Chapter 9: Bed and Breakfast.

Adel’s POV.

“This place is a sh*thole.” Jen my stepmother raised the tip of her lip judging the pillow shams on the adorable little beds in the bedroom adjacent to the main suit that she and my Papa would be occupying for the next few days.

“Language, Jennifer,” Freddy chastised from the door, startling my stepmother. “Goddess forbid the little bed and breakfast in the middle of bumf*ck nowhere has antique pillow shams.”

Freddy clasped his hands over his chest in mocked mortification. Jen, who only demanded we call her Jen and not Jennifer, locked a death stare on my cousin as he pushed off the door jam and plopped down on the bed, yanking the offensive sham in question from Jen’s hands.

“Fredrick, I think you have the wrong room.”

Jen and Freddy had a tense relationship. Jen was closer in age to us than she was to Papa. When she married Papa at first, she was fun. She would include Freddy and me in these random activities. Then the summer that Freddy and I turned sixteen she became colder and more distant, and instead of her being Jennifer my stepmother, she became Jen.

“You see. That’s the funny thing. You seem to be the one in the wrong room.” Freddy was unamused, his temperament had been touch and go since the morning I found him having sex with Calista in my wing.

Jen stared at Freddy before she growled in frustration, calling for my father and running out of the room to find him.

“Care to explain what that was?” I couldn’t help the smile that settled on my face when I took a seat on the window seat across the twin beds where my cousin rested.

“Not enough beds,” Freddy shrugged, folding his hands behind his head, and leaning against the pillows behind him. “This was the only one open.”

“You don’t have to be like this, Freddy…”

“Like what?” Freddy’s dark brow quirked up.

“Haven’t you heard the phrase you catch more bees with honey than vinegar?”

“But don’t you get it, Delly…” Freddy shot up suddenly, his eyes bright with excitement. “You’ve always been the honey. You’ve always been the sweet girl, who has done no wrong in no one’s eyes—”

“That’s not true, Freddy…”

“Give me one example of when everyone in this family has been so furious with you that you have forever cemented the image of yourself in their minds… Go on… I’ll wait.”

“Fred—”

“You can’t think of one.”

“But what happened to you … It wasn’t your fault—”

“It makes me culpable.”

“Freddy.” My heart ached at my cousin's words and instantly pulled me off the window seat onto the small twin-size bed, our knees practically touching on the narrow mattress. “You are not responsible for who your mother was—”

“No. But I am a constant reminder of her.”

I reached out and held my cousin's hand. The contact was so familiar to me. Like my own hand. So many times, in our lives we had sat like this holding hands while one or the other cried over the death of my mother, or his mother leaving him.

“You have to promise me, Freddy, that you’ll come to visit me on the homestead.”

“Goddess you even sound like them.”

“Why do you hate them so much, I don’t understand it.”

“Because men like them get whatever they want just because of who their family is when men like me have to constantly prove we are better than our family.”

Freddy’s mother had fled from her family’s home in the ‘old country’ and when she arrived in America with my mother, she met his uncle. The story is told that my uncle never knew who she really was. His mother was responsible for so much death and betrayal before she ran back to France. My mother was her biggest betrayal.

“I think you might actually like them though if you got to know them.”

“Them. Or Maddox?”

“I mean the Blood Moon Clan specifically.”

“No,” Freddy responded, leaning back and letting go of my hand. “I don’t think you mean the Clan specifically.”

“I do. I want my pack with me when I move onto the homestead. I want you to—”

“Which one do you prefer?”

“What?”

“The brothers? Which one? Maddox or the quiet one? What is his name? It’s a bird name right…”

“Freddy don’t be cruel.”

“Phoenix… But that’s not what he asked you to call him, is it? No, he asked you to call him… What was it —?”

“Stop it, Fred—”

“Nix. Tell me, Delly. Which one of the brothers makes your panties wet—”

“Enough, Freddy!” I shouted, jumping up from the bed. “What have I ever done to you to deserve you being so cruel to me? When have I ever been anything but a friend to you? Loving to you? Understanding to you? When have I ever judged you for your past or present?”

Freddy sat back, folding his arms behind his head again, a devious smirk firmly settling on his face.

“There she is. There’s the Luna everyone is so hungry for.”

Tears of frustration leaked from the corners of my eyes. I wiped them away furiously from my cheeks, turning away from my cousin who relaxed on the bed, visibly unmoved by my aggravation with his cruelty.

“If you think you’ll be able to cheat fate, Delly—”

“Don’t you think I know that?” I raised my voice once more at my cousin, turning again to face him. “Don’t you think I’m plagued with anxiety that I’m not good enough to be his Luna? That I’ll let everyone down? I don’t need you to remind me of that, Freddy. I need you to tell me that you’re not going to abandon me…”

The realization of what I had said slammed me right between the eyes as dark emotions passed over my cousin's scared face. Freddy slowly rose from the bed, his long angular frame approaching me, bending over slightly so his face was equal to mine.

“I’m not my mother, Adel. But I will never submit to him.”