by Milly Taiden
The wild look in the man’s eye sent terror through Tevrik. This was a man not in his right mind. A man who didn’t think logically about what he was doing. A man willing to accept death as the end game. Petey took his hand off the wheel and stared into Tevrik’s eyes. Petey knew as well as Tevrik that the ridge ended in a cliff. The bastard was trying to take both Juliet and Tevrik over the edge with him.
Tevrik yelled at Juliet to get out of the truck. He didn’t know why she was on the floor. He couldn’t see fully inside. Just enough to know she wasn’t making progress toward the door.
He tried to grab the wheel to steer away from the looming drop, but Petey blocked access.
“Juliet, get out. Get out—” He was shoved away from the snowcat as it tipped forward, the front end dipping, then succumbed to gravity, falling over the edge out of sight..
His mate wasn’t on the ridge. She had gone over, trapped in the snow vehicle.
Deep laughing turned his head. Petey’s fucking face looked at him from where he climbed over the ledge. Smile on the dickhead’s lips.
“Sorry, man,” the bastard said, “was that your girlfriend?” He chuckled and crawled farther in and sat. “Whew. Was that a rush or what?”
Tevrik was in a daze. There, a waste of a wolf sat, and his mate was gone. Sweet, loving, Juliet gone. An explosion far away made him cringe. An image of his beautiful mate as a burned skeleton flashed in his mind. Both he and his wolf cried out an agonizing howl that resonated from the depths of his soul.
Tevrik’s breathing picked up, getting shallower. “You killed my mate. The only woman I have and will ever love.” He stalked toward Petey.
The asshole lumbered to his feet. “How about you join her, then. I won’t mess it up this time.”
Tevrik stopped in his tracks. “Mess up what?”
Petey laughed and took his shirt off. “You kill James? I was so tired of him trying to be in control.”
“I didn’t have a choice, Petey,” Tevrik said. “I don’t go around killing needlessly.”
The big wolf shrugged. “I would’ve killed him if you hadn’t. Wouldn’t be my first.”
Shock rolled through Tevrik. Petey acted as if murder was nothing. Who had he killed? This man in front of Tevrik wasn’t the boy he knew years ago. A cruel hardness had set in him.
“Really,” Tevrik said, playing along, “who have you killed lately?” Hopefully, the idiot would bite and brag about all he’d done.
Petey laughed again. “Nobody you’d know, except for one, a long time ago.” He toed off his boots. Tevrik thought back in time. There was only one person he knew who was killed. The Brinkley boy there on the path in the woods. The one he had failed to protect those many years back. His mind stuttered at the revelation. Petey had shot the boy. Not a random hunter?
Tevrik stepped farther away from the cliff’s edge, ready for Petey’s shift. This would no doubt be a fight to the death. “Why would you shoot a kid? What did he do to you?”
Petey shrugged. “Not my idea. James thought if you were out of the way, then he and I could challenge your father for the pack.”
That threw him for a loop. “Hold on, Petey.” He held his hands out to stop any fight. This was beyond crazy. “You’re telling me as a senior in high school, you thought you could take over and run a pack? You? A kid without a diploma yet?”
Petey’s face reddened and his hands balled into fists. “I was the biggest after you. If things had gone as planned, I would be alpha and everyone would be worshipping me.”
“First off,” Tevrik said, “the alpha isn’t a worship position. It’s respect and trust, you dumb ass. And what was this plan?”
Petey stepped closer and Tevrik sidestepped in a circular direction. He needed to keep Petey talking if he was going to get what the dickwad knew. It seemed he’d misjudged the two misfits from school. They were missing more marbles than he thought.
Petey smiled. “I really shouldn’t tell you. James would be pissed off.”
“But James is dead, remember. You don’t have to do anything he says anymore.” Tevrik played to the man’s ego. “You’re your own wolf. Man up and let the world know how smart you are. The plan failed because it was James’s, right?”
