Chapter Eight: Like father, Like Son

Kadence POV

The pack house loomed ahead like a monument to everything Kadence had spent his life trying to uphold and everything he was currently failing at spectacularly.

He was left standing alone in the driveway of a house that had never quite felt like home.

The east wing light was still on.

His father, awake at one in the morning on a Thursday. Which meant drunk. Which meant looking for someone to drag down into his misery.

Kadence should have gone to his room. Should have avoided the confrontation that was clearly waiting for him like a landmine in the dark.

But his feet carried him inside anyway, through the grand foyer with its portraits of dead Alphas judging him from their frames, up the stairs that creaked under his weight, down the hallway toward that single burning light.

He pushed open his bedroom door.

And there was Garrison, sitting in Kadence's chair by the window like he owned the space. Like he owned everything, even though he'd long since forfeited the right to ownership of anything meaningful.

The whiskey bottle in his hand was half-empty. Or half-full. Kadence had stopped trying to find optimism in his father's drinking years ago.

"There's my boy." Garrison's words slurred together, bleeding at the edges. "Out late tonight. That's not like you."

Kadence said nothing. He moved to his closet, started unbuttoning his shirt with fingers that felt clumsy and detached from his body.

"Silent treatment?" Garrison took a swig from the bottle. "That's mature. Very Alpha of you."

"Get out of my room, Dad."

"It's my house."

"It's the pack's house. You just live in it." Kadence pulled off his shirt, tossed it toward the hamper. He missed, he didn't care.

"And you're not Alpha anymore, so you don't get to pull rank."

Garrison's face darkened. "Not Alpha? I'm still breathing, aren't I? Still have the title?"

"Barely on both counts."

The words came out sharper than Kadence intended, but he was too tired to soften them. Too raw from everything that had happened tonight to play nice with the man who'd taught him what not to become.

Garrison stood, swaying slightly. "You think you're better than me. Always have. Walking around with that self-righteous stick up your ass, judging me for my choices."

"I don't think I'm better than you." Kadence turned to face him. "I know I am."

It was the wrong thing to say. Kadence knew it the second the words left his mouth.

But he was also too honest to take them back.

Garrison's jaw worked. His hands clenched around the bottle.

"You arrogant little—"

"What? What am I?" Kadence stepped forward, his wolf rising to the surface. "Say it. Tell me what I am. Tell me how I'm the problem. Tell me how I'm the one who destroyed this family."

"You want to know what you are?" Garrison's voice dropped to something uglier than shouting.

"You're a coward. Hiding behind your rules and your high morals because you're terrified of actually living."

"I'm terrified of living like you."

"And how's that working out?" Garrison gestured with the bottle.

"You've spent fourteen years trying so hard not to be me that you've forgotten how to be yourself. Eight years looking for a mate you're convinced doesn't exist because you're too scared to actually find her."

Kadence's blood went cold. "You don't know anything about...."

"I know you found her tonight." Garrison's smile was vicious. "I can smell it on you. That specific cocktail of terror and desire. That feeling of 'oh god, not her, anyone but her.'"

The air left Kadence's lungs in a rush. "How..."

"You think I don't recognize that look?" Garrison moved closer, whiskey-breath hot between them. "I wore it. When 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." Kadence's voice came out raw. "Don't compare...."

"Why not? It's the truth, isn't it?" Garrison tilted his head, studying Kadence like a scientist examining a particularly disappointing specimen.

"So tell me. What does your precious fated mate do that's got you so twisted up inside?"

Kadence should have lied. Should have told him nothing. Should have thrown him out of the room and locked the door and pretended this conversation wasn't happening.

But something in him snapped.

Maybe it was exhaustion. Maybe it was the mate bond aching in his chest. Maybe it was fourteen years of carrying his father's sins like stones in his pockets finally becoming too heavy to hold.

"She's a stripper."