“Evan is my brother, Jess, and I will never speak ill of him, but damn if I haven’t tried talking some sense into him where you’re concerned.” Asi started. “If I had known Clarissa was involved, I would have told you though. Evan be damned for his dumb ass choices.”
“Who is Clarissa anyway? All of you seemed to know her, so I assume she’s one of your pack.”
It was hard to read the look that crossed over Asriel’s face then, but what he had to say caught me completely off guard. “She was the wolf Antoine paired with Mikael.”
“What?” Ashley and I both yelped out in stereo. Then I added, “okay, what happened with that?”
“I’m not sure, because when it happened Evan was angry, and at the time I thought it was because he realized there were no other Ancient Clan women to be had. We left, traveling around to see if we could find rogues or perhaps a lesser that was appealing enough. Word reached us long after the fact that Mikael denied Clarissa for some reason.”
Ashley’s stomach growling interrupted the little chat we were starting to have. She looked a little embarrassed, but then just went with it. “Our Chinese is still sitting in De ‘Lune’s. I’m going to order a pizza, because it will get here fastest. Besides,” she looked at me then, as I finished off another rum and coke. “Jess is going to need something to absorb all that alcohol.”
I just tipped my glass up to her and smiled. It was a half-hearted smile at best, maybe more of a grimace that I intended to be more. At any rate I started re-filling my glass as Asi picked up the conversation where we had left it. “I don’t know what to tell you about Clarissa, Jess, except to be careful around that one.”
“She seems like she’d be happy with either of them.” I mused, then took a sip.
“Honestly, it seemed she fancied Evan before she was paired, but she jumped at the chance to be with Mikael when it was offered instead. I’m sure Evan told you that his position, while coveted by some, is a stigma with others. There’s no taint being associated with Mikael among our kind though. I think that’s why Evan’s been such an ass about the situation you’re in. It’s like history is repeating itself. Big brother is swooping in and taking his woman in his eyes.”
“But I made it clear where I stood. His attitude is just driving me away, Asi. If I were to choose Mikael, Evan would have no one to blame but himself.”
“I know. I’ve tried to tell him. He hears nothing.” He looked at me then, and asked his question. “You said earlier that the witch, Sophia, told you one of them would destroy you. When did she tell you that?” He looked worried. “Recently?”
“I haven’t seen her again, if that’s what you’re asking. She said it that day at the school. Please, don’t be mad at Ash for not telling you. I asked her not to. I didn’t want it to be one more thing the guys used against each other in their fights over me.”
“I understand. Was there anything else?”
“She told me the red wolf would know who I should be with.”
“Ashley?” He looked confused.
“Yes, she meant Ashley.” We both looked at her then, and she just shrugged. “She doesn’t really want to give me advice on the matter though, because Ashley thinks I have too many people telling me what to do already.” I smiled at her. It was a genuine smile this time. “That is why I love her.”
“Me too!” Asi agreed, and Ashley’s face took on a crimson hue. “I do believe Ashley has been pushing you to give Mikael a fair shot lately though.” Asi appeared rather pensive, as if he was thinking over everything Ashley had been telling him lately.
“Yes, she has.” I agreed. While Ashley hadn’t told me one way or another what she thought I should do, she had made her choice clear in other ways.
“It’s because Evan has proven himself to be weaker, in her eyes, every time he has walked away from you, or treated you poorly because of what his father is forcing on you.”
“I know.” Ashley was watching both of us as we talked it out, but she never said a word. She never nodded, or agreed in any way with her body language. Her word meant a lot to her, and she was going to stick by her decision not to influence me anymore than she already had.
“You do understand that part of Evan giving you a hard time is because he sees you as more. He thinks you should be able to get past his father’s will, the way he does.”
“I didn’t get that at first, but I do now. He has never understood how stuck I was by his father’s demands. Until today, I couldn’t resist Antoine’s influence.”
“And now you can?” Asi asked, sitting forward with interest. Someone knocked on Ashley’s front door then, and she jumped up to get it, palming the money for the pizza that was being delivered.
“Today, of all days, I find Evan with an old flame after he was a complete ass to me the day before too…” I paused for a moment, shaking my head. “I was able to refuse his father, and break Antoine’s hold on me today. Had the ability come a week ago, or even a day sooner, maybe things would have been different.”
“So, it’s Mikael then?” Asi asked, his voice a little sad.
“If you had asked me when I woke up this morning, I might have been a little conflicted still, but it seems like so much happened between then and now to change how I see things. I guess, more to the point, to clarify what I was already starting to see. Then, with Clarissa here, and both Evan and Mikael seeming very interested in that fact, I guess maybe my decision no longer matters anyway.”
“It matters,” came the deep voice from the doorway. It was a bit gravely and thick with emotion, but there was no mistaking who had spoken.
FATE INTERCEDES
“Mikael?” I stood, but he was already walking over to me.
“I will wait until you are sure, Jess. I’m not going anywhere.” He pulled me to him in a tight hug, and my arms wound around him too. If I was being honest with myself I had hoped Evan would come to set things straight and tell me that I was wrong about what I thought was going on, but I knew that Mikael would be the one to come. Deep down inside, I knew which one of them would do the right thing by me. I wasn’t conflicted anymore, exactly. It was just that Evan had been my first experience with love and relationships, and it was a little heartbreaking to let go of that.
