“I have no idea how we figure that out. I’m more concerned with how he knows my mom.” Mama had no family, and the pack members her age were long gone. Only Shawn and Sindri had known her. A Fae, a guy Cade didn’t know, showing up here and mentioning her made no sense. He was missing something here, something important.
“Y’all still haven’t told me what the guy looked like.”
“Tall,” Ally began. “Long white hair, almost silver, tied back in a ponytail.”
“Eyes?”
“Eyes? Oh, right. No, I couldn’t see them.” She ran a finger across her face, from her eyebrow to her opposite cheek. “He had a scar across his face, though.” She jumped. “Cade? What’s wrong?”
He’d just shouted—a hoarse, sharp cry—and now he couldn’t answer her because he was shivering and shaking like he’d swallowed dry ice.
“Cade? Baby, answer me! Right now!”
He put his forehead on the steering wheel. It rattled beneath his shaking hands. Ally’s cool, soft hands stroked his face and neck.
“Baby? Please, can you tell me what’s wrong?”
“It’s him,” he whispered, swallowing hard and concentrating on not throwing up. He wouldn’t shame himself by falling apart in front of his wolf and his mate.
Ally slid across the seat to put her arm around him, but he pushed her away. To accept her comfort was to admit he needed it. Instead, he stilled the shakes, banished the sick and cleared his head, taking emotional refuge in dominance.
In the backseat Dylan whimpered, terrified by the stress his Alpha was shedding.
“It’s who, Cade?” Ally asked quietly.
“The guy from my dream. The guy who killed my father.”
After a few minutes’ silence, Ally offered to drive, but he refused that as well.
“I thought you couldn’t see the guy in your dream, couldn’t remember what he looked like.”
“Couldn’t before. Can now. The scar. Mama cut his face with the knife that killed my dad.” Now, for the first time in thirty-three years, he saw the guy clearly in his mind’s eye, saw the lean, eerily handsome face and the long silver ponytail whipping in the wind.
Dylan whined again. Cade wanted to say something to calm the pup, but he couldn’t summon the thought to form the words. He rolled his window down. The cool night air cleansed his lungs and dried the sweat on his face and neck.
“The guy who killed your mother shows up here,” Ally said softly. “And he knows Lind. And he wants to know about Dylan’s mother and Becca’s mother, and he wants to tell your mother he’s sorry. For what? For killing your dad? Thirty-three years ago? Doesn’t he know she’s dead? Dylan, honey, didn’t you say the guy looked familiar?”
“Yeah.”
Cade could barely hear him. Ally was the only one who didn’t stink of fear and misery. Cade was grateful, once again, for her levelheaded nature, but he wished she’d shut the fuck up so he could concentrate on not changing while driving.
“Dylan?” he rasped. “You okay back there, son?”
“I think so.”
“If it’s the same guy, what does he want?” asked Ally.
“Don’t care what he wants. I want to find him and kill him.”
“Forget about finding him for a minute, baby. Think about this. He saw us in town almost three months ago, but he didn’t try to hurt us. He seemed almost frightened of Dylan when Dylan cornered him, didn’t he?” She looked back at the teenager.
“Yeah. I thought he was gonna run away from me.”
“So they talk, he does that pathetic ‘you don’t see me’ bit, and he disappears. And tonight, when he sees Dylan, he gets him out of jail and says to tell Eirny he’s sorry. That doesn’t sound like a threat. I agree you need to find the guy, but I don’t get the feeling he’s out to hurt you or Dylan. Or Becca.”
He didn’t answer. What she said made sense intellectually, but his intellect wasn’t working right now. The urge to run back to town, find the bastard and rip his guts out vied with the urge to run into the woods, find a deep hole and crawl in for a few months. Or just lock himself in his room and get well and truly shitfaced. Only the first option, of course, was available to an Alpha.
“Well?”
“Well what, Ally?” he yelled. He could feel her flinch all the way on the other end of the seat. “You want me to speculate on the bastard’s motives? How the hell do I know what he wants? He killed my parents. You want me to give him the benefit of the doubt now? If you’d told me about the guy earlier, when it fucking happened, maybe I’d know by now what he wants!”
