by Brenna Lyons
He swallowed a sob at the thought of his son paying for his crimes. If he could keep Alyssa ignorant until it was too late to abort...
Five months!
I have to do it.
But, could he live with himself for perpetuating this fraud on her for that long?
I must! My son’s life depends on it. At least, this way, his son would live. Whether Alyssa decided to keep him until fifteen or she left the baby with his parents, his son would live.
“Tom,” his father barked.
“Sorry. What did you say?”
“When will you know?”
He’d really lost track of the conversation. “Know?”
“Her cycle,” he hinted in annoyance.
Tom couldn’t help himself. He smiled, fingering the gallon of milk on the seat. “She carries my son.”
There was a moment of silence. “I assume I’ll get to meet her tomorrow?” The unspoken “finally” was impossible to miss.
“Of course.”
“I meant what I said. I intend to have Tyler tether you to the manor, especially now that my grandson is involved.”
His stomach lurched. At the manor, it would be nearly impossible to keep Alyssa and his family from trading too much information long enough to save his son’s life.
“Tom! Do you understand me?”
“Perfectly,” he breathed. “Whatever happens to me, I deserve it.” But, not my son. Ani, if you have any mercy, protect my son...and Alyssa.
* * * *
December 9, 2049
“You said they’d expect nothing less from you,” Alyssa complained, a touch off of hysterical.
Tom fought to keep a neutral expression, as she repeated his lies back to him. “They’d expect it. That doesn’t mean they’ll excuse it. I broke laws, and I have to pay for that.”
Her hand closed on his arm and her cheek nestled to his shoulder. “What will they do?”
“It’s called trial.”
“Not the trial. What will your punishment be?”
“There is no trial as you know it. It’s a trial of battle. Usually, the older Warriors are better fighters. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t have survived this long. If I even get the opportunity to defend myself.
No. He hadn’t injured anyone physically. That they know about, anyway. It wouldn’t be blows he had to take without a fair fight.
“And?”
He turned to her. “I’ll face them, as many of them as they deem injured by my actions. Then they’ll put on other sanctions like being unable to roam freely, being paired with another Warrior like a first night... I’ll have to prove myself again.”
She paled. “They’re going to batter you?”
“Yes, but I’ll heal from that quickly enough,” he assured her. “Our healing is accelerated.”
Alyssa shook her head, seemingly horrified. “No. You—”
“I have to face my punishment. It’s a matter of honor that I do this.”
“But... It’s not right.” Tears made her eyes bright.
“Our laws are absolute.” Finally, he was telling her the truth. Where was that kernel of wisdom when I was breaking those laws to lay claim to her? Strangely silent.
Or drowned out by my madness.
The tears pooled on her eyelashes. “I’ll explain,” she offered desperately. “I’ll ask them... I’ll explain.”
Tom wound his hand in her long, blonde hair, brushing his lips over hers, fighting the urge to shout out in triumph. Alyssa loved him; she wanted to protect him from harm.
He sobered, deepening the kiss, fisting his hand in her hair reflexively. If Alyssa tried to defend him, she’d damn him further. As it was, her innocent answer of where she lived had added fuel to the fire. It was only by pure luck that they hadn’t decided to question her further upon learning he’d left Armen range without permission to pursue her in Hunter. He would certainly face several additional blows for it.
“Thank you, but it’s a matter of honor that I take my blows without such a show.”
He was lying to her again. He’d face no ribbing or sanction for Alyssa’s heartfelt concern; his family would envy Tom her solicitude. They might even ease off the physical blows in deference to her naivety and pain. But, the price of her intervention would be too high to allow her to attempt it.
She sobbed.
“I don’t want you to go with me.” If she spoke out at the wrong moment— “I don’t want you to see what they’ll do.”
Alyssa paled further, weaving on her feet. Tom scooped her up, laying her on the bed, berating himself for scaring her. It wasn’t right to make her fear his family, even if it served his purpose to cause a rift between them.
