Midlife Dragon Brothers (Midlife Shifters Book 11)

by J. L. Wilder

  “We’ve been in line for alpha for years. None of us could produce an heir, though.” He sighed. “A week ago, another couple in line for the position announced they were having a baby. So, we got kicked out of the running, essentially.”

  “Maverick told us about Milo, though. Milo is our heir, Maggie. He’s the only reason we’re going to be able to save our position in the clan and lead it in the right direction.” Sawyer saw the look of horror on Maggie’s face and rushed on. “We’re announcing today, now. This is all unexpected and out of left field, but we can’t let these other people claim the role of alpha.”

  Maggie took a step back and looked at Maverick. “Is that true?”

  He nodded. “It wasn’t anything I was aiming for, Maggie. I’m not sad it happened and that we have Milo, but I don’t care that he makes us alphas. I care that I have a son.”

  She turned around and walked a few feet away from them, thinking. It was all so much. She hadn’t known they were so close to becoming alpha. She hadn’t thought about it at all. They were going to tie Milo to Brady for the rest of his life. They were going to tie her to Brady for the rest of her life. Milo being heir to the alpha meant that things would be different for him. He’d have to be prepared, and there would be a ceremony for the guys that Milo would have to be in. There was so much.

  She didn’t want to be tied to Brady. Already, she was in turmoil. There was something about the Walker men that called to her and she didn’t know how to stay away from them, especially if Milo was going to be so closely intertwined with them. How would she avoid acting on her feelings? She didn’t even know if they had mates. Did they have wives and love?

  “Maggie, we know this is a lot, but you’ve given us a huge gift, whether you feel that way or not.” Sawyer sighed. “I know it’s probably not a good time, but we’d also like to see Milo. We would love to meet him and spend some time with him.”

  “For the alpha thing?”

  “No. For us. For him. Even for Maverick.”

  For you. Those were the words Maggie strained to hear. They didn’t come, but she didn’t really think they’d say it. How could they? Why would they? She was a selfish cow who wanted three men. They were just normal guys, wanting one woman to have a normal relationship with.

  “Of course, you can see him. I never meant to keep him from any of you. It just...happened. You’re his family, as much as I am. We can set something up, I guess.” She rubbed at her face and looked back at the door to the main room. “You’re going to announce it now?”

  Sawyer nodded. “Yes. We have to stop Ray and Jessi from proceeding any farther. They’re toxic and would be horrible for the clan.”

  Wyatt and Maverick both nodded, giving Maggie the feeling that the couple really had to be awful if all the guys agreed about them.

  She shook her head and then shrugged. “Fine. I understand.”

  Maverick moved forward and took her hand. “Do you? Milo will be tied to us, to Brady for the rest of his life. He’ll be alpha one day.”

  She pulled away and wrapped her arms around herself, feeling vulnerable. “I don’t have a choice, do I? For the good of the clan, that’s what we were always taught.”

  “We won’t do it if you don’t want us to.” Wyatt waved his brothers off when they tried to stop him from saying what he was saying. “You have to have a choice, Maggie.”

  Sawyer ran his hand down his face and looked away. “Fuck.”

  She looked at the three of them and tried to imagine seeing them every day around town. Playdates with Milo, bumping into them at the grocery store, bringing gifts to their weddings when they finally happened. She didn’t want to be in Brady. She didn’t want to face her past or their future. Yet, she knew that Milo deserved them in his life. They would be better than anyone she could ever pretend to care about anywhere else in the world. He needed help with his dragon and he needed his dad.

  “Do it. He needs you.” She said it to the three of them, and they seemed to each understand what she meant in their own way.

  Sawyer surprised her by pulling her forward and pressing a kiss to the top of her head. “Thank you, Maggie. We owe you the world.”

  Wyatt grunted. “At least double that.”

  Maverick hung around a second after his brothers and looked her over. “You okay?”

  She laughed. “I don’t think I’ve ever been okay, Mav.”

