FULL NOVELXO Chapter 21
Chapter 21 Brooklyn
"I have to marry someone, Brooklyn," he says with a shrug, his voice laced with defeat. "This is not a world where what I want matters. And with you? Well, at least I know we get along, like the same things." I huff out a laugh at this.
"I mean, you were really upset when we broke up!" Hudson continues, trying to be upbeat. "And I really am sorry about what happened in the coffee shop. But isn't it kind of weird that we found each other out there on our own anyway, and we were engaged the whole time? It's kind of like...fate."
"It's not fate, Hudson. It's fake," I say, looking at him with all of my pain on display. I can't help it—he was my first love, and he totally betrayed me, and now here he is asking me to jump right back in?
"I don't want a mate who is unfaithful to me," I say, spreading my hands out in emphasis. I lower my voice
to a hiss. "And I don't want a husband who is into men, considering I'm a girl. Do you really want us to be
in a fake mating for the rest of our lives? Just because it's what your dad wants?"
"Please, Brooklyn," Hudson says, his eyes skittering for the door. "I get that you're upset-"
I nod fervently at this.
"But seriously, that's not something we can talk about there. Please." He turns worried eyes to me, and
I'm surprised to see true fear in his face. "You've got to promise to keep it a secret."
"Hudson..." My heart goes out to him. "Why is it such a big deal? It's the twenty-first century-it's so backwards to think that way about sexual orientation -"
"You don't understand," he says, shaking his head and looking down at the floor. "It's a different world here. That's why I spend so much time outside of it, at school, in bookstores and coffee shops.
"This world, this family...all their values are 100 years old, maybe more. And tradition is everything; family is everything. If I don't get married, don't have kids to carry on the family line...not only will they consider me a failure, but it will cause massive chaos in the city as the other bosses try to grab what my dad has built. What I will inherit, whether I want to or not."
I study Hudson's perfect face, feeling for him. He's trapped, and he knows it.
God, am I trapped now, too?
"Do you know what they do to people like me?" Hudson turns to look at me, agonized.
I shake my head "no," not even wanting to imagine it.
"They beat the crap out of them," he says, "make them denounce their sexuality, who they are, and if they do it again, they...they mutilate them..."
He speaks quickly, shaking his head. "One of the other Alpha's sons. He shamed the family and..." Hudson shakes his head again, unable to finish.
"Why don't you just leave?" I ask, horrified for him. "Why not just run?"
He laughs, a harsh thing. "You think I haven't thought about it?" He shrugs. "They'll just find me. There's no getting out of it. I'm the sole heir to my father's game. If I run, they'll find me. If I defy expectations about the kind of life I'm supposed to life-mate, family, taking a role in the organization, they'll... Weff, they'll straighten me out."
His lips quirk at his little play on words. Mine do, too.
"Hudson, this all sucks," I say, and he laughs at my understatement. "But is the solution really just to give
them what they want? You know what your dad did to me today-made me give up everything I love, say horrible things to my family so that they'll let me go."
Hudson looks at me, hopeless.
"Why give them what they want? Why don't we both run? Maybe together..."
He shakes his head, sighing. "You don't get it, Brooklyn," he says. "You can't just disappear anymore.
You're in his world now, there's no escape."
"My mom did it," I say quietly, realizing it myself for perhaps the first time. "She ran from my father, stayed away. And look at what a powerful Alpha he is. If she could escape his pack..."
"Yeah," Hudson says, looking me in
the eye. "And even after she died, the world came and found you, her daughter, and pulled you back in even when it couldn't take her. Don't you get it? Even if you got away,
got married, had kids, had the life you wanted my dad? Your dad? They would find your kids and pull them in. There's no getting out."
My stomach drops like a stone when I realize that he's right. Even if my mother did get out-here I was, right back in it.
But still. I couldn't just give in. Maybe
Hudson has been more beat down than me-or maybe just more realistic but this isn't the life I want. I have to try. And in order to try maybe this means I have to go deeper into this world. Study it. Figure out what makes it tick.
And then, when I find a loophole. I'll run.
Lena gives an approving growl.
"Well," I say, taking Hudson's hands again and giving them a squeeze. "You may have given in, but I'm
not sure I have yet. All I ask is that when the time comes, you don't stop me from leaving."
He looks at me, sadness etched on his face, and says nothing.