Quick Note!
I am so sorry about the long wait. I have been thinking this over for a couple weeks and I really want to try something new. I hope you enjoy this brief glimpse into the life of Teague. If you guys really like it I might just put some time into a small spinoff for him.
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Teague's P.O.V.
Grease splashed back onto my cheek when I loosened the lug nut too much. I cursed at myself and wiped the oil from my face. My ass was numb from sitting on the cold garage floor for so long but I didn’t care. I had been working on my bike for hours but it barely felt like any time passed.
This was what my life summed up to these last ten years; a condemned terminal bachelor who plays with toys in a garage. From the moment I found my mate this was what my life became because of it.
My hand clenched around the wrench when I thought about her and what she had done to me, to us. Ten years and I still could barely come to terms with what happened between us.
The second she rejected me I fled to the Shadowland’s territory and pledged my allegiance to Alpha Xavier. I couldn’t be anywhere near her and the Shadowland’s were the farthest territory from her.
Once I explained my circumstances, Alpha Xavier welcomed me into his pack with open arms. He had to fight tooth and nail with my old Alpha for me though. After a year in the Shadowland’s pack Xavier took me under his wing. He trained me to become the next Beta to his daughter, Arianna, and her Alpha mate.
At first it was hard to be around everyone else with their mates and happy lives. So I hid. I bought myself a clunker and poured my frustration into fixing it into a beautiful motorcycle.
It didn’t take very long to finish so I bought three more. Eventually other terminal bachelors joined me in the garage. Arianna’s annoying friend, Logan, and his slightly more tolerable older brother, Scott, were regulars.
After Xavier died I even took a pre-teen shifter under my own wing. Kevin became the younger brother I never had, which turned into the son I would never get the chance to father.
But today there wasn’t another shifter in sight. They were all inside grieving over Arianna’s mother, Alpha Terrence, and the traitor’s wife. Sadly one of her pack members found her in their bathroom. The guilt over her husband’s treachery consumed her. She became just another victim to him.
I knew I should be in there too as Dante’s Beta, but I couldn’t bear to be around all the sadness. I paid my respects to Arianna and Dante this morning. Once it was apparent I wasn’t needed anymore I slunk off to the garage for the seclusion from everyone.
Over the past couple days I found it harder and harder on myself to be around anyone in the pack. I couldn’t take their looks of pity. Poor Teague, the freak shifter. My only solace was that it seemed I wasn’t alone. Cooper had also been injected with bear blood. Even Dante had his own shifter cocktail of all the shifter blood Walter could get his hands on. It was a wonder he was keeping it together. But he had his mate to ground him.
The door creaked open but I didn’t bother looking away from my bike. I was too busy throwing myself a pity party.
“Do you mind if I hide in here?”
Her voice cracked and I could hear the sorrow in her tone. Last year this Arianna would have been foreign to me. Her laughter and light tone was second nature. Walter and his hunter friends had crushed that side of her.
I looked up at her, “Of course.”
She bit her lip back and slowly walked over to me. Her black dress billowed with every step and even in the dim garage light I could see all the scars that marred her beautiful face and body. A woman that young, even an Alpha female, should never have to bear so many battle wounds.
Without another word she sat down on the cold, hard floor next to me. She rested her hear on my shoulder and sighed.
“I want to ask you something but I am afraid I don’t have very much tact at the moment to nicely ask it of you.”
I snorted, “I don’t think you have ever had tact in your life.”
A small, short laugh escaped her lips, “I suppose you are right. I just don’t want you to hate me for asking.”
“I could never hate you. I don’t think we have ever had any secrets from each other. You certainly didn’t have any tact when you forced me to tell you about my mate that one summer.”
“I wanted you to know you had someone in your corner; that I am always here for you even though she isn’t. You’ll always have me, Teague.”
I took a deep breath and sighed, “You want to know about my parents.”
She slowly nodded her head.
It was only normal for her to wonder about what she was feeling right now. She only lost her father less than two years ago and now her mother. Dante was parentless as well but he was never close with his father and he was too young to remember the feelings surrounding his mother’s death.
“For the longest time I was mad at the world,” I began to explain, “I couldn’t understand why they left me. When I first found out about the car accident I didn’t want to believe they were really gone. It was hard to accept.”
She sniffled, “I just wish people would stop telling me how sorry they are. Everyone is just so sorry. I know it is good manners of an Alpha female to accept their deepest apologies for the second parent that was murdered before my eyes but I don’t want to. I shouldn’t have to. Neither of them was supposed to die yet. It wasn’t their time.”
I curled my hand around hers in comfort.
“In our world it rarely is someone’s time when they are taken from us.”
“Well it isn’t fair!”
I shook my head even though she wasn’t looking at me.
“Life never is.”
“I just couldn’t stand to be in there anymore. I can’t accept another apology for the rest of my life. Every single time someone opens their mouth to apologize is just another reminder that my parents are gone.”
“Is that why you’re in here?”
I could hear the change in her heartbeat. She may not have been my mate but her father trained me to be in tune and alert to everything that had to with her.
“Yes.”
She never was good at lying but I didn’t want to force her to tell me the truth. She would tell me what was wrong on her own terms and in her own time.
I already knew what it was about but from the look on her face when Dante revived her a couple days ago I knew she wouldn’t want to talk about it for a while. It took months for her to talk about her father’s death. It would take a while for her to talk about her own brush with death.
“Teague?”
“Hmm?”
