~Kade~
The house was loud when I walked back in after meeting Layla in the woods. I missed the quiet of the forest, and I missed her. The first thing I did was go up to my room and take a shower to make sure that nobody would smell her on me, but first, I lay in bed with my clothes on.
After the shower, I went straight to my mother. After what Layla had told me, I knew that there was something my mother wasn’t telling me. Thinking back, I could remember instances where her words had been cryptic, and she would always say that whatever she did, she did to protect us kids, but that wouldn’t work this time. I needed the truth, all of it, everything that she had been hiding since I was a child.
“Mom?” I walked into my father’s office on the first floor, and there she was, sitting behind the desk. She looked up from the papers, and I saw the look in her eyes change the second that she saw mine. “Kade,”
“Don’t. No lies, no cryptic messages,” I said and closed the door behind me.
“Just the truth,” I pulled out the chair. She sighed, shaking her head, and putting the pen down. “What is it?”
“I met Layla,” she smiled.
“I know you did.”
“I showed her my memories.” My moms jaw dropped slightly, her eyes widened, and she leaned back.
“You did,” she breathed.
“She saw everything, and she mentioned something.” My mom gulped. I leaned my arms on the desk.
“The men who came in and killed uncle Mark, they were Emberclaws weren’t they?” Her face hardened, and she straightened her back.
“Yes.”
“And they were after me.”
“Yes.”
“And they tried again with that guy that joined our pack years ago.”
“Yes.” My eyes narrowed on my mother, and I leaned forward.
“I need more answers than ‘yes’,” I said through clenched teeth.
“You don’t understand. A mother’s job is to protect her children. That’s all I’ve been doing,” She said and leaned forward as well.
“I’m not questioning that. I’m questioning the fact that you have never told me about any of this.” “Because it didn’t concern you at the time.”
“Are you serious?” The chair flung back, and I rose to my feet.
My mother rose and walked around the desk with her hands interlocked in front of her. She always managed to keep her calm, even when the rest of us blew up.
“It didn’t concern you then, but I understand that you need the answers now. Please sit,” she gestured for the chair that was lying on the floor.
I pushed it up and sat down a little reluctantly. There were already so many unknowns. I couldn’t have more of them coming from my family.
“It all started many years ago. You were just a pup, and your father was preparing you for your role as Alpha. A man came and knocked on our door,requesting a meeting with your father and me. We invited him in and sat down with him. The man, who seemed normal, began talking about an opportunity for you and other young Alphas to join a warrior program that would prepare you for your duties. We, of course, graciously declined, and that was just the start. People were stopping by unannounced, lurking around the borders, and when they began stepping over the border and entering the pack, that’s when we had enough. We captured two of them.” She flicked her tongue, and I saw the lack of emotion in her eyes.
“One of the men died during torture for answers that he wouldn’t give. The other one, after seeing his friend die in front of his eyes, decided to speak up. He said that they had been sent to retrieve a person whom their leader believed to a threat.”
“Me?” I asked.
“Yes,you.”
“He said something about a premonition. Their leader had seen you in the future, ruining his grand plan.”
“What grand plan?”
“I don’t know. He wouldn’t say, but I understood that he would stop at nothing to get you. And he didn’t. Throughout the years, his continuous attempts carried on, but we knew what he was after, so we could better prepare. We were worried when Danielle came into your life because we thought it was part of it. We thought that she was sent as an attempt to take you away from us. With time, we learnt that her love for you was real. It was obvious that the girl cared about you, so our worries dimmed for a moment. Then Danielle left, breaking your heart and leaving us wondering what would come next.”
“Why do they want me?” I asked, wanting to get away from the subject about Danielle.
“We still don’t know. All we know is that you are as much part of the future as Layla is, and something tells me that whoever is in control doesn’t want you two to be together.”
I folded my fingers between each other and looked down at the desk.
“And this is all you know?” My mother’s hand rested on mine, and she smiled with a heavy gaze.
“I promise.”
“What happened to the man you captured?”
“Oh, I killed him.” She said, and now her smile was genuine and lighthearted.
Her eyes turned fierce, and her jaw clenched.
“Nobody harms my children.”
I walked out to replace Anna and let her know that I met Layla. If I didn’t tell her myself, I knew she’d throw a fit, and I couldn’t risk anyone else overhearing.
Knocking on the door to her room, I turned my head and looked down the hallway. The smell of strawberries was fragrant and sweet, but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.
“Hey,” Anna opened the door and let me in.
She had hung posters on the walls, and an antique makeup table with a big mirror stood where her desk had been. Makeup brushes stood in glasses, and I could see jewelry hanging out from the tiny drawers, with a scarf tossed over the chair.
“That’s my mother’s,” I said and smiled.
“Yeah, she didn’t want it and asked if I would take it. I humbly accepted,” Anna said and smiled from ear to ear.
I squatted down by the left leg of the table. “Your initials are still there,” she said, and her eyes brimmed with joy.
My sister and I would play with this table every day when we were kids, pretending that the drawers were filled with secrets and treasures because there were so many of them on either side. One day we carved our initials into it, the table was from the 1800s, and we wanted everyone in the future to know who it belonged to first.
“It looks good in here,” I said and turned to face Anna.
“What’s up, Kade?” She tidied up the room a little, placing a blanket over the bed and removing some clothing so we could sit on the two-seat couch.
“I met Layla again,” her eyes sank, and I could practically hear her heart dropping into her stomach.
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