  Before he could respond, she walked back into the room and hurried to her seat next to Sasha.

  “You knew, didn’t you? You knew that they needed an heir to become alphas. You knew what Milo would be and you kept it from me.”

  Sasha didn’t look like she felt bad. “You wouldn’t have come if you knew the pressure.”

  “I won’t ever be able to leave, Sasha.”

  “Nonsense. Things aren’t like they used to be. If you felt like you had to leave, you’d be able to.” She looked up as the clan leaders started gathering at the front of the room, talking in hushed tones. “You ever need to leave, you let me know. I won’t let you suffer here, Maggie. You know that, right?”

  Maggie felt the grip of Brady tightening on her. She’d only been back for two days, and already she was tangled up in things she never wanted. She didn’t know if Sasha would be able to get her out, no matter how much she wanted to help.

  8.

  ***Wyatt***

  Wyatt stood at the edge of the room, arms crossed over his chest, watching Maggie. She looked ready to run. He got it. Being involved with clan politics wasn’t for everyone. They’d been raised knowing that it was their future, but for someone like Maggie, it had to be overwhelming. She hadn’t come from a family involved in anything, except for their own drama. Her parents hadn’t even properly raised her or Sasha.

  Her fingernails had to be chewed to the quick with the way she was eating at them. Forty years old, and she was still doing the same thing she’d always done as a kid. It was ridiculously charming. He did worry about the state of her fingers, though. Poor thing.

  He couldn’t believe he was looking at her, in the flesh. She was sitting right there, close enough that he could be at her side in just a few seconds. He’d thought about her almost every day for so long. Thinking about her had just become a part of his daily rituals. With her sitting there, in real life, he wasn’t sure what to do.

  He’d made a promise to his brothers. They wouldn’t do that to each other again. When Maggie fled Brady all those years ago, they’d each blamed each other. Surely, something someone else did ran her off. They’d fought horribly and then stopped talking. It’d been years before they spoke to each other again, and still, it’d been awkward for another several years. Only when they sat down and promised each other not to harm their relationship again had they been able to heal.

  Maverick had already broken their promise, though. Twice, apparently. It sucked to know that his brother had been where he wanted to be, with Maggie. He was jealous and hurt, but he had to focus on the clan. He believed in what they could do for the clan. They would be good for their dragon family.

  Still, he watched Maggie. Maggie, with her long hair, kissed by the sun. Maggie, with her wide mouth that used to stretch into the biggest grins ever. He’d worked so hard for those smiles. She was still the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. She always would be.

  Sawyer moving forward to speak to the group drew his attention, and he looked at his brother. Sawyer looked ten years younger already, the pressure of obtaining the alpha spot gone.

  “Last week, the Flints announced their pregnancy, and I assumed the Walkers’ chance at alpha was gone. My brothers and I took it hard. We’ve worked for this our whole lives. Everything we’ve ever done was so we could work for the betterment of our clan. It was a hard blow, to say the least.” Sawyer looked to each of his brothers and nodded at them. “We got the surprise of our lives yesterday, though. Turns out, Maverick fathered a child two years ago.”

  The room erupted into chaos, led mostly by
the Flints. Wyatt straightened, prepared to fight anyone who dared come too close to his brothers. Or Maggie. He kept his focus split between them, prepared for the worst.

  “This is bullshit! We announce our upcoming birth and suddenly you find a child? We don’t accept this,” Ray Flint yelled towards Sawyer, his face red with anger.

  Jessi, as awful as Ray, stood up and shouted right along with her husband. “Show us this child. We don’t believe you. Show the kid or move out of our way, Walkers. This is our clan now.”

  Sawyer snarled in their direction. “The clan is not yours. Any claim you had on it is gone. Go back to your rightful position in the clan or leave. The Walkers will be alphas.”

  The current alphas, a set of twins in their seventies who happened to be the guys’ uncles, stood up. “The child will be produced. The source of his birth will be easy enough to determine.”

