, I feel a little bad about that.

“It’s not even her birthday yet,” Kali complains. “So this makes no sense. I mean, I’m glad you’re going away on your little trip or whatever and I hope you have fun, but this seems like a lot of fuss for nothing.”

“Gathering together as a family is never for nothing,” our mother reminds her. “And we’re going to miss your sister, birthday or not.”

No one comments on that, and the conversation moves on to other things. Bethany’s new boyfriend, for instance, which seems to help Adam forget about me in a quick hurry. And then Tommy’s new dirt bike, which piques my interest for a moment. Didn’t my mother say no motorcycles? Isn’t a dirt bike kind of like a motorcycle and maybe even more dangerous? Admittedly, I don’t know the answer to that, but it still seems unfair.

After we’re all finished with dinner and I’m helping Margot and our mother clear the table, Adam comes to me, taking the plate right out of my hand and setting it back on the table.

“Leave all this for your siblings,” he commands. “I need to speak with you.”

With a heavy sigh, since I’ve been dreading this conversation ever since Tian promised it to me, I step away from the table and wait for him to lead me wherever we’re going.

“Tommy, I think it’s your turn to help clear,” Adam calls out to my brother, who is passing by with his favorite portable gaming system in his hand.

“She’s going to be gone for months, so I think she can handle an extra turn,” Tommy argues.

I’m standing behind Adam and can’t see his face, but I assume he gives Tommy that stern look that means “you’d better do as I say or you’ll be sorry” because my brother stops in his tracks, his shoulders dropping as he sighs his resignation.

“Ugh, fine,” he concedes.

With my chores now taken care of, Adam leads me down the hall to my mother’s home office, the very same place where we had our last encounter. Back to the scene of the crime.

“We need to revisit the discussion we were having before,” he turns and says to me as soon as the door is closed behind us, gesturing to one of the comfy chairs to invite me to sit.

“I think I’d rather stand and get this over with,” I tell him flatly, unable to look at him because I know there will be nothing but hurt written across his face.

I want to be mad at him right now, but he makes it so impossible when everything he does just makes me feel guilty. I have half a mind to just forgive him so it will stop weighing on me.

“Suit yourself.”

I notice he has remained standing as well, which gives me pause. He’s intimidating at his full height, and I had hoped he’d sit.

“You ran out of here so fast that you didn’t give me a chance to say anything more, but I think you misunderstood some of what I meant. I also think I owe you an apology for the rest of it, though some of what you said was unfair as well,” he says in opening to our discussion.

Thankfully, he leans himself against the desk, which makes him feel a lot less imposing.

“When I said I wished you had come to us sooner, I didn’t only mean with the information about the club. I know you’d just found out about that, and I do wish you had told us immediately, but I understand why you didn’t. I don’t blame you or hold you accountable for anything, to be clear. What I meant more generally was based on an assumption that you knew more about Emerick than anyone. Even if you didn’t know about his club, I suspected that you might have picked up on some of the signals of something being amiss. He’d been using some potent drugs for some time, and from my observations, it was you he interacted with more than anyone else.”

He pauses, sighing, and removes his hand from his pocket to reach out for me. My instinct is to go to him, but I still want to be stubborn. He’s explaining himself, but I haven’t heard that apology yet.

“Well anyway, what I didn’t think about until you said it was that you have been complaining about him for quite some time. You never specifically said anything about mood swings, personality shifts, or bizarre behavior, but in all fairness, none of us knew to be looking for those things. What you did say many times was that he was being mean, rude, bothering you, bothering other people, and so on. It was on us that we chalked it up to sibling rivalry and the natural tendency of witches and warlocks to be at odds with each other, but we should have paid it more mind.”

To resist the urge to go to him for comfort, I drop myself into that chair he was offering before, releasing a heavy sigh of my own.

“What I thought might have been going on that I sincerely wished I knew about earlier was abuse. Tian said that he saw Emerick with his hand around your throat, but it was so quick of a glimpse that he might have been mistaken. He did tell us that immediately, but you denied it when asked directly, and it didn’t seem that far-fetched after we discovered that it was true to assume that it may have been going on for some time and you had kept it to yourself. Is that what happened?”

It takes me a moment to realize he’s asking me a direct question now and expects a response.

“No, it’s not,” I finally tell him. “Mean and rude, yes, and maybe I’d even go so far as to call him a bully, but he never laid a finger on me until that night that Tian saw him. And I didn’t want to tell anyone because Emerick was sitting right there and had just made awful threats that I didn’t yet know what to think about. He was mostly just an annoyance until he found out I’d caught on to there being something going on with a club, and then he set about systematically destroying my life in a flash.”

“Is that how you really feel, that your life is destroyed?” he asks me softly after considering what I said for a few seconds.

“Well, let me see,” I begin to respond with more sass and snark than I’d have thought possible for myself, “Because of him, I suddenly have no job, no friends, and everyone who did kind of like me now hates me because of all the lies he spread about me. So, I can leave for now, but it may make no difference in the long run. When I come back, I’ll still just be me, and no one will want me here. Probably even my mate won’t want me.”

What had started as a sarcastic rant somehow turns into a teary confession by the end, and the man I walked into this office angry at becomes the man I throw myself at when he kneels down in front of me and reaches to embrace me. He holds me closely as I cry, so tightly that I don’t even notice at what point he pulls me from the chair and sits himself there, holding me on his lap.

“Shh, it’s okay,” he tries to soothe me, placing an affectionate kiss atop my head the way he’s done since I was a baby. “We’ll fix it. Once this investigation is over and we figure everything out, we’ll make it public knowledge. All those lies will be seen for what they are, and one thing I can promise you for a fact is that your mate will love you. He already does.”

I pull away from him, startled by that last statement. There’s no way he can know that now. I’m not even old enough for anyone to know who my mate is.

“How can you know that?” I challenge him, still sniffling from my tears.

“I just do,” he answers unhelpfully.

I already know he won’t tell me any more than that, and it kind of irritates me that he would say stuff like that to me as though I’m still a child who needs fairy tales and empty promises to help me sleep at night.

But I let it go. I’m tired of being mad at him anyway, and I'm leaving in the morning. This is our last chance to reconcile and part on good terms, and I hate fighting with the people I love.