Chapter Eight: Like father, Like Son

Kadence POV;

The pack house loomed at the end of the driveway, dark except for the east wing where a single light burned against the night.

One in the morning on a Thursday. His father awake meant his father drunk, and his father drunk meant he was looking for someone to pull under with him.

Kadence sat in the Jeep for a moment after Ronan drove away, staring at that light. Then he got out and went inside.

The foyer was quiet, portraits of dead Alphas lining the walls the way they always had, watching him cross the floor the way they always did. He took the stairs slowly, following the hallway toward that single burning room, and pushed open his bedroom door.

Garrison was sitting in the chair by the window. Kadence's chair. Whiskey bottle loose in one hand, half gone, wearing the particular expression he put on when he'd been waiting long enough to feel righteous about it.

"There's my boy." The words ran together at the edges. "Out late. That's not like you."

Kadence said nothing. He crossed to the closet and started working the buttons of his shirt, his fingers feeling disconnected from the rest of him.

"Silent treatment." Garrison took a long pull from the bottle. "Very Alpha of you."

"Get out of my room."

"It's my house."

"It's the pack's house." Kadence pulled his shirt off and dropped it. "And you haven't been Alpha in anything but name for years, so don't."

Garrison's face shifted into something darker. He stood, not steadily. "I'm still breathing, aren't I? Still have the title?"

"Barely on both counts."

It came out sharper than he'd intended. He was too hollowed out to care. Too scraped raw from everything the night had already taken from him to smooth his edges for a man who'd never once smoothed his for anyone else.

Garrison moved toward him, and the old familiar energy filled the room, the one Kadence had grown up breathing like secondhand smoke. "You think you're better than me. Always have. Walking around this house with that look on your face, judging every choice I've ever made."

"I don't think I'm better than you." Kadence turned and looked at him directly. "I know I am."

Wrong thing to say. He knew it leaving his mouth and said it anyway because it was true and he was done pretending otherwise tonight of all nights.

Garrison's jaw worked. His grip tightened around the bottle. "You arrogant little—"

"Finish it." Kadence stepped forward, his wolf pressing close to the surface. "Tell me what I am. Tell me how I'm the problem. Tell me how I'm the one who broke this family."

"You want to know what you are?" Garrison's voice dropped into something quieter and uglier than shouting. "You're a coward. Hiding behind your rules and your principles because you're too frightened to actually live."

"I'm frightened of living like you."

"And how's that going?" Garrison gestured with the bottle, a wide, loose motion. "Fourteen years of trying not to be me and you've forgotten how to be anyone. Eight years searching for a mate you've half convinced yourself doesn't exist because finding her would mean you'd actually have to do something about it."

"You don't know anything about—"

"I know you found her tonight."

The room went still.

Garrison smiled, and there was nothing warm in it. "I can smell it on you. That specific combination of wanting something and being terrified of it at the same time. That feeling of not her, anyone but her."

Kadence couldn't move. "How."

"Because I know what it looks like." Garrison closed the distance between them, whiskey heavy on his breath. "I wore that same face the night I met Lydia. That moment of knowing you've found exactly what you want and realizing it's exactly what you can't have."

"Don't." The word came out raw. "Don't you dare compare—"

"Why not? It's the truth." Garrison tilted his head, studying him with the detached interest of someone watching something fall. "So tell me. What is she? What's got you this twisted up inside?"

Kadence should have said nothing. Should have thrown him out and let the night end there.

He didn't.

"She's a stripper."

The words landed in the silence and stayed there.