Callan shut his eyes briefly, the side of his head throbbing. He fought to maintain his anger but he’d had enough. It thrashed inside him wildly, urging him to be released. With every passing hour, his disdain for Amelia grew immensely until he began to wonder if truly there’d been a time he could stand her, that was harder to believe now.
He looked down at Sophia to see she was watching him too. She was beautiful - a staggering realization that was. He’d always known that but now underneath him, her hair wildly strewn on his bed, her face flushed, desires in her eyes, and the swell of her lips…
She was ethereal.
And she was his.
His heart swooned with emotions, an intensity he’d never felt for anything. He must have been out of his mind to think somehow he would bring her into his pack and be able to ignore her, perhaps that had been a lie he’d told himself because all along he’d subconsciously had the awareness that he couldn't reject his mate, not when his mate was the woman who laid under him now, seemingly glowing against the candle lights that reflected on her skin.
“What is going on here?” Amelia’s shrill voice reminded him of her presence.
He got up from the bed and approached Amelia, he could see the anger in her eyes but most especially, reflected on her expression was humiliation and for a while, he almost felt terrible for her but those feelings were quelled the minute she opened her mouth.
“How could you do this to me despite all I sacrificed?”
He wasn't aware of anything being forfeited. His gaze seared through her, the venom in them holding her in place and she froze under his scrutiny. “What gave you the right to walk into my room without proper formality?”
Her lips parted open. “Callan…”
“This is the last time I would be letting you get away with such disrespect.”
She was appalled. “Disrespect? What are you saying? I am your future Luna, we are to be mated, and yet there you were lying... Lying with another woman.” She held his hand and a rush of disgust melted his skin. Maybe it was the fact that he could see her truly now, he could hear the lies in her voice, and he could see the lies in her expression.
She was genuinely hurt but not for the reasons she was leading him to believe.
Power was a burning desire difficult to quench, it lit up so fast, and its heat remained licking at a person's inside slowly until it completely took over them, this greed for it, this lust. Somewhat, it was clearer now that was all this had been, that was all he had been to her - a means to attain power.
Luna of the Black Tide Pack.
It was a position she had longed for almost all her life and that was the only thing that made sense in her head; the fact that she was deserving of it, not because she loved him, Callan was coming to realize that for a woman like Amelia, love was a fallacy but for the fact that it was what she’d wanted and the sacrifice she mentioned was all of the ways she had worked to maintain her position as the future Luna, the ways she had wormed her way through his mother’s heart, through his lives, through his home.
It was the one thing that distinguished Callan from everyone else, his sense of reasoning. In the face of a slight nudge toward the truth, a small realization, everything usually became clearer to him and he was particularly able to decipher so much about a person more than what meets the eye.
“Your father must have told you about the council meeting for tonight. You should be able to figure out what that means.”
And slowly, he watched the emotions dawn on her, terror widening her eyes.
“No, no.” She shook her head. “You can't do that, Callan. You realize what is at risk, don't you? Are you willing to put so much at risk all because of some lowly servant you rescued?” She threw a scathing glance behind him at Sophia. “We can discuss this in a better manner. I understand the reason you might feel swayed, servants have never been known to show any decorum, and I can understand she might have attempted seduction but you…” She placed her hand on his chest. “You know better than that, Callan. You are the Alpha of the Black Tide Pack, the most powerful pack in existence. You don't want to incite an internal feud in your pack because of someone so inconsequential.”
It was the derogatory manner she spoke about Sophia. She wasn't trying anymore to hide it. This was one of the things Callan hated the most about the members of the Dark Wood Pack— the easy way elitism existed, the way they preyed on and took advantage of the weaker members while they who claimed superiority barely doing anything to improve the lives of the lower class.
It had hit him as a shock to find out that the majority of the members had no idea what a string of words on paper meant and that was the same disparaging he was noticing in Amelia.
And Radley.
“Apologize.”
“Excuse me?” she screeched.
He turned to glance at Sophia who was still watching him with that innocence on her face. “Apologize,” he repeated.
Amelia looked at him as though she thought he must have lost his mind but she must have seen something in his expression that told her he was serious because she swallowed, shame washing over her before she turned to Sophia and mumbled, “I apologize for my words.”
And for someone like Amelia, whose presence was always loud, it was almost laughable to watch her struggle to speak.
Without giving Sophia the chance to acknowledge her apology, she looked up at him, eyes blazing with anger.
“I had come here to inform you a visitor had arrived for you and he is down in the drawing room.”
He could see she was itching to be dismissed.
Callan glanced at the parted curtain, the sun had barely rise, who was visiting him this early?
“Who is it?”
She clenched her jaw, her eyes on her feet. “Silviu Alden, a traveler from the Mystic Hollow Pack.”
“What?” Sophia beat him to it, shooting up from the bed.
He nodded at Amelia. “You may leave,”
She shut her eyes and took in a breath before saying, “Thank you.”
Sophia turned to him as soon as Amelia was out of the room, panic swam through her eyes.
“That’s my uncle, Callan. What do you think he’s doing here?”
He would like to find that out too and if he was here to do as the letter said, he hadn't been kidding when he’d said her father would have him to contend with.
“Let’s find out for ourselves.”
She was scared, he could tell she was and he understood perfectly why. Anyone who’d suffered from what she had suffered through by Alexander would be terrified of the thought of returning to that life.
He wished she understood that the only way that would be happening was if he was lying in a pool of his own blood and that unfortunately wouldn't be happening anytime soon.
They went downstairs together and Callan longed to hold her hand reassuring but until he’d spoken to the council members, any form of physicality between them in public would be viewed as a disrespect to the structure of his pack so he settled for giving her a comforting nod and she nodded back at him before the doors to the drawing room were pushed open and they stepped in.
Silviu was standing by the window, at their entrance, he turned towards them. He was a tall, well-built man with an air of superiority around him. His black colored hair was tainted with strands of grey, his gaze was firm, unreadable as they set on Sophia moving from her to Callan and then back to her. A wide grin lit up his expression, but Callan found it strange still — it was a joy that didn't reach the blankness of his eyes.
“Sophia, what a woman you've become,” he said walking up to them and directly in front of Callan, he bowed.
“Alpha Callan.”
Callan stared at his hunched figure for a breath longer before saying. “Rise,”
The man rose and watched him with a wry smile. “I am Silviu Alden, a messenger from the Mystic Hollow Pack.”
“You are welcome to the Black Tide Pack.” He answered in an easy tone, a pleasant expression on his face.
Silviu's eyes went to Sophia. “I am unfortunately a man who does not believe in beating around the bush. The Mystic Hollow Pack believes The Black Tide Pack has inserted itself into the relationship between them and the Black Wood Pack and this is likely to start a dispute between the two packs.”
“I am not going back to Alexander!” Sophia’s voice was sharp with a hint of anger in it.
Surprise flashed in Silviu’s eyes at her words and it was gone immediately, his lips curling into a smile.
“Sophia, dear, you know you have no choice in this matter.”
She cut him short. “I do and my choice is never to return to the Dark Wood Pack. I am done being used as some treaty upholding, it's been almost fifteen years and I would like to think I’ve held my own end of the treaty and I only left at the fulfillment of its condition.”
Silviu scrutinized her quietly for a few minutes before finally saying. “It seems child that you’ve forgotten the reason you were made to go to the Dark Wood Pack. It was of your own doing, Sophia. That was your punishment.”
Callan watched as the blood drained from her face.