Chapter 69
Chapter 69
When we were kids, Silverfang was a small pack. Our parents were determined to become more powerful, and they prioritized it over everything, including us.
I was the firstborn son, so there was always more pressure on me than there was on Lance. With our age difference, he was always treated more gently.
Maybe that’s why his memories of Mom and Dad were so much more pleasant. He always talked as if he’d lost something precious. My feelings about it were far more complicated.
Our parents had been cold and demanding with me my entire life. Even now, thinking about them, I couldn’t find a single warm memory.
The only warmth from back then came from Felicity. She was my best and only friend, the only person who didn’t treat me like an Alpha in training or a disappointment.
As we grew older, we grew closer together, and I fell in love with her. It seemed inevitable, really. She was the only person who ever showed me any kindness, and also a beautiful woman. Of course I fell in love.
When we were teenagers and my parents started talking about finding my mate and producing an heir who would be even stronger and elevate the pack above what I was able to achieve, I couldn’t stand it.
The idea of having a child just for them to treat it the way they treated me made me sick to my stomach. The idea of marrying anyone besides Felicity broke my heart.
So at seventeen, we decided we were going to run away together and we did. We packed only what we could carry, and in the middle of the night, while my parents were busy with a lunar festival, we left.
We made it all the way into the Roguelands.
We had no solid plan for where we were going or how we were going to survive. We only knew that we wanted to be together. Nothing else seemed to matter. At least, not until they found us.
Or more accurately, until I found them.
The sound of my mother’s scream will never leave my mind.
Lance didn’t know the full extent of what happened. He only knew they’d been killed trying to bring me home. No one but Felicity knew the truth, because I’d never been able to bring myself to tell anyone else.
They’d been intercepted by rogues on their way to us, and for all their grand designs for improving Silverfang, they were never very strong.
By the time I fought off the rogues who were robbing them my mother was dead, and my father was mortally wounded.
It was all my fault. If I’d been faster, if I’d been stronger, or if I had just stayed home and accepted my responsibility, they wouldn’t have suffered like that.
I rubbed my temples and looked around at the office that used to be my father’s. I owed it to them to fulfill their dreams for our pack, and I tried so hard. Silverfang was so much more powerful and influential now than it had been when they died.
I’d even found the fated mate they had wanted me to find. But none of it seemed to be enough. The guilt just wouldn’t fade.
Lance was right to hate me. He was right that their deaths were my fault.
Nothing I did was ever going to make up for that, but Felicity had been the only constant source of compassion in
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Chapter 59
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my life, and no matter how much my guilt tore at me, I wasn’t willing to sacrifice her for it.
I wasn’t about to allow Lance to talk about her that way, and I wasn’t about to give
her up because of the elders’ beliefs in some goddess decreed match.
It didn’t matter that Ellie would be hurt. She was just one more person I was
sacrificing for my own selfish needs.
That’s just the kind of man I was, right?
Why try to change now?
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