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Chapter Twenty-Nine

Forrester

S tanding at my mother’s grave, I trace her name with my eyes over and over again trying to connect the woman I knew and the one that was just revealed to me.

It feels like my memories are lies now.

My mother, my father, my uncle…

Drayton.

None of them are who I thought they were.

Talia’s magic revealed the manipulation behind so much of what I thought was real and I don’t think I understand much of my life anymore.

Dropping to my knees in front of her grave, I punch the ground as hard as I can, screaming in anger as I do.

There’s so much pent up anger inside of me just clawing to come out.

My wolf howls in anger and pain as I unleash years upon years of rage all at once.

Eventually the anger drains out of me, leaving only pain in its wake.

Before I know it, tears pour down my face, obscuring my vision as I cradle my busted up hands at my sides.

I wait until the tears slow down, before I try once again to address the things I can’t say to my mother and have to say to her gravestone instead.

“ Why? Why would you do this? You’re the reason for so much of the hate and pain in my soul,” I growl into the wind, my anger renewing once again like a tidal wave, fuelling every word that spews from my mouth.

“The fucking things you did to everyone around you while twisting it so you looked like a victim.”

I scoff, the harsh sound stolen away by the winds picking up around me.

“You’re the reason I’ve said despicable things to Drayton. You made me believe so much fucking bullshit and I lost my brother for years because of it. It’s still nothing compared to what you said to him, what you made him believe for YEARS!”

The rage from before comes back full swing.

My wolf pushes against my mind, wanting out to release his own anger.

Not yet, I tell him.

I’m not done yet.

My fist flies out at her gravestone, cracking the granite of it and breaking my knuckles completely open.

My blood now decorates her broken name and I laugh mercilessly.

“ I fucking hate you! Do you hear me, mother?! I fucking hate you. If you were still alive, I swear to fucking Adessa, I would kill you myself.”

Back and forth, I go between screaming profanities and cursing my mother to crying years worth of tears that have been hidden behind lies and more lies.

The sobbing wins out over my anger, wracking my body with over twenty years of pain needing to be felt.

There’s a new hollow feeling in my chest where so much anger and resentment has lived for the past year.

Those feelings were never even mine.

They were put there by selfish people with hidden agendas.

People I thought I loved, that turned out to be monsters who ruined so many lives with their lust for power.

I guess they had a lot in common with the Croises in that way.

They tried to kill a four year old for the mistakes of adults.

They turned him into a pariah in the pack to make me the pack alpha so they could control them and keep the power to themselves.

Four fucking years old.

What the actual fuck?

!

What kind of shifters do I come from?

And what does all of it say about me?

I fell for all of it so easily, it’s almost laughable.

Fucking hell, I bet they loved that they didn’t have to do much to make me into their perfect little puppet.

“Forrester.” Drayton’s hesitant voice comes from behind me.

“Talia told me where you went. Can we talk?”

A broken laugh comes out that quickly turns back into a body-shaking sob.

At this moment, I can’t manage more than silent screams and tears, let alone a conversation.

I owe him so much more than a talk, I owe him a thousand apologies and yet I can’t say anything.

He moves beside me, sitting down in the grass and plucking a couple pieces out.

It’s almost laughably easy to see so many signs of the abuse he dealt with when we were growing up.

I missed so many of them while I was being treated like a fucking prince.

Drayton made sure he sheltered me from what happened behind his closed door.

If only I had really looked, though, I would have seen what was really there.

“You don’t have to say anything, I’ll do the talking. Please, Forr,” Drayton begs, his own unshed tears making his voice deeper and muffled.

At my nod, he lets out a relieved sigh.

“Thank you.”

Dropping my head in my hands, I sit in silence waiting for Drayton to speak.

It doesn’t take long, his words coming out just as dark clouds block out the sun.

A storm must be blowing in with the wind.

Fucking great addition to this moment.

“The day you were born, my mother came to me and sat me down. She told me that things were about to change and it wouldn’t be good for us. Your mother had given our father another heir, one that wasn’t from their forbidden affair.” Drayton pauses, looking up at the dark clouds above us.

“I was only four years old, but I remember looking into my mother’s eyes and wiping the tears from her cheeks. She was scared for us, scared of what was about to happen. Still, she also knew we had no choice but to stay.”

Drayton shakes his head, recalling his own memories.

“You were a threat, not only to me, but my mom as well. I wanted so much to hate you from that moment on,” Drayton confesses, looking at me with sincerity in his eyes.

“That hate never came. Instead, I loved you like the brother you are to me. Life did get bad after you were born, yet at the same time, it got better.”

Scoffing at that, I shake my head in disbelief.

“I don’t know how years of abuse could ever be defined as better.”

Drayton laughs at my reaction, leaning back on his hands.

“Do you remember when Alaric came to live with the pack? You, me, Penn, and Wes took him out to the cliff overlooking Rampage Drop.”

“Yeah. You told me that nothing scared him, he was a badass through and through. I bet you ten gummy worms that you were wrong,” I recall with a snort.

Shaking my head to release the humour, I look over at him in confusion.

“Where the fuck are you going with this?”

Drayton rolls his eyes at my sudden snarky tone and pushes my shoulder lightly.

