by Kari Gregg
If that was true, Da’s deterioration since then was heart-stopping. Jamie grudgingly admitted Devon had been right to bring him home. Time for his father was short.
“Come closer, son. My vision isn’t as sharp as it used to be; I can barely see you.” A quiet cackle rolled out of his father from the cocoon of his bed, interrupted by a series of wet, phlegm-laden coughs. Shaking, Jamie watched his father blot at his mouth with a handkerchief, the skeletal fingers clutching the scrap of cotton as much a rude shock to Jamie as the rest. “I won’t bite. I promise.”
Unspoken were all the times Da had fought Jamie. Not physically. Jamie and his father had laid hands on each other once, when Jamie and Ian had returned from the rocky pass after they’d mated. When Da had grabbed Jamie to tear him from Ian’s grasp, Jamie had snapped at his dad. Jamie remembered the coppery taste of his father’s blood with equal parts sadness and shame. He wished he’d handled that better, that they’d all dealt with his and Ian’s mating with more care than any of them had mustered.
He wished a lot of things were different.
“I won’t bite either.” He shuffled toward the hospital bed, limbs leaden with regret. “I’ll try.”
“Best I can hope for.” His father blew out a protracted breath and studied Jamie as he edged nearer. “You’ve grown into a fine man and a great example for the whelps to follow.” He nodded. “I was proud when they chose you as pack trainer after Mack died.”
Jamie clasped his hands behind his back to stop himself from fidgeting and rocked back on his heels. “I wondered if you gave them a push in my direction.”
“Not me.” Da snickered. “Ian might have. He was sneaky, at least when it came to you.” When Jamie bristled, his father’s shoulders slumped. “That’s no criticism. Ian worried. That’s all I’m saying.” Da waved a frail hand. “He would’ve done anything to make his death easier for you. Giving you the kids to care about, who would also provide you a link back to the pack…” He grunted, stare lowering. “Sounds like something he might’ve done.”
Lips pressed shut, Jamie stared at his father. What could he say? No? That Ian wouldn’t have whispered in a few kids’ ears if he thought that would’ve benefited Jamie? Da was right. Ian had denied it when Jamie had asked. Nudging the kids toward Jamie to be their pack trainer did sound exactly like one of Ian’s sly maneuvers, though. “He loved me,” Jamie finally said.
“He did.” Da smiled at Jamie’s answering scowl. “What that boy felt for you was never in question. I knew you loved each other. Everyone could see how well you two fit together from the time you were small.” He plucked at the thin sheet covering his skinny frame. “No one doubted your love or Ian’s, least of all me.”
“You tried to separate us.” Jamie gritted his teeth.
His father shook his head. “I tried to spare you the agony of losing your mate.”
“Loving him was my choice to make, not yours,” Jamie shouted. He thumped his chest with a clenched fist for good measure. “Mine.”
“You were sixteen. Both of you were still boys.” Glaring, Da sat up in his hospital bed. “You weren’t mature enough to grasp the complexity of the situation.” He jutted his chin, stare glinting. “Or understand the consequences.”
“Oh, we understood.” Jamie glared. Maybe he hadn’t wrapped his head around what loving Ian would require in the beginning, not all of it, but what he hadn’t known, he and Ian had quickly figured out. “I had over ten beautiful years filled with his laughter, years of love and sharing and working together to build a life.”
Da nodded. “And two years of grief so sharp and cutting I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy, much less my only son.”
“Worth it.” Jamie jerked a dismissive shoulder. “I have no regrets.”
“I do.” His father grimaced. “It’s a sad thing to come to the end of your days and be filled with so many regrets.” He sighed and fidgeted with the sheet. Finally looked up, his stare stubborn. “The mistakes I made, however many wrongs I committed, I did out of love for my child. I would’ve spared nothing to save you the misery you’ve endured since Ian died. I was mistaken, though. I shouldn’t have interfered with a mating the Goddess blessed and I have paid for it alongside you and that poor doomed boy. We’ve all suffered for my sins, but what I did wasn’t done out of malice. I only wanted to protect you. Can you believe that much?”
