Chapter 37: Kismet/The Dangerous Daughter

Aziz(Through Alastair’s Eyes):

Briskly, we walked away from the forest Merari. At first, we all headed in the direction of the packhouse, when Alastair seemed to think better of it. His mind…our mind was going a mile a minute with Merari hovering so close; the woman that we never thought we’d see again, walking right there. Right there only feet away from us. It was evident that Alastair was about to jump out of his skin with her nearness. Me as well, for that matter.

Extraordinary, how one single woman could provoke such an anomalous attraction toward another. Not just another, however…a human. Merari was a human. Or at least, she wasn’t like any inhuman that Alastair or I had come into contact with.

There were a rare few humans like Merari-their origin unknown, but those rare few possessed one common element of each human was that they in some way involved gold blood. It was a shock to the system seeing her use shift as she did, let alone possessing such power to literally stop my transformation in its tracks. She truly, was an enigma, Merari Van Doren.

“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Ms. Merari,” by the sonance of my beta’s echo when he spoke that Alastair was still dazed by our ex-lover’s presence. But her voice seemed to break him out of his reverie when he finally addressed his beta.

“Slaughter,” Alastair finally stopped. “Head back to the packhouse. I’d like to speak with Ms. Van Doren alone first. I fear we have much to discuss,” Alastair and I immediately felt all of his attention fall on her. I could not resist honing all of my senses on her.

Her long red curls were dark in hue but as her mane fell against her rich brown skin displayed a glow in the moonlight. She was certainly as beautiful as I remembered, and the leer that fell across her plum...plump lips only further magnified it.

“We certainly do, alpha,” said Merari.

“Sure, alpha,” our beta obliged, a seemingly amused smirk on his face as he seemed to catch the sneer on her face as well. It was apparent to us all that she was quite bitter and had a lot to say.

We both nodded to one another before Alastair requested a favor. “Let Harlyn know that I will be there in a few hours.”

Slaughter nodded. “May not have to worry about Harlyn’s concern for you. I’m sure she’ll be more concerned for herself tonight,”

“And why is that?” Alastair asked Toran out of curiosity. He had been so out of it, he had forgotten why Harlyn would be out so late in the evening in the first place. Not like she had been a frequent partier since what happened to Val.

“Tonight, the three future heirs of our pack are out on a mission with delta John to see how they carry themselves in the field and if they are strong enough to lead the other future pack members.” I reminded him with exasperation. It was exhausting sometimes, being the counterpart to someone so brooding and grief-stricken as Alastair could be.

After Toran repeated what I’d just voiced in the back of Alastair’s mind, Alastair asked, “It isn’t too hard-this mission…is it?”

“It’s simple patrol, alpha,” answered Slaughter. “And since things have been quiet for a while and his daughter is out there as well. I’m sure they’ll be fine,” reassured Toran before starting for the packhouse. As he left, I felt Alastair sync with me to communicate with our beta. “Don’t…tell her about…this, okay?”

“I hadn’t planned on it, alpha,” he said and then lifted his hand to signal goodbye.

Alastair:

As Toran walked away, I reluctantly turned to the graceful rage of Merari and swallowed the lump in my throat before asking, “Shall we?”

Without another word, she walked toward the path of my home. “I assume you wish to continue this conversation at your home,” she said.

“And I assume you know where I live,”

Yet again, instead of answering me, she glanced at me with an almost sarcastic grin before continuing forward. “Going to take that as a yes,” I murmured and followed her to the house.

Before I caught up with her, however, I sensed that I needed to speak with my wolf counterpart. Though I hardly needed to put in work to figure it out, I knew that Aziz was impatient with me.

“Aziz,” I addressed through our telepathic connection.

“Alastair,” He countered in short.

“I know that I have not been the easiest person to be bonded to since….” still it was to hard mutter this-even in my mind. “Aziz, I am trying to do better and I apologize for-”

“Wade, I am here through everything and I always will be as long as I am permitted to be. We have been through worse. I appreciate your apology, but right now…we have…someone that we need to talk to.”

“He’s right,” I heard Merari say as we kept walking. When I looked up, there she was staring at me. “We have too much to be catching up on for you to be lagging behind, alpha.”

She was right, and so was Aziz. It was hard not to admittedly be overwhelmed and even intimidated by seeing Merari again. We certainly didn’t end on the best of terms. However, I matched her pace, nevertheless, and stood as her equal while we continued to walk as she apparently did not want to take the quick route back to the house by using my truck.

“You…you’re right,” I confessed with a small smile.

“I know,” she said, still walking backward for a time though her gaze was on mine. Then she started swiftly face-forward again, her magnetic stare shifting to the ground.

As we walked in silence, I realized that there was so much that needed to be said it seemed that neither one of us knew where to start.

“You look, Rari,” I complimented as both Aziz and I had been thinking this the entire time but didn’t seem to think of the best time to say it.

Her head lifted slightly, her eyes shifting to my direction but not up at me. I wanted her to look at me but I wouldn’t force her. She had a lot of unresolved frustrations toward me and this resentment was warranted.

