Chapter 111: Bad Seed
CÉLINE
My father’s hand struck Theodore’s face before my mind could even register what was about to happen.
The crack of the blow echoed through the drawing room. Theodore’s head jerked sideways and he staggered, steadying himself against the bookshelf. Laurent was at his side in an instant, gripping Theodore’s shoulders before he could collapse. My brother leaned into him instinctively.
That was the moment my father truly lost his composure.
He had been building toward it for the previous ten minutes, since Theodore had finally said the words out loud, said them plainly and without the hedging and deflection he had been using for months to keep this specific conversation from arriving. My father had listened with the expression of a man being told something he had already decided was impossible, and was refusing to let reality correct him.
"Of all the people," my father said, and his voice came out strange, scraped thin by something he could not organize into a coherent feeling fast enough. "Of all the people you could have given your heart to. You chose a man."
Theodore straightened. Laurent’s hands stayed on his shoulders.
"There is nothing wrong with me," Theodore said. His voice was steady in a way that cost him something. I could see the cost of it in the slight tension around his jaw.
"Nothing wrong." My father repeated the phrase as if it were in a language he did not speak. "Nothing wrong?" He turned away from them both and pressed one hand to the mantelpiece and stood there, his back to the room, breathing. "Then what is right? Tell me. What exactly is right about this?"
"Father—"
"Do not." He turned back around. "Do not speak to me as though I am being unreasonable. You are my heir. You are the future of this pack. You are everything I spent my life building toward, and you are standing in my room telling me you are in love with your Beta." His eyes moved to Laurent, and the look in them was not fury exactly. It was something more personal and more damaging than fury. In that moment, he turned back to face his son because that was where the problem lay. "Where did I go wrong? I gave you everything. I was present. I was attentive. I pushed you because I believed in what you could become. Was that not love? Did I not love you enough?"
Theodore’s face broke slightly at the edges before he pulled it back together. "This has nothing to do with that."
"Then what does it have to do with? Help me understand, because I am standing here looking at my son, and I do not recognize what I am seeing."
I lingered by the door, silent and watchful, cataloging every detail with the careful precision I had honed over a lifetime.
My father’s eyes shifted back to Laurent, their calculation sharp and icy.
"Laurent Picot." He said the name in a way that suggested that he now intended to throw all the blame on the Beta now that Theodore could not be held responsible. "Your father has served this pack with honor for thirty years. Thirty years of loyalty and integrity. And you repay that service by doing this to my son." He stepped forward. "What have you done to him?"
Laurent met his eyes directly. He was always better at that than Theodore. "I have done nothing to him. We are mates. The bond was not chosen."
The word seemed to physically affect my father. He stepped back slightly, like the air had changed temperature.
"Mates," he said.
"Yes."
"Then there are and will be second-chance mates." My father’s voice had found its certainty again, that particular register he used when he had decided something and needed everyone else in the room to understand the matter was closed. "Reject him. It is done. You serve this Alpha family, and you will continue to do that by rejecting this bond, and you do your duty."
"I will not do that," Laurent said.
"Guards." The word dropped into the room, heavy and unyielding. "Imprison this insolent Beta!"
Theodore reacted at once, stepping protectively in front of Laurent, his hands raised.
"Father, do not—"
The sentinels froze for barely a second, and that angered our father to the brink.
"I said imprison him." My father did not look at Theodore when he said it. He kept his eyes on Laurent. "And beat him and strave him until he comes to his senses."
"You cannot—" Theodore grabbed his father’s arm. "You cannot do this. He is my mate. This is not his fault. This is not anyone’s fault. You cannot imprison him for something that the goddess decided."
My father looked at Theodore’s hand on his arm, then at his son’s face, with an expression I had not seen from him before.
"Bind my foolish son, too." He carefully removed his son’s hand from his arm. "And seal him in his room. Until he is ready to have a reasonable conversation."
