(Alex’s POV)
“Are you f*****g kidding me?” I growled as he stared at my mother for the first time in almost fifteen years. “Hello? Is that all you have to say?” She went to speak, but I held up my hand to stop her. I couldn’t deal with this right now. I had tried to not let my mother abandoning us all those years ago affect me. I got that what was happening was hell. But why didn’t she take Louise, Jamie, and me with her? Why did she leave us with the monsters? My thoughts were swirling, and I was feeling like this big open room was closing in on me. I needed to get away from here. I needed room to think.
“No, actually I don’t care. I thought you were dead.” I spun on my heel and headed for the door.
“I was dead,” She called out behind me and I stopped in my tracks, “Or at least that was your father’s intention.” It felt like a bulldozer of emotion had hit me. I turned back around to face her.
“What?” She looked around the room before her gaze settled back on me. My head and heart hurt. She looked exactly as I remembered, like the last fifteen years had never happened, or she had been in suspended animation.
“Can we talk?” she asked, and then looked around the room again. “In private, I mean?” I looked at the others, who were trying their best not to stare. I felt the slight smile at the corner of my lips as my friends were trying not to intrude. Then I looked back at my mother and nodded. She smiled slightly, and the look of relief flitted across her face. She gestured behind her, and I nodded to Harper and Elias before following her.
She led the way down a hallway into what looked like an underground garden. It was all dark brick walls with a lake and a small waterfall coming out of the wall. There were plants up the wall and all around. Despite knowing we were a good few levels underground, I could have sworn that I could feel the sun on my skin. My mother gestured to a bench by the widest part of the lake and I sat down and looked into the water. I was surprised to see large fish swimming around just under the surface.
“I didn’t leave,” my mother said after a long silence. I looked up at her and saw that she was staring into the water as well. She finally looked up at me and I could see unshed tears in her eyes.This content © Nôv/elDr(a)m/a.Org.
“I was going to leave. I was going to take you and your brother and sister with me,” she said. “I had everything planned. I contacted the Supernatural Council and offered information for them giving me sanctuary. I had enough information on The Circle that I was sure that they would help me, help us.” She took a deep breath and looked into the water again. “That was my big mistake.”
“How?” I asked quietly, and she looked back up at me.
“Nathaniel,” she replied. I realised what had happened. My mother didn’t know that Nathaniel was at the Council. “He had only been there a few weeks from what I gathered. But I guess as soon as he heard that someone had information on The Circle he investigated.” She shrugged. “I wasn’t sure what was happening when your father brought me to Alpha Daniel. Or not until it was too late.” A tear slipped down her face and she closed her eyes. Something like pain crossed her face as I watched her remember. “They raped me and beat me and left me for dead in a ditch outside the pack borders. I really thought I would have died if they hadn’t found me.” I was fuming. I wished my bastard of a father was still alive, so I could kill him slowly and painfully. Then something clicked from what my mother said.
“They?” I asked, and she looked at me again. “Who are they?”
“The Guard of the Order,” she said, like it explained everything.
“The what of the what?” I asked, and she smiled.
“The Divine Order has their own elite trained guards. They are centuries old and very dedicated to the cause.” She looked back into the water and I reached over to take her hand. She looked down at my hand before continuing on with her story.
“The Guard had heard of Circle involvement in the pack and had been monitoring discreetly. It was them that found me in the ditch. They brought me back to the Order and looked after me, helped me to heal.” She smiled. “I don’t know what I would have done without Brin.”
“Brin?” I raised an eyebrow and my mother blushed.
“He is the Guard Commander,” she said. “We became very close during my healing.” Then she turned and looked at me, her eyes wide.
“I promise Alex, I never once stopped thinking of you, Louise, and Jamie.” She had an almost pleading tone in her voice. “I wanted to come and get you all so many times, but Brighid and Drake said that it was important that we didn’t alert Midnight Moon to their presence. I had no idea how important that pack was. Or that there was a seal there.” She looked down at her hands again. “And I was afraid. I had nightmares about what your father would do to me if he knew I was alive. What they would all do.” I growled at the thought. I knew exactly how twisted the Alpha, Beta, and my father were. I saw the effect of what they did on our former Luna and on Caroline Stokes, the Beta’s mate. I knew I was expected to fall in line and continue the tradition, along with Damien and Colton. I hated it and had no intention of being involved in such sadistic means. When I found out that Harper was mated to Colton, I was devastated. I liked Harper a lot. I even kissed her once. That was how I found out that Colton was her mate. He already knew, even though she was sixteen and not so subtly, warned me away from her. But the thought of not only her but also my own sister, who had already been promised to Damien, the Alpha heir, being dragged into this mess made me feel sick inside. I couldn’t blame my mother for wanting to get away from that.
I grimaced at the thought that so much could have been avoided if only my mother could have taken us with her. She must have known, because she gripped my hand tighter and I glanced at her.
“How bad was it?” she asked, and I grimaced again.
“It was really bad,” I said and her face fell. Tears slipped from her eyes and she covered her face with her hand and sobbed into it. I pulled her into a hug and she sobbed into my chest. After a while, she looked up at me, her eyes rimmed with red.
“I need to know,” she said, and I shook my head.
“You really don’t want to.”
“I know I don’t want to, but I failed to protect you as your mother. I need to know what happened.”
I took a deep breath before l began recounting the details of the last fifteen years or so. I told her about Harper and Colton and what our father did to both Louise and me. The more I told her, the more upset she got. I told her how Elias killed my father and whilst I wasn’t there to see it, as I was banned from the pack dinners then, I had all the details from Louise. After I had finished everything, my mother cried some more and begged me to forgive her. I couldn’t forgive what wasn’t there to forgive, though. I explained none of this was her fault. The people who were at fault were now dead, and she was safe. The thought that my mother had lived the last fifteen years in hiding, and in fear of what my father would do if he found out that she was still alive, made me angry. And knowing that he lied not only to his own children, making us think that our own mother would abandon us, but also to the entire pack and putting her name in bad standing.
We ended up just sitting in silence together as the many thoughts swirled around my head, as I tried to process what I now knew. I didn’t know what to do with the information, but it was a start to have my mother back.