Inevitably Yours

MICHAEL

Quinn was so cute when she woke up. I came so close to kissing her but caught myself just in time to rub my nose on hers instead. I didn’t miss the goosebumps that raised along her neck at it, though.

The Moon Goddess had to be testing my resolve. When Quinn rolled over, narrowly avoiding falling off the couch only to cuddle closer into me, I thought I was surely dead. Without actually mating her, I couldn’t imagine anything better than that.

I could have stayed like that forever with her body molded along mine. I could have listened to her gentle, quiet snores on repeat for hours. I could have paused time to adore her soft, freckled cheeks wedged against my chest.

But all good things have to end sometime. It was easier to leave here knowing that I would get to see her the next day. I wanted nothing more than to call her later and keep her on the phone with me for hours, listening to her voice ramble about anything. I had to put aside my selfishness and let her sleep, though. It also provided me the opportunity to sneak into my father’s office to snoop around. If what Daniel claimed was true in some way, there had to be a record somewhere that could verify it.

I didn’t bother to run home; I took my time still in a blissful daze of the past few hours. When I got home, my brother was outback in the pool. When he saw me poke my head out the back door, he scrambled from the pool and came running toward me.

“Hey,” I said. “Having fun?” he asked.

“Yea, we’re having pizza tonight. So where is she?” he asked, looking behind me.

“Who?” I asked.

He gave me a pointed look. “You know,” he said.

“No, I don’t,” I said. Tyler leaned closer and smelled me. Quinn’s scent still lingered on my clothes a little.

“You spent a whole afternoon with her but won’t bring her back here?” he asked.

“Drop it,” I told him, my voice going stony.

“Whatever,” he said. He turned and ran back to the pool. My mom was in the kitchen with a couple of other she-wolves making pizza. I stopped to give her a quick peck on the cheek before running upstairs.

“She won’t suspect anything now,” Eros snickered.

“Exactly,” I said. First, I went to my room and got the key my parents didn’t know about that unlocked the Alpha office. I slipped back down to my father’s office and let myself in quietly.

I looked around the tidy space; he hated clutter. Everything was filed or put in its place. He didn’t even leave papers out on his desk in his rush to leave last night. I went to the filing cabinets first, figuring it the best place to start. If there was information about every pack member in this office, there was information about our family too.

When I came across the files for Quinn and her family, I almost stopped to read through them. Eros reminded me that we were on a mission and not supposed to be in this room. I had confidence that my mother would be busy in the kitchen for a while and leave me be, but there were no guarantees.

When I got through all the drawers, I was disappointed but not surprised to find nothing on anyone in my immediate family. I did find files on my father’s extended family, but it looked like pages had been selectively removed, and things were scribbled out.

Next, I went to the bookshelves along the opposite wall. I scanned the volumes for anything that looked out of place. Nothing in the titles indicated that it would have personal information about my father within it or about my family in general. I did manage to find a couple of false book bindings that were glued together. Behind them was a stash of liquor bottles. I mentally debated whether it would benefit me or harm me to empty them. In the end, I replaced their camouflage and left the bottles, deciding the physical retaliation may not be in my interest or my mom or brother’s.

Then I moved to his desk. I rubbed the key in between my fingers, wondering if I was lucky enough to have it open both the door and the locked desk drawer. There was nothing of note in the two unlocked drawers- pens, extra paper, a stapler.

With no other option than trying to figure out how to pick the lock, I jammed the key into the keyhole of the first drawer. I was fueled when it went right, and I could turn it. I had to do a double-take when I laid my eyes on the contents.

I never imagined my raging perfectionist of a father with his demanding ways and judgmental nature would be hiding this type of magazine in his desk. I picked up the few on top featuring oiled-up, shirtless men. There were only more underneath. The drawer was chock full of photos and images of men in compromising positions with other men.

“He’s mated to my mom, though?” I questioned to myself. The world was beginning to make less sense; I wasn’t repulsed so much as very confused.

“Maybe that is not necessarily true,” Eros said.

I closed the drawer and opened the next with my key. I slammed it shut immediately, hoping it was a figment of my imagination. “That wasn’t what I just saw, right?” I asked Eros. He was silently paralyzed.

