Chapter 59: The Truth

Chapter fifty-nine: The Truth

Bernard

The next morning, I felt abnormally hot. I tried to pull the blanket off me but for some reason, my arms were trapped under something. I opened my eyes to see a head of messy blonde hair sprawled across my chest. The face was backing me but I already knew who it was. I jumped out of the hold and tumbled off the bed with the sheets.

"What the hell!" I bellowed as I stared at the naked back of Helen.

She slowly lifted her head and rubbed the sleep off her eyes. She turned to face me and offered me a small smile before her head fell back onto the pillow.

"Good morning." She said in a sing-song voice.

"What the hell, Helen! What are you doing naked on my bed?" Horrified, I turned my eyes away and looked down at my own body.

"Don't be so shy now, Bernard. You weren't shy at all last night." She teased me.

"Nothing happened last night, Helen, otherwise I would have remembered it. Don't play your tricks on me, I am still healing. There is no way I would have managed to get up even if I had tried, you don't do it to me." She looked offended.

"Don't ruin this experience for me, Bernard. Last night was magical, more magical than I could have ever dreamed. Don't ruin it with your foul mood just because your medicine was making you have a hard time remembering." I turned to face her and focused my eyes solely on her face rather than her bare chest.

"I will only say this once, Helen. Nothing happened between us last night. I know the delusions you are playing with but I would not touch you even if you were the last woman on this planet." Her face took on an angry red tint.

"You are free to believe whatever you want but you can't yesterday, Bernard. It happened whether you liked it or not." She sat up on the bed and I had to look away again as she got out of the bed.

"I am going to take a shower and clean up. You are welcome to join me once you fix that attitude of yours." I heard her bare foot patter against my floor until she closed the door of the bathroom.

"Nothing happened." I told myself.

Nothing happened, otherwise, I would have remembered it.

Helen came out of the bathroom, got dressed, and left my house. I avoided talking to her again. I still refused to believe that we had done anything last night, there was no way. But I wasn't in myself last night, what if something had happened because I was too high on my medicine to remember any of it. Helen seemed so sure that we had done something, she even looked offended when I accused her of lying but this is Helen we were talking about, she is conniving and would do whatever she needed to do to come out on top. I knew she had been plotting something but I don't know if this was part of her scheme.

My head is going stir crazy, I had tried to run on the treadmill but my wolf ran fairly quickly with that one. I had even tried to watch television which was something I rarely did on my own but yet it didn't work. My mind kept going back to Elena and what Helen had presumed to have happened. If I had done that with Helen, I would never forgive myself. It would be a betrayal to Elena and myself. She is the woman who deserves that part of me, not Helen. I needed an answer but the only person I could get them from was a woman who was hell-bent on breaking my union with Elena. Like there was even a union to break now.

"Damn it!" I slammed my hand against my countertop.

I had been standing in the kitchen, staring at my coffee mug for the last hour trying to make sense of everything. How had my whole life gone to shambles so quickly? I heard the front door open and I was nearly ready to make a mad dash for the backyard thinking that it was Helen but then I caught the scent.

"Bern?" Liam called for me.

"I am here." I placed my elbow on the counter and my head on my hands.

If he is here to talk about Elena, then that is the last I need right now. I didn't need any more lectures, the only thing I needed at this point was answers and the person who might have had them is also a compulsive liar.

"Hey?" He walked in and I lifted my head to look at him.

"Hi, if you are here to lecture me some more about Elena, I don't have time for it today. I have a lot going on in my head right now, Liam." He held his hands up in mock surrender.

"I am not here to lecture you but I am here to talk about Elena." I groaned.

"Not about you picking her as a mate. This had less to do with her and more to do with your mother and possibly Helen. But I am not sure what her involvement was in all of this, I do know that she had a hand in all of this." His made me stand to my full height. Helen and my mother were included in one sentence, I knew there was trouble brewing. Ivory's words played in my head over and over again.

"Tell me everything." He moved closer and sat down then gestured to me to do so but I shook my head.

"I am okay standing, Liam."

"You need to sit down for this, brother. What I am about to say may be hard to digest." I felt my heart drop to my stomach. That initial gut feeling I had returned back. I took the seat next to him and waited for him to tell me what I needed to know.

"Your mother lied to you, Bernard." He sighed and my eyebrows scrunched in confusion.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"She set you and Elena up, Elena isn't dating Jack Morgan. Whatever you saw at the bakery was nothing but a friendly interaction. Elena would never put herself in a position where she could lose you, man. I am certain that she is head over heels in love with you." I shook my head.

"I saw him write his number on her hand, there was nothing innocent about it."

"And how did Elena react to it? Did she seem flirty? Did she lean into his touch? Did she look like she wanted his touch?"

His question made me think back, she leaned away from his touch. Her eyes never explored his body like they did to mine when she looked at me. Her smile was polite and not that one she only had reserved for me. Every time he tried to make advances, she always found a way to block it. I don't know if that was subconscious or an intentional thing on her part. But now I looked back at it with a calm mind, I saw all those things I had refused to see before. I had been utterly wrong.

"No, she never once made it seem like she wanted him." I felt like an idiot right now.

"But after what my mother told me, I was sure that what I had initially seen had been correct." He nodded.

"She played on your current emotions, Bernard. She knew that you were upset about the whole thing with Jack and Elena. How she knew was still unknown but you aren't the only one she tricked. Elena came here after the bakery incident."

"What? When?"

"After her shift was over, she met your mother and she told her that you had gone to do cake testing with Helen for the wedding."

"What?" My anger rose quickly.

"But why would she do that?"

"Because she knew that it would upset Elena and cause her to withdraw from you. This way she could get Helen to come in the middle and somehow draw you closer to her. At least, that is the logical conclusion I could have come up with, otherwise, there would be no logical reasoning behind her actions."

Suddenly, everything started recollecting, it all made sense to me now. The little stunt she pulled today in my bed this morning was all part of their master plan. How had I been so blind? Ivory had warned me and I told myself that I would be vigilant. I would remain alert so I could protect Elena but now look what had happened? I had let my guard down with my own mother and I had paid the price. I shook my head in disbelief.

"My mother wouldn't try to hurt me purposefully and hurt the woman I love like that. She is my mother." I was having a hard time wrapping my head around all of this.

"My mother is not this spiteful, Liam. This can't be something she would be willing to do."

"I know, Bernard but I also know how much she values duty and sacrifices. You took an oath to marry Helen and now you want to back out. She may see it as you not fulfilling your duties to your Pack and Ronald."

"To hell with duty and sacrifices, Elena is worth it all. I would give up my title and birthright for that woman, she is my life, Liam. She is the sun and I just orbit around her. I love her and my mother nearly made me lose her, all because of more power and land. I can obtain what I want but I can never have another Elena." I could feel my wolf bubbling to the surface, I was trying to hold on by a very thin thread, I tried to keep my claws from elongating but I could already feel my wolf snarling for blood.

No! I scolded him. We were not about to attack my mother, she gave birth to me after all. I couldn't just let my wolf take things out on her because he would hurt her. With the amount of anger flowing through my blood right now, I needed to calm down first.