Chapter 117 - Unreject Me

Kaya’s pov

“It is so good to see you,” I said as I walked into the meeting room where Pete awaited us. I was expecting a handshake, not a warm hug, but I accepted it. He was my uncle after all.

“It feels good to be back in wolf territory. My wolf is ecstatic to be back in the woods,” he said, offering a broad grin.

“How long has it been? Twenty years?” I asked him.

“More than twenty. Probably twenty-five? Not thirty for sure,” he said.

“Where is Kathy?”

He inhaled a deep breath. “In the city. I told her that I was travelling for work. I work as an architect, and my work is famous among humans. I get offers all over the world. My frequent departures aren’t new to her,” he said.

I smiled. It was admirable that he could leave the pack and pursue a successful career. Perhaps that was one reason he never returned.

“I know you have a lot of questions, so here I am to answer them. Besides, seeing you all sparked a desire to come back here. I don’t intend to stay here for a long time, but while I am here, I want to visit the place where I used to live,” he said.

I gave a subtle nod of my head. “I guess we can go there if you want to, but everything is in ruins,” I told him.

“Yeah, I know. You told me that the pack was annihilated. Still, I want to go there.”

I nodded my head. “We can do that,” I glanced at the omegas who were bringing tea into the meeting room. My mind was boggled with all the questions I wanted to ask him. I wasn’t sure where to start.

“So, tell me. How did you meet?” Pete asked us, glancing at me and Theo.

“Oh, I grew up here. After escaping death, Black Woods was where I found shelter. I grew up here, met my mate on my eighteenth birthday, and that’s that,” I said. I didn’t see any point in dwelling on the dark days of my relationship with Theo. What mattered was that we accepted each other, and after all we endured, we were inseparable.

“Sounds dreamy. I wish I also met my mate,” he said, stifling laughter. “Anyway, the past is gone. What is the point of dwelling on it?”

I smiled. “Yes, exactly. Now you are married to Kathy. You must tell us how you met. She seems like a sweet lady.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Eh. For a human, she is good. I like a lot of things about her. So yeah, the marriage works. She gives me what I want, and I give her what she wants. It’s a mutual relationship,” he grinned.

A frown wrinkled my face. “Don’t you love her?”

He chuckled. “Love… that’s a deep word. I adore her enough to be faithful to her. I think that’s enough.”

His answer struck me as strange. Why was he married to someone he wouldn’t admit that he loved?

“We used to work for the same company. That’s how we met. We dated, and I found out that she had no family. She grew up in foster care. No one adopted her because she was too old. And once she turned sixteen, she had to start working. She was pretty resilient. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have succeeded in her education, despite all the hardships she faced. The more I knew about her, the more I liked her. She wanted to go to college but couldn’t because she didn’t have the time or the funds. So I offered to pay her tuition. She is now a graduate of Stanford University. She recently got a job as a lecturer at a local high school. Teaching is a passion, so she is happy where she is.”

A smile curled on my lips. Although‌ Pete wouldn’t say he loved her, I wanted to believe that was love. Why else would he do so much for Kathy? And she deserved it. From what he told me, I could tell that she was an extraordinary woman. People like that deserve so much in life.

“Kathy sounds great,” I said. “Why aren’t you telling her about us?”

He pouted his lips, narrowing his eyes. “Well, I don’t think that any human can really grasp the concept. Change is a big thing for humans. If anything new is happening to them, they need a heck of a lot of time to accept it. I think she might think that she was going crazy if she ever saw me morph into my wolf. Explaining would be too much. Like I said, I am a busy man. The workload is pretty high, and I don’t have the time to explain that to anyone. So I would rather keep it a secret.”

Pursing my lips together, I nodded my head. “You would know better, Pete. You have been with them for a long time.”

“Exactly. And she is easy to live with. So Kathy is good.”

“And she is pretty young, isn’t she?”

He laughed. "Oh, she's way younger than me, but she doesn’t know that. She thinks I am in my forties,” he said, winking in my direction. “I’m almost sixty now.”

Once again, my forehead wrinkled. Sixty? Was he my dad’s older brother? My dad couldn’t be that old.

“You’re sixty? Were you the older brother?” I asked him.

He looked into my eyes, a smirk curling on his lips. “Yes, and are you wondering why I didn’t become the Alpha?”

Shit. My heart started to race. The whole altercation with Asher began due to his belief that he was the rightful Alpha of Black Woods. I didn’t even know who Pete was. Regardless, there was no denying that he was my relative.

Despite my racing heart, I managed to maintain a calm demeanour. “Yeah, why?”