“Damn right it was,” Petey spit out. “He thought if we used scent blocker, you wouldn’t know we were there. Then when you were close enough, I’d shoot you in the head!” Petey let out a whoop. Apparently, he thought it funny that he had killed the Brinkley boy. Was that what Petey had said in his convoluted way?
Fuck. This was completely out of hand. Had he hit his head on a rock and was dreaming up this shit? Even he wasn’t this creative.
They circled each other, both men naked. The bullet wound under his collarbone started to ache. With all the adrenaline racing through him, his body had been numb to the injury and the cold. Now that was starting to fade. He could feel his legs weakening.
Petey sniffed the air and smiled. “It’s about time. I knew if I kept you talking, you’d bleed out enough for me to bash your head into the rocks.”
Wait, what? Petey kept him talking? Tevrik thought it was the other way around. Who was playing whom? Petey leapt toward him, shifting midair. Tevrik rolled to the side, shifting as he sprang to his four feet.
Petey was a big wolf, larger than he’d been in school. And so was he, but he’d had don’t anything close to fighting. They were way out of practice in the ways of battle.
Petey’s timberwolf colors contrasted with Tevrik’s all white. One was common while the other rare. Both jumped and they slammed chests, claws slashing. Each landed on their feet, but the bullet in Tevrik ripped through more muscle, painting his pristine coat bright red.
They bit at each other, coming away with mouthfuls of fur. Petey swiped at his head. Tevrik wasn’t fast enough to dodge and he flipped onto his side, waiting for the spinning to stop. With his loss of blood, Tevrik found it difficult to get to his feet.
Wobbly, he stood on all fours, his eyesight wavering between single and double vision. Petey charged him, shoving him backward in the snow. Tevrik forced himself to his feet, only to have Petey push him farther back.
As he lay, exhausted, on his side, panting for breath, he saw Petey’s plan. Tevrik’s head was a yard from the edge of the peak. One more ram and he’d slide over the side to join Juliet at the bottom. That idea sounded fine to him. What was his life without Juliet by his side? He’d be back to the way things had been the past fifteen years. He couldn’t do that, not after experiencing life with his mate.
Then he saw his mom and dad running toward him. Their snow truck was parked behind the others. He wondered how long they had been there. Had they heard Petey’s confession? His mom yelled for him to get up as she got closer.
He was so tired and felt so cold. His thick coat should’ve kept the chill away, but death crept along his bones. It was welcome if it took him to his mate. Then he heard a growl and his mother slid to a stop, staring at Petey.
That son of a bitch. How dare that dickhead bare his teeth at his mother. No one threatened his family while he was around.
Tevrik rose to his feet, lips pulled back, ready to attack if Petey so much as leaned toward his mother. Seeing him up, Petey focused on him again.
Stretching back, Tevrik’s hind paw felt the edge of the cliff. He was closer than he thought. Petey tore through the snow toward Tevrik. The only place to go was over the side. So, Tevrik shifted to his human form, falling to one knee from the exertion it took to change. His blood painted the snow in splotches.
He braced for impact from the big wolf. With open maul and teeth flying toward him, Tevrik reached out and grabbed onto fur. He rolled backward, using the wolf’s momentum to sling the animal above his head and over the side. That should’ve been it, but it wasn’t.
While Tevrik thought he’d grabbed onto the wolf’s facial fur, it turned out that Petey had one of Tevrik’s hands between his teeth. When Tevrik released the animal to fly over
the cliff, Petey held onto the hand, pulling Tevrik with him.
Just like in the movies, time seemed to slow. He stared into the hate-filled eyes of the madman/wolf. If he could’ve seen Petey’s human face, he was sure the man would’ve been smiling, thinking he had won. He had finally bested the alpha’s son.
Tevrik snorted. Not happening.
With his free hand, he reached out to grab onto something, quickly realizing there was nothing but rocky surfaces. Maybe it was happening.
Then to his shock, as he went over, a small hand snapped out and grabbed his outstretched arm. The hand yanked him hard toward the rocks. His fingers in the animal’s mouth slid free and he wrapped them around a protrusion below a pair of boots he recognized from when he took them off his mate.
