Violet
Her chest constricted. Her lungs closed off.
No, no, no, no, no. She could not have a panic attack in front of him. There was no way. She didn't want him to see that.
She hung her head. She was a failure. She made all these choices for one reason, and now more than seven years later, she was right back where she’d started. They were in Alaska, her home state, the one place she never wanted to be stuck. And now she had this male shifter who was making demands on her life and Arabella’s life.
She knew it wasn't fair, she knew that as a father, he would be able to claim rights under most pack laws. Just because she didn't belong to a pack didn't mean they wouldn't enforce them.
Even humans had strong laws about paternity and allowing the child to see the father. She'd been around enough humans for the last seven years to know that a court would not look kindly on what she had done. In a human court, she might lose custody because of what she’d done.
She’d heard from several women during her various jobs who had been lectured by judges about deliberately keeping their children away from the father. Especially if there was no good reason. Some had even had their custody reduced because of it.
She had a good reason though. She just didn’t think anyone would understand it.
And now here was this good-natured male wolf shifter sitting next to her. He could’ve turned into a real asshole. He could’ve dragged her and Arabella to his pack the minute he saw them and let his Alpha decide their fate. After what she’d done, including paralyzing him, she knew exactly what her fate would be – they’d say she wasn’t fit to raise a child.
Was she supposed to be grateful that he was nice? Because she wasn't. She wasn't grateful at all. She was bitter and resentful, and she was fighting mad. All she’d ever done was try to keep a low profile and take care of her daughter and now none of that mattered.
She wasn't going to cry, but she felt her skin begin to get wet as she pressed her hands to her eyes.
His big hand landed on her back. She wanted to shake him off, but he couldn't bring herself to do it. Part of her liked the comfort that his hand brought, and she hated that too.
Maybe it would be easier to be one of those uncomplicated females who just accepted who they were. But she could never do that. The past was too close. It would never fade from her mind.
Just yesterday Arabella had asked, "Mommy, why can't we be a part of a big pack?"
"It's complicated. You're probably too young to understand." Violet wished she knew how old she was when understanding had dawned on her.
When was the first time that she had watched her mother defer to her dad over something important? When was the first time she'd realized that her mother had no say in her own life? When was the first time she'd realized her mother had no say in the lives of her children? She had not been much older than Arabella. Hell, maybe she'd been even younger. It was hard to know, because they didn't celebrate birthdays in her pack the way humans did. Her father had thought it was nonsense.
But a few of the older shifters had told them about it. And they had pretend birthday parties in the woods and made mud pies for each other. They had no firsthand experience, but the older shifter had claimed it was true that humans had a big party and got presents when they turned another year older.
“How do you know about this?” she’d asked. All of them were forbidden to go into the human world.
"My dad saw it on the trip."
“And he told you?”
“Of course not. He told my mom.”
That made more sense, although she'd realized before then that her mother and father had a very different relationship. Her father never shared stories with her mother. He just told her what to do. And kept her bred so that she would always have a child.
The males controlled the relationships of every couple in the pack. But not all of them were as repressive as her father. Not all of them ruled with the iron fist that he used.
There may have even been a few couples who loved each other. But it was hard for her to say because she saw every woman as a prisoner, as someone who could not escape.
But couldn’t they have? Could they have escaped had they wanted to? She had wondered, what made her different?
She actually went through a period of a few weeks wondering if there was actually something wrong with her. Not just that she was wired differently, but that she was missing some essential component to being a female and raising a child. But she quickly pushed those notions away. She knew that she would do anything for Arabella from day one, and that was not something her own mother could say with any conviction at all.
Was her own mother bad? Was she weak? Or was she simply terrified of what would happen if she left? Had he been violent with her? Had he threatened her?
She learned the term domestic violence from one of her coworkers. The woman had been through it with her own husband. And after that, Violet had tried to see her own mother in that light.
One scenario she could not stomach was that her mother had actually loved her father and wanted to be with him. That was the option that turned her stomach and made her stay resolute in her decision to never become a part of a pack.
She didn’t know the answer to any of those questions. It could be a combination of them. Or had her mother simply been too timid to strike out on her own? Violet didn’t know and she would never know – she would never see her mother again.