Please don’t tell me my dad snatched the position.

“Our father had this strange rule. Only the one who found his mate could become the next Alpha. He didn’t want the pack to be luna-less. So he didn’t want to pass the pack on to anyone until I found a mate.”

My lips parted. “You couldn’t find your soulmate,” I whispered.

An archaic smile curled on his lips. “I did find a mate. She wasn’t my fated mate, but our father didn’t mind as long as we wanted to be in a relationship, but then she met her soulmate before we could finalise everything. She left me for her fated mate.”

“Oh, that gotta hurt,” Theo muttered.

Pete laughed. “Oh, my stupid young self was heartbroken and kind of pissed because I had invested myself in that relationship. I was ready to reject my mate if I ever met her, and I think she would have rejected hers too if we had marked each other before she crossed paths with that other dude. Fate is weird. It just happened, and I couldn’t stop it from happening. By then, I was too angry to find another mate, and my father wouldn’t pass the pack to me.” He sighed deeply. “Ben met his mate and settled down before I did, and unfortunately my father chose to pass the pack down to him.”

My lips pursed together. “That wasn’t fair,” I said.

He shrugged his shoulders. “I didn’t care about that. My brother was also a trained Alpha. I knew the pack was in good hands. But losing the girl I wanted made me bitter. My brother and I fought a lot, and it got to a point where having two Alphas in the same pack was unhealthy. So I left. I wasn’t going to challenge my little bro, even after our father died.”

I sighed. “You are a good brother.”

He looked at me with a smile curling on his lips. “Your dad wouldn’t agree.”

“Why didn’t you try to call? I understand not living in the same pack, but you all could have kept in contact,” I said.

“Eh, my ego was too big for me to accept that I was wrong somewhere. So I focused on building my name in the human world.”

“That’s good, actually. But I wish I knew you sooner. I thought I had no living relatives,” I told him.

“Well,” he said, shrugging once again. “We are here now, right? We can get to know each other.”

I smiled, nodding. The past should be the past.

“So, where is little Ethan? I thought I would see him too,” Pete said.

“Oh, sure. The pups are in the playroom with the omegas. Let’s go upstairs.”

As he stood up from his seat, I noticed that he frowned, mouthing the word ‘they’ to himself.

“Oh, I haven’t told you about our pups, have we?” I said. “Come on. Our family is getting bigger once again.”

He said nothing as he followed up to the playroom. The door was opened a little, and I could hear Archie’s cheerful chatter as he played with his Avery and Ethan. Pete stood at the door, watching them play for a while.

“You have pups of your own?” He sounded a little surprised. “I thought you didn't, and that was why you were adopting Ethan.”

“Oh, no. Ethan is my nephew. His father is gone, and I am his only living relative. His mother is a crackhead, so I am going to raise him with my pups,” Theo explained.

Pete’s lips pursed in a line. I knew what he was thinking.

“That’s our eldest, Archie. He is the heir, being the oldest. Don’t worry, we won’t have an additional rule like my grandfather did. The pack is his,” I said.

Pete slowly glanced my way. “Archie is your son?” he asked, and I replied with a nod. A faint smile curled on his lips. “That’s my grand nephew?”

I chuckled. “Yeah, and that’s Avery. Our daughter.”

He admired the pups from a distance with a smile on his face. “My family isn’t gone forever,” he whispered.

“You have your family in the human world too,” I reminded him. His response surprised me a little. Clicking his tongue, he shook his head slightly.

“She isn’t a wolf. This is different. We don’t even have kids together.”

My lips drew together in a grim line. Could it be that a wolf and a human couldn’t procreate? Maybe that was why they were looking into adoption. Or maybe it could be because Kathy grew up in foster care.

I cleared my throat and gathered the courage to ask him that question. It was a sensitive topic, and I didn’t want him to get emotional, but I was just too curious.

“You mentioned Kathy grew up in foster care because no one adopted her. Is that why you were looking into adopting a kid?”

He shook his head. “She wanted kids, and I didn’t want to have kids with her.” His gaze met mine. “Do you get it? I didn’t want our genes to mix and create a mediocre version of a werewolf. She wouldn’t understand, so I didn’t tell her anything. I just gave her an elixir for months that stripped her of the ability to conceive.”

My jaw dropped. “Do you mean to say she won’t be able to have kids of her own?”

He winked at me. “Yup. She thinks she was born that way. She doesn’t know what I did. So we are going to adopt a human kid and nurture her. Everyone’s happy.”

I was speechless. How could he do that to Kathy? She didn’t deserve that.