“She is ours now,” Dad said. “We cannot change the past but we have our present and our future. That’s all we need.”
“But she’s still in danger,” Mom said. “It’s because of me.”
It broke my heart to see my mother take on this weight and this guilt, when all she had truly been guilty of was trying to help someone.
“You can’t blame yourself,” I told her.
Even though the sight of my mom crying like this rattled me inside, making me feel like a small boy again, I fought against that feeling to tap into my Alpha strength. When I said these words, I wanted her to believe them, and the using the confidence of an Alpha was the best way to do that.
“You are not to blame,” I told her. “You were deceived. The fault rests solely on Ruth’s shoulders.”
I knew that, even with the confidence in my
