But instead of packing the few things she’d taken out of her suitcase, she sat down on the edge of the bed. Wanting to do something, wanting to fix this, but unable to move for the ache in her heart.
Why? she had to ask herself. Why did telling him to leave hurt even worse than being left behind?
Because of the mate bond. Even stronger now after ten years. It’s biology, she reminded herself. Give yourself time. It will pass.
So she waited. Sat there, trying to reconcile all the feelings swirling around inside her.
“Where is she?!” A voice, low-pitched and angry, sounded on the other side of the door. “No, Keri, I will talk to her! I cannot hold my tongue any longer!”
Halle looked up just as Utibe shoved open the door with a crash.
She rose to her feet, tilting her head to the side. Funny, she thought. Canadian wolves had a reputation for being almost comically polite in comparison to American wolves, but apparently, Utibe hadn’t gotten the memo.
He came to a stop directly in front of her, not even seeming to feel the tug of his wife pulling back on his arm with both her hands.
“You brought danger into my house. After everything my wife has gone through with you, you put her life in danger!”
“Honey, please don’t make a scene. I told you it was nothing. I’m fine. We’re both fine.”
Utibe threw his wife a disbelieving look over his shoulder. “Maybe she is fine, but you are not.” Then he turned back to Halle with a vicious glare. “You are the reason my wife calls me at work, crying. Not because your mate might have hurt her, but because you refuse to call her by her proper title. And tell her she should not try to act the mother to you.”
“Wait, I’m sorry Nago came here, but I don’t understand why you’re so upset with me. I didn’t mean for Keri to get scared…”
“I wasn’t,” her mother insisted. “I was just upset for you. That’s all. Utibe is being silly…”
“Do not put words in my mouth, woman!” he said, turning to face her. “You are my fated mate, but I will not abide by you pretending this girl did not choose to hurt you for many years before showing up here and asking you to hide her from this dangerous wolf she brought to our house while I was not here to protect you. What if he had hurt you, my darling? Then what would I have done?”
“But he didn’t,” Keri insisted. “I am alright. He’s gone now. And everyone’s fine. Including Halle.”
“Yes, Halle,” he sneered. “The girl who ignores you for twelve years then takes advantage of your good heart.”
“Wait, what do you mean I ignored her—?” Halle started to ask.
But before she could get the words out her mother shouted, “She had every reason to ignore me! I left her. And you don’t understand because you don’t have kids, but I betrayed her trust by going off with you. And it was up to her whether she wanted to see me again. And it might hurt that she won’t call me Mama anymore, but I’ll take her. Any way I can get her, I’ll take her. She’s my daughter, Utibe. And I won’t apologize for finally having the chance to be here for her in her time of need.”
“Wait, wait, Mama…” Halle started, only to stop when Keri gasped, fresh tears pooling in her eyes. Just because she’d used the word. What the…?
Halle extended her neck and said, “I don’t understand. You were the one who didn’t want to see me. I sent you so many bios, and you never answered them.”
“What? No!” For once her mother’s expression didn’t stay perfectly placid. In fact, her entire forehead wrinkled as she said, “I sent you bio after bio, begging to see you. Your father got full custody under shifter mate abandonment laws, which meant the only way I could see you was for you to officially request to see me. But you always wrote back that you hated me, and you’d never forgive me. I kept trying. You’re my daughter so of course, I kept trying. But then right before your eighteenth birthday, you sent me that bio asking me not to write you anymore.”
“Right before my eighteenth birthday? But that’s impossible. Two days before my birthday I got a message from you saying you wanted to move on with your life and start another family, so I should stop writing you.”
“No…no…! I’d never write that. I can’t even have more children. They had to remove all of that after I had you. And even if I could…”
She shook her head at Halle. “I would never write something like that. You’re my daughter!”
“And you’re my mother,” Halle returned, shaking her head in an identical way. “I would never have said I didn’t want to see you again. Or stayed away if I hadn’t thought you didn’t want to see me.”
They stared at each other helplessly, twelve years of misunderstanding falling away from their relationship like ashes.
“But how…?” Keri seemed to ask for the both of them. “How could this have happened?”
Halle didn’t know. Couldn’t put it together.
But then suddenly she could.
“Son of a bitch…” she whispered.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Nago, how many ways do Dad and I have to tell you to let this girl go and return to your kingdom in Alaska?” Rafes demanded.
After appearing out of nowhere on the screen of the driverless car Nago had rented to take him from the hotel back to Halle’s mother’s house.
Nago jumped in his seat. “Rafes, how did you…?”
“Motherfucking president of North America,” Rafes answered before Nago could finish the question. “Why has everyone in this family seem to have forgotten that?”
“Okay, alright…you got me,” Nago said, with a wry chuckle. “So how’s it going, man?”
Rafe flinched, probably taken aback by Nago’s good-natured response when he’d been expecting another argument. But then he reset and said, “Poorly. In case you haven’t heard, Myrna, daughter of the Fenrir, came through the North Dakota time gate.”
“Wait…Valkyrie Babysitter???” Now Nago leaned all the way forward. “Crazy hot princess Valkyrie Babysitter is here…now?”
