by T. S. Joyce
With Clayton, Dalton was giving too much away and forgetting who the Silvers’ father really was. He wasn’t a friend. He was a dangerous grizzly shifter with the power to give kill orders on a whim.
“I’ll get it taken care of,” Clayton said low. “Give me a day. You owe me.”
The line clicked, and when Dalton drew his cell in front of his face, the call had ended and the screen blank. Nice.
With a growl, Dalton shoved the phone in his back pocket. He had to get out of here. His April First spiral had to be over early this year because it was dangerous to stay in town. Here in Galena, he was too close to Link and that beautiful baby girl of his. He was too close to the family who reminded him the most of what he’d lost. But that wasn’t the only reason why he would have to leave town first thing in the morning.
The meat of the matter was that his interest in Kate was dangerous for them both.
His wolf was marking his territory with every moment he sat in front of her apartment and laying claim to a woman he had no shot in hell at keeping happy.
Whatever had happened with Miller had brought her to her knees, and Dalton didn’t want to be the weight that pinned her to the ground. He was a wildfire, burning everything good in his life to ashes. Only shifters survived him—Chance, Link, the Silvers.
Dalton was a realist, and the cold, hard fact was he’d given his first mate all he had—everything he was—and still, he’d fallen miles short.
Kate was a good person. Maybe she was the most selfless person he’d ever met.
And she definitely deserved better than him.
Chapter Five
Dalton pulled his snow machine through the last line of piney woods before the clearing that housed Link’s old cabin. His alpha was still making payments on the place, but for the life of him, Dalton couldn’t figure out why. Last year, Link had moved into Nicole’s cabin on the next property over, and now this cabin sat vacant except on the rare occasions he and Chance made their way to Galena. Not that he was complaining. This place sure beat the hell out of staying at some bed and breakfast in town. His wolf liked to roam the land here. In a way, it felt like a second home to Dalton, right under the temporary room he lived in at Silver Summit Outfitters where he worked as an outdoor guide.
Dalton narrowed his eyes at the figure sitting on the front porch stairs. Chance Dawson, his cousin and the final leg of their pack, was waiting for him with an overnight bag sitting on the snowy porch beside him. Freaking great. Just what he needed.
Angry enough to spit nails, Dalton skidded to a stop and cut the engine. “Please tell me you’re not here to intervention me.”
“I’m not here to intervention you,” Chance said blandly. The douche-wagon didn’t even try to hide the lie.
A snarl ripped through Dalton as he climbed the porch stairs two at a time and blasted past his cousin and into the house. Chance followed him in and set his overnight bag just inside the door.
“Nuh uh,” Dalton said, pacing the kitchen. “There’s a cabin out back for you. This ain’t a slumber party.”
“That’s a shed.”
“It has log walls, a furnace, and a bed. It’s a damned cabin.”
Chance’s gaze drifted to the picture frame on the coffee table. Gritting his teeth against a string of curses at being busted, Dalton slammed the picture face down. “One week, Chance. I asked for one week alone. It hasn’t changed in four years, yet here you are, breaking my one damned request for the fourth year in a row. Why can’t you let me have it? I just want one week to get out of my head.”
“You done?” Chance asked, sinking into the couch cushion and lifting his boot onto the coffee table. He came dangerously close to hitting the picture frame.
Dalton cracked his knuckles as he paced. “I’m going back tomorrow.”
“Why?”
Because I met someone who scares the shit out of me. “Because I’m tired of being here.”
Chance narrowed his eyes to bright green slits, and his blond brows drew down suspiciously. He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees as he studied Dalton in silence. “What’s going on? Where were you last night?”
Dalton scrubbed his hands roughly through his hair, then busied himself with stripping off his winter layers. When Chance only watched him in that uncanny, annoying, knowing way of his, Dalton admitted, “I was with a woman.”
“Like fucking a woman?”
“No.” Dalton swallowed hard. The last thing he needed right now was Chance giving him shit over a crush. There was no escaping this conversation, though. Chance wasn’t like Link, who didn’t know how hard and how long to push. Dalton and Chance had grown up together, and his cousin knew that all he had to do was wait and Dalton, like an idiot, would spill his guts eventually.
Letting off a short growl, he sank into the single chair across from the couch. Glaring at Chance, he muttered, “I didn’t fuck her. I just slept beside her.”
Chance’s brows rose so high they made wrinkles on his forehead. Huffing a surprised sound, as if he’d been punched in the gut, Chance relaxed back into the couch cushions. “Did you spoon?”
“See, I knew you’d give me shit—”
“I’m not making fun of you, man. It’s a serious question. Did. You. Spoon?”
After a few drawn-out seconds to make sure Chance was being serious, he answered, “Mostly I hugged her to my chest. I was supposed to sleep on the couch, but she had a nightmare and I…I don’t know…calmed her down.”
“And how did that feel?”
“Are you a therapist now? What do you mean how did it feel? It felt awesome. She wasn’t repulsed, she didn’t flinch away, she pet me in her sleep like I was her favorite parakeet, and when we woke up in the morning, she wasn’t disgusted with the fact that she’d slept beside me. There was no guilt. She looked at me like I was normal, and she told me I make her feel safe. So, yeah. It felt nice.”
