The DarkNess Within Him | ✔

Chapter Sixteen

My mother's eyes fall to the marble table guiltily, unable to face me when I take in a sharp breath, trying to process what she just said to me. My skin vibrates instantly, the immediacy of the emotions hitting me like a hard, slamming into me like poisoned knives and riling up my wolf in the process.

My eyes shift gold, not in anger but in raw pain as my bottom lip twitches. My wolf claws at my skin tired of being contained. I clench my shaky fists, dragging them with hardened effort to my face.

"What did you say?" I face her with a low tone in a show of respect. No matter how agitated I am, she's still my mother. "You're leaving?"

"Let me explain Kayla." She pleads. Her eyes shoot up as she tries to reach my hand with hers from across the table.

I pull my hands further into myself. "I'm tense mom. I don't want to lash out at you so please forgive  me but for now, don't touch me."

My mother nods. "It's not like I want to leave. It's more like I have to leave."

"Is someone threatening you just like when I was younger?" I shoot back, memories flooding to mind of the people that used to try to threaten or emotionally manipulate my mother into leaving.

"You have no business here!" They said.

"Mikayla is already illegitimate why do you want to ruin her life more with your cursed presence by staying?" They said.

"Look at Mikayla's skin Julie! It's like soot just like yours! She doesn't even look like her father yet you decide to shadow her with your unlucky presence." They said.

That's how I grew up. So many people throwing nasty comments my mother's way. Never my way because Logan was there to put anyone who even gave me the smallest disrespectful glare in their place but with my mother, this pack's hatred for her was never hidden.

No one stopped them either. I remember alot of times I would go to her bedroom at night because I couldn't sleep and I would hear her bitter sobs, her painful cries.

They accused her of seducing the mated Alpha. They accused her of being shameless and living with us when she should have left me because even if my skin is dark like hers, I didn't belong to her. I belonged to my father and she should know her place.

They said that she used me as an excuse to get close to my father. I grew up hearing all these things everywhere especially when I was out with her but no one knew the truth. The gossipers never bothered to find out the actual facts.

My mother never seduced my father. It was the reverse. He was mated to his wife, Logan's mother Jane and my mother was the daughter of a poor physician in the pack. My father always had his eyes on her even after he found his mate. It was poor luck that no one in this pack would hire her. Only my father agreed to hire her and so she worked here and kept refusing his advances.

I am the product of grief doused in a large bottle of whiskey.

My mother's father died and she went back to her old house that same night to grieve. Her own mother had previously died in childbirth. She died while birthing her. All my mother had in this world was her father and he had been taken away from her by a heart attack. So she went to her house, her father's house to grieve. There, she saw the whiskey bottle and in her pained state, she started to drink.

It wasn't long before my father, who had followed her out of concern knocked on the door and for once, my mother didn't have the strength nor will to refuse him. She let him in and also let him take advantage of her fragile state.

That's how I came to be but no one knows this. His wife, son and maybe some others know but not the majority. Even if they did know, they would still blame my mother. They would still say that she seduced a married and mated man. They would still say that it's all her fault.