My Fated Mate Can Have Her

Chapter 341: Ugly Faces

Violet

My father kept shifting his weight from one foot to the other. My brother’s hands were shoved deep into his pockets, his shoulders hunched. And my mother was wringing her hands together so tightly her knuckles had gone white.

But they were all smiling.

If the disgust on my face wasn’t enough to make them stop, I did not know what would.

A slight quiver swept through my body as I trembled in rage.

The pack wolves at least had the decency to lower their heads and avoid my gaze. Elena had been pitiful and delusional, but these three...

I had known not to pine for their affection in their own home, and when they threw me out, it had taken months to grapple with that decision.

I had been closer to my grandmother, but once she was gone, I had wanted to cling to them out of desperation, but I had had to let it go.

And now they were walking toward me with open arms?

I felt insulted.

But my mother moved first.

She took a hesitant step forward, then another. Her eyes kept flicking to Rowan behind me, then back to my face, then to Rowan again.

Each glance at him made her flinch slightly before she corrected herself and refocused on me with renewed desperation.

"V-Violet." Her voice shook. She was trying to sound warm, but the quiver running through it betrayed her entirely. "Oh, my girl. When Marcus told us you were coming, I told your father, I said we have to see her." She reached for me, her trembling hands rising toward my face. "We have to—"

I felt the slightest movement from Rowan, causing her hand to freeze in the air.

I turned to him and the other wolves. "Please, I’d like to handle this myself."

The wolves nodded and turned away while Rowan’s face twisted from anger to surprise. "Violet—"

I clutched my hands tightly to my stomach. "Please."

He frowned, staring hard at my family before turning away.

I faced my mother to find her smile wavering before she forced it back into place, wider this time and a bit more strained.

There was a glimmer of hope in her eyes.

"Oh, my girl..."

"Your girl?"

I could feel Zephyr echoing my revulsion.

She had never called me that. Her last words to me years ago had been a dismissal so casual it might as well have been directed at a stray animal lingering too close to her doorstep.

And now I was her girl.

The hypocrisy was staggering.

I knew how ugly my family was, but I had never expected them to act so shamelessly.

"You look so well," she pressed on, her words tumbling out faster. Was she blind or just so self-obsessed that she couldn’t see the obvious look on my face?

"Everything we’ve heard, everything you’ve done, we are just so proud. So, so proud. I always told everyone, I always said our Violet was special—"

"Pathetic."

All three of them flinched as if I had struck them.

My mother’s hands dropped to her sides. My father, who had been inching forward with that same rigid smile, went still. My brother took a half step backwards before catching himself.

I looked at my mother.

She was stiff, but her eyes were wide and darting across my face with the desperate urgency of someone searching for any sign of the child she remembered.

The weak one. The quiet one. The one who would have been grateful for any scrap of acknowledgement, even false.

A bitter taste rose at the back of my throat.

The gall she had to try to see if she could deceive me.

I wanted to scream at her. I wanted to ask her if she remembered the nights I had gone hungry, or the winter I had nearly frozen because the holes in my shack let the cold straight through. I wanted to know if she had ever lain awake and wondered whether her daughter had eaten that day.

Despite her seeing that daughter from time to time and acting like she was non-existent.

But I already knew the answer to that.

"This is very amusing." I smiled bitterly. "If I’d said something like this back in the day, your reactions would be the complete opposite of this."

"We made mistakes," my mother rushed out, her voice cracking. She was speaking faster now, the words spilling like she was afraid I would walk away before she finished. "I know we did. I know things were not easy for you here, and your father and I, we should have done more—"

"You should have fed me."

She went white.

I felt so angry.

"You should have opened your door when I knocked," I continued. "You should have spoken to me when you saw me on the streets. You should have treated me like I existed." I let out a shaky laughter that made her step back. "So many ifs."

Her mood shifted, as if she was now feeling my anger.

The smiles of the other two collapsed entirely.

Especially my father. His disgusting cowardice knew no end. Of course, he would have been the one to suggest this.

I had to look away from them for a moment before the anger fully swallowed my composure.

I would not let them destroy my day.

They were not worth that.

However...

"That was a nice monologue, but is that how you address your superior? By name? Or do I have to banish you from this pack and deny you access to every other pack in the nation so you can remain rogues for the rest of your lives?"

Their faces crumpled, and I let the overbearing weight of my syzygy engulf them.

I watched them tremble under the suffocating weight of my power. I did not care if I was showing off or trying to make a point, but they needed to know exactly where they stood.

"You chose to cut me out of your lives," I said calmly. "That was your decision. I respect it, as should you. "

My father collapsed to the ground, his face pale, while my brother’s shoulders were hunched over, sweat beading on his forehead as he tried to make himself appear small.

Their eyes were fixed on the ground.

My mother still remained standing, but she was so stiff she almost looked like a statue. Her eyes were also on the ground, and her heart was thrashing wildly in her chest.

"We are strangers," I said. "Disrespect me again and you will pay for it."

I turned and walked past them without another word.