APEX - Season 2

Ch. 24: A Loyalty Test

Calla

After leaving Apex Headquarters and what was basically my funeral wake, Simone attempted to put her mothering mode into full gear.

"You seem pale, Calla. Too much excitement. You'll spend the night at my home with me and your siblings. I'll have Mirena make you bacon and an omelet with a fresh squeezed orange juice for breakfast tomorrow."

"Mirena is on leave for an ulcer, remember mom?" Spence said. He gave me a sympathetic half-smile. Even though he didn't know all that Arla now did, Spence still seemed to sense my unhappiness, as well as my anger with our mother.

"She is? Did she tell us about this?"

"Several times."

"Well then, who's cooking for us?"

"It's Mrs. Jacobs," Arla said without looking up from her phone.

Simone made a stink face. "Mrs. Jacobs always burns the eggs."

"It doesn't matter who's cooking your breakfast tomorrow," I said. "I'm not staying with you tonight. I want to sleep in my own bed."

"It's still your own bed in your own bedroom, Calla."

I sighed. "No, it's not. I haven't lived at home for seven years."

"I still think it would be better if—"

"If you could watch me constantly until the day of the union?"

Simone scowled. "Don't be childish, Calla."

"Then don't treat me like a child, Mother." I tapped on the glass separating us from the front of the car. Jackson lowered the window. "Drop me off at my place before you bring them back to Mom's house."

Jackson nodded. "Will do, Miss Bardot."

"Wait, Jackson!" My mother said, but Jackson had already put up the window. She huffed several times. "What has gotten into that man? Has he forgotten who signs his checks?"

"Maybe he just remembers who treats him nicely and who treats him like crap," Spence said. A gutsy move from a kid who was just about done with my mother's domineering attitude.

I gave him a nudge and a smile and braced myself for the argument that was about to break out, but instead of reprimanding him, Simone huffed a few more times and turned towards the window, saying nothing all the way back to my place.

My shoulders felt lighter once I'd extracted myself from the car and walked away from it towards the front doors of my building, my security team flanking me. "Any chance you might want to take the night off?" I asked them but got nothing more than an apologetic smile from Evan and nothing but resigned stoicism from the other three.

Once my bodyguards had swept my apartment, I ordered them out. "I can't deal with you people in my personal space tonight. No offense," I told them, and it wasn't for the first time. I'd rented them the small studio space that was available across the hall from me a few weeks back and they'd gotten used to spending most nights there, with occasional check-ins and sweeps of the building.

Bodyguards removed, I threw myself down on my chaise lounge and cried dramatically, as though I was a Victorian lady whose secret crush had just been lost at sea. Time ticked by as the tears flowed. I couldn't wrap my head around the fact that I was supposed to mate with Aamon, deny my true mate, and somehow this would lead to the salvation of werewolves. Why? Why couldn't me mating with Rhys, joining with him in a lifetime union be the salve the city needed to convince them we weren't inhumane monsters?

You aren't good enough for him. He's fated for someone better than you. He'll mate with an Apex woman, of course. All of these things that I'd heard more than once—that was why. Gerald would never let his heir lower himself by mating with a Crown werewolf, even if that werewolf was its Luna. I wasn't good enough. My pack was no longer strong enough. But I was good enough for Apex's second son. That was a deal Gerald was willing to make, and my mother was willing to take this consolation prize. Aamon, after all, was likely more capable of producing an Alpha son than other Crown werewolves were.