  “Who is the mother? Who are you introducing into our pack with this outrageous claim?” Jessi glared around the room until her eyes landed on Maggie.

  Wyatt cleared his throat and straightened. He wasn’t going to allow Jessi to hurl anything Maggie’s way. “Our uncles have spoken. We’ll produce our heir and it will be easily determined that we are, in fact, the true alphas. Any further talk about it is redundant and useless.”

  Ray growled at Wyatt. “Redundant and useless? About as redundant and useless as an alpha who never leaves his ranch.”

  Maverick moved quickly forward, only stopped from closing the gap between him and Ray by Sawyer. “Watch what you say, Rayburn. I’d hate to have to embarrass you in front of your wife.”

  Jessi whispered something to Ray, and his head turned to look back at Maggie. Ray snorted and looked back at Maverick. “You knocked up Maggie Holcomb? Is that what you’re trying to tell us? She’s been gone for forever. You really think you’re going to claim whatever bastard child she came back with as your own?”

  Wyatt surged across the room, his dragon close to the surface. “Watch your fucking mouth.”

  Chaos was breaking out in the meeting. Supporters of the Flints were raising their voices against supporters of the Walkers. The Walkers had more support and the trust of the clan, but the Flints had ingrained themselves into small subsects. The two groups argued back and forth, with Ray and Jessi at the head of them, hurling insults at the Walker men.

  Wyatt didn’t give a shit what they said about him. He was a reclusive rancher. It didn’t matter. He’d add alpha onto that title and things would carry on. They weren’t going to insult his family, though. That included Maggie and Milo.

  Just before the meeting ended in blows, the alphas called it and sent everyone home. Wyatt searched the crowd for Maggie but couldn’t spot her. He, instead, ended up sitting with his brothers, shaking his head.

  “What the actual fuck was that?” he growled under his breath and tried to unclench his jaw. “Those assholes have some nerve.”

  “It’s better we know now what we’re up against.” Sawyer looked over at Maverick and sighed. “Somehow, while fucking us over, you managed to save us.”

  Laughing a bitter laugh, Maverick just scowled. “She’s going to run. This is too much for her.”

  “We all know that.” Wyatt snapped and then took a deep breath. “Sorry. This is more difficult than I thought it would be.”

  Sawyer nodded. “Let’s just focus on getting past this one obstacle first. Then, we’ll sort out what to do about Maggie.”

  None of them seemed very happy about that course of action, but they didn’t have much of a choice. Wyatt walked out with his brothers, wondering what the hell they were going to do and if they’d make it out okay. If they fell apart, what good would them becoming alpha be? A clan run by three broken alphas wasn’t better than a clan run by an asshole couple.

  They weren’t expecting to walk out into the mess that was waiting for them, though.

  9.

  ***Maggie***

  If she’d been expecting a warm welcome from the clan, she would have been sorely disappointed. As soon as people started suspecting that she was the surprise mother, the comments had started. The looks, along with the comments, had proven just how little people still thought of her after two decades.

  “She’s the heir’s mother? She’s the girl who slept with all three of them. She broke their hearts.”

  “Oh, god. Her? She was always trash.”

  “They can’t be serious. Maggie? She once burned a church down.”

  “Didn’t she almost kill that kid at a party that one time?”

  “She’s an embarrassment to dragons. If she’s the mother, I’ll leave this clan.”

  “Do you remember the time she got caught with Sawyer on the football field? Everyone saw her entire ass.”

  “She was a slut back then, and she clearly hasn’t changed. What kind of heir to the alphas would she birth?”

  Maggie had fled as soon as the yelling had started closer to the front of the room, and the attention moved on from her. She slipped into the bathroom and closed herself in one of the stalls. The tears came fast and hot. She’d left Brady to get away from that person she’d been before. She wasn’t that person anymore. She had worked hard to be good and decent and careful.

  None of that mattered to the people in Brady, though. They remembered her as the wild child who’d reined terror on the town. It was clear that they weren’t over the things she’d done and the person she’d been. They hated her.