Cade locked his jaw and stared straight ahead, waiting for her to burst into tears. But no—that’s what she would’ve done before, like the day he’d shown them around the ranch. Now she was his mate, and it had changed her as much as it had him.
His mate didn’t cry. His mate busted his balls. He steeled himself for a tongue-lashing.
It never showed up.
In a soft voice, a voice full of love and concern he didn’t deserve, she said, “Does emotional turmoil cause all alphas to act like assholes? Is it some kind of defense mechanism?”
It caught him so completely off-guard that he choked on a laugh. The tension in the car didn’t evaporate, but she’d burned off a good fifty percent of it all at once.
“I don’t know about all alphas, but yeah, I’d guess most.” He rolled his shoulders and pressed them back against his seat as he stretched, forcing his body to loosen up a little bit. Glancing up at the rearview mirror, he caught Dylan’s eye and nodded shortly. His nephew closed his eyes and put his head back.
Ally unbuckled her seat belt, slid over and buckled the middle belt. She tucked her arm behind his and laid her head on his shoulder. “If you try to push me away again,” she murmured, “I’ll bite you.”
“I might wreck the truck.”
“So don’t push me away.”
So he didn’t. And when she took his right hand and placed it in her lap, covering it with both of hers, he didn’t take it back. Her touch eased the heartache, her scent calmed the rage. If she insisted he accept a comfort only she could provide, a comfort his body had been screaming for, then he would.
Sindri must’ve started cooking as soon as he learned of Dylan’s arrest. The kid followed his nose straight to the kitchen.
Ally made an exasperated sound.
“Could anything kill his appetite?”
Cade laughed and drew her close. Glad to be home, she snuggled into his arms.
“Hey,” he murmured into her hair. “You okay?”
“I am. Are you?”
Just then, her stomach growled loud enough to be heard outside. Cade’s chest rumbled with laughter against her ear, and he squeezed her tighter.
“I will be, but I think I need to feed my girl. Come on, let’s go see what Sindri’s making.”
Hand in hand, they walked into the kitchen, where Sindri toddled from stove to table as Dec laughed at Dylan.
“All right, pup. Can you stop eating long enough to tell us what you did to merit your first arrest? Please say a pretty girl was involved.”
Ally sat down next to Dec. Cade fetched beers from the fridge and sat down across the table from her. Dylan paused in his inhalation of meatloaf long enough to grin. “I was with a pretty girl, yeah, but she wasn’t really involved.”
“Well, what was it, then?”
Sindri put two more plates on the table. Ally got up to fix her own, but he shooed her back to the table. Her stomach growled again. No one noticed.
“Thank you, Sindri, this looks great. You’re not gonna believe this, Dec,” she said when she saw that Dylan was hoovering the meatloaf again. “Jakob showed up at Cue’s.”
“Lind? What’s that gobshite doing in town? How’d he find us?”
“I’d like to know that myself,” Cade said. “I think I’ll take Michael and go back into town to look for him.”
“Tonight?” She’d assumed all the drama was over fo
r the evening. “I mean, you’re exhausted, you’ve had a big shock. You should get some rest.”
He reached across the table to squeeze her hand, a hint of irritation lurking behind his smile. Pack Alphas probably didn’t like their females clucking over them in front of others. “Baby, I told you I’m fine. We need to know what Lind’s doing in town and if we wait ’til tomorrow, he could be gone.”
“Yeah,” Dylan piped up. “Remember, the Fae guy told him to get out of town.”
Dec paused with the beer bottle halfway to his mouth. “Fae guy? What Fae guy?”
Dylan started to answer with a mouth full of meatloaf. Ally backhanded him on the shoulder. “Not with your mouth full!”
Apparently over his earlier shock and anxiety, Cade answered for his nephew. “Well,” he drawled, “a strange Fae followed Ally and Dylan and Becca around town a few weeks ago, but nobody bothered to tell me about it. And then tonight, the same guy showed up at the police station and told the cops to let Dylan and Lind go, and they did. But that’s not the worst part.”
