That’s when my mom started to grow frantic. “You don’t understand the whole story, Millie. It’s complicated. All I can say is you are a part of something so special and important. I know you think you belong with those mutts, but?—”
My heart constricted at her foul use of the term “mutt” to describe the amazing men who’d banded together to keep me safe when they had absolutely no reason to.
“Don’t youdarecall them that!” I snarled angrily. “These men have done more for me in these last few days than my own blood family has done in all the years since you left me.”
Sensing she’d misstepped, my mother tried a different tack then. “I was in your position when I was young, baby. I didn’t understand the way the world worked. I know that it feelslike Ethan and those other wares are connected to you somehow, but it’s a pale comparison to what you’ll feel here in Alaska with the Tupilaq pack. Your true blood family.”
I’m not sure what had caused my mother to so willingly drink the poisoned Kool-Aid, but whatever the reason, I wasn’t taking a swig any time soon.
“If family meant so much to you,Jenny,” I used her name because I wanted her to know just how far from family she was to me in this moment, “you wouldn’t have abandoned yours.”
“That’s not fair, Millie!” My mother passionately argued. “If you would just come home and listen to reason, I could explain it all to you. I promise. It’ll make sense once you see everything for yourself.”
“If you could explain yourself, you’d do it over the phone right now when it matters, or you could have done it years ago,” I fired back. “But you can’t. You’re scrambling. You’re trying to convince me there’s some big answer that I don’t know or understand. There isn’t. I’ve already met your ambassador from the Tupilaq pack. He threatened to slaughter my mate and his brothers and force me to submit to him! After that, I’m not interested in getting to know anyone else from your hateful cult.”
“Your mate?” My mother spluttered, like that was all she’d heard from my entire speech. “Did you say that to Osyrius?” She actually sounded panicked by the very idea. “No wonder he acted so poorly. He’s yourtruemate, Millie. You’ve been promised to him since birth!”
It was disgusting how she protected that animal while so casually overlooking my fear, anger, and grief over beingambushed and threatened at work. “Wrong again, Jenny. Ethan is my mate. We’ve already bonded.”
I shouldn’t have taken such pleasure in saying that, but I did. It might be petty of me, but I think I’d earned an ounce or two of that at this point.
“He’s bitten and knotted you!?” The outrage in my mother’s voice was palpable.
I blushed even darker but refused to back down. “Yes, he’s knotted me. Not that it’s any of your business.”
My mother sounded like she’d put her hand over the receiver and was trying to calm someone else down in the background. When her voice came back over the speaker, she wasn’t quite so agitated as before.
“So he hasn’t bitten your throat yet?” She asked in a desperate sort of way that put my teeth on edge.
Bitten me? Of course he hadn’t bitten me. Why in the world would that be so important?
Ethan spoke then, having stayed out of this conversation between mother and daughter for the entirety of this epic battle of wills.
“Jenny, this is Ethan,” he interrupted, his power and strength singing over the line.
“Ethan, how could you have done this to my child?” My mother hissed over the line. “Calvin would be so ashamed of you right now. To take advantage of our daughter when you knew she’d been promised to someone else.”
A micro expression of pain skittered across Ethan’s face at her chastisement, but it vanished just as quickly as it had appeared.
“You want to talk to me about what Calvin would or wouldn’t have wanted, Jenny?” He volleyed back. “I don’t think you have any right to talk to me about my best friend. You gave up that right when you turned tail and ran back to Alaska putting your daughter in arm’s reach of the very people you ran from.”
On the defensive, my mother argued, “It’s complicated, Ethan. You know that. Millie might be a new ware, but you aren’t. There are rules, duties, expectations when you belong to a pack. I was young and overwhelmed. I thought I was in love, and I made a mistake I’ll never be able to live down. You might not live as a pack ware, but you know what it’s like.”
Ethan’s face hardened at her backhanded slight about his “mutt” pack. “Is there anything else you’d like to tell your daughter before we end this call, Jenny? Think carefully, because it might be the last time you have the chance to speak your piece.”
“Don’t you dare hang this phone up, Ethan!” My mother ground out. “You can’t keep my daughter from me. You don’t have the right!”
I was done. Like a child, a very sad one, I’d wanted this to work. I’d hoped beyond hope that my mother could be half the parent my father had been and want to see me happy. But that was nothing more than a pipe dream, a silly, childish wish that would never come true no matter how much I might want it to.
“Ethan’s not keeping me from you, Jenny. You did that all yourself. Now, do us all a favor and go back to pretending you’re dead. I know that’s what I’ll be doing,” I quipped before hitting the end button and killing the call.
The room was dead silent as we all processed what had just happened. I know I wasn’t the only one reeling. We all had different reasons for why the exchange had wounded us, but we were all wounded nonetheless by my mother’s horrible words. The word “mutt” had cut all those present deeply. These men, not by any fault of their own, had lost their packs. Reminding them of that like it was somehow a slight on their characters was beyond cruel.
Of course it was Flint who broke the silence when he said, “So, that was intense.”
I could have laughed, if I wasn’t so upset. “Yeah, it was.”
Ethan didn’t say anything, he simply stood with me in his arms like I weighed no more than a feather. “Millie and I need to talk about some things upstairs. When we’re done, we’ll reconvene as a pack and discuss what we’re going to do next.”
