I knew this might happen. The pack would try every dirty trick in the book to draw Millie in like a spider does an unsuspecting fly to its web.
Although I was her mate, and her alpha, I wasn’t Millie’s father. I couldn’t tell her what to do. I might not want her to listen to Jenny’s desperate pleas to come home, but I wouldn’t strip her of her free will, either. Being an alpha wasn’t about absolute control. It was about proving you were man enough to lead. This was Millie’s decision. If she needed help making it, I’d talk her through it. If not, I’d stand mutely by and give her my full support. Pure and simple.
Millie sucked in a deep breath. The air was clean and crisp, as she chewed over her options. “Let’s hear what she has to say. If I don’t like it, we leave.”
CHAPTER 17
Millie
My mother was sitting at a two-person table in the corner of the room diagonal to our party. She looked just as I remembered. Beautiful, graceful, and sad.
It was as if she’d just stepped out of the pages of my memory into the real world, and I was both elated and terrified. Elated, because she was still my mom and I loved her, had missed her, despite our complicated history over her abandonment of me. And terrified, because I knew what, and who, she represented. The Tupilaq pack. The family she’d left me for. Who she wanted to be with, regardless of whatever she might claim tonight.
Pulling out the empty chair, I sat opposite my mother. Glancing over my shoulder at Ethan, I noted his handsome face was tight with concern. My amazing mate was worried for me but also understood exactly why I needed to do this.All the men at our table did, including Laurence. They were in a unique position to understand complicated family dynamics in a way few others were. That’s why our family had bonded so well. The pain and loss of our past had united us in a way that few others could understand and empathize with.
“Thank you for meeting with me,” my mother timidly began. “I wasn’t sure you would, after our last phone call.”
That had been pretty bad. But part of me thought my mother had been influenced by whoever was sitting beside her when we’d talked. Although she was an adult who made her own decisions, it was clear to me she wasn’t calling the shots. And from what Flint had said, females had almost no power in the Tupilaq pack. Somebody else was controlling her. I suspected Osyrius’s father, the alpha of their pack, was heavily involved in whatever my mother did.
I cleared my throat and stared at the woman who resembled the one I looked at in the mirror every day. “Flint said whatever you wanted to tell me was urgent.”
“It is,” she quickly agreed, “I-,” she started to speak, but our waitress stopped by then with a pitcher of water.”
“Can I start you two off with some drinks or appetizers?” the young girl inquired. Not waiting for a response, she quickly filled the glasses at our tables from the icy pitcher in her hands.
“I’ll have a glass of whatever the house red wine is,” my mother politely ordered, her hands shaking as she took a long gulp from her water glass.
“Same,” I replied, not caring what the hell they brought me.
“I’ll go get that for you two,” the waitress stated, not picking up on the tension at the table as she placed two plastic menus in the space between us. “That’ll give you some time to look over our specials for the evening.”
“You were saying,” I prompted when we were again alone.
Suddenly thirsty myself, I gulped down my water as I watched my mother over the rim of the glass.
My mother licked her dry lips. “I wasn’t being honest with you when I called before, Milie.”
That was a good start. “Why not?”
“There was somebody listening in on our conversation. He…well… he is the leader of the Tupilaqs. He asked me to make the call and told me what to say.”
“Osyrius’s father?” I returned. He was the alpha of the pack and seemed to rule with an iron fist.
“Yes. His name is Malcolm. All pack decisions go through him. He’s… not to be defied,” my mother uneasily stated. “He’s also my mate.”
That checked out. “Why are you telling me this?” If we were being honest, I wanted the whole truth, not some watered-down version of it that she thought would soften me up enough to blindly follow her back to her pack. “Malcolm isn’t my alpha, and I don’t answer to him.”
“I know,” my mother quickly replied, “but I do, and he threatened someone very important to me, if I didn’t bring you back into the fold.”
I hadn’t expected that. “Who?”
“My son,” my mother confessed, shocking me. “Our son, actually.”
My mind began to spin like a top as I considered what she’d just said. Though it wasn’t strange that my mother should have a second child, I had to admit, I’d never considered the possibility. I’d reasoned that, because she’d already abandoned her first child, she’d make sure she didn’t have a second. What a fool I’d been.
“You have a son? I have a brother?”
My mother guiltily looked down at her hands where she was nervously shredding a paper napkin. “Yes. He’s six.”