Dec, no longer smiling, had put the beer down and now sat perfectly still. Sindri too, stopped in mid-motion, his back to them, holding a plate over the sink.
“So what’s the worst part?” asked Dec with unnerving seriousness.
“The worst part is, his description fits the guy who killed my mother.”
The plate Sindri was holding crashed into the sink.
Cade jumped up. “Old man! Are you okay?”
The brownie turned to stare at Dec with a horrified expression. He said something that sounded like a question. Dec, not turning to look at him, replied in the same language.
“Why not, Dec?” Dylan asked, food forgotten.
Ally gaped at him. When had he learned to speak a new language?
Instead of answering, Dec asked, “Did he speak to you, pup? Did he tell you anything?”
Dylan nodded, wide-eyed. “Yeah. He said to tell Eirny he was sorry, and he wanted to see her.”
An ashen-faced Dec said something in the foreign language again. Then, in English, “The mad bastard doesn’t know she’s dead. How the hell did he get loose?”
“Forget that,” Cade growled. “What the hell do you know about my mother, MacSorley?”
“Oh shit,” Ally whispered to herself. Like they hadn’t had enough stress and surprise for one evening…
Cade’s hands gripped the back of the chair he’d been sitting in. His knuckles were white, the veins and tendons of his forearm standing out ropey and rigid. He leaned over the table and stared Dec in the face.
“I asked you a question, MacSorley. Answer it or you’re going out a window.”
Dec didn’t flinch, or whimper, or run like hell. He did none of the things a beta would’ve been expected to do with an enraged Pack Alpha inches from his face.
With an authority she’d never heard from him before, he replied, “I’m your uncle, pup. Eirny was my sister.”
“Dude,” Dylan breathed. “You’re my great-uncle? How old are you?”
No one laughed. The only sound in the kitchen was Cade’s harsh, rapid breaths. He didn’t move a muscle, but his body vibrated with tension as he faced the Irishwolf across the table. Cade stared at Dec with loathing. Ally stared at Cade, watching for any sign he might start changing.
He hadn’t mastered his earlier shock and anxiety after all. And this could push him over the edge.
His jaw was clenched so tightly his mouth barely moved, but there was no mistaking his next words. “Leave. Now.”
Dec stood. Behind him, Sindri said, “No, barn. He must stay. There is so much you do not know.”
Cade’s expression went from surprise, to confusion, and finally to heartbreak. Seconds later, his face a stony mask, all he said to Sindri was, “Sounds as if there’s much you haven’t told me.”
She heard the pain behind his words and she longed to throw her arms around him, comfort him with her touch as she’d done in the car.
Touching him didn’t seem like a good idea at the moment.
“Cade,” she implored, “he was going to tell you. He was waiting for the—”
His eyes cut to her. “You knew? Goddamn it, Allison, will I ever be able to trust you?”
She swallowed against the sudden ache in her throat.
Dec laid a hand on her shoulder. “Leave off, barn. It’s my fault, I asked her not to say anything. I put her in a terrible spot.”
Touching her wasn’t a good idea at the moment, either.
Cade threw himself across the table with a roar. Dec shoved her out of the way as he was borne backwards, flying across the kitchen and slamming into the counter. Sindri moved just in time to avoid being crushed. Ally scooped the little brownie up and dove for the other side of the room.
To her amazement, Sindri lunged out of her grasp and was halfway across the huge kitchen before she dragged him back. Someone’s elbow—she thought it was Cade’s—clipped her in the jaw as she slid across the floor.
“Let me go!” Sindri screamed. “He will kill him! Let me go!”
Arms wrapped tightly around the frantic brownie, she huddled against the pantry door while Cade and Dec grappled and punched and rolled on the floor. The kitchen seemed much smaller with werewolves tearing it up. Chairs went flying. Fists and feet and heads punched holes in cabinets. The sound was terrifying, the smell worse.
Werewolf brawls belonged out-of-doors.
“Dylan!” she screamed. “Go get Michael!”
