Chapter 13
Michelle POV
I walked into Conrad’s kitchen in the morning with Liam following behind me. All three girls eat at the long wooden table, and Eve stands at the cooktop making eggs. Kimberly grins at me while holding her coffee.
“So, did you have a good night?”.
“Well, I don’t think I can ever have sex with a human again”.
Kimberly and Willow start giggling at this. Liam starts dramatically acting like he has just won an Oscar and does a big dramatic bow, making them burst out laughing. Eve even turns around, and I can see her small smile.
Conrad enters to room and suddenly everything goes cold. All the laughing stops, and Eve suddenly turns around and focuses all her energy on her eggs. He just sighs as he senses this, as he would have heard us through the door before entering.
“I’ll just get a coffee a be on my way. I have a meeting anyway”.
I’m starting to feel bad for him because he is trying so hard and only getting a wall of ice in return. I decided to throw him a bone and try and include him.
“Nonsense. Besides, this is your house, and I have a ton of questions. Most important one. What do we call you? Humans call you Mr Strongheart, wolves call you Alpha King, and Liam calls you Conrad. What do you want us to call you?”.
He’s momentarily stunned by this. “Errm. People in my inner circle call me Conrad, so you can too”.
The girls instantly pick up on what I’m doing while Eve is still off in her own world over the stove. Willow joins in next.
“So I work at the local museum as a cataloguer and noticed we have a lot of artefacts from the Strongheart foundation. Do you have many pieces in your collection?”.
“Yes, I do. You will be doing a tour today, and you will see the Library where I store most of them”.
Willow's eyes light up at this. Kimberly goes straight to family questions.
“I could see on the way in that the pack is very large. How many wolves are here, and is your family here too?”.
“There are nearly 1500 wolves here, making us the largest pack in the country, and we are growing very fast. Even though to wolves a pack is considered family, I’m assuming you mean biological family, and I don’t have any left”.
“Oh, that’s so sad. I’m so sorry for your loss”.
“Don’t be, I’m not”.
Everyone but Eve turned to Conrad, and he realised what it must have sounded like. He looks at Liam, who just shrugs. He sighs deeply as he contemplates telling us his story.
“I was born in an extremist pack”.
“What?”. We all freeze at Eve joining the conversation. She spun round and stared straight at Conrad, and they locked eyes on each other.
“Yeah. For the past few hundred years, extremist packs believed humans should be enslaved to wolves because we are gifted with strength and shifting. They think that because we are gifted, we are more favoured by God and so should be supreme rulers. I was beaten by my family for refusing to kill humans and live up to my so-called family legacy as a bloodline royal. My grandmother, Ava, got me out when I was 14 and hid me in Liam’s pack. It’s how we met. It was Liam’s family that loved and raised me after that, which is one of the reasons we are as close as brothers. At 18, we joined the military to learn combat skills and how to work with humans. I studied business to build my empire to unite humans and wolves like we were at the dawn of time”.
“Alpha Derrick”. Eve turns and looks down at the plate with her food on it and avoiding eye contact with everyone again.
“Yeah. How do you know my father’s name?”. Conrad was very confused by this.
“He came to the Blood Moon pack to see Alpha Blake”. You can see her start to shake as she is pulled into a memory she has been trying to hide from.
“He never visited your old pack when I was there. I’m sorry if he caused you any pain”.
“Doesn’t matter now, I’m going to go get ready”. She hadn’t eaten again and ran out the back door.
Conrad turns to us, clearly worried about Eve and trying to hold himself back from following her. “I have to go to that meeting”. Then he heads out the other door.
Liam ran straight over to me and started covering me in kisses.
“Stop, stop. What was all that for?”.
“You got them to talk about something personal on day one. You’re amazing”.
I just started smiling at him as he followed Conrad out to the meeting.
The girls and I left the kitchen wondering what Eve remembered.