To Be Owned and Owed

~DAVINA~

“You’re mine.” He’d somehow considered my words like little dust in the air, almost unnoticed. He’d fucked me the way I wanted to be fucked but his eyes were filled with a kind of hate I didn’t appreciate.

The possibility of him being Alpha Aiden ate me up all night.

I avoided Rafe through school and pretended like thousands of eyes didn’t follow me around campus. I only had a sense of relief when Soren came around to pick me up and hung his arm around my neck.

When we got home, Father and Mother were in the living room…staring around awkwardly. It felt like the air stiffened and neither of them met my eyes.

I instantly knew something was wrong.

“Mom…Dad.” It was my simple way of greeting. Neither of them responded, and I found out why in the hallway.

My suitcases were arranged carefully in the hallway. I froze and looked at them for a long time. Two large, one small, my monogram embossed in silver on the corner of each.

I didn’t fully understand.

“Whose bags?” I asked.

“Yours.” Mom didn’t pause. “Your father will explain.”

Anything that concerns my Dad with me was never good. And he proved my point even more so.

He explained in seven sentences. I’d counted and stood still, numb as I have learned to, my hands wrapped around a mug of tea that had gone cold.

Alpha Aiden’s school. Wolf abilities. Important. His offer. Your brother will manage the pack. Your mother and I will be abroad. You leave in the morning.

Seven sentences, none of which had contained the words “would you like” or “what do you think” or any variation of me being consulted about the life I apparently occupied.

My heart swelled, I knew my father better than to confront him, and I held that grief and hate deep in my chest.

Soren found me in the garden. I exhaled deeply.

“Did you know?” I asked softly.

His silence was answer enough.

“Soren.”

“I wanted you to stay.” He sat down beside me on the stone wall, close enough that his arm pressed against mine. “I told him you should be here, that you could train with our own—I fought it, Davina. He didn’t listen.”

I believed him. He’s the only one I believe.

“How long?”

“The Semester. Maybe longer. Until—” he exhaled. “Until you find your wolf abilities, whatever they turn out to be.”

“I’ve been waiting two years for them to surface. Maybe they won’t.”

“They will.” His certainty was absolute, the way his eyes certainly always were, the way I sometimes cling to it in the middle of my worst nights because at least someone was sure of something. “You’re not an ordinary wolf, Davina. You never have been.”

I looked at the garden, the silver-leaf hedges mother had painted and the stopped tending, the small moon-pool in the centre that the pack used for solstice ceremonies. I grew up here. Every particular shadow was a part of me.

Somehow, it still didn’t make sense. The mad last night told me he would make me his, send me to his house…his friend’s daughter…but Alpha Aiden would never breathe the air of the arch let alone set foot on it.

It could be a carefully designed trap for me by my father, he’s capable of all things and poor Soren, he probably has no idea how cruel our father could be and how silent my mother goes when he speaks.

“Do you know if Aiden agreed to this?” I asked. I shouldn’t be asking him but he’s the only one who could give me actual answers without changing a thing.

“Dad says he’s doing him a favour.”

“Does Aiden know he’s doing him a favour, or did Dad inform him of that as well?”

Soren made a sound that was almost a laugh. Almost. But it was never funny. Soren knew too many details about what they were doing with my life, they kept treating him like he was already the master of me and treated me like a piece of jewellery to be traded. I can’t help but think this is all part of his way to pay his mysterious debt.

I sighed and tried my best not to look angry at Soren.

“He’ll take care of you,” Soren said, and I could hear him trying to make it sound like what he wanted it to be: a reassurance. “He’s strict but he’s—”

“He’s your father’s friend who has said maybe forty words to me in my entire life.” Like when he asked if I walked in the moonlight…so close…so…so tempting.

This won’t do. How do I—

“Davina—”

“I’m not angry.” I wasn’t. I was somewhere past anger, in the flat and practical country that came after it, where things simply were. “I’ll go. I’ll find my abilities, I’ll do what they need. I just—” I looked at my cold tea. “I would have liked to have been asked.”

Soren pressed his forehead against the side of mine. I felt his breath, even out.

“I know,” he said. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“Davina!” Father’s voice was like thunder on a sunny day.

“I’ll see you later,” I mouthed to Soren and went to my father in the living room. He was alone now.

“Your…night meetings won’t end while you’re in school. You’re not halfway through the settlement yet.”

I was quiet for a heartbeat, tears instantly blurring my vision but I didn’t let my shield break.

“It’s a new school—”

“More reason why Aiden and no one else must find out. I’ll get you a personal guard and driver who will be in charge of taking you to the arch whenever you need to. If you ever get found out…well you know what happens.”

My heart ached. I knew I was worthless to him, just never knew it was this intense. My own father…

I went back to my room and cried into my pillows. Just this night. Tomorrow, I’ll be handed from one man who hadn’t asked me to another.