The teenager, whimpering and shivering beneath the table, stumbled to his feet and ran out, even as she heard someone crashing through the front door. From outside came the sound of panicked howling, the pack picking up on their Alpha’s fury.
Cade was snarling like a wild animal. The two of them were moving so fast she could barely tell them apart. She didn’t know what was most incredible about the spectacle—the fact that Dec was holding his own, or that he kept trying to talk to Cade as they fought.
“Cade—Christ—listen to me! Stop it, barn! Calm down and give me—shite! I don’t want to hurt you—leave off, you fecking maniac! I need to talk to you!”
She heard wolves in the living room all talking at once, but no one howling inside, thank God. Becca might actually sleep through this.
Michael, Roman, and another alpha raced in, paused a split second to gawk, then threw themselves on Cade. Eventually the three of them peeled him off his uncle, who lay panting on the floor.
Cade had sustained some cuts and bruises. They’d heal in hours, but she was impressed—and by now, strangely unsurprised—at the damage Dec had inflicted.
Sindri was still pushing and kicking to be free, so she let him go. Weeping, he ran straight to Dec and threw himself on the Irishwolf. Cade watched, still snarling, trying to break Michael and Roman’s grip. They held him fast.
“Goddamn it, let me go!”
“No way, boss.” Michael, blasé as ever, stood behind his Alpha with one hand on Cade’s arm and one arm around Cade’s neck. “You don’t want to kill your mate’s friend, and I’m not gonna let you.” Roman held onto Cade’s other arm as Cade twisted and fought.
Dec pushed himself up to his feet with a grunt, then leaned over with his hands on his knees, fighting to get his breath back. Now she saw that his right eye was beginning to swell. Blood seeped from a cut on his temple.
“Someone gonna tell me what this was about?” Michael asked.
Sindri was weeping, babbling beside Dec.
Ally stood up. “It’s a long story, but—”
“It’s my fault,” said Dec as he reached down to hug Sindri to his side. “I’ve bollixed everything to bits. I never meant—”
“Get out.”
They both fell silent at the guttural command.
Cade had quit struggling. His chest heaved as he panted. Though his pupils were round and surrounded by white, his eyes held a distinctly Jack Nicholson “here’s Johnny” cast as he stared at his uncle.
<
br /> “Cade, this is too important,” Dec protested. “There’s too much I have—”
“You leave now,” Cade snarled. “You’re not welcome in my home or in my pack.”
“You can’t do that! Cade, for God’s sake, hear what he has to say!” The group turned as one to look at Sarah Jane, who’d slipped in unnoticed amid the turmoil.
“Is Becca awake?” Ally asked quietly.
“Of course she is. I’ll check on her in a minute.” She stopped to take a look at Dec and drop a quick kiss on Sindri’s head. Then she faced Cade with her hands on her hips. “Cade. You need to talk to us, all three of us. Declan, Sindri, me… There are things you need to know. Please, honey, calm down and—”
They all knew she was wasting her breath.
Ally still had a lot to learn about this wolf she’d probably spend her life with. One thing she already knew was that he hated lies. She and Dec had basically lied to him. He’d have to forgive her, eventually, but he wouldn’t forgive Dec.
“You’re welcome to go with him, Sarah Jane. In fact, I think you should.”
Ally gasped. “Cade! You can’t—”
He closed his eyes and grimaced, taking deep breaths. “Let go. I’m fine.” Michael and Roman stepped back.
Cade squeezed his eyes shut and took another deep breath. He ran both hands through his hair, his face contorted as if in pain. When he opened his eyes and spoke, his tone was conversational.
“Ally, see to Rebecca. Sarah Jane, Dec, get off my ranch and don’t come back. And Sarah Jane, you even think about challenging me for custody, I’ll bankrupt you. Michael, get the pickup, we’re going into town to look for Lind and the Fae.”
“Okay…” said Michael, cocking his head. “Who’s Lind and who’s the Fae and why are we looking for them?”
“Now would be a good time to shut the fuck up and act like an obedient second.”
“You’ll explain later. Got it.” Michael left, Roman behind him.
Yours, Mine and Howls: Werewolves in Love, Book 2 Page 24