When You Were My Mate (Demetra and Emris) novel Chapter 26

Chapter 26

Demetra.

“Amira, come here… stop running.” I try to catch her in the grand mall.

It’s the so-called Palms Mall, a VIP shopping experience that’s large as an airport. Tiffany said it’s supposedly designed for the leaders of packs and their kids. It’s cornered with heightened security to keep regular pack members out. I wouldn’t normally choose somewhere so exclusive, but Dad said it was the closest and had the best amenities for the granddaughter of an Alpha.

Right now, all I see are polished floors and overpriced toy stores

I’m digging through my purse for the movie tickets when I see her little legs pump faster toward the cinema entrance. My heart leaps into my throat as she stumbles, her balance going until a pair of strong hands catch her just before she hits the ground.

I exhale sharply with instantaneous relief then my blood runs cold.

Emris.

He crouches down to her level, saying something too low for me to hear. Instead of answering, Amira turns and runs back to me, burying her face against my leg. I rest a protective hand on her back and my eyes lock on him.

What is he doing here!?

After everything that happened last night, he’s the last person I wanted to see. I even told Slade I wasn’t coming for the second day of the Alpha Fest today. I woke up to my phone blowing up with clips of me slapping Luna Derisha. The internet has dubbed me as “Miss Slap.” It’s almost funny, but beneath the humor is a low, cold fear. I defended myself, but she’s Emris’s mother.

Disrespect like that doesn’t go unanswered in their world.

I can’t read his expression. Is he looking at me like someone he wants to strangle, or someone he wants to talk to? He’s wearing one of those snug black shirts that outlines every muscle, paired with baggy pants. He looks like a soldier at a kids’ mall.

“Hello, Angel!” a small, bright voice says. I look down to see Mile beaming up at me.

I put up smile. “How are you, Milo?”

“Fine. Good morning.” He’s so polite that a genuine maternal instinct makes me reach out and gently brush his hair from his forehead. “Here,” I murmur, pulling the hair tie from my own hair. I kneel to gather his soft hair into a tiny ponytail.

“Whoa, thank you!” he says, then immediately turns to Amira. “What are you doing here?”

“To watch Kitty Kats.”

Emris steps closer as the kids chatter. His presence feels like a static charge in the air.

“Really? Daddy, can I join?” Milo asks, looking back at his father

“Of course.” Emris says. “I’ll keep Miss Angel company.”

The offer makes my skin prickle. I almost change my mind about letting Amira go, but I know the tantrum that would follow. Once Amira starts crying, it takes forever to calm her down.

“Come here, kids,” Emris says. Milo runs to him instantly. Amira looks at me, uncertainty in her big eyes. Should she go to

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the strange man who is, unknown to her, her real father?

“Go ahead.” I tell her softly.

Instead of holding her, Emris bends and scoops both children up one in each arm. They giggle, suspended in his hold. I watch, with a feeling in my heart as he carries them to the ticket counter, handling everything with an ease that feels surreal.

My hands are shaking as I see it.

When the staff comes to take the kids into the theatre, Amira glances back and gives me a wave. Then Emris returns. He’s holding two popcorns and two sodas. Please don’t let one of those be for me.

He doesn’t speak. Just tilts his head toward a dimly lit theatre area for parents. My eyes catch on a tattoo peeking from the collar of his shirt, curling up the side of his neck. I don’t remember him having that.

He walks in first. I follow into the soft darkness of a side theatre. There are only three other parents inside, all sitting far away. We have a row to ourselves. The screen isn’t showing something normal! It’s playing… 365 Days. Seriously? What kind of parents’ lounge is this?

While I sit, I also brace myself for the raging beast I know him to be for what I did to his mom. But Emris is eerily calm. Maybe because the kids are nearby.

He sets a popcorn and a soda in the cup holder next to me. Then after some minutes, his voice comes.

“You’ve got the whole internet making fun of my mother and my pack. Are you fucking aware of that?”

There it is. The temper. I won’t bend to it.

“It’s a shame no one filmed the part where she pushed me first. Are you aware she deserved it?” I reply.

“Next time you

touch my mother-”

I turn my head sharply and meet his shadowed gaze in the dark.

“What will you

do?”

“You have a father that I hate. You have a brother I hate. And a nephew I hate. I won’t touch you… but I have no rule against touching the rest of your loved ones.”

The threat lands like ice in my veins. I know what it means when Emris threatens someone. The first time he threatened to send me away from the pack house, he did it within the hour. He doesn’t bluff.

“Your mother pushed-”

“I caught you after what she did!”

I feel his gaze on the side of my face in the dark.

“And that means I should let it go!?”

“Yes. Don’t add to the hatred I already have for your pack before the last day of the Alpha Fest.”

I decide then to stop talking. I don’t care what he thinks.

We sit in tense silence for a while, pretending to watch the ridiculous, overly-dramatic movie playing on screen. Then, Emris speaks again, his tone shifting strangely.

“Do you

think Amira can come to Milo’s birthday?”

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I scoff, almost too offended to answer. Milo’s birthday? Amira’s own birthday is in three days but wait… I was pregnant with her first. But somehow, Milo’s birthday is before hers. Which means Elena was already pregnant while I was carrying his child?

How is that possible? No…something is wrong with that calculation. Emris was not with her then.

“Amira has her own birthday to prepare for. And I don’t know why you’d even ask that, given our families are enemies.” I cross my legs and the slit of my dress falls open.

“Hmm.”

“So you conceived her right after you left my pack?” he asks, and I know exactly what he’s doing…calculating, searching for any clue about her father.

“Yes.” I say sharply. “With an Alpha.”

I add the detail so he won’t ask again.

“Hmm.”

“And you’re standing between us. I would have gotten married to the father of my child… but unlike you, I don’t want to marry someone else while I’m still bonded to another. I’m sick of having your marks all over me. A rejection will solve that. So… prepare your wolf for it. I thought you’d be eager to reject me, but for some reason, you’re not. You want Eden and Teddy to break their bond… but your family doesn’t know you’re a hypocrite.”

After I’ve said it all, I try to focus on the movie.

Until a raw gasping sound comes from the speakers. It’s an explicit scene, with the characters tangled in a position that’s all too familiar…a position I’ve only ever been in with him.

“Ah!”

My face heats at the sound from the speakers and my throat goes dry as they shift into the most tuned-up, upside-down impossible angle to another.

It’s worse to look at it more, because the next position they’re in s explicitly one I enjoyed with Emris.

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