“You make her feel safe?” Chance’s lips stretched in a slow smile. “Well, that’s a new one.”
Dalton sighed. “Yeah, well I didn’t say it made any sense. I just said it felt nice. I heard you told Link about April First, you dick.”
Chance shrugged one shoulder unapologetically. “At some point, he should know. He’s our alpha.”
“Out of convenience.”
“Bullshit. Link is doing a better job than we thought he could. He’s doing better than either one of us would do at the head of a pack. You just want to keep everyone at arm’s length.”
Dalton leaned his elbows on his knees and stared at the wood floors between his boots. “Can you blame me?”
“Nah, I don’t blame you. I blame Shelby.”
“Don’t.”
“Think real hard, Dalton. Did Shelby let you cuddle her? Did she let you console her? Did she calm from a panic because you were there? I was there for the aftermath of every hard day with her. I saw Shelby for what she was. You didn’t. You still don’t.”
“She was my mate.”
“False. She talked shit about you behind your back whenever she got the chance, and she never allowed you to claim her.”
“She didn’t know I was a werewolf.”
“Why? Why didn’t you ever tell her?”
Dalton clenched his jaw as he was pummeled with the hundred reasons why he hid the biggest part of him from a woman he’d loved. “Because she wasn’t trustworthy with our secret,” he ground out.
“Then how could she be your mate? You didn’t give her a claiming mark. You hid yourself away. You let her verbally ream you all the fucking time, and I hated to see it. I hated her. You’re a beast, Dalton. You always were, and you let someone make you feel less than. You let her. You let her bend you until you almost broke.”
“She was the mother of our child.”
Chance scratched the blond, three-day beard on his face. His eyes pooled with sympathy but his words didn’t match. “Your child, Dalton. You and I both know Shelby never wanted that baby.” Cha
nce flipped over the picture frame. “Look at her. Look at her eyes. There is no softness there, no kindness. She could barely muster a damned smile for a picture, Dalton. You weren’t the unworthy one. She was.”
Slowly, Dalton leaned forward and picked up the picture frame. In it, he and Shelby were standing in front of their house in Anchorage. He had his arm draped around her shoulders, and his other hand proudly cradled her round belly. The smile on his face was big, dopey almost. But Shelby’s mouth only lifted a little at the corners, and her eyes looked dead. It wasn’t the baby that had drained their relationship either. Every picture they took together was like this. She had liked the life he could provide her, but beyond that, she didn’t like him touching her. She didn’t like holding his hand or kissing him in public. Now that he looked back on it, she hadn’t seemed to enjoy kissing him at all. How had he not realized that until now? He’d brought this picture because she’d looked beautiful in it, full with his child, but Chance was right. Her eyes were cold. They always had been, even when she told him she loved him.
Dalton dropped the picture in a rush, desperate not to touch it anymore.
“When you lost Amelia, it ripped my guts out,” Chance said in a thick voice. “I know how much you wanted her to be a boy so she could live. I know how much you wanted to be a dad. But you didn’t see it there in Shelby’s eyes.”
Dalton couldn’t look Chance in the eye, not when he was riled up and reeling like this. “Didn’t see what?”
“The relief on her face.”
“Don’t say that.”
“You couldn’t see it, but I was right there, standing in the doorway while she held Amelia’s little body, and she wouldn’t even look at the baby. She just stared out the window with this relieved look like she’d dodged a bullet, man. She wasn’t the mate for you, and she sure as fuck wasn’t the right mother for your child. You said it yourself. She. Wasn’t. Trustworthy.”
“Why didn’t you tell me all of this before?”
“I tried, but you weren’t ready.”
“But I’m ready now?” Dalton had tried and failed to hide the disgust from his voice. All this time, he’d been mourning a breakup with someone who hadn’t felt the same, who wasn’t mourning him back.
I wanted her to love us back.
Stupid wolf had fogged his vision. Dalton shook his head, his thoughts spinning as each memory took on a new meaning. All of the I-hate-yous hadn’t been his fault. They’d been hers. Who even used those three words as weapons? He hadn’t deserved them as he’d thought. She’d just known how to cut him the deepest.
And he’d let her. Chance was right. He’d opened himself up and allowed it.
“I feel so stupid,” he murmured, linking his hands behind his head.
“Nah, you aren’t. You would’ve dealt with it differently if you hadn’t lost Amelia. If she’d never been pregnant, you would’ve left her. You bonded with that little baby in her tummy, not Shelby. It got you all mixed up.”
In a flash of anger, Dalton stood and yanked the frame off the table, then strode for the front door and chucked the picture as far into the woods as he could. A part of him felt liberated, but a bigger part of him felt shame for allowing Shelby to taint his April First. That had been the day Amelia had died. Female werewolves hadn’t been able to survive before Vera cured Link’s little girl. She’d passed at the beginning of April, the day after she was born, and Shelby had ended their relationship then, too.
He’d lost everything he’d ever wanted, everything he’d fought for, in one day.
Chest heaving, he scanned Link’s winter white woods as his throat tightened up.
