Page 50 of Forced Alpha Bride
Of course, Regina is probably hoping to make a fool of him. Damon has presence by the bucketload, but he can’t keep control of himself in formal situations. It would be easy for her to embarrass him, and it wouldn’t look good in front of the other packs.
“Did you hear me?” he asks.
“Yeah, I heard you,” I reply. “I’m just not ready to get up yet.”
“That’s okay. Take all the time you need. It’s not like they can start without me.”
I can’t help grinning, and I snuggle a bit closer to him as he gently strokes my hair.
I do enjoy his wit. He’s so quick and smart. He can also be very gentle. Are any of the stories about him really true?
It’s a disturbing thought. I don’t have any evidence of him being a terrible person, only secondhand or thirdhand stories.
He hunted me in the snow… but I did just run from the meeting without any warning. By the time he came after me, I was in deep trouble. I would have died if he hadn’t come, and he risked his own life, too.
It doesn’t escape me that Damon sent back the other members of his pack and put himself in danger for me without risking anyone else.
He tied me to the bed, kept me in chains… I was bound at my own wedding!
I can’t excuse this, no matter what kind of mental gymnastics I do. It seems entirely irrelevant, though, because I actually enjoy being tied up.
No one’s more surprised about that than me!
Anything else Damon’s been accused of—petty crime, violence, fights—all of it could have been shaded by whoever told the tale. I know absolutely nothing about him. Not really.
Maybe I should get to know him before I condemn him.
“Damon,” I whisper. “Why did you become alpha?”
His hand pauses briefly, then continues to stroke my hair and back.
“I’ve dreamed about it my whole life. My mother and I didn’t have a nice life here when I was a kid, and my father was dead. I always felt it was really unfair how the council treated my mom. She was ostracized… because of me.”
“Because of you?” I echo. “But you were just a little kid! How could it be your fault?”
I feel him shrug. “I personally heard Regina say it enough times. She seemed to make a point of finding my mother in public places and abusing her. This bled into the next generation, until I just couldn’t catch a break in school.”
“Oh,” I say, remembering all the gossip Krista shared with me. Whenever she told me a story with Damon in it, she was brutal in her assessment of him.
And I just believed it. I assumed he was dull, slow, and stupid. But he’s none of those things.
“You left school, though, didn’t you?” I ask.
“Yeah. My mom left me with my uncle, and then she disappeared. We found out later that she died, but I don’t really know how. I came back for the funeral, but the whole pack acted like I didn’t have the right to be there.”
“At your mom’s funeral?”
“Well, in town at all. I think the only reason I wasn’t driven straight out was because itwasa funeral.”
“But then what? Did they actually run you out of town?”
“I didn’t give them a chance. I took off.”
I’m tempted to ask about the next few years, which is apparently when he built his gang and started a life of crime, but I shy away from that topic.
Maybe I just don’t want to know. It would clash with the “Damon’s a great guy” cheer squad I’ve got going on in my head right now.
“So, what about Valentine Creek?” I ask. “Why do you care so much about them if it was never your home?”
