With a pained sigh, Court lifts his head to prop his chin on my shoulder. “Haven’s dad was an asshole alpha who used his bark as a way to control his daughter-”
“Court,” Thayer tries to cut him off, but he keeps going.
“When Haven managed to thwart his commands entirely and bond with the Calloways, he looked for another way to control her.” His arms tighten on me in an almost apologetic squeeze.
“You?” Piers whispers, looking pale. He’s probably the only other person in this room who can fully understand the horror of being under an alpha’s control when you don’t want to be. “He used his bark on you?”
The smile I give him is thin. “Yep. Barked me to go with him, to the very same abandoned restaurant Haven started her heat alone in, told me to sit in a chair and not move, and then he took a sledgehammer to my knee while he filmed it for Haven as a warning that he would do worse if she didn’t listen, didn’t do as he commanded.” I look away from them, out the window to the glittering water of the pool. “I couldn’t do anything about it. Couldn’t fight, couldn’t stop him. Just sat there and cried while he took everything from me.”
There’s a long, long silence, where I can feel their anger on my behalf, their rage, their dominance. Like their alphas are ordering them to fix it, but there’s nothing to fix.
Frederick Bell is dead.
My knee isn’t going to magically heal because theywillit to.
And my aversion to alpha barks is… ingrained on me now.
“Florence,” Forsythe sounds… wrecked. And I don’t want to stick around to see what else he might say.
“There now,” I say as I hop off of Courtland’s lap. I’m a little surprised when he lets me go, but maybe he recognizes I’m at my breaking point. “I think I’ve filled my quota for conversations I don’t want to have for the day, don’t you?”
Before any of them can react I hurry past Forsythe and out the door, beelining toward my little house and barricading myself inside.
Episode 14: The Wolves at the (Studio) Door
Piers
It’s been three days.
Three days since we flew across the world.
Three days since we slipped into bed next to Ren’s feverish, unconscious body and pulled her back from the brink.
She hasn’t said a word to us for two of those days. Not after her horrible revelation about her knee, her aversion to alpha barks.
No, that’s not true.
She’s polite enough whenever we stumble upon each other in the giant estate she lives in, though she’s all but ceded her little pool house to us. I don’t know if she thinks it’s a punishment or what. But I couldn’t be happier staying anywhere but there, surrounded by my omega’s things, her scent.
We’d worked out a plan of action, a way to approach her again about returning to Bravonne with us. I’m not sold on the move, but I was outvoted as I often am. Forsythe’s voice always carries more weight in our decision making and he is certain thatthe way forward is to at least get her to agree to return home with us.
Never mind that doing so brings her into the very jaws of danger we were trying to avoid.
The queen will not be thrilled when she hears of it. And she will hear of it.
I think it’s a much better plan for us to stay here with her. Make Isadora come to the States if she still wants to be a princess. Though I think that too is a mistake.
Florence is our mate and we really need to start treating her like it. I can only hope that the more time we spend with her, the more they’ll realize this to be the case. Florence is ours and no other will do.
She needs us to survive.
We need her to survive as well.
But Forsythe is still stuck on his duty, which means the rest of us are stuck too.
If we could just get her to spend some time with us, have a conversation that isn’t thick with hurt and heartbreak, then maybe we can all come to some kind of an understanding. But it’s been two days of dancing around each other.
Yesterday she was gone from early morning until the evening with Atticus and Jude. We still have no clue where they went or why. No one bothered to tell us. Hale only informed us that she was gone and where she went wasn’t any of our business.