“Promise me you’ll stay here. I can bear this, if I know you’re here...waiting for me.” Now, I’m playing on her emotions again. When did I become such a beast?
She nodded, a single-tear tracking down her cheek. “I’ll take care of you.”
He groaned, hardening. “If you do that, I’ll have to thank you properly.”
She smiled, darkening, most likely in memories of how he usually thanked her.
“I have to go down now.” As it was, he’d lingered too long.
Alyssa sighed, closing her eyes.
Tom pulled the blanket over her. “Rest. I’ll be back soon.” But, first he’d wash up and change clothes. He wouldn’t let her see the worst of it. He couldn’t do that to her.
He watched her for a moment, memorizing the lines of her face that he’d surely know for too short a time. Tom turned away and headed down to the training room with a heavy heart.
All of the close Warriors had been assembled, as well as the trainees and a few of the older women who’d no doubt come to comfort Alyssa.
His father looked around Tom’s shoulder, his eyebrow rising in surprise. The question remained unspoken. Of course, they expected Tom to bring Alyssa. By breaking the rules they knew of alone, he’d committed an offense against her, and she was expected to watch him pay the price for it.
Tom cleared his throat. “Alyssa knows what will happen here and why. I asked her not to come.”
“Tom,” Tyler began.
He didn’t give the house lord a chance to finish his thought. “She carries my son. I will pay for my crimes. You cannot demand that my mate and son pay for them. As it is, this has her upset. She’s lying in my bed, crying, as we speak. Don’t make me add to that. Being upset while she carries isn’t good. You know that.”
Tim winced.
Tyler seemed to consider that carefully. “Because she carries,” he conceded.
The women filed out, confirming his suspicions about why they came here.
“Because she carries,” Tom parroted. When they kill me, I will hold him to that pledge.
“You know the rules of sanction you broke.”
“Yes, I do. I take full responsibility for my actions.”
“Is there anything else you want to tell us?”
They cannot know. “No. Nothing.” They hadn’t asked if there was anything else he’d done wrong. They’d asked if there was anything else he wanted to tell them. He certainly didn’t want to tell them the other rules of sanction he’d tossed when his son’s life hung in the balance.
They implied it.
My son! “Nothing,” he repeated quietly.
Tyler nodded, his jaw tight in anger. “Tim.”
His father stepped forward, and Tom steeled himself for one hell of an opening blow. It was actually two blows: one to the gut and the other to his face.
Tom knelt on the floor, recovering slowly, fingering his cracked rib with one hand while he pressed the other to the floor to steady himself. Colors danced before his eyes, starbursts that appeared and disappeared without plan.
“The first was for the eleven days of grief you caused your mother,” Tim growled. “The second is because you have yet to beg her forgiveness for it.”
Tom nodded, gasping out a vow to do so at his earliest
convenience. As soon as I can move from bed. If those first two blows were any indication, he might not be getting back up for three days, and with Warrior healing, that said a lot.
“Then do it now,” Tyler suggested. “You won’t be in any condition to do it later. While you recover, let me lay out your other sanctions. First, you’ll face your father, then me, and finally your brother. When you recover from that, you’ll hunt with another Warrior for six months.”
I won’t live to hunt alone again.
“You will not be trusted to roam more than two hundred miles from the manor for at least a year. You’ll check in like a first night until that time.” He hesitated. “Am I understood?”
“Yes. I understand and accept.” Tim managed an even breath, his chest easing.
“Tyler,” his father hinted.
“Oh, yes. Until your six months are up, you are required to live at the manor.”
Tom’s stomach turned to a block of ice. It was over. In such close proximity, he’d never make it to five months.
You have to. Your son’s life depends on this. “I understand.”
* * * *
December 17, 2049
Alyssa smiled her thanks as Debra handed her a glass of warm milk. Tom’s mother waited until she’d taken a sip before she turned away. His parents pampered her horribly, and that was disconcerting, but Alyssa was at a loss for a polite way to tell them not to, so it went on endlessly.
