Page 3 of The Alpha's Heir

The clerk calls Preston’s name, and he stands and kisses me hard. “I love you; I will see you at home,” he tells me before going into the Chambers.

While I wait for my turn, I think about my father and what happened when Aiden and I went to confront him a month ago.

~*~ Flashback ~*~

~~~ One Month Earlier ~~~

“If we want answers, we must confront him. He knows the truth and knows where she is, and we deserve to know too.” The same argument between Aiden and I has been going on for the last couple of weeks. He wants to confront our father, whereas I want more evidence.

Aiden thinks I’m delaying because finding the truth scares me, as does the possibility of our mother rejecting me all over again. Maybe he is right, but I also know former Alpha John Goldrick will have a cover story in place and so I want more evidence to confront him with.

Once Preston knows as much as we do, he takes us to speak to his father, who was our father’s Beta. His behaviour and reaction just makes us all the more suspicious. However, I know he is bound by a loyalty to his former Alpha and without Aiden using his authority as the current Alpha, we can’t force him to break his oath.

“Aiden, if we wait, we might find something solid to present to him so he cannot just fob us off.” This is weird; it’s usually Aiden advising caution to me. When did our roles reverse?

“We have waited over twenty years, Amber… twenty fucking years of thinking she fucked off and never spared us a backwards glance, twenty years of wondering why the fuck we weren’t good enough. And he knew, he knew she had no choice and let us hurt like that, Amber… what sort of a sick bastard does a shitty thing like that to his own children?” I know from the amount of swearing he is doing that he is upset and angry and that is another reason why I have tried to delay the inevitable. It will come to blows. The subject is too emotive for them not to.

Maybe I can’t stop the fallout that is coming, though, and it's becoming clear that the longer I make Aiden wait to confront our father, the angrier he is getting. He has as much right to answers as I do.

“Have you got a plan at least, Aidy?” He starts to pull off his jacket and gives me a serious stare.

“Of course I do. How about, ‘Hey dad, remember us? Your children? Why the fuck did you lie about the reason our mother left us when we were pups?’ I think that covers it, don’t you, Amber?”

I shake my head and link Preston to tell him where we are going. I turn my back as my brother shifts into his impressive wolf form and wait for him to turn before shifting myself. Lizzie, my wolf, shakes out her fur and stretches before pressing off into a gentle run.

Our father, former Alpha John Goldrick, lives in the remote part of our lands with his chosen mate. For years, we have been anticipating they will be blessed with pups, but they have made no such announcement. It takes us about fifteen minutes to run there and once we arrive, we put on spare clothes kept in a hollowed-out tree trunk.

We walk in companionable silence for the last couple of minutes until our father's cottage comes into view. The chickens and vegetable patch in his garden demonstrate his attempt to be self-sufficient, but the idyllic image is marred by the shouting that comes from the cottage.

Our father's roar has always been loud and intimidating, but the thought of him shouting at his mate like that knocks me sick.

Aiden’s eyes glaze over as he mindlinks our father. The front door of the cottage swings open and our father storms out as I try to imagine what Aiden said.

“You might be the Alpha, boy, but I am still your father and you do not show up at another man's house, uninvited and unexpected, and command him to stop shouting at his mate.”

Our father looks a lot like Aiden: tall, with dark hair and pale skin. Father's hair is greying at the sides now and Aiden has green eyes like me and our mother, but apart from those differences, they look a lot like one another.

“Did you banish Mother?” Jeez, Aiden just jumps straight in there. In spite of my annoyance at my brother’s lack of tact, I face my father and wait for him to answer.

My father’s face goes from pale porcelain to beetroot red at lightning speed. “Why don’t you ask her?” he snarls back at us.

“We would, but she left us, remember? And we haven’t heard anything since we were pups, but we want to know if the rumours are true. Did she leave us or did you banish her?” The words are pouring out of me without restraint, like a dam bursting open. I know he is lying; I know he is trying to come up with another story.

“Amber, sweetheart, you, your brother, her mate, her pack, all of us weren’t enough to keep her here. Why are you dragging all this up now? You have your mate, you can have a pup and make your own family, there is no need to be dragging all that stuff up now. Let's just move forward, okay?”

He turns to go back into the cottage when his mate comes to the door. Marissa is a little older than Aiden, maybe closer to 35 years old, and she has been my father's lover for a long time, probably close to fifteen years. They mated officially just after Aiden became Alpha and have lived out here for around six years.

“John, don’t you dare run out on me again. We need to talk about this,” Marissa shouts to my father. She obviously hasn’t seen us yet, through her swollen, bloodshot eyes.

“GET BACK INSIDE NOW!” Father shouts and I cover my ears, just like I used to when I was a little girl. Aiden stands between me and our father.

“As your Alpha, I command you to stand down. Stop shouting and scaring your daughter and your mate.” Marissa stops at the gate when she hears Aiden’s voice, and I can see her trembling even from a distance. This is what our father does. He shouts and scares us until we relent or forget.

“No, Father. I can’t just move forward. I want to know why I wasn’t good enough for my mother to stay. I am going to find her and ask her. I am giving you a chance to tell me first, but I will not stop until I know. And if I find that she was banished, I will come and rip your throat out myself.”

I walk away and Aiden follows behind me when our father calls out to us.

“I did banish her. I banished her because she took a second mate and chose him over us.”

---