34. Whitley Whitt

Chapter 34

Whitley Whitt

Cake it easy on me baby .

When I don’t immediately move from the hidden library, Connor waits for me to scamper past him, his claws tearing through his butler gloves.

“You’ve known this entire time you were a Van Helsing.” Connor’s voice is low and menacing.

The stone-cold expression on his face tells me I only thought he hated me before. His emotions are entirely shuttered, and he looks nothing like the man I love.

I swallow the lump in my throat, unsure of what to even say. I start to blurt I had no idea it was such a big deal, but deep down, I did know. I knew as soon as he mentioned the name, but I was just so scared. I meet his gaze, my bottom lip trembling as my hands shake.

I was terrified he would react like this, and now I know.

“Connor, I didn’t mean to hurt you,” I tell him, not liking how his face darkens and disgust spreads across his features. “I didn’t know what my ancestors did to you, I swear. I’m not even one of them. I don’t know that side of the family at all.”

I grab him by the arm as he tries to walk away from the library, and he shrugs me off, recoiling as if I struck him. His gaze flashes deep gold with fury.

“Don’t touch me,” he growls out. “You knew you were a Van Helsing, and when I told you, you said nothing.”

My hands fall to my sides. “I didn’t mean to?—”

He arches a brow and cocks his head. “You didn’t mean to tell me? Didn’t mean for me to find out? Why do you continue to keep things from me?”

I reach out to touch him again and pause midway when his nostrils flare. “No. That’s not what I meant. I didn’t mean to hurt you, and I wanted to tell you.”

“I need you to leave.” His words are short, clipped, and they snip my heart into pieces. “I can’t talk to you about this. This is way too much to take in.”

“I’m not leaving,” I snap.

I try and fail to ignore the wobble in my voice, and the knot in my throat won’t go away no matter what I do as tears burn. The hair on my scalp lifts, adding insult to injury as my body displays my emotions for all to see, turning it frizzy and unmanageable—all because of him biting me.

“Yes, you are,” he says the words with a finality that brooks no argument. “I want you to leave this castle, my home. A bloody Van Helsing shouldn’t have stepped foot in it in the first place, and any that have in the past, we’ve slaughtered without regret. You’re lucky all I’m doing is asking you to leave.”

The words are a blow, but I can’t feel it. I’m numb.

He would strip everything away, throw us away when we just found each other? The taste of betrayal coats my mouth at how easily I’m tossed aside, for something I never did, for something I had nothing to do with! And the undertone of his threat is clear, as if the very ground I’m now standing on is tainted.

I know it’s probably a lie just because he’s mad, but it doesn’t stop the way it hurts for him to say that.

He doesn’t even want to listen or talk, like a fucking meathead!

Yellow blazes across my mind and determination floods me.

Fuck him . He will have to make me leave.

“I’m not going anywhere!” I shout, clenching my fists at my sides to keep from trying to smack him. I will make him see reason, because this can’t be something that comes between us. I won’t let it be. “You turned me into a lycan, and now you’re trying to make me leave? I didn’t ask you to do this to me!”

“If you were a normal human, you wouldn’t have turned at all.” He gives me a disgusted look as a rude laugh falls from him. “But no—instead, you’re one of them. ”

That hurts, but I brush it off. I never even knew them, so how could I be one of them? “I didn’t know.”

“You did know,” he bites out, refusing to listen. “And just like them, you’d rather lie so long as it benefits you. How the fuck am I supposed to trust you’re even my true mate, and this isn’t some fucked-up ploy to finally end me? Were you just waiting for me to let down my guard until you could find an opportune moment to kill me? It’s just too convenient that you turned up here, of all places.”

He stares at me like a stranger would and my eyes well, blurring my vision. Oh my god, I can’t believe he would think such a thing after everything.

“Connor, I would never do something like that.” I blink furiously, warm tears slipping down my cheeks. “How could?—”

“You’re a Van Helsing!” he roars, throwing his hands up as his claws curl. “That’s what you people do! You are cruel, dishonest, vile humans who would kill their own family! Get the fuck out, Whitley. Leave before I do something stupid!”

“I’m not one of them! My last name is Whitt, you bonehead!” I scream back at him while needing to fight the shift that threatens me. I’m so scared and upset, my heart breaking, that I’m moments from imploding. I can feel the bond between us, still as strong as ever. There’s no way he can mean what he’s saying. “My contract says I have another three weeks, and I will finish it. If you won’t listen to me, you’ll at least let me finish my contract so I can buy my bakery!”

