Chapter Twenty-Five

Amara

I t had taken some convincing, but Amara somehow managed to get the guys to leave before the sun came up. She just had to promise them that she would start packing later that day as well as tell her father what was going on. It was not something she was looking forward to doing. She was sure it was going to be a fight, but it needed to be done. It was time.

However, because the guys had kept her up so late the night before, she had decided to work on that stuff after she caught up on some sleep. She didn’t have to be at work until later that morning, and there wasn’t all that much to pack. The guys’ apartment was furnished already, so she didn’t need any of her furniture or anything like that. All she had to pack were her clothes, essentials, and the few things she owned that were important to her, like the things from her mother.

Amara felt as though she had just fallen back to sleep when she was suddenly awoken by a very angry growl and the blankets being ripped away from her. Her eyes shot open, and she scrambled further up the bed, snatching a pillow to help cover her naked form. When she spotted her father standing at the foot of her bed, his eyes alight with anger, she braced herself against the headboard, her heart beating rapidly in her chest.

She had never seen him so angry before, and she could practically feel it wafting off of him. His eyes were flashing, his hands balled into tight fists too, and she knew that she was in trouble. This was not how she intended on him finding out about all this and she wasn’t ready for it.

“D-dad,” she gasped. “Wh-what are you doing here?”

His nostrils flared. “You missed the meeting this morning, and now I know why. This place reeks of men, you fucking whore!”

“I-I can explain.”

“How?” He sneered at her, making her flinch. “How could you possibly explain away the fact that you’d spread your legs for anyone? I can smell them, Amara. Three men. Do you know what that makes you?”

“Loved?” Her voice was small, even to her own ears, but that was what her father did to her. He made her feel small and insignificant. He made her feel worthless, and she hated it. She hated him.

“A fucking slut,” he corrected bitterly.

“They’re not just some random guys, Dad,” she tried again.

“Well, they aren’t from my pack, so that can only mean one thing: They’re rogues.” He practically spat the word, his voice filled with so much hatred and disdain. She had known this wasn’t going to be easy, but it was turning out to be far more difficult than she expected.

“Yes, they are. But –”

Her father scoffed and shook his head as if in disbelief. “My own daughter, sleeping with filth. I never thought I’d see the day.”

Amara swallowed and tried to muster up all the courage she had. She was doing the right thing. She couldn’t keep their relationship a secret forever, nor did she want to. They had marked her, she had marked them, and now she was planning on moving in with them.

“They are my fated mates, Dad,” she told him as strongly as she could. “I didn’t ask for this, but it’s the truth. You, of all people, should know what that means.”

His face grew so red at her words that she was surprised that steam didn’t come billowing out of his ears. Pain seared through her face as he backhanded her hard across her cheek, causing her head to smack against the headboard. For a moment, she saw stars due to the force behind it.

“You are just like your whore of a mother, using ‘fate’ as an excuse. All so you can fuck three men!”

“It’s not an excuse,” she pleaded, blinking away the tears that stung her eyes. “It’s the truth. Why won’t you believe me?”

“You just want attention. Is that it? You want my attention? Well, now you fucking got it!”

He snatched a handful of her hair and yanked her off the bed. She hit the ground hard, the air whooshing from her lungs, as the pillow went flying. His fist collided with the side of her face, and blood filled her mouth as pain blossomed through her skull. As she curled into the fetal position, his foot crashed into her abdomen, making her stomach clench in protest and bile rise in her throat.

Amara rolled onto her back, grasping her ribs and gasping for air. Her father pulled back his fist to hit her again but stopped.

“They marked you?” he roared, his raised hand shaking as his eyes zeroed in on the marks from her mates.

“Yes,” she growled through her tears. “And I marked them. The mating is complete, and there is nothing you can do.”

Everything hurt – her heart, her body. All she had ever wanted was for her father to love her, but he changed when her mother left, and now nothing she did was ever good enough for him. He had become a monster, through and through, and there was no saving him; she could see that now. The only thing she could do was get away from him.

