MATED TO FATHER, FATED TO SONS-Chapter 30: THE FATHER

AMARIS

I hated my father.

That was one truth I had come to terms with. Whatever daddy issues that seemed to be going on in my life right now and the need for outward validation was linked to him.

He made me feel small, irrelevant and useless. He always reminded me how he never wanted me and I was a mistake.

But there was this one time, when he came back from a battle and had won and was happy, I came to greet him and he bragged about me to his friends how beautiful I was.

"She looks like a fucking goddess, don’t you think?" He had smiled and his friend nodded in agreement .

Then he added, "Which of you would like to fuck her," his eyes darkened. He was clearly drunk but those lustful sick fuck called men were about to pounce on me like vultures. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

I had to run and hide in my room that night.

But this sick thing about that night was that whenever I think of it, I don’t remember it as the night that my Father had offered me for sex to his friends like a prostitute to celebrate victory.

No, I remembered it as the night he called me beautiful and that I looked like a goddess. That is how fucked up I was.

Now standing here at the news of his death.

I thought about the belt, about standing naked in the courtyard, about all the times he had looked at me like I was something disgusting he had scraped off his shoe. I thought about the dungeon, the starvation, the casual cruelty that had shaped every day of my life until I was sent here.

He was gone and I was supposed to feel something but all I felt was numb.

"Amaris," Corvin’s voice cut through the fog in my head. "Did you hear me?"

I looked up at him and his face was still unreadable but there was a tension in his shoulders that had not been there before, like he was waiting for me to break down or scream or do something that would require him to deal with emotions he clearly had no interest in dealing with.

"Yes," I managed, my voice coming out flat and empty. "I heard you."

"The funeral was this morning," he added, and that piece of information hit differently because it meant while I had been here, while Ryker had his hands between my legs and I had been falling apart for entirely different reasons, my father had been lowered into the ground and covered with dirt.

I had not been there, I had not said goodbye, not that I would have known what to say if I had been given the chance.

"Why didn’t you tell me sooner?" I asked, and I genuinely wanted to know because it seemed like the kind of thing you told someone before their father was already buried.

Corvin shifted his weight and for a second he almost looked human, almost looked like a man who had made a decision he was not entirely comfortable with. "Because I did not want you distracted before the engagement," he answered honestly. "You need to be focused tomorrow, you need to perform your role correctly, and grief makes people unpredictable."

Of course, everything came back to duty and performance and making sure I did not embarrass him in front of his pack. My father was dead and Corvin’s main concern was whether I could smile pretty enough at a party.

"Darius," I repeated, letting the name sit heavy on my tongue. My oldest brother, the one who had locked me in closets and laughed while I screamed to be let out, the one who used to trip me during training and then report me for being clumsy.

He was Alpha now and that meant the Stormshadow pack was in even worse hands than before because at least my father’s cruelty had limits, Darius had always been creative with his.

"He will be bringing his Beta and a few pack members tomorrow," Corvin explained, moving back toward the door like this conversation was over whether I was ready for it to be over or not. "You will greet them appropriately and you will not cause a scene."

"Appropriately," I echoed, and a laugh bubbled up in my throat that tasted like hysteria. "My father just died and you want me to smile at my brother like we are one big happy family."

Corvin turned to look at me and his eyes were cold again, any hint of discomfort gone. "I want you to do your job," he corrected. "Your personal feelings about your family are irrelevant to your role here."

He opened the door and stepped into the hallway but paused before leaving completely, his hand still on the doorframe.

"And Amaris," he added without looking back at me. "Tomorrow you represent me, you represent this pack, so whatever grief you are feeling, whatever anger, keep it buried until after the guests leave. Do you understand?"

"Yes Alpha Corvin," I responded automatically, the words coming out like they had been programmed into me from birth.

He left without another word and I stayed on the floor listening to his footsteps fade down the hallway. The room was too quiet and too bright and I could not decide if I wanted to cry or laugh or scream so I just sat there staring at nothing while my brain tried to process that my father was gone.

Dead men did not hurt you, dead men could not drag you into courtyards or swing belts or call you mistakes.

But dead men also could not apologize, could not change, could not look at you one day and decide maybe you were worth loving after all.

Not that my father ever would have but some stupid broken part of me had always held onto that possibility like it was something precious.

Now that possibility was buried six feet under and I was alone with a pack of wolves who wanted to use me and a mate bond that felt more like a curse than a blessing and an engagement party tomorrow where I would have to smile at my brother and pretend everything was fine.

My father was dead and I did not know if I was an orphan or finally free.