Chapter 36 Chapter Thirty Six - Bad Timing

Chapter 36 Chapter Thirty Six - Bad Timing
The room got so quiet you could’ve heard a pin drop. 

Dallas looked at the faces watching him. Different guards and servants, young wolves and old ones who had grown up hearing his name spoken with the deepest respect. 

All of them were watching to see what he would do in the face of such public embarrassment.

Dallas bit down so hard on the words rising in his throat that he tasted blood in his mouth.

“No, Alpha Aurelius,” he said.

His father began to move through the room in a slow pattern, the tip of his walking stick clicking against the marble. 

“I warned you. When you first told me about this boy. When you were barely thirteen years old, you came to me with stars in your eyes talking about the mate bond you’d felt with that human child you grew up beside.”

“That is true, Alpha Aurelius.”

“Did I not tell you then that you were forbidden from ever acting on that bond? That you were to stay away from him, and wait until you were both of age, and then reject him cleanly?”

“Yes, Alpha Aurelius,” Dallas growled, his irritation growing by the second.

“I decide that you would take a responsible female Luna from one of the great bloodline families and produce heirs as a future Cross Alpha must. Did I not?”

His father’s words hit their target, each one stabbing Dallas where it hurt, digging up ugly memories from his past that he struggled to suppress.

Dallas closed his fists tight, his claws pressing so hard into his palms that blood started to drop to the ground, while Dallas’ eyes narrowed. “Yes, Alpha Aurelius.”

“And did I not warn you,” his father continued, his voice growing quiet and dangerous, “that if you disobeyed me, if you acted on that bond and brought that boy into our world, I would personally rip him limb from limb before he ever brought shame and ridicule to this pack?”

Dallas’s eyes flashed red at that threat. “Yes,” he said, his voice more animal than human. “That is what you said."

“And yet.” His father stopped walking. “Here we are.”

“I cannot stay here and discuss the past,” Dallas said, forcing his words out through clenched teeth.

“My mate is with child. He carries the next heir to the Cross bloodline, regardless of your approval. Whatever your feelings about the circumstances, that child is your grandchild, and it is my duty to—”

“He’s pregnant?!” 

For the first time, Aurelius’s composure cracked, his eyes widened with horror and disbelief.

“How in the name of the goddess did you manage such a thing? A human male—” Alpha Aurelius stared at Dallas as though he’d just announced a natural disaster. 

He pressed two fingers to his temple. “You have cursed us, you absolute fool. Do you understand what you’ve done? ”

“I understand perfectly well what I’ve done,” Dallas said. “I have created a family, a pack of my own that I will protect, even from you.”

His father’s eyes snapped up. “Watch your tone, boy.”

Dallas closed his eyes. He was so close, so close to losing his patience and snapping completely.

One more word out of his father, Dallas thought, and he would stuff the insults back into his mouth with his fists.

But he couldn’t let that happen, the scandal that would follow would complicate his life further and that of his mate.

So instead of lashing out, Dallas focused on Carter’s face in his mind's eye, especially the blue of his eyes when he was furious, on another one of his stubborn, adorable rants.

He held that image in his head and took a deep breath, letting his heart rate slow down, so his murderous rage would calm to a level he could manage.

When he finally opened his eyes, his father was still furious.

“—believed you would outgrow this foolishness. I tolerated this, more than you deserved, more than any other Alpha father would have given a disobedient son.”

“I forbade you. I told you that I would not allow you to remain near that boy if you ever showed him any affection meant only for a mate.”

“That is exactly what I did, Alpha.” Dallas bit out, struggling to hold on to his calm

“Is it? You think I don’t know that you decided to act clever and bend the rules? I told you that you could not be around that human if you would show him affection, so instead you turned that affection into pretend hatred, just so you could remain near him and defy me.”

Dallas said nothing. There was no arguing with that one. 

“Instead of disciplining yourself and practising restraint, you used the boy’s very hatred of you as a reason to stay in his orbit. Chasing him across the world, funding his life from the shadows, creating every circumstance just to keep him close.”

You have no idea how much restraint I am practising right now, Dallas thought darkly.

“And I allowed it, thinking surely one day you would tire of it. That you would grow up and accept your responsibilities as Alpha of the Cross pack and conduct yourself accordingly. Instead, here you stand, already a man, but still the same disgraceful, impulsive, thoughtless—”

“You can’t talk to him like that.”

Dallas heard a familiar stubborn voice coming from the entrance to the throne room.

“Shit.”

Every head in the room turned to see who it was.

Carter stood in the doorway, his hair dishevelled and his expression blazing with righteous anger. 

He was slightly out of breath, as though he’d just been running. His eyes swept the room, landed on Aurelius, and narrowed.

“Why are all of you so rude all the time? That is no way to speak to your son!” Carter called out, pushing his glasses up his nose with a deep frown.

The hairs on the back of Dallas' neck stood on end with terror. This was what he wanted to prevent! How the hell had Carter found his way here?!

“What the hell are you doing here?” Dallas asked in disbelief.

But Carter only looked at him for a second, before going right back to glaring at Aurelius.

Dallas groaned with frustration. This infuriating, reckless, impossibly brave idiot had somehow escaped from a locked cell in a labyrinth basement and marched directly into the worst possible situation! 

Had he taken a detour from his escape, just to defend Dallas? Or better question, was he fucking insane?!

Meanwhile, Aurelius slowly turned to look at Carter. 

Not once in his centuries-long life had he ever been interrupted by someone else, let alone a human.

“And you,” Aurelius said softly, “must be the abomination.”