Chapter 13: Overruled

My mother held my eyes and did not look away.

I wanted her to look away.

I wanted her to cry, or plead, or call me her daughter.

She did none of it.

"Take them home," Kellan told the guards.

His voice was iron.

"Both of them. Stand at their door. Nobody goes in or out."

"Alpha," my mother said.

"Not one word, Mrs. Harlow. You will say it all in front of the pack."

The guards took my father by the arms, because his legs would not hold him.

My mother walked behind him with her back straight and her towel still in her hands.

She did not turn around.

I stood in the path with the whole pack staring, and I could not feel my feet.

Kellan's hand closed around mine.

It was not a gentle hold.

It was the grip of a man who had decided the whole pack could watch.

"Come home," he said.

I went.

The house was quiet. He shut the door and leaned his back against it, and neither of us moved.

My knees finally gave. He caught me before I reached the floor, and I pushed his hands off.

"I'm not hurt," I said. "I'm not hurt, Kellan, I'm angry."

"Good."

"I have been angry for fifteen years, and I had nowhere to put it. Now it's all over the floor."

"Then put it on me."

I looked up.

He stood there with his arms open at his sides and my mother's words still on his face.

I crossed the room and put both hands flat on his chest.

I shoved him into the door so hard the frame rattled.

He did not fight it.

I did it again, and he let me.

The third time I stopped with my fists in his shirt and my forehead against his collarbone.

"I'm not done," I said.

"I know."

"I'm going to ask you for something, and you will not say sorry while you give it."

"Ask."

I lifted my head.

"I want you in the bed. I want your hands on me. I don't want to think about my father's face."

His breath went out of him in a rush.

"Rule three," he said, very low.

"I'm overruling it."

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