I eased the drawer open one more time and was unsettled, finding a large dildo inside. Next to it were discs with handwritten labels on their cases. The one on the top told me everything I needed to know about the stack. I closed the drawer and locked it once more.

“I don’t know if I want to keep going,” I said. There were some things you just never wanted to find out about your parents. While my contempt for my father had been brewing for years, I did not need to know about anything in those drawers.

“You need to. Something important could be in there. Let’s just hope that’s the last of that,” Eros said. My stomach was in knots, confusion dominating my mind.

“Fine,” I said. I took a peek at the clock above the door. I had already spent a solid twenty-five minutes in here and needed to hurry it up.

I pushed the keyhole into the third drawer’s hole. This one had papers and letters within it. The addresses looked handwritten, so I grabbed a few to look at. I didn’t recognize the name on the return address, so I pulled out the first letter and started to scan the page. “What is this? Did my father have a mate other than my mom?”

“It appears so,” Eros agreed. I folded the first letter back into its envelope and looked at another. The letters were from a woman begging my father for his affection. They mentioned a rejection and changing her ways. I pulled out a few more and kept skimming.

The more I read, the clearer the picture became. This woman’s letters talked about my mother not satisfying my father and him coming to her. There had to be communication both ways; these seemed like responses rather than unsolicited love letters. There was a stinging in my chest; he had been cheating on my mother. My mother was marked, so she had to feel it too; she had to know. Why did she stay? What was going on?

“We need to hurry,” Eros pushed. I felt like I didn’t know the man that sat at the desk at all. I replaced the letters and locked the drawer once more. One last one and it was bigger than the others.

I tried the key one final time, but it wouldn’t go in the lock properly. I pulled it out and flipped it only to be met with the same problem. “It’s a different lock. Whatever is in there, he doesn’t want anyone else to see even more than the other drawers,” Eros concluded.

“He’s arrogant. Even though they are locked, who would believe what was claimed to be in them? That is if they lived long enough to tell anyone,” I said. I looked at the drawer dejectedly. I knew at my core the answer I was looking for was in that drawer.

“Michael, would you like some pizza? I made one with buffalo sauce and lots of meat for you,” my mother linked me.

“Time to go,” Eros said.

“Yea, I’m coming, Mom,” I replied. I hurried from the room, making sure everything looked just as it did when I arrived. If I couldn’t get the physical proof, I could go somewhere else for answers. There was always one person I knew that could put my father in his place for as long as I could remember.

–

The next morning, I walked slowly up the circular pathway that led to my grandparent’s house. It started on one side of the hill their house was atop of, passed by their front door, and continued to the other side of the hill. The three-story house looked over me, and as much as I wanted answers, it got harder to walk to the door as I neared it. I paused on the driveway, looking up at the open balcony leading from my grandparent’s room. It always made me think of when my mom caught me on the roof with my grandpa handing him tools when I was a pup. I’d climb the short pitch to the next level of the roof to take things back and forth for him, and my mom lost it when she came to pick me up that day. She calmed down pretty quickly, but I never got to go up there with him again. I’d been so proud to be able to help my hardworking, gruff, and quiet grandpa, and I wished I’d asked to do it more often. My eyes fell to the huge wrap-around porch that went around the entire house. My grandma had entertained the family countless times there, served us lemonade as I tried to help my cousin with her clarinet over the summer, and I’d spent more summer hours hiding from the sun there with a book than I could remember.

Looking around, all I saw were memories of my family. Could I really not be a part of this family? I’d felt a small amount of relief when Daniel told me because it meant I wasn’t Lawrence’s soon. I hadn’t thought about how this would mean that I wasn’t anyone’s son. Did I want to open this door?

“You have to,” Eros told me, more softly than I’d ever heard him. “Family is more than b***d. They aren’t him. If he isn’t your father, you can still choose to be their family.”

“If they still want me….”

“They didn’t have to be good to you, even if you were theirs.”

