Page 90 of Our Deceptive Heat

I follow behind him, wishing that anything else would come up to stop what’s going to happen, but alas, my luck holds, and we’re escorted to a private room.

The room is bare but for a stinky lounge in one corner and a mirror on the wall opposite. It must be some kind of practice rehearsal room, but the band was never offered it.

I walk into the middle of the room and stop, standing perfectly still with my hands clasped in front of me, while my father paces in slow, measured steps. It’s a delaying tactic, a way to build fear. It’s working.

He turns back to me only after he’s made me sweat. A thousand disjointed thoughts have gone through my mind, nothing staying long enough for me to register.

Where’s my out? What’s my plan? Denial? We’re just friends? I need to play this down completely. Compliance. I need to surrender to him, feign obedience. Submit to his narcissistic tendencies.

He steps up to me; it takes me too long to register the raised hand. I look away from his narrowed, flat brown eyes and clenched jaw to take in the threat of his raised palm.

“Are you going to hit me, Dad?” I whisper.

“You are going to be bonded to a pack that I decide. This is for the company, our legacy.”

“It’s archaic and outdated,” I snap back, breaking my own resolve to give him what he wants.

“It’s for family. Everyone has fucked up so far. All we have is us. I need you to bring the security that Locke, Lia, Raider, and Kelly have thrown back in our faces.”

“Dad, the company will survive.”

“This is not up for debate, Auryn. I’m your father, and I know what’s best for you, your mother, and your future. You are a beta, a mere beta. You can’t possibly see beyond your need for approval and acceptance. But I can. And I know a pack who would treat you-”

“Like a whore?” I snap, incensed.

His hand lashes out, gripping my wrist, grinding the bones together. “If you act like a whore, then you’ll be treated like a whore. Had you been a son, a useful heir, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, but you can’t be what I need, so you will get me what I want, whether you need to whore yourself out or not!” he growls savagely.

I swallow hard and relax my arm, not fighting him.

“Why do you hate women so much?” I whisper.

He stands up, letting me go, and adjusting his cuffs. “I don’t hate women, don’t be ridiculous. I find you useless and tedious. There is a difference. Women are emotional. Irrational.”

Is there?

“So, it doesn’t matter if they hurt me, if I say no, and they ignore me, if they-”

My father raises a hand, silencing my questions with the threat. “As long as you get us that merger, I don’t care what happens.”

I stare at him. In some distant part of my mind, I think I’d been hoping that he’d find something to love about me, something to be proud of. I think I thought that I could eventually earn his love. There was hope. I didn’t know it was there, but it was.

I feel it die inside me. Part of me crumbling and falling into the ocean of ruined things. I lose my dad.

“I’ll send you to another band. Or back home. You obviously can’t be trusted.”

What? No!

“It’s a harmless flirtation,” father, I can’t even say the word out loud, it drips with scorn. “Nothing serious.”

“All the same-”

“No! You gave me this job, and if you want me to do it-”

“Don’t talk to me like that!”

“If,” I say over the top of him, “if you want me to go peacefully into the merger without making a scene, you’ll leave me to do my job. I know that I’m not allowed to be with the band. They don’t want me like that, anyway.”

My father raises an eyebrow. “Threatening me now?”

---