The sentinels advanced. Theodore resisted, even knowing it was futile, because he always followed his heart, and his heart was only three feet away, pinned by two guards. They forced his arms behind his back and fastened the platinum cuffs reserved for the worst of men.
My father turned to me when it was done.
"How could your brother rule if he cannot produce an heir?" he said. "How does this pack continue? The relatives will have a field day with this, knowing that they can usurp what I have worked so hard for."
"Surrogates exist," I said. "Adoption is not unheard of. The fated bond is placed by the goddess herself, and it is not our place to override what she—"
"Fate cannot fix everything." He cut through my words without raising his voice.
"No," I agreed. "But it can be worked with rather than fought against. If what you want is a clean succession and a stable future for this pack, there are ways to achieve that without destroying what Theodore has." I held his gaze steadily. "For example... Name me heir apparent. I have no complications of this kind. I can be built in your image. I will serve this pack with everything I have."
He stared at me.
Then he scoffed.
"My son and your brother happens to be going through a foolish desire because he is confused by the mate bond, and you are standing here plotting."
"I am offering solutions," I said. "Which is more than the situation currently has."
"You can be so frightening sometimes," he said. It did not sound like a compliment. It never did. "You do not even read the room you are standing in."
"I read it perfectly," I said. "I simply respond to it differently than you would prefer."
He looked at me for a long moment with an expression I could not entirely interpret, and then he looked away. "If you want to be useful, go talk to your brother. Make him see reason."
I looked at my father’s back as he walked toward the door.
"You would take a gay heir over me," I said to that retreating back. "Why? Because I am a woman?"
He stopped.
He did not turn around.
He did not answer.
It was like he weighed whether I deserved an answer and decided he was better than it. Because he walked out.
I lingered in the empty drawing room, drawing a steadying breath before setting out to find my brother.
The sentinels at Theodore’s door demanded authorization. I told them my father had sent me, which was only half a lie. When they hesitated, I met each of their eyes and reminded them, quietly, that my father’s reign would not last forever and that I never forgot a face. After a tense pause, one relented, murmured for the time being, Luna, and pressed the key into my hand.
I closed the door behind me.
Theodore sat slumped against the far wall, wrists bound in platinum, his face set in that familiar way it always was after he had finished crying. When I entered, he looked up, and something in his expression softened at the sight of me.
I crossed the room, freed him from the cuffs, and settled beside him on the floor as he flexed his fingers, coaxing sensation back into his hands.
He wrapped his arms around me, and I let myself be held.
"Father sent you," he said against my shoulder.
"Father sent me to talk sense into you," I said. "But you know I am not like that. I came because he is wrong and I am not a monster."
He drew back and searched my face. The hope flickering in his eyes made something twist inside my chest, something I chose not to name.
"He will not change," I said. "You know that. You have known it longer than you have allowed yourself to accept it." I kept my voice even, practical, and careful. "The way your heart has decided to go has created a situation where you have to choose a side and let the other one carry the damage. That is the reality."
"I do not want to make that choice," he said.
"I know."
"I should not have to."
"No," I agreed. "You should not have to. But wanting a thing to be different from what it is has never once changed what it is." I looked at him steadily. "Both sides will suffer while you refuse to choose. That is the truth. Father will find a way to have his. And when he does, the one who absorbs the worst of it will be Laurent. He is a Beta. He will lose this game. Father will make sure of that."
Theodore’s jaw tightened.
"What would you do?" he asked.
I chuckled. The sound came out softer than I intended. "I would not take advice from me if I were you. We are very different people."
"Tell me anyway."
I studied my brother’s face, the pain etched deep within it, and beneath that, the stubborn hope he still carried, unbroken despite everything.
What a fool.
"If I were you," I said slowly, "and what I wanted was out of reach, I would make certain Father understood that if I could not have it, then no one would win."
I watched the words land.
I watched them settle.
I watched the thought take root behind his eyes in the particular way thoughts took root when they arrived at the right moment in the right soil.
I said nothing further.
I did not need to.
The seed was already in the ground.