“She’s your nothing.” He made a slicing motion with his hand. “Do you understand?”
“No, I don’t.” Shaking her head, anger welling up inside her, she took a step towards him. “I don’t understand any of it.” Forcing herself to take a breath and try to calm down, Sara squared her shoulders. “I thought you were going over there to talk about our potential bond and agree for us to go into one another’s territory without needing permission.”
He laughed, the sound harsh and bitter.
Sara ignored him and forged ahead. “Well, I’m not only a part of your pack. When I tell Mum and Grandad, they’ll both—”
“Sara.” He silenced her, his tone laced with alpha power. Sara flinched back as though he’d slapped her. “When you came back here to live with my pack, you agreed to adhere to pack rules. And I’m your alpha, Sara. I’ve always been your alpha.”
Shit.
“You’re also my father and I trusted you.” She fought back tears.This can’t be happening.“I thought youlovedme.”
“I do,” he said, putting his hands on her shoulders, and for a moment she saw the love that she knew he held for her. He looked away and sighed. “Which is why I can’t agree to this… this…” His nose scrunched up in distaste.
“Bond?” Sara hissed.
“This foolish notion.”
Sara opened her mouth to object, but he held his hand up.
“Your grandmother was chosen to be on the alpha council. That’s as good as royalty by shifter standards.” Running a hand through his hair, he blew out a breath. “I won’t let you throw it all away.”
“Throw what away?” She gestured in the direction of Rachel’s territory. “I have a potential bond with an alpha’s daughter. It shouldn’t matter who it’s with because a bond is special regardless. How can you be disappointed? I want this.” She hugged her hands to her chest, where the ache for Rachel simmered. “I need it.”
“No.”
“Why?” She yelled the word at him, shrugging out of his grip. The urge to reach out and shake the answer out of him almost too much to ignore. “Why don’t you want me to be happy?”
“I do. But not at the expense of your heritage.” He met Sara’s narrow-eyed gaze unflinchingly. “You and your brothers have a bloodline the envy of many, and you can do so much better than a childless union with a beta from the Penwith pack.”
“Rachel.”
He frowned.
“Her name’s Rachel Tregarrak.” She took a step away from him, desperate to put some space between them. “I’m not some sort of… of broodmare. Who’s to say I even want children?”
“Of course you want—”
“No! You want me to have them, but for all the wrong reasons.” She felt the wall against her back, cold and unwelcoming. Like everything else in that moment. “We’re not living in the dark ages, Dad. You can’t trade me for land or… whatever you think you could get for me—”
“Don’t be so melodramatic. I just want you to do better than a bloody Cornish pack in the middle of nowhere.”
Sara stared at him, incredulous. “But that’s what we are.”
For a moment she saw a flash of hurt in his eyes before his expression hardened again. “And your mother left me because it wasn’t enough.” He waved his arm out wide. “This place wasn’t enough for her.”
That wasn’t true, and Sara knew it. But even as angry as she was, she couldn’t look her father in the eye and tell him the reason her mother had fled back to her father’s pack was because she was suffocating under his need for control and his closed-mindedness. Her mother was a free spirit, accepting of all things like her grandmother, and her father’s refusal to alter his outdated thinking drove her to despair.
Walking over to the table, he pulled out a chair and sank into it. “I’m your alpha, Sara, and I’m forbidding you from seeing Rachel Tregarrak from this moment forth until your potential bond has faded to nothing.”
Her sharp intake of breath made him glance her way, but his expression never faltered. This wasn’t the father she knew. Or it was a side he’d kept well-hidden until now.
“If you try and contact her in any way, then I will be forced to take matters further.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve given you an order. As is my right as alpha. If you disobey that order, I am within my rights to banish you from my pack—”