She glanced toward the two Warriors in the corner nervously, considering disappearing to Tom’s room yet again, though she loved the library at the manor house.
Tim and Tyler weren’t themselves. There were no smiles, no jokes, not even discussion between them. Their grim dispositions and intensity unnerved her, but she couldn’t state why.
She’d always known Warriors were unbalanced. Tom had told her that often enough. He’d been crazy for her: crazy to get her into bed, crazy to marry her, crazy to have a son, crazy because of what he was.
But, this went beyond the typical edge of violence inherent in the breed. There was something brewing, seething beneath the surface.
Alyssa opened her mouth to ask what was wrong, then shut it, lifting the glass to her mouth. If they were this close to the edge, she wasn’t going to risk pushing them over. Like the wolves they compared themselves to, Warriors snapped. She shivered at the memory of their tenuous control.
The smell caught her attention first. Alyssa coughed, her eyes watering. Beast blood was foul stuff, the type of odor you never got used to.
She looked at the doorway, screwing her face up in disgust. Chad was splattered in the tar-like substance. He held one of their weapons, his hands cupped under the hilt and the blade.
“Tim, no,” Tyler ordered.
Alyssa didn’t look at them. Something in Chad’s expression made her heart pound. He lurched toward her, and she scrambled back to the far end of the couch, upsetting the milk onto the hardwood floor. She didn’t know what Chad was doing, but instinct told her she wanted no part of it.
“No,” Tim growled.
“Stand down,” Tyler ordered.
Chad reached her and dropped to his knees. He lowered his face and raised the weapon as if offering it to her. Alyssa glanced at Tyler, hoping for guidance...and gaped at the scene.
Tyler had Tim in a bear hug and was struggling to force him to the floor. She shook her head, gasping out a plea to God as Tim howled.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Chad choked out. “If I could have—”
Tim roared, eclipsing the rest.
Alyssa recoiled from the feeling of the hilt of the weapon Chad held, tacky in beast blood, touching her hand. Still, Chad extended the weapon to her, forcing her back.
“It’s over,” he pleaded. “I killed the beast. I swear I have.”
“I don’t understand,” she managed, jumping as Tim cursed at Tyler and nearly broke the hold on him. Her heart pounded in terror.
Chad’s head swung up, and he stared at her, tears fresh on his cheeks. “Tom is dead,” he whispered. He nodded toward the blade. “The beast who killed him. This is yours...for the son you carry.”
Tim threw Tyler off, launching to his feet. He swept the antique lanterns off the mantle. They shattered on the floor, sending up a shower of glass. He picked up a chair and chucked it into the floor-to-ceiling mirror.
Alyssa flipped over the back of the couch and ran. Warriors streamed into the room, parting for her, then closing ranks between Alyssa and hell itself. The women at the stairs were less accommodating. More than once, she had to shake off a hand grasping at her or push past the mass of bodies.
The sounds of destruction followed her. Furniture splintered. Glass shattered. Heavy objects fell. Tim screamed out his fury, again and again.
“Let him vent the madness,” Tyler shouted. “Let him destroy the room. Get the women and trainees away.”
Alyssa bolted into Tom’s room and slammed the door, locking it behind her. She stumbled to the bed, shaking, sobbing, jumping every time Tim’s anguished cries reached her.
The bed seemed too open, too exposed. She dragged a quilt from it and sank into the corner of the closet, pulling it around her, chilled.
* * * *
The snap of the lock brought Alyssa to a hazy half-awareness. She’d known they’d come in eventually.
The knocking had started within minutes of her locking herself into the room. Their pleas to open the door had gone unanswered. Finally, Sammi, Tyler’s wife, had ordered them to give Alyssa time to compose herself.
“Alyssa?” Tonya called. “Where could she go?”
“Nowhere,” Sammi answered. “We saw her come in here. She’s here, somewhere.”
“But, where?”