Tevrik’s body slammed against the cliff side, but now he had a reason to hang on. The most beautiful face he’d ever seen looked down on him. Her feet rested on a slab of cracked stone, secure and relatively safe.
So much joy rushed through him, he almost let go of the rock he was holding. She eyed his body, stretched out and naked. When she licked her lips, he scowled, and of course, his dick hardened.
“Juliet, stop that. My parents are here.”
25
After helping Tevrik’s mother dig the bullet out of her son’s chest, then his subsequent shift and healing, Juliet and the three shifters sat around the fire in Tevrik’s small cabin, sipping hot herbal tea and munching on fresh fruit from the greenhouse. Hours had passed as Tevrik told his parents about his sojourn and how he’d been living in this cabin over the years.
“I must say, Tevrik,” his mom said, “this tea is better than anything you can buy at the store.” She glanced toward the door leading to the greenhouse. “And this fruit is fabulous. You’ve been growing your own food all this time?”
He nodded. “Once it’s all set up, it’s not hard to maintain.” He rocked back and forth and gently rubbed a hand down Juliet’s side. She leaned against him in the chair.
He gave her a semi-fake snarl. “And you,” he said, tightening his arms around her waist, “why didn’t you tell me you knew about shifters? Do you have any idea what I was going through trying not to expose myself?”
She giggled. Her man, wolf, was so adorable. “How was I supposed to know that you didn’t know that I knew shifters existed?”
He stared at her for a second, shook his head, then asked, “How are the ribs feeling?”
“Better,” she answered. “It’s really just the one side I landed on that hurts.”
Dad cleared his throat. “How did you get down the side of the cliff in the first place?”
She looked at Tevrik and his expression was as questioning as his father. Her mate asked, “How did you get out? I thought you were d—gone.” She felt his heart stutter on the word he couldn’t voice. Dead.
She rested her mug on her lap. “It all happened so quickly. I tried to find something to hold onto to pull myself onto the seat. The only thing I could grab was the latch to the door. When I did, the door popped open and I was able to grab the seat and scramble out. Actually, it was more like the truck fell away from me as I reached for the cliffside. Either way, I was very fortunate to have stopped sliding after a few feet.”
Tevrik squeezed her, getting a yelp from both of them. Her for her sore ribs, and Tevrik for using his injured arm. After a short laugh, the room quieted. Juliet wondered why everyone wasn’t hugging and kissing and bundled around each other after being separated for so long. Well, if no one else was going to talk, then she would.
“Tevrik, I heard you talking with Petey after the snowcat went over the cliff. What was that all about? Did Petey say he killed people? He was, like, bragging about it.” Tevrik’s face paled and she glanced between him and his parents. “Should I not have asked that?”
Dad said, “Your mother and I heard most of what he said.” He was about to say more but didn’t.
Juliet studied her mate. She smiled remembering what he said to Petey—she was his mate and he loved her. She knew he did. His actions proved it. The big turd was just too scared to say it. Typical.
She hugged on him and said, “It’s okay to tell, babe. We all love you here.” She had a feeling that what needed to be said was the root of all the isolation and loneliness on Tevrik’s part. Something he hadn’t even told her yet.
“Yeah, all right.” He snuggled her closer and stopped rocking. After a deep breath, he started. “It was time to check the northern perimeter like we always did the last Saturday of every month. When I, Tony, and Devon got to the park, the Brinkley boy was there. He wanted to go with us and I told him no because it was a long trek and could be dangerous for someone not strong enough.
“He mouthed off that he was strong enough, but at ten years old, he was still just a pup. We weren’t much older in reality but at that age, you couldn’t tell us we were too young. The stupidity of teenagers you know. Anyway, I told him to go home and we watched as he stomped across the playground. In our wolves, we went on down the shortcut to the tundra, like normal.
“About halfway through, my wolf smelled something strange. It wasn’t a natural nature smell. It stung my nose like a chemical or something. The other guys didn’t smell it, but I took us off the trail and through the woods anyway.”