A long silence, then, “Though she does not understand it yet, she’s my fated mate, so you can refrain from calling her ‘Valkyrie Babysitter’—or referring to her as ‘crazy hot.’”
“Wait, wait, wait. Let me get this straight. Myrna, Princess of the North Wolves, the girl mom’s been using as the poster child of her anti-black box movement, the insanely hot shield maiden who used to babysit us—she’s really here? In this time period? And fated…to you?”
Another long beat, then, “Yes. And don’t laugh. Nago, do not la—”
But it was too late because Nago had already fallen to his side on the car’s arched seat, overcome with laughter.
“Fuck you,” Rafes said on the car’s screen.
“You…Rafesson Nightwolf…the most uptight guy on earth…are fated to a bad-ass shield maiden—I can’t…I can’t breathe! This is like hearing Wonder Woman hooked up with Lex Luthor!”
On screen, Rafes took a deep breath, steepling his hands and pressing them into the bridge of his nose before saying in a barely level voice. “I’m calling because I’ve already logged over 2000 requests for quotes about you in the last twenty-four hours. One reporter was so desperate she even managed to hunt down Knud.”
“Wait, wait, I’m sorry,” Nago said, sitting back up.
“I don’t need an apology. I need to talk to you about—”
“No…I mean I’m sorry for not asking what Knud said about you being fated to Valkyrie Babysitter. That should have been my first question right off the bat!”
“Nago, I swear I will send a fucking drone down there to get you if you do not focus on the topic at hand,” Rafes snarled. “I thought we talked about you staying away from that woman! But according to your car’s coordinates, you’re in Louisiana. And since they’ve already turned down our black box proposal, I’m assuming this has something to do with the Mississippi she-wolf?”
“I am going to let her go,” Nago assured hi
s brother. “As soon as I make things right with her.”
“What do you mean by ‘make it right?’”
“1122 Berry Ave. You have reached your destination,” the car announced.
“I’m here. Gotta go,” Nago answered.
“Nago…listen to reason!”
Nago started to ignore him like he usually did but then paused before exiting the car to say, “No, bro, why don’t you listen to me for once? I understand everything you’ve been doing as president of the most powerful North American territory in the world.”
“Good, because it doesn’t feel like anyone does lately,” Rafes grumbled on the screen.
Nago shook his head. “But bro, the job is turning you hard. You’re calling me when you should be focusing on the fact that the universe has handed you a fated mate! That’s crazy! Instead of yelling at me about how I irreversibly fucked up the only relationship I ever wanted, why don’t you learn the lesson? Find your mate. Compromise. Stop caring so much about who’s following orders and do something different for a change. Handle your own business for once and leave me to me.”
Before his brother could respond, Nago pushed the screen’s off button. He loved Rafes, but he didn’t have time to argue with him. He had to find Halle.
However, this time a large black man answered the door.
“No,” he said when he saw Nago. And he moved his full body into the doorway, filling it up.
Not an insurmountable obstacle, Nago noted. But getting past him wouldn’t be pretty. And it might make Halle angrier than she already was. So he fell back on manners. “Sir, I understand you’re probably upset after my earlier visit.”
“You barge into my house without my permission! Scare my wife and threaten my stepdaughter…!” the tall man pointed out, voice barely controlled.
“Sir, you’re right. That was wrong of me. But I’m not here to argue, I swear. I just want to apologize—for real this time, and I’m ready to talk about moving forward with a custody agreement. But before I can do that, I need to explain a few things to Halle, so nothing takes her by surprise this time. Because no matter how she feels about me now, I will always love her. I’m done doing things behind her back and I need her to understand what I just did wasn’t meant to be manipulative. There aren’t any strings attached. I’m trying to make it right. Please, sir, will you call her to the door so I can tell her this?”
Halle’s stepfather glared down at him as if he were a fly on his windshield instead of a fellow shifter begging to talk to his stepdaughter.
But then a voice said, “Utibe! Utibe…stop it. Let me through.”
Halle’s mother squeezed past her husband. “That was a very sweet speech, King Nago, but she’s not here.”
Then Keri frowned and said, “What is it exactly that you’re so worried about her misunderstanding?”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“He did WHAT?”
“You heard me! We no longer have to deal with that Alaska king. We now own our kingdom free and clear with a billion-dollar town restoration grant cherry on top! That means we’ll never have to worry about money again, and you can marry Prince Eric!”
“So he…” Halle swayed, suddenly not feeling steady on her feet. She’d come in with a head of self-righteous steam only to deflate when she found her father in the act of popping a bottle of champagne in their formerly grand kitchen. “He’s just giving up his Chivaree wins?”
“That’s what his lawyer said. Told me they’d be sending over a contract stating King Nago is signing the kingdom over to you. He’ll also provide you a beta to protect your claim until you marry the wolf of your choosing, and he’s giving us a one-billion-dollar grant on top of child support. Don’t that beat all!”
Halle looked around the kitchen with the mismatched linoleum she’d been patching up for years. And the 80s era appliances she’d been trying to keep going as best she could. Then she watched her father pour two glasses of champagne. Surprised, but not surprised he seemed to have completely forgotten she was pregnant.
