02: TWO CHOICES

TARA

By the time I got to our house at the edge of the pack, my parents were in the living room of the small apartment, so I ran up to my room, so they wouldn’t question me or see my puffed face.

Kayla arrived barely ten minutes after I did, and I was temporarily relieved.

“I’m pregnant,” I confessed, picking my cuticles as I paced the length of my small room with her sitting on the bed.

Kayla blinked in rapid succession. “Wh-what?”

“I am…”

Kayla’s words could pass for a scream. “You’re. Fucking. Pregnant!?”

My heart skipped, and my eyebrows jumped as I flew to the bed to seal my hand over her mouth.

“Shhh! My parents could hear.”

Even if my parents were omegas too, they might still hear without the heightened senses.

“I’m sorry,” she said, tears brimming in her eyes as she understood the gravity of the situation.

“It’s Aidan’s, and he doesn’t believe me. I’m finished.” Fresh tears leaked from my eyes, and Kayla wrapped her hands around me.

“What can I do?” She asked after I pulled away, sniffing.

Resolution burned in my eyes. “I can’t keep it. You have to help me take it out. If my parents found out that I lost my virginity to a man almost a decade older than me, got pregnant, and he’s refusing to own up to it, they’ll …”

Too late.

The words died in my throat, and my knees buckled as the door to my room was whipped open with force and banged against the wall.

Outside, my father stood with a heaving chest and disbelief in his eyes, while my frail mom looked like she was trying to prevent him from barging in.

My mom gasped and covered her mouth with her hand.

“Dad?” I whispered, praying that they didn’t just hear me.

“Kayla, goodnight.” My father’s tone was collected, confirming my fears.

****

Tears flooded down my face as I crouched on the living room floor. My father barked at me, and my mother sobbed at the side.

“Tell me it’s a lie, child,” my father pleaded with tears in his eyes. I’d never seen him so weak.

Dropping my gaze, I muttered. “Dad, I’m sorry.”

My father let out a choked sound and ran a hand through his thinning hair. He staggered backward till he hit a chair, and he suddenly spun around, grabbing it like it weighed nothing, and flinging it across the room.

My mother and I flinched as we watched my dad destroy the place I called home.

The table went next. It crashed on the wall with bits of glass flying everywhere, and I couldn’t help but scream in fear.

“Dad! Please, stop!”

“You’ve gone against every single doctrine your mother and I instilled in you,” he barked. “Years! Years of training you and this is what you give us? Years of taking out loans to put you through school, and you come home with this?”

I hated myself at that moment. I wished I would just die, but all I could do was watch and listen to my parents break.

“Who owns it?” My dad asked in a small voice. “Do you even know? Or did you sell yourself to the pack guards?”

“James.” My mom spoke to her mate for the first time.

“Stay out of this, Sarah,” Dad snapped.

He turned back to me with questioning eyes, and the words died in my throat.

“Who!?”

My cries got louder as I flinched in fear, but I managed to speak. “He rejected it,” I cried, and my mother fell from the chair, wailing.

My dad looked between us and shook his head. Giving one final look at me, he walked away from the both of us.

“Mom, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” I crawled to where she was weeping. “I hate myself for doing this to you, but I swear, I’m sorry.”

She stood up with resolve, and haphazardly made her way to the kitchen and back.

“You call this number. My sister in the southern packs, she’ll take care of you…”

“Mom,” I cut her off. “You’re scaring me. What do you mean?”

She went on. “This is my burner phone number. Call me once every week and let me know how you’re doing. Mindlinks won’t work with the distance.”

My eyes frantically searched hers for answers as she scribbled numbers and an address on a paper, but I got nothing.

“No. I don’t want to leave y…”

“You have two choices,” my father's voice thundered from behind us, making me yelp, and my mom, freeze.

No. This wasn’t my father.

The man standing before us, with a shotgun loaded and cocked to my and my mother’s heads wasn’t the same man who raised me with love all my life. The bloodshot red eyes that stared at me vacantly didn’t belong to my dad.

“James! Put that down!” My mother screamed.

“You either come back here with the person responsible for this and bear the consequences of your actions, or you leave and never show your face here.”

“Dad, I’m sorry,” I screamed.

“You have till the count of five.”

“James! You know it’s dangerous out there. StoneWolves are wreaking havoc this period,” my mom protested.

StoneWolves were cursed wolves who had lost touch with humanity, and running into even one of them could mean death. Nobody stepped outside the safeties of their pack, but Dad wasn’t listening.

“One.”

“Dad!”

“Two.”

“At least let her pack some essentials.”

“Three,”

My head began to spin, vomit rose to my throat, and voices whined in my ears.

“Four.”

“She’s carrying a child for God’s sake!”

A deafening shot was fired, just as my mother screamed out long and loud, and for the next ten seconds, all I could hear was a painful ringing in my ears.

I slowly looked behind me to find out that my dad had shot a hole through the television screen and blasted the wall in the process.

“One. Second,” he bit out, cocking the gun straight to my head.

A silver bullet was all it would take to end my life and that of my child.

With eyes as wide as saucers, adrenaline pumping through my veins, and the unmistakable desire to see another rising sun, I picked myself up to my feet, and staggered backward.

“Hey,” my dad called, and I almost groaned out with relief at his change of heart.

Who was I kidding?

“Drop that note.”

And so, with nothing but my clad clothing, and the life clinging to me, I stepped into the stormy night.

I blindly trekked for hours, and when I started to feel cold and sore all over, I found an open laundry store at the pack’s square, and I staggered inside after making sure it was empty.

It would make matters worse if I ran into a bully.

This had to be a dream, I thought. I just had to believe that I’d wake up tomorrow, and none of this would have ever happened. I plopped down by one of the machines and sobbed.

Right before I drifted off to sleep, a ding from my pocket startled me.

I hadn’t even realized I had my phone with me. Half-sobbing, half-laughing, I pulled it out. The time was just past midnight, and the text was from ‘Babe with a red heart’.

My heart roared to life, and I shot up to my feet.

Aidan was texting me.

[Meet me at the hotel?]

‘Is he okay? Does this mean he wants to talk and work things out?’ I questioned myself.

I tried to mindlink Aidan, but he wasn’t responding.

I heaved a sigh of relief just from the thought that we could still make things work.

But I couldn’t ignore the nauseous feeling that crept into my stomach as I asked myself out loud.

“Why does he want us to meet at this late hour?”