“Thanks…I guess,” she shrugged my compliment off, wounding my pride. “Seems you’ve been…surviving since Valene’s death.”

“Surviving,” I scoffed, shaking my head. My attention shifted toward the night sky and immediately a harsh chuckle left my lips. “That…is literally all that I’m doing,” I confessed.

“Hm, that’s sad,” Merari said this but the tone in her voice hinted at further cynicism.

“It is…far past sad, Merari,” I corrected, anxiously running my hand through my bear as we continued in a quick yet casual stride for an inhuman.

“I…completely agree with you.”

Her eyes lowered and I sensed the sullenness emanating from her. “You were close to her, I see,” I remarked and looked forward. “I imagine you created quite the bond having been a part of her life since birth. It’s not surprising that you’ve grown to care about her.”

“Care? What-” she looked at me incredulously. Apparently, I’d said something wrong. “You still don’t get it,” she closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath, shaking her head. “Are you really that daft, Alas,” she whispered under her breath as we arrived at the house.

“Rari, what are you-”

“Can you just…open…the door please?!” she snapped at me.

I had upset her and didn’t even understand why. However, knowing that I was treading on thin ice and that Merari seemed to be more powerful than I realized, I did as she asked.

“She couldn’t be,” I heard Aziz whisper in the back of my mind, but ignorance did not allow me to register it at the time. No, at the time, I just wanted to get down to the bottom of why she was so upset.

As soon as I unlocked and opened the front door, Merari rushed past me and into the house. “Merari!” I quickly went after her, slamming the door behind me. “Stop!” I finally snapped, and with a quickness, she did as I demanded.

“What, Alastair!?”

“What? What?!” I spewed angrily. “You show up out of the blue-and-I am…so glad to see you again! Don’t get me wrong, but you-it is you who showed up on my bloody doorstep and sook me out, not the other bloody way around here! I need to know-”

“You didn’t seek me out,” she rushed toward me angrily. “Because you thought I was dead!” she spat. “I’m sure had you realized that I was alive, you would sook to bed me at least one more time!” she exclaimed, tears at the brim of her angry and alluring eyes. “It seemed that was all that I was good for, right?!” she snapped, shaking violently as she said this and when she did, her anger ignited life into the shut-off lights in the living room. Bulbs shattered and a sofa moved.

“Merari,” I started to grab her shoulders to try and help her calm down when she lifted her arms pushing away from me before I could even touch her.

She backed away, closing her eyes and taking deep breaths, muttering something under her breath, and gradually the erratic activity around us began to stop.

When she finally calmed down, I had to try again. I had to let her know that she was wrong about her assumptions of me. Again, I reached for her, gently placing my hands on her shoulders.

“Rari, I did…you meant so much more to me than a bedmate,” I said, my hand gingerly trailing down her arm to find her hand. “You still do. I…I have never forgotten you…even when I should have. Why…why do you think I gave Valene your name,”

She scoffed, and dropped her stare. “How fitting,” she murmured.

“Merari, please…I…” it bothered me more than it probably should have when she could not seem to look me in the eye. I placed my finger against her chin, lifting. “Look at me,” and though it was visibly hard for her, she did. “I…am…so happy to see you and I-I want-I need you to understand that even now…after all of this time, what seeing you does to me.” Before I could stop myself, my lips were moving in toward hers. There was a magnetic pull to her that I could never control.

“Don’t…Alas,” she almost whimpered and it nearly made me go haywire.

“I can’t help it,” I confessed as my thumb ran the length of her soft lips.

My lips nearly made it to the target of hers when she immediately pulled away. “No!” she pushed away from me and walked off. “No! You will not do this to me again!”

“Merari-”

“Caris, Alastair! Or have you forgotten?!” She turned to me angrily. “The first call you receive from your lying, cheating, wife! You abandon me! She played games with you-”

“She was sick, Rari!” I could not believe that she was being so harsh toward my mate.

“You’re damn right, she was sick!” she hissed at me. “She tried to kill me…Alastair….she…almost…killed me! And where were you?! Huh? You-” she started to get angry again. She stopped and I knew why; she had become so enraged again that she was about to lose control. So, she stopped talking and took another deep breath and as she did, I took that spare moment to speak my peace.

“Rari…I…I did know that she was trying to lure me away from your side. I did not know that she was trying to hurt you. I just…” With I sigh, I admitted my fault. “I was…I felt an obligation to make sure that Caris was okay. We’d lost so many children and…we both knew why. I couldn’t…I couldn’t leave her like that. And…so when…when she called that night, I just…I thought I-”

“Stop,” Merari interrupted. “You loved her. Just admit it,” she shrugged and stepped toward me. “You loved her.”