“He signed the kingdom over to me?”
“Yes, and gave us a billion dollars on top!” her father crowed.
“To me,” she repeated.
“Yes,” he threw her an irritated look. “I know it’s hard to believe, Halle, but that’s what happened. You don’t have to worry about him anymore, and you’re free to marry the Ohio prince now—”
“To me,” she said again, then before her father could say anything, she clarified. “He signed the kingdom over to me, not you.”
Her father’s smile faded a bit. “Well, yes, technically to you. But you’re my daughter. And what kind of daughter wouldn’t provide her father with a portion of her settlement? You’ll house me and pay me an allowance. That’s what Eric promised. And it’s tradition.”
Halle stared at him long and hard before asking, “Is it also a tradition to lie to your daughter?”
He paused in the act of taking his first sip of champagne. “What are you talking about?”
“I went to see Mama. That’s where I was these last few days. At Mama’s house.”
Her father’s face fell then morphed into an ugly frown. “Why…why would you do that? That woman left us! She destroyed me and abandoned you!”
“But that’s just it, Dad. She didn’t abandon me. In fact, even though you got full custody because she left her marriage, she tried to reach out to me.”
“Is that what she told you?”
“Yeah, that’s what she told me. And know what, Dad? I believe her. Because while you always did everything you could to keep me here, you didn’t seem to care about me one way or the other. You needed me to keep this town running—or so you claimed. But you were always after me to marry for money. And as soon as Eric suggested putting me up for Chivaree, you agreed. Like I was just a thing to you.”
Halle shook her head, realizing the truth of it as she said the words, “Because that’s all I ever was to you. A game token. You never wanted full custody. You kept me here to punish her.”
What seemed like a thousand different emotions flashed across her father’s face before he burst out with, “I raised you, didn’t I? I gave you a roof over your head. I stayed after she done run off with that Shaka Zulu.”
“Yeah, you stayed for all the wrong reasons, and you lied to me!” she pointed out. “You had the adult controls on my bioware until I was eighteen, so you must have been intercepting all my mail. Making it look like she hated me and I hated her. Punishing both of us, because…why? Your wounded pride?”
“No! No! She’s the one who left. She didn’t deserve a daughter,” Arnold insisted. “She didn’t deserve to be happy after what she did! You think I was going to sit back and let her claim you, too?”
“Yes!” Halle answered. “Because I’m not a chess piece. I’m your daughter. And I deserved not to think my mother hated me all these years!”
Her father rolled his eyes. “Fine, you lookin’ for a sorry, girl? I’m sorry your mama is a slut who I couldn’t let get away with abandoning us—there, you got it. Happy now?”
She tilted her head at her father. “No, I’m not happy. Why would I be happy about any of this? You’ve been lying to me—”
She cut off when the gravel popped outside the kitchen window. It was the recognizable sound of rocks crackling under car tires. Who would be visiting now? Her heart leaped, wondering if it could be Nago…
But her father said, “You know what, Halle? Let’s table this discussion for later. Right now, we need to explain to Eric how this whole mess has been fixed and you two will be able to get married after all.”
“What?” She shook her head. “Are you crazy? I’m pregnant with Nago’s baby. Even if I wasn’t about to begin custody arrangements with him, I wouldn’t get engaged to someone else.”
Her father licked his lips nervously. “Pregnancies…can be fixed.”
Halle froze, her entire body going cold at the suggestion. “No! I would neve
r get rid of this baby just to marry Eric. That’s crazy!”
“Not really, dear. It’s simply what must be done.”
She whipped around to find Eric behind her in the doorway. And that’s when she realized: her father hadn’t poured the second glass of champagne for her. It was for someone else. Someone he was expecting.
“Just do what he wants,” her father said behind her.
Halle turned back to face him. He no longer appeared petulant and unrepentant. Instead, he was visibly trembling as he looked at Eric. “She’ll marry you. She’ll get rid of the Nightwolf spawn and marry you. I swear it. Just don’t do anything crazy.”
Eric didn’t respond. But Halle looked over her shoulder to ask her father, “What did you do?”
Her father just shook his head. “I owe him a lot of money, Halle. This is the only way to pay him back.”
She blinked, not believing her father would even suggest something like this.
“Eric, whatever money my father owes you, I’ll pay you back. But obviously, I can’t just get rid of this baby. Or marry you. That’s off the table…”
She trailed off. Not just because Eric wasn’t responding to her offer to pay him back, but also because he looked…
At first, she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. He was wearing what he’d worn at the Chivaree: a white shirt, fatigues, and a crossbow strapped to his chest.
But then it hit her.
The Chivaree was over.
So why did he need a crossbow?
“I’m sorry to hear I can’t change your mind about this, Halle, dear,” the Ohio Prince said in those overly hokey tones of his.
Then he reached for his crossbow.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Mississippi 1837
Her first thought was to raise her hands in surrender. But her second thought kept them down. She would not go out sniveling to the Massa. She would not give him even an inch of her freedom or a spoonful of her pride.
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