“Do you ever feel like there was one defining moment in your life that you failed? And that if you hadn’t made that mistake then you would be happy?”
“I think about that moment every day of my life, Arianna.”
“What was it for you?”
“Did you know that Alpha Terrence didn’t personally train his fighters like most Alphas? When we were young he sent us away for months to be Alpha Eric’s punching bags. He actually used us to train Tristan and Dante.”
“My father never told me that.”
“I don’t suspect the other Alphas knew too much about Terrence. He became Alpha before most of them were even born. His parents were murdered by hunters when he was just twelve. He was forced to take over before he hit puberty. It does something to someone to have to grow up that fast.”
“I still don’t agree with anything he did,” she grumbled.
I lightly chuckled and shook my head, “I don’t either but that wasn’t my point. I was almost eighteen the last time I went. He never sent anyone past that. It was the last time I ever saw my parents. It was also the time I would have met my mate. There was a huge party that I was supposed to go to that she attended. Terrence even offered to keep me home. By the time I was sixteen I was already stronger and fiercer than full grown shifters. But my parents and I fought the week before and I wanted to get away from them.”
A sting of pain twinged at my heart as I finally admitted to her what I had never told anyone before. It was just too much to think about or force myself to feel. But I knew she would never judge me or make fun of anything I told her. I trusted her with my life and she trusted me with hers.
“I saw Tristan,” she quietly whispered.
My body stilled and I stayed silent. I could feel her wanting to tell someone what she saw but she was afraid. It wasn’t something Dante would understand or want to listen to. As much as he loved Arianna, he would never try to understand anything that had to do with his brother loving her or vice versa.
“I heard his voice as clearly as I hear yours now. I saw his beautiful blue eyes and felt his smooth skin with the tips of my fingers. His lips warmed mine.”
Her hand reached up and she touched her lips. She was pulled into the memory now like I wasn’t even there. I didn’t dare move and startle her.
“He asked me to choose him, to stay there with him and my parents. I almost didn’t come back, Teague,” she broke out into a sob, “I wanted to stay there with him, with them.”
“You can’t blame yourself for wanting to be with your family and your mate,” I tried to reassure her, “More than once I wished to be with mine.”
“How do you do it, Teague? How do you live without your family and your mate?”
I knew she meant well by the question but it still stung to think about.
“You and this pack are my family now. I have a son to look after, an Alpha and his family to protect, and an annoying brother who is one of the most loyally men I know.”
“Coop is quite annoying, isn’t he?” she softly giggled.
“None of you are my blood kin but you are all my family.”
She poked my chest, “Which is precisely why you cannot leave us.”
I deeply sighed. I hated when she was right, which was most of the time. Even the stranger blood now coursing through my veins wasn’t going to make me leave this weird family I had.
“Now, let’s go back inside. Uncle Bruce broke out the good whiskey and I have heard Christian and Regan like to sing duets when they are tanked.”
When I looked into her eyes they were no longer filled with sadness for her parents. Instead they held excitement with a twinkle of mischief. This was the Arianna that grew up before my eyes.
“You never told me what you thought your moment was,” I told her as I helped her off the garage floor.
Her smile faltered a little, “Another night.”
I nodded my head in understanding, “I’ll be right in.”
“I better see you inside in five minutes or I will drag you in.”
I shook my head as she disappeared back into the house. There wasn’t a single doubt in my mind that she wouldn’t attempt to drag me inside. I slowly began to put my tools away while I thought about everything she said to me.
It had been ten years since I saw my mate. She tried to contact me a few times over the years but I refused to talk to her. It wasn’t her fault that she wanted a family and made one without me. She didn’t know we would find each other. I didn’t really blame her. I wanted to but I could only blame myself.
For a moment I wondered what her moment was; something with Dante or Tristan, or perhaps with her parents? I don’t think anyone ever gets over their parents passing away. The pain just slowly eases as time passed by.
“You’re not in here crying by yourself like a big sissy, are you?”
I chuckled and looked up to see Kevin standing in the doorway.
“Shouldn’t you be tucked away in bed by now?” I scolded him.
He scoffed and pretended to look offended.
“I will have you know I am almost legally able to drive. I think I’m old enough to set my own bed time.”
I hastily glanced down at my watch, “It is eleven o’clock at night and you have school in the morning. If your ass isn’t in bed in five minutes then you are going to be sorely sorry, emphasis on the sorely.”
He didn’t even attempt to hold back his groan, “Aw come on! You don’t expect me to go back to school after everything that has happened! Haven’t I at least earned a week off?”
“You’re at four minutes now.”
The kid was going to be sixteen in two months but he sure could stomp his feet like he was still five years old.
“Gee dad, couldn’t he have had just five more minutes,” Cooper mocked me when I stepped back into the house after Kevin.
“Were we ever that bad at that age?”
He snorted in response.
“We never asked for an extra five minutes. We went to bed by ten and snuck out by ten thirty.”
“You think I should go check?”
“Please, Bobby and Kevin may be a lot of things but they are not us. Trust me. They went to bed. No one wants to suffer the wrath of Teague.”
“I told you that I was going to come get you!” Arianna yelled at me from down the hall.
“I was just bringing the old man now!” Cooper shouted back.
“Old man?”
He shrugged, “You went to bed last night at nine. I think that qualifies as hitting a ripe old age.”
I chuckled and took a drink from the whiskey bottle he held out to me. I could already hear the tone deaf Alphas singing “I’m Too Sexy” in the living room. This was going to be a long night.