TEMPORARY MATES PERMANENT CRAVINGS novel Chapter 34

Thirty-Four

CAMERON POV

I was nine years old when I realized my stepmother hated me.

Not disliked. Not resented.

Hated.

She showed it in a thousand small ways. The way she “forgot” to have the kitchen prepare my meals. The way she assigned me the worst chores and gave me the smallest room in the massive estate.

But mostly she showed it through silence.

My father, the great Alpha everyone respected, was rarely home. He spent his time managing pack business, traveling to other territories, doing everything except being a parent.

Which left me and Nadia alone with her.

Nadia and I shared the same dark hair and sharp features we inherited from our birth mother, a woman neither of us had ever met.

Our stepmother liked to remind us of that.

“Your mother was a whore,” she would say casually over dinner when Father was away. “A desperate pig who spread her legs for tokens. Just another prostitute.”

Nadia would flinch. 1

I said nothing.

“Your father only used her because I couldn’t give him sons,” Victoria continued, sipping wine. “He needed an heir, so he bought one. You should be grateful he kept you instead of sending you back to whatever hovel she crawled out of.”

“Our mother is dead,” I snapped. The only time I ever spoke back.

Victoria’s eyes turned cold.

“Yes. She died giving birth to you two. Some might say that was the Moon Goddess’s judgment.”

Nadia started crying. I reached under the table and squeezed her hand.

That night Victoria ordered us to the basement. Said we needed to “learn respect.”

I took Nadia’s punishment along with my own.

Six lashes for me.

None for her.

It became our pattern.

Whenever Nadia did something wrong, I stepped forward and took the blame. Victoria seemed to enjoy punishing me more than Nadia anyway.

Maybe because I was the heir.

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The bastard son who would inherit everything despite having no right to it.

By the time I was twelve, I had learned to take the beatings without reacting. Learned to stand still while Victoria used whatever she had in her hand, a belt, a riding crop, once even a fire poker.

Nadia would watch from the corner, crying and whispering apologies I never acknowledged.

I didn’t blame her.

I blamed our father.

He left us there. He never noticed what was happening. Pack responsibilities always mattered more than his children.

When the military academy acceptance letter arrived on my thirteenth birthday, I felt relief for the first time in

years.

A way out.

A chance to escape the house, the woman who ruled it, the constant humiliation.

Then I looked at Nadia and realized I couldn’t leave her behind.

“Take me with you,” she begged.

“You’re a girl. They won’t accept you.”

“Then don’t go.”

“I’ll come back,” I promised. “As soon as I graduate.”

“She’ll hurt me when you’re gone.”

I pulled her into a hug.

“I know. But you’re stronger than you think. It’s only four years.”

Nadia cried into my shirt.

“Promise me something,” I said.

“What?”

“Don’t let her break you. Don’t let her make you think you’re worthless. You’re better than all of them.”

She nodded, but I knew she didn’t believe me.

I left for the academy the next week.

A mistake that stripped the last of my humanity.

Seven years later I got the call.

My father was dying from an aggressive illness.

He wanted to see me.

I didn’t want to go.

Fuck him. Fuck his deathbed wishes. Fuck the legacy he left behind.

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Then Nadia called, crying. Our stepmother had died a few years after I joined the academy. It was just our father and Nadia now.

“Please come home. I can’t do this alone.”

So I went.

The estate looked exactly the same. The gates. The manicured gardens. The heavy silence that always hung over the place.

A staff member met me at the door.

“He’s in the master bedroom. The doctors say he has weeks at most.”

I ignored her and walked inside.

Nadia waited in the hallway.

She hugged me.

That was when I saw the changes. The way she held herself. The shadows under her eyes. The faint smell of alcohol even though it was barely morning.

She had found her own way to survive the house.

Parties. Drinking. Anything that made her forget.

“Cameron.”

My father’s voice called from the bedroom.

I left Nadia in the hall and went inside.

He looked small in the massive bed. Shrunken. Nothing like the Alpha I remembered.

“You came,” he said.

“Nadia asked me to.”

He flinched. “Not for me, then.”

“No.”

