Beth.
Chapter 4 - Beth
Beth stopped mid-step when she spotted Ken amongst the dozen or so faces staring at her. His mouth had parted in disbelief, and a mixture of emotions crossed his face in a flash.
Gods, Ken was just as handsome as she remembered him with his dark, untameable hair, and those forest-green eyes. Staring at him produced hazy memories of long nights spent kissing that powerful jaw of his, his sculpted arms wrapped around her.
She gulped and tried to look away from him, but she couldn’t. She felt like a deer in the headlights, unable to do anything but stare into the eyes of the man who could love her or destroy her.
How she hated that she'd been forced to leave his side, her memories erased and messed with to make him believe he had only been a one-night-stand, not the love of her life. Because looking at him now, it was impossible to ignore the tug she felt toward him, the chain of fate drawing them together. The link they shared as mates, as faded as it was now.
Then Ken’s lips pressed into a hard, firm line, and the tug vanished, at least for now. Just one look like that and she knew that the goblins had paid Ken no such kindness as to make him forget her. The punishment for finding their hive had not been stealing Beth's memories and forcing her to run off into the night with her unborn child; the real pain they had caused was in letting Ken believe, for fourteen years, that Beth had never loved him, that she ran off when she couldn't take being with him anymore.
And letting that pain fester for so long that he believed it.
She could see all the pain andangerin his gaze, rising up to wipe away the hint of hope, loss, and confusion that had first lingered there.
Tears grew in her eyes, but she worked hard to keep them from falling. Now wasn't the time or place, and truth be told, she was tired of crying. Last night she’d hardly slept at all because the tears wouldn’t stop pouring out. There were times she’d had to pull over on the long drive with Joanna to Silvercoast just to let out some of those pent-up emotions.
"Im—impossible," Ken stuttered. "You can't be here.”
“I’m sorry,” Beth said quietly, because it was all she could bring herself to say in front of all these people. The accusation in Ken’s eyes was more than enough to make her feel embarrassed, the redness in her cheeks rising to match.
Ryel beckoned her forward. “Beth has just as much right to be here at the council meeting as any one of us.”
“That’s a fucking lie and you know it,” Ken growled, directing his anger at the alpha rather than Beth. “She’s been gone for years! She’s not a member of this pack anymore!”
“Perhaps her status is in question, but she was born into the Silvercoast pack, and we do not throw away our own so easily.”
“Even when they throwusaway?”
“There are other details in Beth’s situation that have us carefully considering the reasons for her departure. In the meantime, I believe it is in our best interests to listen to the warning she brings.”
Ken, seeming to realize that Ryel wasn’t going to listen to him, turned back to Beth with fire in his gaze. He pointed an accusatory finger at her. “You don’t have a clue what's going on in this town. You ran away, you abandoned us, your pack, years ago! How dare you show up here again pretending you knowanythingabout what that was like?"
Grief lanced Beth's heart, and for a second, she couldn't breathe over the shock of the intense, hate-filled words spewing out of Ken's mouth. The tears welled again because she could feel just how much hehatedher for what she'd done. She wished nothing more than to explain everything to Ken, but this wasn't about her, or him, or even Joanna. It was about keeping their whole pack safe and making sure the goblins were either not a threat anymore, or that they were swiftly dispatched.
"I'm not going to pretend I know what it was like," Beth said, trying to keep her voice as even as possible. "Because I don't. I lived in ignorant bliss—I was made to believe I didn't have a pack. That I was alone in the world. But I'm not here with excuses, and I don’t expect to immediately make up for the time I’ve been gone. I'm here because I'm afraid there's a real threat to the wolves of Silvercoast, and it would have been irresponsible for me to ignore the knowledge I have."
Ken growled low, but before he could speak again, Ryel raised a hand and gestured to the entire room. "Tell everyone what you told me, since Ken is not the only one struggling to believe my word alone."
Beth turned away from Ken; it was too hard to look at him, and she needed to be composed while she told her story, or else no one would believe her. She was lucky enough already that Ryel had been compassionate enough to hear her out, let alone immediately trust her enough to call an emergency meeting to disseminate her news and warning.
He didn't even know her. He would have only been a young pup when she left.
Mostof the people in this room didn't know her, except for some of the older wolves who were still on the council, and they weren't any more inclined to believe her than Ken was. She had to win them over if she was going to ensure Silvercoast’s safety, and potentially a position in the back for her and Joanna.
Right now, she wasn’t liking her odds.
Beth took a deep breath and faced everyone. "Fourteen years ago, I was an honored member of the Silvercoast pack. I grew up here. I shared the same hardships and pains; I lost many family members and friends to the goblin wars. Despite my pains, I was a driven member of the community, wanting nothing more than to improve Silvercoast and make the next generations more prosperous.
"But one day, I wandered too far out into the woods, and that dream was stolen from me. I went too far past Wolf Rock and into the mountains, too lost in thought while I enjoyed the freedom of my wolf form. That's where I found them. The goblins had just felled a deer, and I knew I should have run home the instant I saw them. I should have reported what I saw; I knew the dangers. I ... I didn't. My head was in a different place. The wrong place. So instead, I made the mistake of following them. I found their lair."
Worried murmurs spread out through the room, and though they didn't look like they believed her, they did seem less enraged than before. That had to mean something, right?
“If that’s true, why did you run away from Silvercoast instead of reporting it?” Ken snarled. “You left the rest of us to rot.”
His angered response seemed more like a reaction to the sway in the assembly that a rebuttal of Beth’s story. When his green eyes narrowed on hers, she swallowed, and continued.