Destined for Greatness ✔️

Chapter 46

Getting tortured by memories was one thing, but being back at the scene of the crime was something else entirely. Ryleigh hadn't been back to the sight of their original pack since the day of the battle. Fourteen years, and yet she remembered the place like she'd been there yesterday.

Early in the morning she had asked Parker to teleport her to the nearest town. He hadn't asked any questions, for which she was grateful. She knew he was bursting with curiosity, but he trusted that she would tell him once she had worked it all out. If he knew, Corbin would know, and Ryleigh wasn't sure that was a good idea. Her own reaction to realising her mother was alive had already been intense, but Cerise was Corbin's fated mate, and Ryleigh knew that he would take her betrayal very personally. And so he should. Cerise had abandoned them all. Had run from battle like a coward. It seemed like no one's loyalty was a given – Jade, Paige, Cerise. Soon there'd be no one left.

It had been about three weeks since Ryleigh had found out the truth, and it still made as little sense as it did right when she uncovered the memory.

Cerise was the toughest woman Ryleigh knew. She had never been a warm and fuzzy kind of mother. Never one for showing affection. Never one for hugs or heart-to-hearts. She valued performance over anything, and when she gave compliments it would be over achievements. Her praise had to be earned. None of that was to say she had been a bad mother. Not at all. She had always been there for her children, spurring them on to be the best versions of themselves. She had supported them in their dreams, had stood up for them, had taught them about the world, had read to them at night, had sat by their bedside when they were sick after being silvered. She loved them. Ryleigh had never doubted that.

She knew Cerise and Corbin had a multi-faceted relationship that hadn't always been easy. Cerise was as headstrong as any man, and Corbin was as much an alpha as alphas could be. They clashed. He wanted to push her in directions in which she didn't want to go, and they would fight explosively and aggressively – and constantly. But they had the kind of fights that ended up in sex. The kind of fights that made Cerise all the more attracted to Corbin. She valued strength, and Corbin's temper, to her, was a show of it. He never backed down from a fight, and neither did she. Cerise had loved confrontation, and she loved pushing Corbin to the edge, just to see how far she could push him until he'd break. They fought partly because of their differences and partly because they enjoyed it. It was a dysfunctional relationship – even as a child, Ryleigh had been able to tell as much – but they had loved each other. They were fated mates and that had always been enough for the two of them. No matter how far they drifted apart, they always came back together.

Perhaps there were things Ryleigh never knew about. Things like Alpha Alexa. Things Cerise had deemed her too young to understand. In her head, Ryleigh had been born an adult, and it didn't usually occur to her that at eleven she'd still been a child. Some things only time could teach, and she'd been young back then. Perhaps she had never seen the extent of their dysfunction. Perhaps she had, but never wanted to admit it.

In any case, Corbin couldn't know that Cerise was alive yet. Corbin wasn't a man of keen feeling, and apart from anger or derogatory smiles she had never seen him emote much. This knowledge, however, was sure to freak him out, and he got unpredictable when he was experiencing emotions. If the shock was bad enough, he could single-handedly blow their entire operation. She couldn't let that happen.

If she was ever going to tell him the truth, she would need to be careful about it, and she would need to have all the answers. She would need to be able to give him a reason. She would need to be able to talk him off the edge. She would need to help him understand. She couldn't do that until she understood herself. But how to get those answers? She didn't know where Cerise was, let alone whether she even wanted to see her. The only place available to her to perhaps figure out some answers, was home – or what was left of it. So she had let Parker teleport her to town, where she had pick-pocketed someone's wallet to pay for a teleporter, who, in turn, had taken her to a location close to their original pack. She had told him to wait there and had taken off into the woods.