Page 51 of Fated to Her

• Eli •

Adeline is completely unaware of the danger my father poses; I don’t care what he says. He hasn’t changed; no one would change that much. We tried for years to get him to see reason, leave my mother, and help save us all. But he always chose her. He chose her over his own flesh and blood.

Coming into the living room, my father is at the counter. His back is to me as I approach him. He’s talking to Emery while she drinks her coffee. Picking up my scent, he glances over his shoulder at me and sighs.

“If you have come to hit me, at least wait for me to turn around,” he says.

“Why are you here?” I ask him.

He turns on the stool on which he sits to face me. He stares at me, though I don’t see any of the rage I was accustomed to when I was a child. No, now all I’m seeing is an aging man. Someone who looks like the light within is slowly flickering out.

But I know this man. Know what he’s capable of. He would sell his own kids like they mean nothing to him, condemning his own for defending his sisters and being with another man. He had his pack hunt us for decades, not to capture but to kill. His own blood because we didn’t represent or become the people he wanted.

He blames us for our mother’s withering mind, the insanity that crept in over the years, slowly making her unstable. I never knew her as anything but crazy, but before us, apparently, she was a decent woman and not an animal who would slaughter her own kids and have them raped to death for financial gain.

“I don’t understand. In this house?” he asks.

I shake my head at him. “No. I mean, why, after all these years, did you suddenly walk back into Emery’s life? Why now?”

He looks perplexed for a second. “I’m her father. Yours too, Elijah.”

“No. Fathers don’t try to kill their kids. Fathers protect them, not watch them slowly die at the hands of another. Now, why are you here?”

“Your mother died. I only meant to tell you both. Emery contacted me. Ask her if you don’t believe me. She never had to reach out. Though I’m glad she did,” he says, looking at her.

For the first time in my life, I actually see his eyes soften.

“I’m here because I want to be here, Elijah. I have no ill intentions. I just want to be in your lives. Is that so hard to believe?”

I scoff. “In our lives? You didn’t even want us when you had us. You were happy to be rid of us. Clarissa, you remember her, right? Your first born? The one you gave to that savage to be killed?”

He flinches at my words. “I never intended for that to happen. You know that wasn’t my doing. Your mother picked her suitor. I never wanted any of that.”

“Yeah, but you stayed silent and then made us pay for that mistake. Her blood is on your hands. Do you have any idea what they did to her?” I ask him.

Finding her that day would be forever ingrained in my memory and haunt me for the rest of my immortal life. The dead look in her eyes, her naked, mutilated body, and the horrid things she endured; no part of her was left unmarred, all their scents on her. They dumped her like garbage. Something no child should come across. No person should see their sister like that. She should never have been entrusted to that monster, never should have been forced to endure what she had, and this man let it happen.

I remember going home and my mother staring at me as I explained how I’d found her. The look she gave me was so cold before she shrugged and called my father and told him I was on another territory; she didn’t even care. All she cared about was that I was in another pack’s territory, and she told my father to punish me. He nearly killed me, and I prayed he would, just to stop the agony that was him.

“You think I don’t know? You think I wouldn’t give anything to go back and fix it? Your mother was my mate. You should know how hard it is to go against your mate.”

“Mate or not, we were fucking kids. Clarissa was your daughter, your own flesh and blood,” I scream at him, my claws slipping from my fingertips.

“Please, Elijah, just stop,” Emery cries. Tears slip down her cheeks as she clutches her mug of coffee. She’s biting her lip, something she only does when I know she is on the verge of breaking. Gone is the strong, fearless woman she has become; instead, here is the fearful girl I grew up with.

I nod to her.

“I mean no harm, Elijah. I just want a second chance, a second chance to be the father I was meant to be, the grandfather I could be,” my father tells me.

“I won’t have my child raised the way you raised us. I’ll protect them with my life. I’m not a coward like you. I protect my own, even if it means protecting them from you.”

“As you should, but please, for the sake of Adeline and your child, see reason. You know we can keep them safe out there.”

“And Cyrus. If he isn’t welcome, we aren’t,” I tell him.

“I have no issues with Cyrus. I have changed, Elijah. We even have a few same-sex couples at home now. I made mistakes. At least let me try to mend them,” he says when a door opens in the hall.

Looking toward it, I see Addie come out, going to the kitchen. She grabs a glass from the cupboard and turns the tap on.