Rejected Mate's Ascension

Chapter 3. Everything Is Just Peachy

My parents' den had changed little since the nineteen-nineties, except there were more pictures of my siblings on the walls, looking a lot older than they were fixed in my memories. Their children joined the collection, also looking older than I thought they ought to be. How the time flies!

Yet, Dad still wore that ridiculous mustache he grew out when he started going bald, and he chewed it in an eternally exasperating manner.

"Why in the Goddess name do you want to drop everything and scuttle off to Goddess-know-where with this mangy cur?" he grunted, and teacups jingled together on the tray of snacks Mom was bringing out of the kitchen.

I let a breath filter slowly through my teeth, but come on! Since when was California a Goddess-know-where? "This is an FYI, not a discussion," I said as calmly as I could manage. "I just didn't want you to hear about the ceremony and everything from other people."

"A ceremony?" Mom finally set her damn tray on the coffee table. It landed smoother than it should have judging from how badly her hands shook. "But of course! You'll have to go before the Alpha and the Luna to request a formal recognition of your mating before you move. When is it?"

I fingered the phone in my pocket, seized by the urge to check my messages and make sure I wasn't dreaming. But I checked it at least three times before I pushed my parents' doorbell button.

Harold: 1 pm with B&C, Council's boardroom. Talk there.

"Today at one." In four hours, basically.

"Fools rush in," my dad commented with a grim satisfaction.

"At least she found a mate, Byron," my mom put in with a shaky smile.

"A mate? You call Almarr's hound a mate? This imbecile, this clown, this sleazebag, one step from a rogue, and that in a wrong direction—"

Funny, I hated Harold, but the more my Dad ranted about him, the more my cheeks burned. "May I remind you Harold was everyone's golden boy, giving Blake a run for his money," I said. Until the catastrophe with Scarlett, but, but, but... "But for the grace of the Goddess, he isn't our Alpha."

"And thank Goddess for watching over us," Dad grumbled. "Besides, if this sleazebag became our Alpha, he would have mated his Epsilon cousin, not you."

I gasped in outrage instead of a comeback. What was I supposed to say?

That, sure, Scarlett was horrid. The couple attacked our pack, lied constantly and nearly killed our Luna, all true. But one thing Harold wasn't guilty of was being Scarlett's cousin? Lloyd Almarr had exaggerated his degree of relation to the Beaumonts of California for his own vanity, and the stigma bit Harold in the ass unfairly in this very specific instant?

This sounded like a crappy defense, so I sulked. "First, you don't want me to mate Harold, then you're pissed he wouldn't mate me. What do you really want, Dad? I'm not asking your permission, mind you, but I'm getting mixed signals."

"If you did what I wanted, you would have been mated and happy years ago," he said moodily. "Then we won't even be discussing this renegade of yours."

"Oh, be quiet, both of you." Mom turned to me, her eyes bright with excitement. "What are you wearing to the ceremony?"

"Mom!" This was the important thing? Really?

She ignored my outburst. "That dress Maddy wore last Solstice would fit you well. Do you want me to mention it when I call her?"

The last thing I wanted was to wear whatever my gorgeous younger sister was wearing to a ball. "Thanks, Mom, but I'll just go with the suit I wore for my graduation—"