  It shouldn’t have bothered her so much, but it did. She wanted peace if she was going to live there. She needed it. She’d need to work eventually and have a social life that wasn’t just Sasha. That didn’t seem like a real possibility, though. Not if everyone was still holding onto who she was as a teenager.

  She hadn’t been able to control her dragon, or her emotions. She’d been promiscuous and quick to fight. She took what she wanted and lived life fast and loose. Having sex with each of the Walker boys had been thrilling, and the stranger the location, the better. She’d pushed people away hard and lived like every day was the last. It’d been volatile, and she’d been hard to handle.

  She’d grown up, though. She’d put herself in therapy for the anger, and being away from other dragons had helped her ignore hers more and more. She’d eventually gotten her degree and become a therapist herself. She helped teenagers with anger problems. Or she had, before she left Los Angeles. She was a better person.

  Being back in Brady almost seemed to erase all of that change, though. If perception was reality, nothing had changed.

  She wiped her eyes and stood up to leave the stall, but the bathroom door opening halted her movement. She knew she’d look like she’d been crying and she didn’t want anyone to know. She stayed silent and hoped whoever was coming in left soon.

  “This is all so crazy.”

  “Honestly, I’m pissed. I’ve been sleeping with Sawyer for years. I was supposed to be the one to give them an heir.”

  “Instead, it’s Maggie. God. What a waste.”

  “I know. It could’ve been me, but she ends up being the one who has the kid? It’s awful. I can’t believe they ever slept with her. She’s pretty, sure, but she’s kind of awful. She abandoned her clan and is only back now to get all the glory of being the mother of the heir.”

  “I was there the night she hurt the human at that party. She just lost it. The guy just spilled his drink on her and she lost it. She half shifted and threw him across the house. He went through a wall and had to be rushed to the hospital.”

  “Oh, my god. Can you imagine?”

  “It was awful. I’ve never seen anyone lose their shit like that. She’s scary. I’m not even sure she should be allowed back in the clan.”

  The sound of the sink cut off and then the door closed behind them, leaving Maggie with their words and her emotions. She was torn between self-disgust, because the story the woman remembered was true, and jealousy.

  She’d hurt a human in a drunken rage. She’d cro
ssed every line ever and it’d been the breaking point. It was the worst night of her life and to have it remembered so lightly by others was gut-wrenching.

  The jealousy was harder to stomach. That woman slept with Sawyer. For years. He’d tried to have a child with her. Did he love her? Was he with her? Maggie had no claim on him and she had no right to feel anything towards him, but the jealousy was real.

  Like she’d learned in therapy and taught in therapy later, a lot of people disguised their emotions in anger. Anger was easier for some people. Way easier than admitting hurt and being vulnerable. Despite knowing better, she felt herself shift into anger and went with it.

  The guys had thrown her to the wolves. Dragging her into their clan politic bullshit had just put a target on her back. They’d effectively invited everyone in the clan to look at her and judge her as the mother of the alpha heir. She was never going to measure up to that position.

  She stomped out of the bathroom stall and faced herself in the mirror. Her skin was blotchy and her eyes were red from crying. She looked like a mess, but it didn’t matter. She didn’t need to look good to confront the guys.

  The timing was perfect as she exited the bathroom and found the guys just leaving the main room. They all seemed to spot her at the same time, and concern crossed their faces. If she’d maybe had five minutes to calm down and think, it maybe wouldn’t have been so awful.

  She marched towards them, anger fueling her. “Did you know that this would end with me being torn apart by every single person in the clan? Is this some kind of sick punishment for who I was as a teenager? Is this payback for me being an asshole?”

  Sawyer frowned. “What are you talking about? Payback?”

  Wyatt shook his head. “Maggie, who’s tearing you apart? What’s going on?”

  She hated the gentle way they spoke to her. “You’re just using Milo and me. We’re just part of getting you three into power. At what cost, though? The entire clan hates me. They’re never going to accept me. And because of that, they’re going to hate Milo.”