“Was Antoine pissed?” I asked as I lay my head against Mikael’s chest.
“Honestly, I think he was torn between being pissed, impressed, and worried. That only lasted a moment before he exploded, wanting to know what the hell Clarissa was doing here. He didn’t seem surprised that she was here, exactly, just that she was there at the meeting.”
“Oh.” I tried to pull away, but he wasn’t having it.
“I don’t know what my little brother was thinking. Maybe he wanted to remind me of the opportunity that I already passed up once, or maybe he was planning to set me up with her. Who knows? What I do know is that Clarissa is a crafty one. She’ll do just about anything to seat herself in the middle of a perceived power base. She’s 25 already. She’s wasted precious child bearing years hoping one of us would come back for her.”
“I don’t know if anything happened between them, Jess. I do know that even if nothing did, Clarissa will try to make you think otherwise.”
“I don’t know what happened in their past, but I do know what I heard today.”
Mikael looked puzzled, then asked, “what do you mean?”
I explained what I overheard on the phone earlier, and a clarity seemed to settle in his expression then. “That’s what the texts were about this morning, right?”
I nodded, feeling almost guilty for putting off what happened with Evan onto Mikael this morning.
“Jess, I meant what I said then. I chose to be with you, and only you. If my dumbass brother is too stupid to be faithful, then he deserves what happens.” Mikael pulled me close again, and kissed the top of my head.
“Hey, I ran into the pizza guy coming up the sidewalk…” I looked up to see Evan standing in the doorway holding three larg
e pizzas that smelled divine. After seeing the look on his face, I kind of lost my appetite though. He was looking at me like I had betrayed him. The irony was not lost on me.
I let go of Mikael, and walked over to grab the pizzas from Evan since everyone else seemed to be paralyzed with surprise by him showing up. As I took the pizzas I glanced over Evan’s shoulder to see if he was alone. He caught the look, and understood just how bad he had screwed up. That betrayal he had written all over his face moments ago was replaced by something I couldn’t place. Fear, maybe regret, or loss. I didn’t even want to speculate, so I took the pizzas and turned to go to the kitchen.
“Jess, it’s just me. She wasn’t… I wasn’t…”
“Asriel and Ashley are hungry. I’ll take these to the kitchen, and be right back. Once I set the pizzas down on the counter, I took a moment to catch my breath. Letting go was not going to be an easy thing, because it hurt. It didn’t matter if I had decided Evan wasn’t good for me. I still remembered all the good times we had together, and how magical everything had seemed in the beginning. The only thing that made it a little easier was remembering the phone call, or the way Clarissa had her hand wrapped all around Evan’s arm earlier. Those things reminded me why I was going to get through the hurt and come out just fine on the other end.
Ashley came up and slid her hand gently across my back to land on my shoulder, “are you okay, hon?”
“Right as rain, I guess.”
“Do I need to go kick some ass, like we talked about before?”
The grin that broke out across my face was a testament to how much I loved Ashely, because I didn’t feel at all jovial, but I knew where her heart was. I also knew she was only half kidding. If I said yes, she’d go try to kick Evan’s ass. “Not yet. Enjoy the pizza. I’ll be back shortly. I have to go deal with the nuclear bomb about to detonate in your living room.” I looked down longingly at the pizza for a moment, “save me a slice or three, will you?” I directed the question at Asi who had walked in the room sometime after Ashley had.
“No promises,” he garbled as he shoved half a slice of pizza into his mouth.
“Aw, man! Fine, but if you eat it all, I’m sending you for more chocolate ice cream, and you can’t say no.”
Asi choked back a laugh as he tried to swallow his pizza. “Deal.”
I was stalling at this point, and even I knew it. So, I pulled up my big girl panties, and walked my butt back out into the living room to face the music, and let the brothers know exactly where I stood on everything. When I took inventory of the room Mikael was sitting in a chair and Evan was on the couch. I could either sit next to Evan or on Mikael’s lap. Damn if that wasn’t a setup somehow. I was pretty sure they both would have taken more meaning out of my seating choice than I would have intended so I opted for Switzerland, and parked my ass on the coffee table between them. Mikael smiled at my diplomacy. Evan did not. That was the difference between the two of them. I realized. There would always be a tense air to things where Evan was concerned. I would always wonder if I was going to offend him with something I did. I didn’t have that worry at all with Mikael. He actually respected the decisions I made, supported them even. That is something I was going to need as a ruler one day. I would need someone who would support me, and not throw a tantrum when they my decision didn’t suit them. There was a time, not long ago, that I would have plastered myself to Evan’s side, or his lap, without a thought. Part of me missed that. The other part of me realized I was finding my own strength again. Now that I was looking at things differently, I enjoyed being a person who was secure with herself.
No one spoke for a few minutes as we sat there in contemplative silence. Evan was the one to break it. “You two seem to be getting along a lot better these days.”
“If you only knew,” Mikael taunted.
