Chapter 39

Chapter 39

“I can’t go home without you!” I protested, gripping my father’s hands. “You’re an innocent man! I won’t let them keep you here!”

My father looked sad. “Isla, I’m not innocent. I betrayed my best friend.”

“That’s hardly your fault.” I scoffed. “There was a witch involved. Deborah Shadowmoon. Luna Regent of the Shadowmoon Pack.”

“Yes,” my father agreed. “That still doesn’t mean I can go with you.”

“Mason will forgive you. I’m sure he already has.” I said, pleading with him. “Or, if he hasn’t. then as his mate. I am going to give him what for!”

If I was still his mate. I had just called him a monster and runoff. I touched my cheek. Did I have to be in his presence for him to reject me? Maybe we could…

talk.

My father’s eyes lit up with the tiniest spark of life. “You and Mason? I’m so happy, Kora. So happy for you both. I always knew there was a special connection between you.”

“Yes, right.” I said, grasping at this happiness my father seemed to have found in the wasteland that appeared to be his current emotional landscape. “Yes, there always was. He loved me, and I loved him, and we had a wonderful childhood together.”

“Childhood?” my father echoed with a frown.

I rubbed the back of my n*eck. “Things are sort of… complicated now. But it’s nothing… um… we can’t fix. And, I mean, even if we can’t, I can still bring your home.”

“What did he do?” my father demanded, his eyes going hard.

I spread my hands in a helpless gesture. “A lot of it was out of his control-

“What was out of his control?” my father pressed.

“Well… I was sort of sent to the Traitors’ Cave after you left…” I said with a wince. I might have been mad at Mason, but that didn’t mean my father needed to be. “He didn’t do it, of course. The Luna Regent did. It’s, you know, pack policy.”

My father was silent for a long time. “How did a traitors’ daughter end. up pack Alpha, then?” he asked bitterly.

I tugged at the ends of my hair. “Well. We were at the rejection ceremony-

“Rejection ceremony,” my father repeated.

with the

“Well, technically he rejected me. Third strike and all that,” I said with a nervous laugh. “But then he accepted me at the rejection ceremony. The rest of the pack

wasn’t exactly thalled about that…”

“Third strike?” My father’s frown showed lines on his forehead. Deep lines. Lines that had not been there before.

“I… may have been rejected three times,” I said. “But Thomas, I didn’t even want. Goddess only knows what the Moon Goddess was thinking.”

My father’s chest rose and fell in a long sigh. “And the second?”

1 coughed. “Well… um… about that…”

“It was Alpha Lyle?” my father provided helpfully.

“It was hardly anything.” I tried to wave it off.

My father was having none of it. “He broke your heart.”

“Yeah… yeah, he did.” I swallowed. “But, turns out he wants me to reject Mason and take him back. How funny is that?”

“Not funny at all. Kora, you need to get out of here and go back to Mason,” my father said.

“We’re not officially mated yet.” I wanted to take the words back as soon as I said them.

My father’s expression was tired, but still almost as thunderous as it might have been if I’d told him this story when I was younger. “He rejected you, accepted you, and what, no Luna ceremony?”

“It was all fairly recent,” I replied in a small voice.

“Did

you sleep together?” my father demanded.

My jaw dropped. “Father!”

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes.” My father rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I cannot believe Mason would be so callous as to bring you to his bed and then cast you off again.”

“He didn’t cast me off. I ran away,” I said.

My father’s nostrils flared. “To find me.”

“Yes, and no. They captured Shawn. I have it on good authority he escaped, but you’re still here.” I gripped his shirt and pulled him into a hug.

He stiffened. “Kora, you need to forget me and go back to Mason. Make up. Make it work.”

“I called him a monster, Father,” I sighed, feeling hurt by my father’s pulling away from me.

“So? You didn’t mean it,” my father said.

“I did at the time. I mumbled.

My father hesitated, then patted my knee. “Sweetheart, we all say things we don’t mean sometimes. Especially to those we love. You will say and do st upid things all through your lives together. Give it a chance.”

“I will if you come home with me,” I tried to negotiate.

“Kora, I can’t. I’m still under her influence, you see,” my father said sadly.

I froze. “The Luna Regent’s?”

My father nodded. “She has a magical hold on me. I honest-to-goodness cannot leave.”

“But-”

“But you can. Get out of here before they figure out a way to keep you,” my father said fervently.

I shook my head. “No. No, I won’t leave without you. I can’t.”

“Kora, they want something with you. At the very least, they will use you to hurt Mason. And Lyle will become the father of your children. Is that what you want?” my father asked.

I shuddered. “Absolutely not.”

“Then you have no choice. Get out of here as soon as you can,” my father urged. “Father, you can’t make me leave here without you,” I said, exasperated. “You can’t, and I won’t.”

My father drew his frame, bent under the weight of the world, up into some semblance of ramrod-straight severity. “Kora Monroe, I am your father, and you WILL do as I say!”

I felt tears pr ick my eyes, and my throat swelled closed. “I can’t,” I choked. “I love you, Father. I refuse to live in a world where you are suffering here on your own.”

“I’ve made my own choices, Kora. This is my pack. I was raised here. If you were to ask the Luna Regent, she would tell you I lost my way when I betrayed her and really became involved in the Fullbright Pack. I was raised to be Fullbright’s betrayer, Kora. I am exactly where I deserve to be.” My father looked intensely sad.

“You’re wrong,” I argued. “You’re a good man, and you deserve a lot more than what life dealt you.”

My father sighed and stood. “Leave, Kora. I mean it. If I have to come here again, I will drag you out by your hair.”

I jutted my chin out, stubbornness creeping into every fiber of my being. “I’m the best warrior the Fullbright Pack has. I’d like to see you try.”

A growl rumbled out of my father’s throat. “I can still wh oop you, little girl.”

I snorted. The condition my father was in. I would be surprised if he could wh oop a spider. “I’m going to find a way to get you out. In the meantime, you just stay alive, okay? You look like hell.”

My father ran a hand through his thinning hair.

“Go,” he said again. “Go now.”