At that moment, some of Petey’s ramblings started to make sense to her. Juliet said, “Petey said James had them use scent blocker so you wouldn’t know they were there. Then they planned on shooting you. But you smelled the block and changed course, right?”
He nodded. By his shell-shocked expression, she saw the pieces fall into place in his mind also. He asked, “But why would he shoot the kid?”
Juliet replied. “Because he thought it was you. Either he didn’t wait to make sure or the boy could’ve been sneaking through the trees along the path so you wouldn’t look back and see him. When noticing light colored fur, Petey shot at it.”
Tevrik dropped his forehead onto her shoulder. She felt his mental anguish of reliving that event. He’d probably spent the last decade of his life trying to forget it.
His mom’s voice floated to Juliet softly. “Why did you run, Tevrik? Why not come home. It wasn’t your fault.”
His head popped up. “But it was, Mom. Don’t you see that? I should’ve known what that smell was. I should’ve known the kid would follow us. An alpha protects the pack, keeps them safe. And I failed: failed to protect the boy, failed to protect my pack, and failed you. I didn’t deserve to be alpha. I blamed myself and that was all I could think about. I was too ashamed.”
Juliet raised a hand, stopping the argument before it started. “Tevrik, finish your story, then we’ll decide how dumb it was for you to run.”
He kissed her cheek and continued. “After hearing the gunshot, I ran back and smelled blood. I trailed the scent to the small wolf’s body lying against a tree. He looked like he was just sleeping, his head propped up on a root. I was going to yell at him for putting himself in danger. There was a hunter nearby and he could get hurt.” He shook his head, shaking the memory off.
“Then I saw the blood run from under his body like a creek through a deep valley. I knew what happened. I knew I had failed him, failed the pack, failed as an alpha. I-I couldn’t face you all and see the disappointment, knowing I let you down as the next alpha.”
Juliet held him, giving him her love and support. Her heart ached over the tragedy, over how he felt.
“Tevrik,” his father said, “you are not a god. You can’t know everything—”
“But you always do,” Tevrik barked. “You are the perfect alpha.”
“Perfect?” his father repeated. “Did the pack look perfect when you were there? Did all the closed shops and boarded up houses look perfect to you?”
“Dad,” Tevrik huffed. “That’s not what I mean. You know everything, how to take care of every situation, always make the best decision. I would never be worthy of such a position. I couldn’t even
keep a child safe.”
His father leaned forward “You were a child yourself. No one would have blamed you. The whole pack mourned both of you. Even the other two with you, Tony and Devin, knew the truth of the incident. They were so upset about losing you, they left the pack after graduation, never coming back.”
Juliet leaned forward and set her mug on a stump acting as a side table. Then she turned in the chair and took his face in her hands, letting her own alpha rise to the surface. “Now, listen up, pup. I don’t want to hear anything like that come out of your mouth again. You are more than worthy of being an alpha.” He shook his head.
She continued. “Yes, you are. You saved my life at least twice, and found those traps before I stepped on one, kept me from walking into a den of wolves—”
“Yeah,” he butted in, “then you almost fell off the mountain to your death.” His parents gasped.
Juliet ignored it. “And you saved me. Do you think I would’ve made it to the rock path on my own? What’s one of the most important things for an alpha besides safety?” When he didn’t say anything, she went on what Raven told her. “To feed your mate and the pack. My god, Tevrik, you have a grocery store of fresh produce outside your door. If I wanted a steak, I’m sure you have a few hiding around here somewhere.
“And you healed me, Tevrik. I could barely breathe and sure I was going to die, but you knew what was wrong and you fixed it. I was almost normal the next morning. Maybe not right now, but we’ll take care of that later.” She gave him a wink, hoping to lighten the sting of her words.
“You nursed me back to health. You showed me the beauty of nature with the cubs and sunset. You appreciate all the world has to offer. What more could a great alpha possibly do that you haven’t shown me you’re capable of?”
His mom cleared her throat. “There’s that pesky matter of grandpups. Plural.”
Tevrik dropped his forehead against hers. “Please tell me my mother didn’t say that out loud.”