I know it’s a desperate bid to stay, but surely after a few days, he will calm down and it will be fine.

“If money is all that matters to you, then I’ll fucking pay you out and consider your contract fulfilled. I would rather cut my own arm off than touch you. You are literally what I hate the most in this world, and I don’t even want to look at you.”

My heart sinks in my chest, sorrow bleeding into the fibers of my being.

It registers that I’ve betrayed him on a level I can’t comprehend, and I have no way of understanding. He’s been alone these three hundred years, and I can’t imagine what he has been through, but that still doesn’t mean I want to leave him. I understand he’s hurting, and this isn’t the Connor I know. We have to be able to work through this.

“But I love you.”

His yellow gaze flashes. Instead of warmth at my admission, his features twist into a disgusted cringe. “I don’t care about your feelings, Whitley. I don’t even want to be near you.”

Pain ricochets through me, even as I refuse to believe it. Lies .

“Well, that sounds like a you problem, because I still have weeks left on my contract, and you have no reason to fire me.” I jab a shaky finger in the general direction of the castle kitchen. “I’m staying, and you can’t make me leave.”

My heart stutters in my chest when he steps closer and roars in outrage, making my skin crawl, and I shrink into myself with fear as my pulse gallops.

“Then I will!”

He leaves the library without looking back, taking the shattered pieces of my heart with him.

Connor O’Doyle

I stare down at the murky brown water as it ripples and waves, lapping against the stone of the drawbridge, my hands planted on my hips while the wind tears at my hair and what’s left of my shirt and suit jacket. I tore through all the layers flexing my tense shoulders on the way outdoors, and I’ve been staring at the moat for the last hour wondering what horrid deed I must have done in a past life to deserve this bullshit. I’m no closer to any answers.

Luckily, none of the remaining guests or any employees witnessed my outburst in the hallway as I made my way outside. I needed away from the bloody castle and Whitley’s presence before I did something truly fucking stupid.

My mate is a Van Helsing. A derisive chuckle escapes my chest, even as the thought makes me want to batter my fists into something until I don’t feel this rage. Terrible hate spews within me like a volcanic eruption, eating at my insides even as I try to process what I can’t readily accept. How could she keep this from me?

I don’t know how I’m supposed to trust her when she literally comes from the most horrible family known to monsters. They didn’t care how innocent the creatures they were butchering were. They tortured me, and killed so damn many of my dear friends.

It also doesn’t help that she not only lied to me, and deliberately kept me in the dark, but then she chose to confide in Odette. I hate that it feels like a second betrayal.

The fact that she still doesn’t trust me either is beginning to fester like a sore that won’t go away, and now I have to contend with her being a Van Helsing. I attributed her insecurities with me to be because of how terrible I treated her at first, but she continues to hide things from me even now, and with something so important.

It doesn’t help that the entire castle smells of her. It makes me want to claw my hair out and chase her down like the beast I am, then demand an explanation. But just the thought of being around her has me imagining her with her face in the dirt while I fuck her into submission. Her betrayal does nothing to temper how my body reacts to her, even if my rage and unbridled hatred would see me clawing my own dick off before putting it anywhere near her right now. It’s like the two sides of me are warring with each other.

Muscles bunch and tighten across my back and arms as I fight to keep myself in check.

As pissed off as I am, I could hurt her, and neither of us want that, no matter how much she argues and challenges me.

My mate, my one true mate—born of the very family I’ve hunted for centuries. I don’t think she actually planned to deceive me in this way—our pull feels too strong—but it was one of the first things that came to mind. Now that I’ve calmed, I feel like a dim-witted donkey’s ass for having said it.

The water slaps loudly against the stone, reminding me of why I’m here in the first place. If Lachlan knew she was a Van Helsing and didn’t tell me...

My phone vibrates in my pocket, distracting me from tossing something large into the moat’s waters, hopefully landing on his big fat head.

I snatch the device from my slacks and don’t bother to withhold my growl.

Vlad:

Call me. It’s important.

Me:

What is it? A little tied up at the moment.

The message reads as delivered and instantly “read,” so I know the fucker has looked at it. I start to put the phone away as annoyance of a new kind has my hackles raising.