There was a moment of silence, and Alyssa allowed herself to slip closer to the sleep they’d interrupted.
“Oh, God,” Sammi breathed.
The closet door opened, and the clothing overhead slid away. Alyssa turned her face from the light streaming in.
“Oh, God,” Sammi repeated, touching a sore spot on Alyssa’s hand.
She yanked it away with a whimper of pain, burying herself under the quilt more fully.
“Alyssa, honey... Come with me. You have to come with me.”
“Go away.” Her voice was rough in a combination of thirst and crying.
Sammi touched her cheek, and Alyssa shied away, choking on a sob.
“Get Tyler,” the Lady Armen ordered.
“Sammi?” Tonya questioned.
“Get him, now.”
Alyssa squeezed her eyes shut, seeking sleep. Whispers intruded on her respite.
Arms slid behind and beneath her, and she twisted, trying to escape them. The arms tightened, denying her. Alyssa cried out in fear and dismay as she collided with a male chest.
“Shhh,” Tyler soothed her. “Let us help you.”
She sank into the bed, shivering at the feeling of his hand smoothing her hair. Warm milk touched her lips, and Alyssa swallowed a mouthful of it. Heated, soft cloths bathed her face. Another trailed over the sore spot on her hand, and the injury throbbed. Alyssa sighed, nearly numb in exhaustion. Someone removed her Keds, then her socks.
“How is she?” Tim asked in a hoarse voice.
“Facing her own madness,” Tyler replied.
Alyssa opened her eyes, staring at the cuts and bruises on Tim’s hands in a detached sort of understanding. She wasn’t capable of fear, of anger, or of pain. She wasn’t even certain which of those she should feel. There was nothing. She was empty. Her eyes slid shut.
“We’ll make her comfortable,” Sammi promised.
* * * *
The house was quiet, dark, unnaturally still. Alyssa had no idea how late it was...or how early, but she had to move.
She pulled on a pair of black jeans and a black turtleneck over her jockey shorts and spaghetti-strap t-shirt. Black felt right. Widows should wear black. Shouldn’t they?
The bathroom beckoned, a
nd Alyssa headed in, relieving herself and washing her face. She stared at her reflection, noting the blotched cheeks and reddened eyes. Her hair caught her attention, the halo of mussed gold like a beacon on a dark night.
Memories of Tom flooded her mind. He’d noticed her hair first, buried his hands in it moments after he’d cleaned his blade on the beast who’d attacked her. He’d nuzzled his face in it as he made love to her, combed his fingers through it, fisted it in his hands.
Would Tom have given her a second look if it weren’t for her hair? Would she be here now? Pregnant? Widowed? Not even widowed. We never made it to the altar. Trapped in a world full of madmen?
“Why did you leave me?” she whispered. “Why did you...notice me?”
Alyssa dragged the medicine cabinet open and pulled a pair of scissors from the first aid kit. She grasped handfuls of her hair and cut it off, dropping it to the floor around her bare feet. Her hands shook, and she swallowed hard, staring at the jagged mess left on her head. Alyssa shoved the scissors back into the kit, turning away from the mirror and trudging toward the kitchen.
She kept her gaze to the floor, all too aware that she didn’t belong there. She was an interloper in this world, an imposter.
She wasn’t really hungry, but common sense dictated that she had to eat something. It was routine. It was normal. She needed normal.
The few Warriors in the hallways cleared the way for her with gasps and muttered curses. Conversation died out as she entered the kitchen.
“Alyssa?” a woman’s voice intoned.
She looked up, panning her gaze over the bulk of the Armens in the room, pausing only momentarily on Tim, then nodding to Kaitlyn, acknowledging that she was the one who’d spoken.
The König princess sat at the table with her Armen mate at her side. “What do you need, Alyssa?” she asked solemnly. “What is it you want?”
Her head spun. They’d actually asked. Kaitlyn was König. If Alyssa requested it... This woman could grant her nearly anything.