Teeth gritted, Jamie dipped his head in silent acknowledgment. He wouldn’t have accepted an apology and Da offered none. But…they could come to terms at least. “I’ve been wrong too.”
“What?” His father’s brows formed a V, disappearing above his hair line in exaggerated shock. “You were what too?”
Jamie scowled because of course Da would try to yank the confession out of him. “You sent Devon to the Between,” he said, voicing his suspicions aloud. “When Ian and I nearly starved and froze to death, once you realized hardships and isolation wouldn’t force us apart, you sent help.”
“Devon loved his brother.” Da glanced away. “The pack follows my lead, but pack law ends at the border. Nothing barred trading and hunting in the Between except fear of reprisal from me. I just let Devon know there would be none. He would’ve made his way to Ian eventually, with or without my intervention.”
Maybe true. Probably true, but Da had hastened the process by which pack members accepted Jamie and Ian on the fringe of their lives. Jamie was sure of that. “You tried to reach out and make amends.”
“I realized, instead of saving you pain, I’d caused you more, but I changed my mind too late.” Da bit his lip and glanced away. “Ian welcomed Devon, but you never did. Him nor anyone else, until the kids chose you as pack trainer. At least you let them into your den to get out of the rain. As far as I know, you’ve never permitted Devon inside your cabin and you won’t speak to anyone other than him.”
“You rejected us first.” Anger burned inside Jamie, made him shake. “All of you turned your back on us. You drove us out.”
“Ian forgave me. He forgave all of us.”
“Ian is dead.” Jamie sneered, body rigid with his affront. How dare his father try to use Ian against him? The same mate Da and the entire pack had tried to take from him? Jamie refused to be manipulated, not when he was sixteen and especially not now. “You wouldn’t care about me at all if you didn’t need me to fulfill your prophecy.”
His father glared from the hospital bed. “It isn’t my prophecy. It’s yours,” he said, echoing Ian’s old assertion, and when Jamie flinched, his Da sniffed in acknowledgment. “I see Ian also plagued you with that painful nugget of truth. That boy taught this old wolf a few new tricks, you know. Hopefully, he got through your thick head along with mine.” He coughed into the handkerchief again, the wet rattle in his chest spiking wild fear alongside Jamie’s anger inside him. “You are right, though. Your pack needs you. I do.” He grimaced. “Kenneth too, more than any of us.”
Jamie’s gut roiled, but his hot temper felt more comfortable, as easy to wear by now as his second wolfen skin. He clung to it. Desperately. “Pack politics,” he said, infusing the words with as much scathing contempt as he could. “Your problem and his.” He cut a hand through the air. “Not mine.”
“You think your mother was mistaken then? That the mate she saw for you isn’t Kenneth and you aren’t fated to partner with him to lead this pack?” Da snorted. “I didn’t raise stupid children.” He glared. “Just stubborn ones.”
“Ian and I were together over ten years.” Ire rising, Jamie crossed his arms over his chest. “You could’ve rescinded the command to shun us any time you wanted and you’re calling me stubborn?”
“Shunning is a far more humane punishment for defying your alpha than fighting to the death, which was what your grandfather would’ve done. He and his father before him were hard men, strict and unbending when it came to pack discipline. They were both too harsh, but right about the importance of maintaining order. You defied me and that challenge had to
be met with consequences. I would never have been able to hold the pack together if I hadn’t ordered your shunning.”
“You chose the pack over me.” The betrayal of that still sliced as deeply as it had when Jamie was a teenager.
Da scowled at him. “What I did, I did for you.”
A bark of disbelieving laughter spilled from Jamie. “Oh really?”
“Failing to mete out punishment for open defiance would’ve invited more defiance and challenges to my leadership. I’m not as strong a wolf as my father and grandfather. I wouldn’t have survived long and any alpha unseating me would have come after you and Ian next. To make an example of you to the pack, you both would’ve been dragged onto Burnt Fork lands to face excruciating death before my corpse grew cold. To avert that disaster, I had to act even if doing that promised I would lose my son.”