Silence stretched between us.

“I’m dying,” he said.

“I know.”

“The pack needs an Alpha. You’re my heir.”

“I don’t want it.”

“You don’t have a choice.” He coughed, blood staining his lips. “The Oracle will arrive tomorrow. She’ll choose the next Alpha from the eligible bloodlines.”

“Let her choose Matthias. He actually wants this.”

“Matthias is weak. He’d destroy everything I built.”

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“And I wouldn’t?”

My father studied me with something close to regret.

“You’re stronger than you know. You survived being a bastard in a world that despises bastards. You’ll survive this too.”

“I don’t want to survive. I want to leave.”

“If you take the Alpha position,” he continued, “you’ll have the power to protect Nadia. To give her the life she deserves.”

The Oracle came the next day.

Ancient. Bent with age. Blind eyes milky white. 1

The entire pack gathered in the ceremonial hall. Every male of Alpha blood stood in line waiting for her judgment.

Matthias stood near the front, confident.

I stood near the back wishing I was somewhere else.

The Oracle walked the line slowly, touching each candidate’s forehead.

She passed Matthias without a word.

His confidence vanished.

She rejected candidate after candidate.

Then she reached me.

Her hand pressed against my forehead.

Something shifted. Something old and powerful recognizing something inside me.

“This one,” she announced. “Cameron. The Moon Goddess has chosen.”

The hall erupted.

Matthias’s face turned red with rage.

I stood there realizing my life had just been decided for me.

Matthias confronted me outside the hall.

“You’re a bastard. You have no right to this.”

“Take it up with the Oracle.”

“I will. I’ll prove she was wrong. I’ll prove you manipulated her and stole what belongs to me.”

“It was never yours.”

He shoved me against the wall.

I was already stronger than him from years at the academy, but I let him do it. Let him burn through his rage.

“I’ll make you regret this,” Matthias said. “I’ll spend every day proving you’re not fit to lead. When you fail, I’ll be there to take what should have been mine.”

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Then he walked away.

1 knew he meant every word.

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TH

I forced myself back to the present, standing in the empty corridor outside the Council chamber.

Years later, Matthias was still trying to prove me unworthy.

Still waiting for me to fail.

And now, with Evangeline dying and no heir in sight, he was closer than ever to getting what he wanted.

Unless Lisa got pregnant.

Unless I produced the one thing that would silence him forever.

A son.

I returned home that evening irritated at the world. I needed a drink. A fight. Something to drown out the thought that my entire legacy rested on the same shameful foundation I was repeating.

I crossed the main hall toward my office.

Lisa sat in the garden courtyard visible through the tall windows, talking with Franklin. They were close together on one of the stone benches, laughing about something.

I watched as Lisa said something that made Franklin throw his head back with genuine amusement. She smiled, the real one she never showed me, and shoved his shoulder playfully.

Franklin looked at her with something dangerously close to affection.

Jealousy hit hard.

She was a contract surrogate.

Franklin was my second-in-command, and he was simply being kind to someone trapped in a difficult situation.

There was nothing happening between them.

My wolf didn’t care about logic.

I forced myself to turn away and headed toward Evangeline’s quarters.

Over the next few days I tried everything to forget Lisa.

I spent more time with Evangeline. Walks in the garden. Meals together in her room. Sitting beside her while we watched the sunset.

I made sure to do it where Lisa could see.

Made sure she understood that Evangeline was my mate and my priority.

But Lisa didn’t react.

She passed us in the hallway with a polite nod and continued on her way.

She saw us eating dinner on the terrace and quietly took her meal to her room instead.

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No jealousy.

No reaction.

No sign she cared.

That made the frustration worse.

I started noticing everything she did. When she left her room. Where she went. When her voice echoed down the. corridor.

It was pathetic.

I should have buried myself in pack business. Instead I kept remembering the look in her eyes when she asked for a break.

Every time I tried to be intimate with Evangeline, my body refused. It remembered Lisa instead. Every time I saw her laugh with Franklin, something dark and possessive twisted inside me.

I was losing control.

And I had no idea how to take it back.

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