The moment Colin locked the door, Claire turned on her heels and demanded, "I need a lot of answers."
He nodded and held his finger to his mouth. She furrowed her brows but complied. Colin walked into his bedroom and removed a drawer from its unit. Reaching behind, he pulled out a small, brown, leather satchel. He dumped its contents onto his coffee table and sat on the couch. Claire sat near, but not directly next to, him. He frowned but didn't say anything else.
"Here goes nothing," he muttered under his breath and held a match to the pile of dried herbs.
A small, hazy bubble grew around the pair in a ten-foot radius. Everything outside of it looked tinted with blue, and the bubble seemed to breathe with them, swirling around. Colin looked over to her proudly.
"What did you do?" she whispered in amazement.
"Aloisa, the pack witch, gave me this on my birthday. It creates a silent small sphere. No one outside of it can hear what we are saying." He looked off into the distance momentarily. "She said that I would need it soon. I assumed that my dearest dad was going to finally banish me from the pack, and this would help me stay hidden if I needed to."
Claire stopped staring at the magic around them and turned to face him. "Why did you assume that he was going to kick you out of your pack? What's going on, Colin?"
Once again, he ran his fingers through his hair. His pinky had set incorrectly and bent at an awkward angle. It would be fixed the next time he shifted, so he didn't worry too much. Colin sighed, "It's complicated."
Claire pounded the wooden table with her fist so hard it cracked and replied shrilly, "I don't give a fuck if it's nuclear fission, you're going to explain everything to me!" She dropped her face into her open hands. "I just can't be lied to anymore. I can't. You swore that you hadn't lied to me, Colin. You can't start now!"
Colin touched her shoulder, but she shrugged him off. "Claire." She didn't look up. "Claire, I will never lie to you. I promise. But that doesn't mean what I have to tell you is easy for me to share."
She chewed her lip, clearly upset. He could tell that she was feeling guilty. "You have every right to be mad at me. I should've made sure we talked about, about it all, sooner. But I wasn't trying to lie to you."
Claire nodded, leaning back into his open arms. His shirt was stained with blood, mud, and grass. She tensed for a moment before taking deep, calming breaths.
"I can go shower first if-"
"No. I need to know, now."
Colin stood up and removed his shirt, tossing it behind them. Claire's eyes quickly scanned his body, but quickly jumped to meet his. Colin grabbed a sweatshirt from the corner of the couch and threw it on with a sigh. He had not wanted to share all of this with her, not yet. Not until she was more comfortable around wolves. Around him, at the very least. But her blue eyes fixed into his own brown ones, and he could not deny her.
"My father is the Alpha, but my mom was not his Luna. His mate died before he took over the pack, so their marriage was a political alliance. Mary is the niece of the former King. But since there was no bond, nothing stopped my father from being," he paused, thinking of the best way to state it. "Nothing stopped him from being a piece of shit. He cheats on her, often."
Claire nodded slowly, remembering the way the Alpha King had glared at Peter whenever he referred to Colin. She had assumed the anger had come from the current situation, not history. She looked at him reassuringly, sensing how difficult this was for him. The pain from his brother's attack had worn off, but his face still twisted bitterly.
Colin lifted his eyes from their entwined hands back to her face, relishing her encouraging smile. "My mom, she wasn't even old enough to vote, and he brought her into his office as a secretary after school." He gritted his teeth angrily, taking a breath in an attempt to calm down. Claire rubbed his palm with her thumb. "She was just a kid, and she didn't know better. And when she finally realized how fucked up it all was, he had ordered her not to say anything. She still ended it, but then she found out she was pregnant; he wouldn't let her have an abortion."
Claire could tell that he regretted that. That he hated the fact that his mother had given birth to him. She wanted to pull him into her arms and tell him that if he had never been born, they would have never met. But she didn't. She only squeezed his hand and offered her silent presence.
"Luna Mary, she was furious. But she wasn't allowed to be angry at him publicly, so it got taken out on my mom." He scoffed, "Like a seventeen-year-old could manipulate the Alpha. Everyone must've known the truth, but no one ever said anything against the Luna.
"Only Chris and Matt were old enough to see how it all affected their mom, so I guess they decided it was my fault too. There's a lot of angst in a pack when there's an issue between the Alpha and Luna. Everyone was hurting from it, and they felt all that anger towards my mom and me. I guess it just sort of stuck."
"Why didn't she leave?" Claire asked and immediately bit her tongue. She shouldn't have said that, but it was what her own biological mother had done to get away from her coven: run.
Colin growled in response and then looked apologetically at her; but she knew it was the answer, not the question, that had elicited the response.
"The first time Peter had gotten proper mad at me, she tried to. She packed up our little apartment and left. We made it a mile out of the borders before we were caught. They drove the car off the road chasing us. Apparently, she died in the accident." He made it clear that he did not believe the story. Scoffing, he wiped away a few stray tears that had slipped out, "I was awake when we crashed into the tree. She was alive, screaming for me to run. We were almost in another pack's territory, and if I had made it out of the neutral zone, the warriors wouldn't have been able to follow. She had a friend who was going to take us in, even though she was technically kidnapping the Alpha's son. At least, that's what Peter said she had done."
Claire stared at her mate, horrified. She was not scared of him like he had been worried about. She was scared for him. His mother was killed when she was younger than he was now, and he had been there for it. And he had lived his life with the people who did it and lied to him about it. She was scared of those people. "I thought Alphas hold their pack's safety above everything else."
Colin smiled bitterly, "My mom lost her standing in the pack the moment my father laid eyes on her. Mary was so pissed, she even tried to have her banished from the pack, but at least Peter had the basic decency to stop it. But it didn't matter, the damage had been done. I'm a constant reminder of the Alpha's infidelity, and the pack feels that anger towards me."
"Why would they be mad at you?"
For the umpteenth time, Colin sighed. He didn't mind that he had to explain things about his world to her. If she asked, he would learn Mandarin and teach it to her. He loved the way she looked in his eyes, listening with her whole body. He hated that he had to explain this to her. That he had to explain to his mate why the pack he loved so much hated him. "The Alpha and Luna of a pack, they have a serious impact on everyone else's feelings. And since Luna Mary hates me, Alpha Peter does too, and now others do too. It's not everyone, but if you're near them, or other pack leaders, you'll feel it. Most members of the pack don't even think about it – no one really thinks of me as one of the Alpha's children. Unfortunately, it's enough to make things, well, difficult at times."
"That isn't fair," she whispered, knowing that an apology would do nothing.
He smiled at her affection. "If life was fair, I don't think we would've ever met."