He was right; that eased the pressure in my chest enough to move forward. One foot fell in front of the other, and I was soon at their door. It creaked as I opened the storm door towards me, the heavy wooden one opening inwards after it.

“Grandma?” I called up the short stairway into the dining room next to the kitchen. It split, going upwards in front of me, and then to my right, stairs descended into the basement. I know I’m not supposed to be afraid of anything, but their basement always gave me the creeps.

“In the kitchen!” she called back.

Of course, she was. I could smell the potatoes sizzling in her cast-iron skillet. My stomach rumbled; I loved her potatoes. As I crested the stairs and stepped into the dining room, I could smell the familiar scent of olive oil. Whatever my grandma’s actual scent was, it was drowned out by her bathing in the cooking oil she used regularly. She’d take it right out of the counter dispenser and rub it into her skin.

“You hungry?” she asked, looking up at me over the counter that separated the kitchen from the dining room with a smile. I’d been here for five seconds, and she was trying to feed me, typical grandma stuff.

“I’m not going to turn down potatoes,” I shrugged. “Thanks, Grandma. You need any help?”

“No, no,” she shooed me towards the table. “Just sit down.”

I stopped at the large fridge, grabbed a water bottle out of it along with the ketchup, and sat down with a sigh. How did I even begin to tell her what I came here for? Before I could make a decision on wording my question, she put down a steaming plate in front of me.

“Hot sauce?” she asked.

“Please,” I replied, glad that she didn’t hate flavor like her son.

I busied myself with my food, lost in thought, as she cut more potatoes and popped around the kitchen cleaning it.

“Excited for school?” she asked.

“Yea, I’m sure it’ll be fine. It’s just school,” I answered, distracted.

“What’s wrong with you?” she stopped and asked. Her hands were on her h**s, and she looked at me with her steely glare that told us grandma meant business.

I pushed my plate away and met her eyes, “Can I talk to you without you telling my dad?”

Her eyebrow arched, and a smile tugged at the corner of her lips, “Your dad may be the Alpha of pack but not in this house. My son doesn’t need to know everything. What is it?”

“I’ve been hearing rumors-”

“About what?” she interrupted impatiently.

I decided to just rip off the band-aid, “Is Lawrence my biological father?”

There was a pause, and the only sound I could hear was the sizzle and pop of the new potatoes in her skillet. “Oh,” she said simply, turning away.

Oh? My grandmother, who had never been lost for words in her life, just replied to that with ‘oh’?

“That’s it?” I asked, anger beginning to blossom. If he was my father, she would have said yes right away and dismissed it. She’d all but confirmed it.

“Michael, I want to tell you-”

“Then tell me. He’s not the Alpha here, remember?”

“It’s not that simple. You need to talk to your mom about this,” she replied. She was turned away, but what I could see of her face looked crushed, like she didn’t think she’d be the one to have to tell me.

“I’m not asking my mom; I’m asking you, Grandma,” I insisted. A mixture of anger, relief, and sadness swirled within me. It felt like a chasm was spreading between my grandma and me; the woman who’d been a stern but loving figure in my life for as long as I could remember had never felt so far away.

“I can’t tell you anything, Michael. It isn’t my place. Please, ask your mom. I don’t think she’ll lie to you about this because you’re almost of age.”

I looked down at my half-eaten food, suddenly sick to my stomach. Pushing myself away from the table, I picked the plate up and placed it on the counter along with my condiments.

“I’m sorry, I’m not very hungry anymore. Thank you for the food, though,” I said quietly.

Without another word between us, I walked down the stairs and out the door. I found myself down the driveway and walking along the road before I had time to process anything.

“Where now?” Eros asked, as agitated as I was.

“If Grandma won’t tell me, I’ll ask Pop,” I told him.

My Mema was gone, but she’d left my Pop behind. They were my mom’s parents, and they’d been living in the packhouse with us since I was about eleven. She’d died not long after I turned fifteen. We’d shared hobbies, read together, and I was extremely close to her until she was gone. If she were still alive, my Mema would have told me anything I’d asked. I hoped Pop would do the same.

“Quinn first,” Eros said. I agreed; I needed a dose of serotonin before continuing my search.