MATED TO FATHER, FATED TO SONS

Chapter 168: WASN’T FATE

VICTOR

Lila is impulsive as fuck, she is as impulsive as good as she is at orgies.

I dropped her chin and turned away. The laugh came out of me fully, filling the gym, bouncing off the walls, and I turned back and she was standing there with her eyes sharp and her jaw set, working to keep her expression even.

Two years of work. This is where it starts to pay.

I stepped back toward her and she held her ground. She always held her ground. It was genuinely one of the few things I appreciated about her.

God she is gorgeous. It is genuinely inconvenient.

I put my mouth close to her ear. "Oh, sweet Lila." My lips moved along her jaw toward her mouth and I caught her lower lip between my teeth and applied pressure until her breath caught. I released it. Pulled back and looked at her. "You all think you understand Freya."

"Then explain her to me," she breathed, rougher than she intended.

Every man she has ever known has wanted her. I want to use her. She has not noticed the difference yet.

"Do you think she came back here for love?" I murmured it against her jaw. "The tragic woman. Fate dealt her a bad hand and she simply wants what was promised. Is that the story you have built about her."

Her hands came up and pressed flat against my chest, fingers curling into my shirt. "Get to the point."

"Make me," I murmured.

Her eyes narrowed. "Is that supposed to be charming?"

"No." I pulled her closer by the waist. "It’s supposed to be honest."

She tipped her chin up. "Then honestly, Victor. What is the point of having me if you won’t use me."

"I use you constantly." My mouth grazed her jaw. "You just don’t always know when."

She made a sound low in her throat that was half frustration and half something else entirely. Her hands gripped my shirt tighter.

"Freya has been playing every single one of us from the very beginning." I slid my hands up her sides, feeling her ribcage expand under my palms.

"Including me. And I do not say that lightly." My thumbs moved over the fabric covering her breasts, back and forth, slow, and her chin tilted upward.

"She placed Cole inside Gravemoon pack when they were children. Arranged it herself. Engineered it. I did not discover this until I believed her dead and had the time to pull her history apart properly."

Her hands moved down from my chest and she pressed her palm flat against the front of my trousers, deliberate and measuring, and I kept my face entirely still.

She thinks this is leverage.

"Keep talking," she murmured.

"She needed proximity to Cole and proximity to Corvin." Her hand moved and I exhaled through my nose, controlled.

Keep going. Think you have me.

"Every piece on that board was placed by her years in advance. Long before any of us knew we were sitting at her table." I pulled the fabric of her top aside and ran my thumb across her breast, slow, watching her eyes shift and darken.

"A woman who builds to that timeline does not do it out of love. Love is impatient. Love makes mistakes. Whatever Freya has been doing, it is not love."

I like her better like this. Flushed and losing the thread.

"Then what does she want," Lila breathed, her hand not stopping.

"That," I murmured against her neck, pressing my mouth there, "is exactly the right question." I felt her head tip back. I bit lightly at the skin below her ear. "What does Freya want that required placing her brother in a pack years in advance. That required everyone believing she had no power of her own."

There is a version of this where I tell her everything. I have not decided yet if she lives to hear it.

"The Luna title," Lila managed. "Corvin."

"Think larger." I lifted my head and she made a frustrated sound. I took both her wrists and held them between us. She looked up at my face, pupils wide, breathing shortened. "Are you with me?"

"I am with you," she gritted.

"The mate bond," I continued, holding her eyes. "Between Freya and Alpha Corvin. The one the entire pack treats as sacred and immovable and written by the moon goddess herself."

Her brow pulled together. "What about it."

"Who confirmed it was real."

"You either have a mate bond or you don’t. You cannot construct one."

"That is what we are taught." I released her wrists and stepped back and picked up my water and drank from it while she stood there disheveled and impatient with those calculating eyes fixed on me. "I visited the head of the witch covens three months ago."

Her expression shifted. "You went to the witches."

"I went to the witches." I set the bottle down. "Who informed me that a mate bond can be manipulated. Not created from nothing. But redirected. Made to attach where it was not naturally assigned." I held her gaze steady.

"It requires extraordinary power. First order, she told me." I tilted my head.

"Now. Think about everything you know about Freya. No wolf , a witch fated to an alpha. No explanation ever offered. Everyone accepted it as a weakness." I paused. "Has Freya ever once struck you as a woman with genuine weaknesses."

*Freya. The one name that still makes me careful.*

I watched it arrive across her face in real time. Each piece moving into place. Her eyes went wide as the full shape of it landed and settled.

"She is a witch," Lila breathed.

"First order," I confirmed. "She has concealed it her entire life and everyone around her helped by never asking the real question."

She impressed me. That almost never happens.

"Then the bond—" Lila stopped. Started again. "The bond between her and Corvin—"

"Exists." I held her gaze. "Functions. Is real in every practical sense." I looked at her steadily. "But the head of the covens believes it was not assigned by the moon goddess."

The colour left her face.

"It wasn’t fate," she breathed.

"It wasn’t fate." I held her eyes.