“Shunning nearly killed us, Da.”
He grimaced. “You and Ian were both smart, resourceful. I realized living without pack support would be hard, but you’d make it.” He arched an eyebrow. “If for no other reason than to prove me wrong, you wouldn’t endure shunning. You’d thrive.” He grinned. “I was right.”
As if Jamie’s refusal to die without his pack excused his father’s decisions. “What you did was unnecessarily cruel.”
“What I did saved you more cruelty. Your mother’s prophecy of another mate for you guaranteed a fight to the death would have ended in you killing me. You would’ve had to survive to find love again, but I’d already fulfilled my birth prophecy, which made me expendable. If my death would’ve spared you pain, I would’ve gladly died, but no father would force that burden onto his child if there were other alternatives. The prophecy at your birth also meant exiling you wouldn’t work because you would return at some point to lead this pack with our next alpha beside you, which would’ve required another fight to the death with whoever took over as alpha. I would not burden you with that, either. No, shunning was the least damaging of a list of bad choices and my only genuine option.”
“When Ian and I were young maybe.” Though admitting it felt like chewing broken glass, pride stiffened Jamie’s spine. “In the years since, Ian tithed trade goods to the pack you’d ordered to reject us and he regularly treated with you outside pack territory, sought your advice and negotiated where we were permitted to hunt. You developed a relationship with Ian to spy on me. Don’t act like you didn’t.” Self-righteous indignation flooded Jamie. “You made your own command to shun us a hypocrisy.”
“If I had retracted the shunning, would it have made any difference?” He laughed, the sound jarring and bitter. “Don’t lie. You wrote me off at sixteen, me and the rest of your pack.”
“It would’ve made a difference to him.” Jamie hardened his jaw. “He might have spent his last years free to visit his family—”
“Ian never broke ties with his parents, his brother, or his Aunt Kelly. He didn’t let anything, including mating you, keep him from the ones who loved him.”
His father’s pointed glare more than adequately conveyed the unspoken like you did, but Jamie wasn’t a child anymore. He wouldn’t be cowed. “I was with the one who loved me.”
“After he died? Are you with the one who loves you now?” Da jutted his chin. “Goddess bless the man, Kenneth has waited for two years. He’s funneled his energy into rebuilding the pack while you mourned and no one is more grateful than me for the attention he’s given our people and the future he’s working toward for our pack. If you would truly see what he’s done for love of you…”
“For love of me? He doesn’t know me. He’s to be alpha. What he does is for himself, not me.”
“He doesn’t know you because you won’t let him know you, but that hasn’t stopped him from reforming the pack to woo you to him.” Da sighed. “No one faulted you for grieving Ian. You were mates and his loss was a blow few manage to endure, but survive it, you did. Your mother saw that you would overcome the tragedy of Ian’s death to love again and you punished her for it, punished all of us. Especially Kenneth who has done you no harm.”
“Nor have I done any harm to him.” Jamie squared his shoulder. “You speak of my punishing you, him, the pack, but unless you count my failure to drop to all fours to let him mount me, I’ve hurt nobody. I live my life as best I can, as I see fit, and that’s no one’s business except mine because that is the path you and this pack set for me. Now that you need me, you judge the independence I fought hard to learn a wrong against you?” Wrath filled Jamie. “I owe him nothing. I owe this pack nothing.”
“You will mate Kenneth. Your mother, our seer, saw that.”
Jamie curled his mouth into a mocking bow. “I haven’t ripened for him.”
“Only because you won’t give him a chance.” His father leaned back into his bed with a displeased harrumph. “We gave you time and space, as much as we could, but I won’t last much longer. You have to meet us—him—halfway. Before it’s too late.”