“STOP!” I said eyeing Mikael with a frustrated sigh.
“Sorry,” he all but whispered, “old habits, and all.”
I decided not to beat around the bush at all. “I broke through Antoine’s hold today.” Mikael already knew from what he’d overheard earlier. While Evan probably guess by what happened at the club, this was a shocking confirmation.
“That’s great,” Evan broke into the conversation. “I knew you could do it, Jess.”
“Really? Because all I’ve heard from you recently was a bunch of disappointment that I hadn’t done it already.”
“That’s not fair. It was just frustrating for me to have to see you running off to go play with my brother.”
I rolled my eyes at him then. “Seriously? It wasn’t fair? It was frustrating-for you?” I swore under my breath. “That’s what you’re going to go with? Poor Evan! How horrible for you. Hell, of the three of us, you had it the easiest. I told you I belonged to you-with you. I had my decision already made from the beginning. You know what the hard part was? It was hard for Mikael to know that, and still try to find hope.” When Evan looked like he was going to interrupt, I held my hand up to stop him. “No, you’ve said enough. This is my turn! I had to deal with being forced to date another person, with feeling the excruciating pain of trying to deny your father’s order to satisfy you, and when that didn’t work, I had to deal with your fucked up commentary about how I wasn’t trying hard enough, and worse. I almost gave myself a god damn aneurism trying to break your father’s hold on me to satisfy you.”
“Well, you broke free of my father’s hold now. So, we can work it all out, and get past this.” Evan threw a scathing look at his brother. “I guess there’s no reason for you to be here any longer, since she’s not being forced into it now.”
“Excuse me?” I squealed in a high pitch that startled me as much as it did Evan. “Have you lost your damn mind? What makes you think I would pick you?”
“But you said you’ve chosen me from the beginning.”
“I did, in the beginning. You made me rethink things when you were a complete asshole to me though.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean, Jess?” Evan was getting pissed. His hands were gripping hard at the edges of the couch cushions.
“For all his faults and all the times he’s antagonized you, Mikael has never taken this situation out on me. Not once! Every time he was around, texting me, or you knew I had a date with him, you treated me like shit. You acted as though I had a choice in the matter at the time. You begged me not to go on dates with him when you knew I was in a great deal of pain all the times I refused to go. It tore me apart inside knowing not only that I was being forced to do something, but that it was hurting you too. Not to mention the fact that you didn’t care how much it hurt me, emotionally or physically. You just cared that you weren’t getting what you wanted, when you wanted it. You’ve behaved like a spoiled child. Worse, you acted like I was less of a person, not enough, not living up to your expectations of me.”
“I never thought less of you, Jess.”
“Yes, you did. You constantly told me I could fight the command if I wanted to. You had no faith in my original decision to be with you in the end, which means you had no faith in me, or us.” Evan started to deny that, but I cut him off. “No! Don’t even try it. If you had faith, you would have let things play out, and helped me through the fact that your father was mind raping me to date someone else.” I felt horrible for my choice of words, because Mikael looked as if I had slapped him with that last statement. I couldn’t stop and coddle him at that moment though, as much as I wanted to. “I had no choice. You had no compassion for my position at all. You just thought of yourself the whole time, and how everything was unfair for you. You weren’t the one being forced to date two people. I was.”
I looked at Mikael then, “I feel like I should apologize to you, because it isn’t fair for you to hear that. Your father’s mistakes are not yours, even though you’ve apologized enough for them.” I turned back to Evan, “When I called you this morning…”
“I didn’t get a call from you.” Evan stated as he interrupte
d me again. Apparently he was going to play this out with lies.
“After my mom told me you stopped by, I called. You weren’t the one to answer though. Clarissa was. She took a message while sounding extremely preoccupied and even downright giddy.” I watched his face then, the shock and something else that I saw there prickled at my brain. Mikael was shaking his head, clearly disappointed in his brother.
“It didn’t…” Evan stopped and chose his words again, “we didn’t…” That apparently didn’t work for him either. “It stopped when she said your name.” He at least had the presence of mind to look ashamed.
I knew I didn’t have any right to feel bad or betrayed, considering my little foray to the hot springs with Mikael that morning, but it hurt to hear that Evan had started to get intimate with someone else.
“Don’t look at me like that!” Evan said to Mikael. Then he turned to me. “I did show up at your house, and I followed your scent to the edge of the woods where I ran into some teenagers complaining about a couple getting down to business in the hot springs. I knew Mikael was with you, because I could smell him while I was tracking you.”
Well, that explained a lot. I had wondered if he had tried to follow me the way Mikael had.
“Those kids saw a kiss, and nothing more,” Mikael said to his brother. Oh there was way more than just a kiss, but that admission coming from Mikael, who liked to goad Evan with innuendos of what we did alone made it sound entirely believable.
“Well, I didn’t think you were having sex since she’s determined to stay a virgin until she’s bonded.” I turned beat red. That was not something I had discussed with Mikael–ever. Evan had just outed me for the virgin I was to Mikael.
Mikael turned to me, and looked stricken, “What?”
Falling into the White (The Ancients Series) Page 11