MATED TO FATHER, FATED TO SONS-Chapter 27: LESSER EVIL

AMARIS

The problem with surviving one fire was that the world kept finding new ways to light another one under you.

Nia closed my room door behind us and turned around with her eyes wide and bright and practically vibrating, "That bitch," she breathed, pressing both hands to her cheeks, "Amaris, you actually slapped Lila Cross."

"She slapped me first," I said, dropping onto the edge of the bed and pressing my fingers against my cheek where the sting had finally started to fade.

"I know and I am not complaining, I am celebrating." Nia dropped into the chair across from me, leaning forward on both knees, "How are you not shaking right now, that woman terrifies half this pack."

I looked at her, "When you have spent your whole life being bullied by men twice your size, Lila Cross is not a difficult lady to face."

Nia sat back and let out a short breath, her expression equal parts impressed and sobered, and then she scoffed and shook her head, "Lady," she muttered, "that woman is no lady, she is a snake wearing a sundress."

"She is Rowan’s problem," I said, reaching up to pull my ponytail loose, "not mine."

"She was Cole’s problem first." Nia’s voice dropped a note, taking on the particular texture it got when she was about to say something she had been holding for a while.

"She was sleeping with him, right up until she locked eyes on Rowan and decided to upgrade, dropped Cole the same week without so much as a conversation."

I paused, "Well, as long as they are not still together that is their business."

"It is bad, Amaris," Nia pressed, sitting forward again, "because she has Rowan completely convinced she is this gentle innocent girl, meanwhile Cole tells me things about her that would make your hair curl, and he is not a man who exaggerates."

I thought about the way Lila had smiled at me before she threw that slap, "Rowan is a grown man," I said, "if he cannot see through that act then that is entirely on him."

Nia opened her mouth to push further and the knock at the door cut her off clean.

We both looked at each other.

The door opened before either of us spoke and Beta Marco filled the frame, straight-backed and expressionless in the way he always was, like someone had built him specifically to deliver news no one wanted to receive, "Alpha Corvin requests your presence at lunch, Luna Amaris."

The ease drained out of the room instantly.

I had not seen Alpha Corvin since the coal, since my palms, since that garden, and I had been doing a very deliberate job of keeping it that way, "I am not hungry," I said.

"He is waiting," Marco said, and the two words carried absolutely no room for negotiation.

I looked at Nia. She gave me a tight sympathetic smile that said she was very glad she was not me right now and I stood up.

The dining room was already occupied when I walked in and my steps slowed at the doorway taking in all three of them seated at that long table, Alpha Corvin at the head, Rowan to his left, Ryker across from him, and I stood there for one moment looking at the collected disaster of every complicated thing in my life sitting in one room sharing a meal.

I chose the seat opposite Rowan because out of all three men at that table he was currently the least likely to either punish me or do whatever it was Ryker did, and I sat down and kept my eyes on my plate.

"How are you settling in, Amaris," Alpha Corvin asked, his voice carrying that particular smoothness that never fully covered what was underneath it.

"Fine," I said.

The servant entered and set the food down and the silence that followed was the heavy suffocating kind, the kind that had four people at a table with too much between them and no one willing to put any of it into words.

Ryker broke it.

A laugh came out of him rich and genuine and completely inappropriate for the atmosphere, and Alpha Corvin looked at him with flat eyes, "Something amusing to you."

Ryker leaned back in his chair, relaxed and deliberate, the posture of a man enjoying himself at everyone else’s expense, "I was just thinking," he said, picking up his fork, "about how you two are supposed to breed a cub that will one day run this pack, and you cannot even sit at the same table without the air going stale."

He glanced between Alpha Corvin and me with open amusement, "And I heard she is already out here choosing wedding venues and punching your future daughter in law."

The fork in my hand went still.

Alpha Corvin turned to look at me, "You did what?"

Ryker’s brows lifted with theatrical innocence, "You did not know, wow, I assumed someone had told you."

"Ryker." Rowan’s voice came out flat, "Let it go."

"Amaris slapped Lila Cross," Ryker continued, unbothered, reaching for his glass, "that is the rumor currently moving through this pack, I am simply verifying it at the source."

Alpha Corvin set down his cutlery quietly , which was somehow louder than if he had thrown it, and looked at me with eyes that had gone to stone, "Stand up."

I looked back at him across that table, my heart hammering against my ribs, my voice coming out steadier than I felt, "Are you going to punish me again."

His palm came down on the table hard enough to rattle every glass on it and I flinched before I could stop myself, "I said stand up, and you will go to my room and wait for me there."

The silence that followed was absolute.

"Your room," Ryker said, and for the first time since I had met him the amusement had left his voice entirely, replaced by him working to keep his face steady.

"Yes." Alpha Corvin rose from his chair, straightening his jacket, his eyes still on me.

"There is more than one way to discipline a woman who does not know her place, and perhaps a more intimate lesson is what is required here." He held my gaze for one long beat, "Consider it practice for the chemistry my son found so amusing."

He walked out.

I looked at Ryker across the table and found him already looking at me, jaw tight, a muscle working in his cheek, and I saw it on his face clear as anything, the mortification, the anger he was not going to admit to, and some petty vindicated part of me registered satisfaction at seeing him rattled.

But it was a small and short-lived satisfaction because underneath it was crawling moving through my chest, the reality of what Alpha Corvin had just said settling into my bones one word at a time.

Was he going to punish me in his bed?