“What’s her name?” Chance asked softly from behind him.
“Who?”
“You know who. The one who made you ready to hear what I’ve been trying to tell you.”
“Kate.” Dalton rolled his eyes closed and inhaled deeply, imagining the scent of honey. It calmed him little by little until his breath came steady. “Kate Hawke.”
Chapter Six
Kate smiled politely at Dr. Vega and waved goodnight. He’d been in a beast of a mood tonight and yelled at her twice for no good reason, but she forgave him. His brother had been sick for a long time, and he was open with his worry for his family, but Dr. Vega tended to take out his frustrations on the clinic staff when he was at work.
He jerked his chin as a goodbye and lowered his attention back to the paperwork on the nurse station countertop. She didn’t wait around for an apology. That man didn’t give them. Really, no men gave apologies. They took what they wanted, drained the women around them, then moved on. Or died, apparently.
She shook her head hard to punish thoughts of Miller out of her mind. He had been terrifying in the end of their relationship, or whatever it was they were doing, but in the beginning, he’d pretended to be nice. It was those few days of the pretend caring that had gotten her all jumbled up with the news of his death. She felt guilty for being sad. There. There it was. He deserved to be in the ground, but she was still sad at the loss of a life she’d known once.
The snow was falling in thick sheets, and she high-kneed it through the deepest parts on the way to an awning that protected her four-wheeler from the Alaskan weather. There were a couple of other ATVs sitting under there with hers. She owned a truck, but it liked to fishtail in weather like this, so on the snowiest days, she used her little off-roader to make her way through town. It wasn’t like Galena was huge. The only reason they could afford a police station and medical center was because this was prime real estate right off the Yukon where boaters were frequent in the warm months. This was the place where all the tiny towns in the surrounding area could load up on supplies. There were a couple of bush pilots who lived here that kept this place stocked as long as the weather was flyable.
She loved it here. Or she had before Miller. Before the video that kept her in shame. Everyone in this town had probably seen it. Oh sure, she kept her head up, but the whispers of a small town were hard even on the toughest souls, and she was quite meek.
A black Chevy truck with fat tires and chains on the wheels came to a stop behind her, blocking her from backing out. In an instant, fear pummeled her heart. Was it Darren, back to finish what he’d started? But the truck was older, and not the right model.
When the window rolled down, she froze. Dalton’s eyes danced, but for a few moments, neither one of them said anything, only stared at each other until she offered him a shy smile. “I thought I would never see you again.”
“That was the plan.”
She wiped a thin layer of snow off the taillights of her ATV just for something to do other than swim in his too-handsome gaze. “What are you doing here?”
Dalton relaxed back into his seat, arm draped over the wheel as he dragged his attention out the front window. “I’m going to be shitty at this.”
“At what?”
His jaw clenched, but when he looked at her again, a smile lingered right at the corners of his lips. “I’ll take the job.”
“The job?”
He lifted his chin and waited, cocky, sexy man.
“Oh, you want to sleep with me.”
His smile deepened, and her heart banged against her chest. Dalton was the most striking man she’d ever seen, and he was here, talking to her.
“We should negotiate terms over dinner.”
“Dinner?” Was he asking her out? On a date?
She swallowed down her immediate, high-pitched answer just so she wouldn’t look too eager. “It’s late. Not much is open at midnight around here.”
“Yeah, when I planned this, I didn’t know you worked so late.”
“My schedule changes all the time, depending on when I’m needed. Uuum,” she said, desperately thinking of somewhere they could go because she definitely wanted to go on a date with Dalton, even if it was the middle of the night. “There’s the Taco Trailer. It stays open late. It’s right beside the bar so when last call ends, the heavy
drinkers can eat and sober up a bit before they go home.”
“Perfect.” He looked at her ATV. “You know how to load that thing?”
“Oh, I can just meet you there.”
“I don’t like you cold.”
“Oh. Okay. Yeah, I can load it. Do you have a ramp?”
Dalton shoved his door open and disappeared around the other side of the truck, then lowered the tailgate and pulled out a couple of long metal pieces with grooves. He set them at a comfortable angle, then leaned on the side of his truck, arms crossed as he waited. He wore a white sweater that clung to the muscular curves of his arms, but no jacket. He didn’t even look cold, but maybe that was a werewolf thing. She didn’t know for sure, nor would she ask because she still had to be careful not to let on that she’d guessed what he really was. She might like him a ridiculous amount, but she’d liked Miller at first, too, and he’d turned poisonous.
“I’d offer to load it, but I have a feeling you can take care of yourself just fine.”
That drew her up short. “Why do you say that?”
“Am I wrong?”
“No,” she said softly, struggling to hold his direct gaze. “I can take care of myself, but usually people underestimate me. They always do, actually.” Before he could respond to that mortifying bit of personal information she’d just shared, she turned and hopped over the seat of the four-wheeler, then started the engine. Backing through her exhaust fumes, she pulled a wide loop in the parking lot and lined it up, then hit the throttle and drove it carefully up the ramp and into the back of Dalton’s truck. Without a word, he began to wench straps onto it to secure the ATV in place as she climbed down one of the jacked-up tires and onto the snowy ground.