Page 92 of Our Deceptive Heat

“Mum, I love them.” I don’t know why I confess this to her. Because I haven’t been able to vocalise it to anyone else because, right now, it feels like the two of us share some terrible secret that is crushing us to death, and maybe I want her permission to leave.

“You don’t, though. You’re too young to know love. When you have pack bonds and a pack or an alpha who takes care of you-”

“Beats me.”

“And loves you.”

“Rapes me.”

“When he looks after all your needs-”

“Publicly sexually assaults me and laughs while I cry.”

My mother blinks out of her stupor. “No, it’s not like that. Alphas aren’t like that.”

“Dad does it to you.”

My mother flinches and rocks back on her heels. “No, he, he loves me.”

“He is a monster, Mum. He’s a user and an abuser, and we are more than what he says we are. I can sing, Mum! I can sing so well, and I write songs, and I found people who love me. Don’t I get my dreams? Don’t I get five minutes in the light? Don’t you remember how it felt to be Chile Raines?”

My mother’s pain-filled eyes flutter closer, her hand raising to grip her throat. “I remember, but it’s fleeting. The lights, the music, the love, it’s all there until it’s gone. You can skip all that and go straight to-”

“A domestic violence situation that will end up with me cutting my own throat rather than staying.”

My mother’s eyes water. “Don’t say such things.”

“Help me get away from him.”

“There is no escape, Ryn. I tried. I tried so hard. He owns the world, and you and I are nothing but ornaments.”

I glare at her, terrified by the complete acceptance she has over this life of hers.

“I don’t want that, Mum. I don’t want to be scared anymore. And I don’t want to wonder if every day is going to be my last. Walking on eggshells, listening to screams. The police. The questions, the lies. I don’t want it. Mum, I want to feel good, to have people touch me and have it feel pleasant, to be joyful in their embraces. I do not want to endure my alpha’s touch. I want to yearn for it.”

My mother steps back. “It’s the way it is. Life isn’t fair to people like us.”

“We have the entire world at our feet. Why are we the exceptions? The days of staying with people who hurt you because marriage and packs are forever are over. We can leave him. Start a new life. Come with me.”

I’m begging her. I’m pleading with her. My whole heart is straining with the need to hear that whispered yes slip past her lips.

But my mother’s mouth tightens, and she shakes her head. “I’m not going to tell your father what you said because of all the help you gave me, but I’m warning you now, Auryn. You need to put all these delusional thoughts behind you. Accept the merger your father has made for you. Forget the music, the songs. This is the best course of action.”

“You condemn me to my death.”

“Don’t be so dramatic!” she snaps.

“This isn’t dramatic. This is the truth. If they don’t kill me, I’ll find a way to end it myself.”

My mother stares at me with bruised eyes. “Then I hope you never have a child, so they never take that option away from you.”

Her words haunt me for hours after she leaves. I stand there in that room hearing them over and over. Am I the weapon my father uses to keep my mother chained in this relationship with him? The horror of that, all the beatings, goes through my mind. Every single time I’ve resented her, every time I didn’t understand.

My world is reshaped. It’s reformed.

I’m going to get free of my father, and I’m going to take away the knife that’s being held to my mother’s throat.

Chapter twenty-nine

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