“Always so impatient. Anyways , you said he was afraid of heights and would piss his pants at Rampage Drop. I took that bet because I knew you were full of shit, Alaric wasn’t afraid of anything, let alone a cliff. We got to the cliff, your smug ass face dropping into panic when, lo and behold, he wasn’t scared at all. He looked at us like we were stupid for going to a cliff that was basically a barren, boring drop off. He even complained we couldn’t jump off of it into some water or something.”

Drayton laughs at the memory, his eyes staring off into the distance like he was watching it all unfold again.

“My powers told me he was scared of heights! How was I supposed to know that even at eleven years old he had balls of fucking steel?” I say, laughing with Drayton at the memory.

“The motherfucker stole the rest of my gummy worms after I gave you ten because he said I shouldn’t have made the bet at all.”

“Alaric does not appreciate being underestimated. Never has, never will,” Drayton says between laughs.

“Just be happy you weren’t Penn. He took poor Penn’s favourite teddy bear after Penn told Alaric he couldn’t beat him at the full moon run. The bastard still keeps it on his shelf like a fucked up trophy.”

“Penn told me he got rid of that thing because he was too old for it!” I look at Dray in shock, shaking my head at the lie.

“That motherfucker.”

“The only one to actually best him has been Wes,” Drayton reminisces, taking me down memory lane with him.

“Do you remember that?”

“How could I forget? It was when we found out that Wes is the best damn tracker anyone has ever seen.” I shake my head, remembering the shock we all felt when quiet, nerdy Wes destroyed everyone at the yearly hunt at only thirteen years old.

“The look on Alaric’s face was priceless after that one.”

“Penn held it over his head for like two years before Alaric headlocked him and refused to let go until he agreed to shut up about it.”

We laugh together, thinking back to all those memories we made as a group.

It always felt like we were a smaller pack within the pack.

For most of my life they were my ride or die, the ones I would give up anything for.

Drayton gets sombre again suddenly, looking at me to get my attention.

“Behind closed doors a lot of bad shit happened to me. Things that I still refuse to talk about to this day,” he explains with tears in his eyes.

Seeing the vulnerability on his face made me feel better about how much of my own I’ve shown.

“Those things were done by adults that should have known and done better. They were evil and they took advantage of the power imbalance between me and them. None of that is on you. Not then and not now. If I was a victim, then so are you. We were used and abused in different ways, but just because mine was more openly cruel, does not negate that yours happened.”

“It’s hard now that Talia has healed so much of the manipulation to face how much I didn’t see growing up. Everything I thought I knew wasn’t true, my memories have been distorted by lies and manipulation. It feels like I’m drowning right now in all these emotions that I never got to feel in the moment,” I confide in Drayton, my heart beating a mile a minute.

“I want to be a good man. I want to be the kind of man you are, that looks for the best in people and sorts the dark from the light. I want to be a person that Talia is proud of. Who I have been manipulated into being for the entirety of my life is not it. I’m so sorry, Drayton. I turned you into a villain for simply defending yourself. I believed so many awful things about you and I used them against you. I’m no better than they are.”

“You didn’t know,” Drayton starts, but I throw a hand up, cutting him off.

“The problem is that I should have known. All those memories you just brought up to prove that things were also better for you? Those should have been the same memories that I recalled in those moments.” I shoot to my feet, pacing back and forth.

“My mother planted so many lies in my head and I turned my back on you so easily because of it. I’m no better than they were. I hated you, for nothing . I wanted to hurt you because I’m just like them. What if all I know is darkness and anger? What if I’m not worthy of the light? I’m damn sure not worthy to be part of the mate bond, and I’m definitely not worthy of being your brother.”

Drayton stands up as well, grabbing my shoulders and holding me in place.

“This, right here, is how I know you are nothing like them. Do you think they cared about anyone outside of themselves? Do you think your mother, our father, or even Marcus, gave any fucks if they were worthy of anything? No. Not once. In fact, they wholeheartedly thought they were worthy of taking whatever they wanted just because. You are not them and you never will be.”

Opening my mouth to argue, I shut it immediately when he flicks me in the forehead.

Pulling back from his hand, I smack it away with a glare.

The fuck is he doing?

“You deserved that. I saw you gearing up to argue,” Drayton chuckles, turning away from me and walking back towards the pack houses.

“Come on, Forr. Our mate has probably paced a hole right into the ground at this point. She’s worried about you and so are the others.”

Running to catch up, I nod my head at him.

“She healed parts of me I never thought I would see. I owe her a whole lot of gratitude and about a hundred more apologies for how I’ve acted since she got here.”

“You won’t hear me disagreeing with that. Talia is basically everything that’s good in one beautiful package and you hurt her pretty bad.” He looks over at me with a cocked eyebrow.

“You better grovel on your fucking knees before her or all of us will kick your fucking ass.”

“Aye, aye, Captain.” I throw him a small salute, enjoying the banter between us again.

I’m not sure that we’ll ever have the kind of familial relationship that we lost.

The scars will always be there and the damage has irreparably been done.

However, I do have hope that we’ll build towards something stronger than what we lost.

Afterall, we’re bond brothers now.

There’s nothing stronger in this world than the bonds we have to our mate, and that extends to bond brothers as well.