“I did,” I confessed. “But it was more to it than that. I’m afraid you wouldn’t even understand because you’re-”

“What? A human?” she scoffed, a stray tear falling down her cheek. “Not anymore,” she bitterly said and as she said this, her eyes darkened, and her teeth elongated. She laughed. “You see…after…she found me, she gutted me…like a fish. Then she set my house ablaze,” Merari took a shaky breath and honestly it was hard to watch her relive the night that we both thought was the last of her life. “After she was done…she left me there…lying…choking in a pool of my own…golden blood,” she said. “It drew a…a beast…a beast so… desperate for a taste, that they ran through the fire to get to me. The beast bit me, and tried to finish me off. By the miracle of whoever was watching over me, I managed to kill it right before…I died. And when I woke up, I was no longer in that house. I was no longer gutted, and I was no longer…well…dead,”

“Merari,”

“I pleaded with her, you know. I knew that I was pregnant, and…of course, I wouldn’t dare tell her, but turns out I didn’t have to. She could smell the abomination growing inside of me,” She chuckled. “And that only angered her further.”

“Merari, I-”

“Stop,” she cut me off again. At this point, she obviously did not want to hear what I had to say. “Did you…shed one tear…when you thought I’d died? Did you even…wonder what happened to me?”

I did not want to answer that question because we both knew that it would be an answer that she did not want to hear. “I had my suspicions,” I admitted to her.

“Cut the crap, Alastair. You did not have suspicions! You knew!” She snapped. “You knew what she did to me! You-” her voice broke and she couldn’t finish her sentence, and honestly, I nearly broke down with her. It was so hard to hear what I had done to her.

“Yes! Yes, I did know! I knew, Merari,” I rushed to her. “After…I…I…things just weren’t right…they weren’t. I went by your house and I saw…the aftermath and…I knew that somehow, Caris had done something wrong. She had gone too far and…I knew that I had to do something but I...I just couldn’t kill her! She was lost and…it…I needed to save her. That is why I went to that orphanage. That is why I adopted Valene! I needed Caris to come back before she did something else that she-that we both would regret-” Merari tried to get away from me again but I would not allow it this time. “And I mourned you, Merari Van Doren! I mourned you for months! Cried for you…for months. I could-I was broken when I lost you and…I couldn’t even admit my grief until now.”

She was speechless, it seemed, and subtly surprised but she did not respond to my confession. Not how I wished. Merari sniffled, wiped the tears from her eyes, and pulled away from me.

“That doesn’t matter anymore. That past can never be retrieved. So we both should leave it there,” she sniffled. “Anyway,” she said turning to face me again finally once she got herself together. “I didn’t come here to hash up the past and I apologize for doing so. I came here to find our daughter. I just need your help.”

“You keep…saying that we have a daughter, Merari but I just don’t see how that’s possible. And even if it is, why are just telling me about her-”

“We’d been together for two months, Alastair,” she said. “Obviously contraception did not work,” Merari sarcastically remarked. I was pregnant between that time, and she just…grew so quickly when I was turned. To be honest, I thought for sure that your mate had killed her,” her hand touched her flat stomach as if she were recalling the time she spent pregnant with our would-be daughter. Her gaze then shifted up at me and immediately her smile was gone. “And I did tell you…just…not in the traditional way that you’d probably prefer,”

“What…what are you talking about Merari? You never-”

“Led you to the beautiful little newborn at that crib in the orphanage that night?” she rhetorically asked. “Convinced you…to take her home? Though I did not have to do much as it seemed that you’d bonded to her as soon as you saw her. You never wondered why I guess.”

As she put it all together a migraine surfaced between Aziz and myself, me finally realizing what my wolf meant before I came into the house earlier. “No…no, no, no, no, no, no, no! That can’t-No!” I backed away, the ache in my heart growing steadily. I was so blinded by my own overwhelming thoughts that…I didn’t put two and two together. “You-”

“That’s right,” she sighed. “I couldn’t keep her…because…life had gotten extremely dangerous after she was born. I needed her safe and as much as it repulsed me to do it, I knew that she would be safer with no one but you. I had planned to swallow my pride but…my fear told me no. If Caris was still around and she realized that she didn’t finish the job, she’d no doubt try.” she said and shrugged.

“I would never have let that happen, Merari.” And I couldn’t believe that she thought otherwise.

“Better than sorry,” she quipped. “So…again…my guardian angel seemed to be watching over me…because I had finally made the heartbreaking decision to keep her at that orphanage. I’d come by when I could but…it was days at a time when I was able to and I was…starting to break more and more when I finally had to leave. Then…you show up,” tears were still falling down her eyes as she snickered. “Call it kismet, I guess. But you did show up when I needed you.” she nodded. “If nothing else, I am grateful for that,” she confessed. “And that little mate of yours had to raise the little abomination that was growing inside of me.” she smiled. “She turned beautiful, strong…more than…I could have ever asked for her to be despite her circumstance.” she looked at me. “I guess I should thank you for that too.”

“Valen…Valene is m-mine?” I could hardly get the words out but her silence was all the confirmation that I needed. “She’s…she’s my daughter,” I began to cry without even knowing it at first. “Valene…wh-” I then remembered Merari mentioning why she had shown up in the first place. “Wh-she’s alive?!”

“Yes,” she answered. “And…she’s alive…but she’s not well, Alastair.”

“What?” my concern quickly surfaced. “What do you mean?”

“That night…she died. She was turned like me…but…she’s angry-she’s…she’s dangerous, Alastair. And we need to find her before she…”

“We will. I swear it. Come hell or high water we will get Valene back.”