Were in the City Ch. 09

Jessie asked "Were your parents true mates?"

"No", Liam answered, "but they loved each other very much even so. We can always choose who we want to be with, and we can love as we wish. A true mate connection is something we can't control, it's a bit like the bond we three feel but it's not the same thing."

Jacob continued. "Silvie caught my scent too, and looked at me with a very surprised expression. Then she ran off towards the house where her family was living while the renovations to the castle were going on. I don't know where I got the strength to stay put and not run after her. If I had I'd have been killed that day I'm sure. I didn't know what to do about what had happened and she didn't either. We were trying to avoid each other but kept looking for and at each other from a distance for weeks.

We started finding hidden places to talk, sometimes only for a few minutes. We got to know each other in a bunch of short, dangerous moments. She was beautiful, willful and intelligent. From the outside she looked like an answer to any man's prayers ... but the situation I now found myself in was a nightmare.

Silvie lived under a dark shadow. The Richard family was an ancient one, stretching back to the Old World. They'd come to North America, to the territory of New France, in the mid-1600's. It was said that a female Richard child would become a powerful Alpha and create a new pack over the bones of the old one - apparently it was some kind of ancient family destruction curse, I never got the whole story. Female children in that family were very rare, but when they happened they were always born with marks that confirmed the curse was true and they were always killed at birth."

Liam said, "A great excuse ... a "curse" ... but really it was a whole lot of powerful males, Alpha or otherwise, who didn't want any threat to their power and control. Somebody starts a story, people start to believe it, and those female children paid a terrible price."

Jacob continued, "Silvie had two older brothers, Mark and Stephen. Richard's wife hadn't been well for a long time and nobody expected she'd ever have more children. She died shortly after giving birth to her daughter. To everyone's great surprise Silvie didn't have the marks that confirmed the curse, and her father chose to let her live. I'm sure it was not because he cared about her. Her father was a brute, subjecting every member of his family and his pack to plenty of physical and mental abuse. No, he kept her because he thought he could use her to his advantage in some way.

It didn't take me long to see that Silvie was arrogant, spoiled, and twisted. She looked down on everyone, would use anyone to get what she wanted, and was unhealthily attached to her father. The attraction I had to her made me care about her but I could see how damaged she was. I felt if I could get her to leave with me I could help her, protect her. She felt a connection to me too, but she fought it. I was poor, I wasn't anything special at all, I was unaligned, and I was a mutt - a coywolf."

I came to believe the only reason she didn't tell her father about me right away was that she was afraid of what he'd do to her, not because I really mattered to her. She didn't know what love was, she certainly didn't believe what we felt mattered. She could have outright rejected me but she didn't do that either, which gave me a bit of hope that there was something in her that wanted something better. I couldn't understand why I was given a mate like her ... all I could think was that I was supposed to save her."

Jacob said softly, "I wish this story had a happy ending, but it does not."

Jessie asked "Did her father find out about what was happening to you both?"

Jacob sighed. "Yes ... and then Silvie's father killed her ... and I killed him".