He wasn't the bully at training camp, and we're one of his commanders.He was supposed to be one of his brothers, and he was one of El’s mates.Shawn, we're supposed to show some sort of respect to him, at the very least, try not to upset him, if only for the sake of his mate.But he had to open his big, stupid mouth.And the moment that he opened his big stupid mouth, he regretted it, considering the fact that Marcus slammed him against the ground once more, his hands unrelenting this time as he gripped at his throat and Trip had to lunge forward to grab Marcus’s shoulder if only to remind him that he shouldn't be doing what he was doing.
“Think of El,” Trip hissed, and yet, Marcus already seemed to be thinking of her.
“Think of how she'll react if she hears that one of her mates is a former hunter and that he once wanted to kill everything that she loved,” Marcus snarled, usually the more empathetic out of all of the men, considering the fact that he was the one that El turned to for comfort most of the time, the one that she relied on the most.
Maybe that’s what made his words hurt more because Shawn knew that when Marcus, of all people, was the one to say them, then they were very likely true.He understood El in a way that many of them didn't, and he would happen to know what would upset her and what wouldn't.
“They struck first,” Marcus spat into Shawn’s face before his hands finally relented as the man pulled away, his eyes filled with nothing but malice and hatred as he looked upon the other shifter.“We didn't hunt them.No one went out of their way to hurt them.They struck first.We had to get rid of them because they were relentless, or at the very least, we had to try.But it's fuckers like you, shifters without morals, that have allowed them to survive,” Marcus roared, looking at Shawn with nothing but absolute loathing in his eyes.“I hope that for the rest of your life, you have to fucking sit here and remember that, to look at your daughter’s face and think about the world that you almost took away from her because you wanted to sit on your ass and whine about fairness when shifters shouldn’t even be used by the government like they were.Did you ever think about the guilt that those shifters had to live with?Did you ever think about the fact that every single night, they had to go to sleep with the taste of human flesh on their lips?No, you didn't because you are a selfish prick,” Marcus declared, turning away from Shawn, “and the older that you get, the more you're going to realize that.”
Shawn had no doubt about that, nor did he have any doubts that if he tried him again, he wouldn’t be as lucky.But, after a moment, it appeared like Marcus was done.He had pulled away from Shawn and averted his eyes from him, folding his arms and doing his best never to look upon the man, even as the steam of loathing practically came off of him.
Shawn knew that he had fucked up then, that he had taken one of the few close relationships that he had and ruined it.He and Marcus were almost friends, and it was beginning to look like they could be close in the end, but then he had to do this.Then he had to reveal that nasty little secret about himself, the one that he didn't want anyone to know about.The one that he had even tried to reveal but that had just slipped from between his lips.Regret stung heavily at the man, and he almost felt like he should apologize to Marcus for all the trouble that hunters caused.But that wasn't him, he wasn't like that.
“I stopped right before I was supposed to take my vow,” Shawn said with a swallow as if that could make up any of it to the man.The look on Marcus’s face indicated that he hardly cared about that.“I changed my mind.I had torn it apart.I realized that it was wrong,” Shawn said, but just realizing that what you had done in the past was wrong didn't change the fact that you had done it.Just apologizing for something that you had done didn't make people forgive you.He knew that he was old enough to learn that.Even if you change, that doesn't mean that other people have to start believing in you.
Shawn sighed as he pushed off of the ground and finally got up to his feet, brushing himself off and resigning himself to the older man's hatred for a while.He would find a way to mend the bridge that had broken between the two of them, but until then, he needed to focus.They all needed to focus.
“El is all that matters right now,” Trip interrupted, perhaps knowing that those were the very words that needed to be said at that moment, even though they were painful and reminded everyone of how much they’d fucked up.“We can keep fighting, or we can put on our big boy pants and pull ourselves together and go face this problem,” Trip said with a roll of his eyes, obviously deciding the side that he was going to take in this situation was neither of them, which Shawn supposed was the right move.
Especially considering the fact that he was as good as dead the moment Ryan figured out what he had done, and he doubted that Marcus would ever care to keep a secret from the pride leader when it was something of that nature.
But, leading the pack at that moment, he could show that he was still a trustworthy person, and so he pulled himself together.Straightening up to his full height and cracking his shoulders to get the tension out of them after he had been slammed down to the ground, Shawn tried to clear his mind and focus on the mission at hand, training his eyes on the horizon and looking for any sign that their path forward was impeded.He scanned the house once more, taking note of all the details for five minutes and then finally finding the evidence that he really hoped wouldn't be there.