The phone rings, his name flashing in bright letters, and I click to answer against my better judgment. “What?”

“What could be more important than me telling you that Aubrey and I are returning tomorrow?” Vlad asks, in his traditional self-centered fashion. “Make sure your little tea party is gone by then.”

“How about the fact that my mate is a Van Helsing? Pretty sure that trumps your news, you overgrown parasite.”

“What?” he blurts, his tone outraged.

I can just imagine his eyes glowing red at that little tidbit of information.

“Exactly,” I bite out.

“I thought they’d all been killed or died out.”

There was that rumor, but we were all a bit tied up with outrunning the different kinds of hunters and trying to acclimate to society to find out if it was actually true. We just hoped it was. Their numbers and ours were far greater three hundred years ago. Now the supernaturals have adapted to blend, and the hunters have faded away, only recalled in fairytales, just like the rest of the paranormal.

Vlad groans. “Stranger things have happened. Where is she?”

“I don’t know,” I tell him, shuffling my feet and turning to look back at the castle.

If she hadn’t tried to talk to Odette about it, how long would I have had to wait until she told me the truth of it? What if she never told me?

“What do you mean, you don’t know?” I don’t like his disapproving tone, the stupid, hypocritical cad.

“Did you not catch that she is a Van Helsing?” I ask, staring down at the phone incredulously. Anyone in their right mind would need a bit of time to process, not that Vlad would know I only just found out.

“You’re an idiot. Why didn’t you call me straight away?”

“The bloody hell help you are! And do not give me this bullshit. I swear to the gods, I will shove you right back in that cat carrier when you get here.”

“As if you could,” he bites out.

I hear him repeat my name as I hang up the phone, my skin bristling with agitation.

“He’s right, ye ken. Ye really are an idiot.” I turn and catch Lachlan treading water below the bridge’s edge. He must have realized I came here to talk to him, and the want to slap him back to the prehistoric age has my fists curling.

“Did you fucking know she was a Van Helsing?”

“What does it matter?” he asks, his brows dipping in confusion.

“Did you know?” I thunder, my hands becoming claws as I lose my temper, refusing to put up with any more bullshit today. I am going to get answers.

“No, I didn’t. She dinna smell anything like them.”

I pause. If anyone could remember what they smelled like, it would be Lachlan. He even helped hunt them for a time, and his instincts are unparalleled, as old as he is.

“If she’s a Van Helsing, it’s too slight tae tell, and what bloody difference does it make? She’s yer true mate,” he continues, his expression conveying he thinks I’m worse than an idiot.

“I told her days ago, and she kept it from me.” The words sound hollow, even to my ears, as a sinking sensation centers in my gut.

“Ye sound like a wee bairn in need of his mother. If ye don’t get yer head out of yer arse, ye will be in big trouble. Who’s tae say ye won’t lose her in the end over this? Whitley loves ye, I could see it from the first night ye bit her. So what if she’s a Van Helsing? It wasn’t her that did this tae ye.”

“I don’t know what to think.”

“Who cares if she’s a Van Helsing? She’s bonnie, fiery, and yer mate . Ye get one in all yer life. How many hundreds of years did ye wait, thinking ye’d never have one because of the way ye were turned? Fate brought ye together, and maybe this was the only way it could.”

Regret.

It blooms in my chest as I recall how crushed Whitley looked when I told her to leave, and the horrible things I fucking said, unable to deal with what I went through for the past three hundred years. Shame crests over me at the way I treated my own woman. I associated all that with her, and to learn she came from something so despicable clouded my judgement.

A pit yawns in my stomach, and it churns with dread at how she could leave me, could have already left me. Shit. Fear flashes in my mind next.

What if she already left the castle because I practically forced her to?

Whitley is my one true mate, and she’s perfect —for me. I’ve been so dumb, losing my temper like that, when it’s no fault of her own. I was completely blindsided by the shock and disbelief that she could even be remotely connected with the family I spent so much of my life fighting.

Lachlan’s right, though. I love her, so what the fuck am I doing out here? Why should the past, that has nothing to do with her, matter? Why am I letting the Van Helsings continue to torture me by taking away the one good thing they’ve given me—her—due to old wounds?

My face pulls into a grimace as my anger deflates. “Fuck.”

“Go tell her yer stupid, and that I said hello, ye fuckwit,” Lachlan says, before he turns and swims away.