Page 10 of Accepted Bonds

I didn’t care if innocent people died or not, but I knew that if my father killed more innocent people, we would get caught.What was the point of getting caught after Aurora was dead?It was better for us to get caught now so that she could stay alive.

I also needed their help to get rid of the compulsion spell that my Alpha had embedded in my mind and my father’s.Maybe then, my father and I would feel better.

Regardless, I couldn’t keep hiding behind my friends who lived inside me.Plus, Reuben was getting more and more bloodthirsty.I didn’t know this while I was the top consciousness standing at the forefront of my mind, but now that I’d been in the back for days, I’d seen his dreams and nightmares.

While I was indifferent to my father killing people, I wasn’t happy to be a killer.I didn’t want to ever kill people for sport.

There always had to be a difference.If not, how was I different from the members of my first pack and our dog-eat-dog laws which caused my family to run all the way from India to the United States only to jump from the frying pan to fire?From a shitty pack with a dog-eat-dog nature and an authoritarian Alpha who liked death duel sports to three shitty packs with equally bad, selfish, and perverted Alphas.

I was hardly ever as logical as I was right now, but after speaking to Aurora, the part of me that could think as rationally as Number 1 had awakened.And I knew what I needed to do.

With a sigh, I pulled my phone out of the last drawer on the bedside table, turned it on, and sent a text message containing the address to this hovel to Aiden.

Aurora, I did it for you.

I know you don’t want to be with someone whose friends and other personalities tried to kill you, but by sending this text, I hope you’ll remember me forever.

I wish I could be branded in your memory for an eternity, but I can’t even watch you get hurt, not to talk of hurting you enough to make you remember me forever.

It was good like this, though.At least Aurora would always remember that I saved her, even though it meant getting caught.

* * *

Sometime after I sent the text message to Aiden, Aurora started running a fever.I had just put a wet towel on her forehead when the door to the single window room that my father had designated to Aurora flung open.

I looked back to find my father standing at the door, his back hunched and his expression indiscernible, while the veins on his hand holding a wet dagger flexed.

I frowned and turned to face him.“Dad?”

“What did you do?”

“What?”I asked.

I couldn’t see his face clearly because the light from behind the open door was giving him a halo, but I could hear his labored breathing.

As he moved closer to me, I saw the dark look on his face as he stared at me with the same look he used to stare at our former pack observer before he killed him.

“You sent a message to one of the Crawford boys.”He wasn’t asking, so he’d found out somehow.

“How did you know that?Do you have spyware on my phone?You ...you don’t even trust me?”A feeling of shock and betrayal made me stare at my father and the dagger he was holding.“Wait, the dagger is to kill me?I—”

“Why would I kill my only daughter?”He closed his eyes for a second as if he was fighting for control over something, but when he opened them again, there was a steely determination in his coffee-brown eyes that looked completely black.“I’m going to kill that evil Supernatural Council, pack observer-loving girl that pretended to be your friend so she could ...”

“She didn’t pretend to be my friend.She is my friend!”I said, getting a little angry and agitated at the way he was standing before me with a dagger, looking way taller than me.

With the light coming in from behind him and the menacing look on his face, he didn’t look much like my father.Instead, he looked more and more like that Alpha, the one that had forced me to be with him when I was a teenager.The one I hated the most.

“You ...gbtimsdhs.”He was so angry that he lost his mind long enough to speak gibberish.He lowered his head for a few moments, using his hand to rub his temples hard.

When he raised his head again, there was no expression on his face and I couldn’t read him anymore.

It was only then that I realized I was not the only one with multiple personalities.

I raised my hands to the side, standing before Aurora’s fevered body to shield her.

“What do you want to do?”I asked.

“After I get rid of her, you will have no weakness.Now get out of the way.We need to get out of here before the Crawfords get here.”He was still moving toward me in short strides, without a single expression on his face.

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