Her father’s eyes narrowed as he squatted down and took a handful of her hair to pull her up to his face. “That’s where you’re wrong,” he stated quietly, angrily. “End things, Amara, or I’ll be forced to execute them. I won’t have my daughter riding off into the sunset with rogues.”

With that, he threw her back onto the floor.

Amara winced as she pushed herself up to a sitting position. She was fairly certain that a few of her ribs were broken or, at the very least, cracked, due to the force of his beating. But they would heal. They always did.

Swallowing a mouthful of blood, she turned her defiant gaze up to her father. “No. I won’t do it. I won’t reject my mates just because you are a miserable old bastard who refuses to let me be happy. I’m leaving the pack, Dad. I’m going to be with my mates. Disown me if you must, but I’m done. I’m taking back my life, and I am going to be happy for once.”

That was the first time she had ever spoken against her father, and she had to admit it felt good. Maybe it was knowing that her mates were waiting for her, or maybe she had just reached her boiling point. Whatever it was, she clung to it to give her the strength she needed to get through this.

A menacing grin took over her father’s face then, making her breath lodge in her throat. “Do you think you’re smart?” he asked her, cocking his head to the side. “How smart would you be if I had them chained to a table and made you watch while we peeled back their skin, layer by layer, strip by strip? Can you hear it, Amara? The beautiful screams they’d make?”

Amara gulped, her face blanching, as the image appeared in her mind in vivid detail. She didn’t need to imagine what it would be like because she had seen it happen before, with other rogues her father had gone after. He was ruthless and cruel, even more so than the rogues he so desperately hated, and he didn’t even have a good reason for hating them either.

Her head pounded, and her vision tunneled as the images played out in her mind. It was so clear, felt so real, that she had to close her eyes and turn away from the man who called himself her father.

He tsked. “Poor little whore. You’d have no one to fuck then. No one would want you after they’re dead.”

“You’re a monster,” she whispered. “No wonder Mom left you the way she did.”

“What did you really think was going to happen?” he screamed, throwing his arms out to the sides. “That I’d give you my blessing to run off into the sunset with your ‘mates’?”

“I don’t want or need your blessing,” she spat, blood and spit flying from her lips. “But if you just let me leave the pack, then I won’t be a problem or a burden for you anymore. Isn’t that what you want anyway?”

“You’re my flesh and blood, unfortunately. If I let you do this, the rest of the pack will think they can get away with anything, and I can’t have that. I will be obeyed, whether it’s by their death or not.”

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. She had known her father wasn’t going to be happy with her decision, but she didn’t think that he would go to these lengths to keep her away from her mates. He wasn’t going to let her go without a fight. He wasn’t going to give up on this or change his mind – that much was clear now – and the only outcome of that was her boys getting caught in the crossfire.

Those were her options: Reject her fated mates, or risk her father killing them. And she didn’t like either one of them.

“Fine,” she relented, the tears falling more freely now. “You win. You always win.”

Even saying that she would do as her father told her to do caused her heart to shatter within her chest. She could feel the pain spreading throughout her body like tiny shards of glass, tearing her apart from the inside out. It was suffocating and nearly unbearable, but she refused to give him the satisfaction of knowing how much it hurt.

“That’s right. I knew you’d come around,” he cooed, patting her cheek. She ground her teeth together to mask the pain. As he rose to his feet, his lip curled in disgust. “Now, go clean yourself up. You look and smell pathetic.”

“Yes, sir,” she muttered, wiping the blood from her chin as he walked down the stairs and out the door.

Her jaw ached, as did her cheek and ribs, but that was nothing compared to the pain she felt just knowing what she needed to do. It was the only way to protect them, to save them from her father’s wrath, but that didn’t make it any easier to swallow.

Pushing herself shakily to her feet, she cursed herself for not just leaving well enough alone, for not rejecting them when she had the chance. It would have saved them all a lot of pain and heartache.