Page 49 of Alpha's Secret Baby Girl
Rafael fought down the irritation. Was she delaying, or was she trying to think up lies to tell him? He grasped her chin lightly and turned her face toward him. His mouth was drawn into a tight line as he studied her.
“Tell me,” he whispered, but it was an order.
“It wasn’t a car crash that killed your parents,” Gwen murmured. “Or rather, it was. But it wasn’t an accident.”
Cold washed through him. His fingers tightened on her chin unconsciously. “What are you talking about? What happened?”
“I’m not going into detail,” Gwen said again, shuddering.
“Gwen!”
“The barrier was failing,” she said, speaking quickly as her voice shook. “That’s when the demon escaped. The same one stalking the island now. Your mother was a witch descendant and had magic, too. It was weak magic, but your father thought it was enough. They… they were trying to restore the barrier. The demon attacked. Randall defended Isabel as she did what needed to be done to fix the barrier. He died defending her. But after he was dead…”
Rafael felt as though all the air had disappeared from the room. His hands shook as he searched Gwen’s face, searching for any sign that she was lying. He almost hoped he’d find it.
“They died protecting the pack,” he murmured. “But the accident…”
“The demon didn’t want anyone to know. It set the scene. Made it look like it was the crash that killed them.”
Nobody knew. Not even the Council. All these years, he’d railed against his father, had hated him for what he’d done. He hadn’t thought there was anything good about Randall Buchanan, that he’d died and killed his wife through another instance of selfishness and spite. Rafael had half convinced himself that Randall had committed suicide and murdered his mother, because why should she be happy if she couldn’t belong to the former Alpha?
Rafael’s gut churned. He groaned as the agony swept through him.
“I always thought he was nothing more than a selfish prick,” he said. He pressed his face into the couch as his mind churned over this information. “Was there anything else I didn’t know? What other things did he do that I just didn’t acknowledge?”
Gwen’s fingers combed through his hair. “Rafael, you can’t think that way.”
“But what if… what if it was all because he was protecting us?” His mind focused on his own actions when he first realized Lianne was his daughter. He had acted badly. He’d acted like his father. So what if Randall’s behavior was rooted in the same fear? “What if he was trying to make us strong enough to fight the demons? What if—”
“Rafael.” Gwen pulled his head up, making him look at her. “It doesn’t excuse what he did.”
Rafael stared at her, trying to understand her words.
“What he did was abuse. You can’t justify abuse by saying it came from a good place or anything like that. He never told you, and that’s on him,” she said, her voice growing stronger. “It’s not your fault; he didn’t say anything. And if he really was trying to strengthen the pack, why would he treat us witch-descendants so poorly?”
She was right. He knew she was right, somewhere inside. But all he could think of was the last time he’d seen his parents. He and Randall had been fighting, no shocker. Randall had said Rafael didn’t understand. Was he talking about the demon? His mother had run after him. She’d begged him to come back inside. Wanted him to apologize to his father and hear him out.
Would things have turned out differently if he had? Would he have been able to see things through his father’s eyes and convince him to see through Rafael’s? Would he have been able to make the changes here on the island? If he could have just done more…
He thought he’d gotten over these torments, the ones that whispered he could have saved his mother at the very least.
Now?
Now it felt as though his scars had been ripped open once more. And he didn’t know how to stop the bleeding.
Chapter 21 - Gwen
After Gwen told Rafael about the vision she had of his father, he took her home, made sure she was comfortable, and promised her, “I’ll find a way to take this thing down without making you fight.”
She was too shaken and exhausted then to realize what he was really saying.“I’m not going to let it kill you, too.”Since then two days ago, she hadn’t seen him for more than a few minutes. When she tried to get him to slow down to talk, he refused to meet her eye and only said he was busy. Her worry grew.
Which was why she’d come back to his office, where he had briefly told her he was going that morning right before he skipped breakfast. She was going to make him stop now. They were going to talk. She was going to march into his office and say, “Rafael, I had a vision that the demon killed Lianne.” And that would slow him down enough so that they could start actually discussing what was happening and get on the same page.
With a grunt, she shoved the door to his office open. “Rafael, I—”
The man standing at his desk was not, in fact, Rafael. Michael looked up. He looked more like their mother than Rafael did. He still had the same dark brown hair, but Michael’s eyes were green behind his glasses. He was taller by far than his brother, and even when he was young, Gwen couldn’t recall a time when she hadn’t seen him in a suit.
“Rafael is with the special ops on a border hunt,” Michael said, straightening his tie. “One of the other packs reported a demon attack, and they’re hoping to find evidence of where it went.”