“She is,” Shawn said after a moment, his stomach sinking down to the ground as his eyes were trained towards the manor and laid on one small, unsuspecting flag.A flag that showed up not just on the main house but rather on all of them.“Annabel is a hunter,” Shawn breathed, hardly able to believe the reality that he was facing.“They all are.Even El’s brothers.”
Chapter15
El was uncomfortable, to say the least.But that, she supposed, was a given.
El had never been overly happy at any one of her mother's formal functions, always feeling like she was the odd one out and like everyone else was in on a secret that she didn't know about, but at this one in particular?She swallowed, her head going from side to side as she took in the potential benefactors that she was hoping to convince to join her charities.
Yep, just judging by the abundance of fur coats and designer labels, there was little to no chance that these people would be helping her raise money for any cause.Not unless that cause made them look better, which was Annabel’s favorite thing to do.But, El had a certain feeling that looking better as a person wasn’t exactly the top priority of the eighteen extra guests who had joined them for Mother’s Day, their own children inexplicably nowhere in sight—as well as El’s six nephews, who were also notably absent.
All things considered, this was probably the most concerning Mother's Day lunch that she'd ever gone to, which was saying a lot because, in 1996, her mother had made the decision to take them on an African hunting trip for Mother's Day, insisting that it was the best way to honor her.El hadn’t managed to kill anything, but just remembering the sight of her brothers with guns and tone, dreaming of shooting big cats and other endangered animals, sort of made her feel a little sick.Almost as sick as the salmon that was placed on the plate in front of her, a salmon that she had to notice was unseasoned and tasted ungodly bland.
Apparently, she had been living in the lap of luxury, residing on a compound where people use spices.Honestly, El had almost forgotten how bad things were whenever she went home.
What was the saying?
Oh yeah, absence made the heart grow fonder.
That seemed to be a particularly accurate statement when it came to her home, which was twice as dreary as she remembered it being, and her mother twice as aggressive.Thankfully, the bulk of her anger was churned towards Meredith for daring to gain a few pounds, but every now and again, she would pointedly stab her fork in El’s direction and bring the whole table's attention to her supposed daughter as she criticized some portion of her appearance, prompting a growl from Ryan as he sat beside her, and yet not much else.Largely because El managed to restrain her mate by keeping her hand on his knee and squeezing it tightly, reminding him that, at the end of the day, they were supposed to be civilized people and that she had dealt with her mother before.Even though he had murmured under his breath a few times that if he had the opportunity, he would have killed her.
But…
El hated to admit it to herself as she sat at the table amongst all of those awful people, but every now and again, she looked over at Annabel, and she kind of admired her.It's been a long time since she had felt like that, but she was able to admit to herself that a small part of her might have loved Annabel, at least for the few seconds of praise she would give her every now and again, and the way that her eyes would go over to her, appraising her and occasionally finding something that she had done right.Maybe there was just something addictive about the older woman's attention, or maybe El genuinely did love her in her own fucked up sort of way.
Stranger things had happened.
After all, not that long ago, she had watched a man turn into a full-on lion and then insisted that she was also a lion, so who was she to scoff at the thought of actually loving her mother?
There were, after all, a few nice moments with her.Mainly when Annabel managed to let her guard down enough to actually begin to love El, but El supposed that you really couldn’t ask much more from a woman like that.And being honest with herself in a situation such as this, she did sort of admire the way that Annabel was able to command a room, making all of the pauses in conversation every now and again feel natural and setting everyone at ease—save for her victims, but…
El took a sip of her wine, swishing it around her mouth and mentally insisting to herself once again that things were not as overall awful as they could have been.After all, Annabel hardly locked her in her room or beat her daily or anything.Most of the time, she just tried to pretend that El wasn’t there, and when she couldn’t do that, she was somewhat civil to her.Plus, she reached out to El after she’d left the house, which was a lot more than most people could have expected from someone like Annabel.
Even though she wasn’t her mother, Annabel seemed to play the role, regardless of whether or not she was her actual mother, and El could appreciate that.What she couldn’t appreciate, however, was the company that Annabel decided to keep.
“So, you're in the restaurant business?”One of the guests, Jared, asked Ryan, obviously having sized him up, and decided that it would fluff the other man's ego if he were to cut Ryan down a hair or so.“Quite an interesting choice there.Most people stay away from food because it's not exactly a stable investment, what with most restaurants failing within the first two years, but I applaud you for having the bravery to do such a thing,” the man spoke, his voice taking on a tone of judgment as he obviously sought to demean Ryan, likely because Ryan was far younger and more attractive than him, and he didn't realize how successful Ryan was.“Now, what is the name of that quaint little restaurant that you run?”The man asked with the cock of his head, the corner of his mouth going up as he failed to hide his own amusement with a game that he was playing entirely one-sided.