The pit dropped out of Jamie’s stomach. Anxiety shook through him at his father’s warning. Or was it meant as a threat? Jamie wasn’t a sixteen-year-old anymore. He recognized the sense in what his father said. If Kenneth and Jamie didn’t mate soon, things would get out of hand. Rapidly. Not because Kenneth lacked self-control. Neither one of them were young and green, ruled by their hormones. As strong as the call to mate could be, as powerful, both Kenneth and Jamie had ample reason to be wary of each other. The pack wouldn’t accept Kenneth without Jamie, though. Absolutely would not. To prevent turmoil and bloodshed when Kenneth ascended to become Burnt Fork’s alpha, their mating had to happen. There was no other way.
But Jamie’s old friend, rage, kept him warm. “Too late?” He smiled at his father, the cold that had echoed through him since Ian’s death shining in his stare. “It was too late the moment you ripped away everything and everyone else I cared about to drive Ian and me into the Between.”
Chapter Five
“JAMIE!”
“Back off,” he growled as he stomped from the porch and through the crowd that had loosely gathered outside while he’d talked to Da. Devon and Michael waited, of course. Ian’s brother had sworn he wouldn’t leave Jamie to cope with the confrontation with his father alone, but Ian’s mom and dad fidgeted next to Devon along with the aunt who continued to spy on Jamie from the woods of Burnt Fork. Kids too. All the pups Jamie mentored through shifter craft as pack trainer milled in Da’s yard, but also the ones who had matured to adulthood since Jamie had taken over pack training from Mack. Some were accompanied by their parents, their features pinched with anxiety. Heart thumping like a war drum, Jamie speared through them, ignoring the hopeful glitter in their stares. Jamie’s pulse roared in his ears. The surrounding faces blended together.
So many people.
Too many.
After the disaster of dealing with his father, Jamie needed quiet to lick his wounds, but the pack pushed closer, silently begging forgiveness. Wishing their pack could be whole again.
Jamie wanted to hurt them. Hurt them, as their rejection had tormented he and Ian. “Get away from me,” he snarled, fighting to hold those ugly impulses in check.
If not for Lisa, he might’ve succeeded, but Momma and Da hadn’t raised timid children. Short where Jamie was tall, stomach rounded with child, Jamie’s sister elbowed through the others to reach him and grabbed his arm when Jamie would have fled. “We need to talk,” Lisa said, her chin jutting with determination.
“What in the hell is going on?” someone roared.
Jamie snapped his eyes shut, his chest rising and falling in harsh pants. Goddess, that scent. His scent. Jamie was no fool. Most of the time he tried not to be anyway. He’d smelled traces of Kenneth in the woods near his den frequently since Ian’s death. Very distinctive, that scent, like old leather mixed with the aroma of freshly turned earth and new grass, but deeper, sharper. Mesmerizing. That unique fragrance had chased Jamie in his dreams often during the past year especially. Even w
ithout the demand in his voice, the shout of an alpha if ever Jamie had heard one, Jamie would’ve recognized Kenneth’s arrival at Da’s den because his intoxicating scent beckoned to him. Enthralled him.
Irrationally, Jamie nurtured this betrayal above all others. He whirled on Devon, stare accusing. “You said he wouldn’t be here,” he said through clenched teeth. “You promised me.”
“They aren’t supposed to be around. He isn’t.” Eyes wide, Devon ping-ponged a frantic glance from one packmate to the next. “None of you are supposed to be here.”
“C’mon.” Lisa jerked Jamie’s arm. “Kenneth will handle this lot, but you and I, we have much to discuss, brother.”
Panic sank claws into him, agonizing and intense. Yanking away, Jamie cartwheeled, his arms flailing. Kids scampered away, their parents and other pack adults marginally less swift in clearing the path of Jamie’s escape. His breath caught when he inadvertently brushed against some pack members in his haste. The touch he had lacked from his people, already an abominable ache inside him, expanded into a terrible gaping maw. The confusion of craving his pack and the desire to strike out at them crashed together inside him in an anarchy of conflicting emotions he couldn’t hope to parse.
Except his fear.
Blind terror rose above the noise and chaos within him when he spotted Kenneth’s unsmiling face, features tight with his anger. Goddess, the man’s glower could fell a shifter from sheer intimidation and fright, but the next alpha’s displeasure wasn’t what scared Jamie.