“Until this exchange, I thought you were here about the children,” Sophia said.
“The children? What children?” Sterling asked.
Sterling and Daisy had joined them, while Boone and Yuri dragged behind.
“Sarah’s children,” Sophia answered.
“Who’s Sarah?” Daisy questioned.
“The mother of Will, Hope, and Noah,” Sterling replied.
“How do you know about them?” Rogue leveled the question at Sophia. He didn’t like the idea of Walker Solomon, or whoever Sophia was to him, knowing about the rogue orphans’ presence—dead or not.
“She was a friend,” Sophia said. She wrapped her arms around herself in an attempt to calm the shaking. “She told me if anything ever happened to her, to make sure the Rogue found out. She knew you had a reputation for helping rogue children and women. She trusted you would protect them from their father.”
“Their father?” Mae asked.
“Solomon,” Sophia answered.
“Christ,” Rogue swore. Will, Hope, and Noah were Solomon’s bastard children?
He didn’t want to consider what the repercussions of that information might be.
Mae gaped at Sophia. “If you were friends with the mother of Solomon’s children, then why were you ever with him?”
“I’ve never been with Solomon. Not really. I was trying to get close to him, gain his trust, in order to kill him myself. Even if I’d known that was what you’d come for, I couldn’t just give you the information. He has eyes everywhere. I was trying to keep my cover. But now that they know I was after him…” She shrugged a shoulder as her voice trailed off. “Long story. For another time.”
From the sound of it, Sophia would likely need protection.
“There’ll be plenty of time on the ride to the airport,” Yuri said. He and Boone had joined them now.
Boone hopped into the truck bed. “Tijuana, here we come.” The young wolf let out a hollering whoop of excitement as he tossed his cowboy hat.
The rest of Rogue’s crew followed suit as Rogue rounded to the driver’s side and Mae headed to the passenger’s seat.
Mae was shaking her head. “It’s just like with the Grey Wolf warriors. Where these raids lead us never ceases to amaze me.”
Rogue tipped back his Stetson as he climbed into the truck. Considering she’d spent her whole life on that godforsaken ranch and the last raid she’d participated in with the Grey Wolves had led to her being locked in a cell beside him of all unsavory people—a situation which by proxy had led to all this—he had no doubt about that.
* * *
Mae stood on the balcony of Rogue’s Southern California mansion. The hacienda-style architecture overlooked the Pacific Ocean. She leaned out over the balcony ledge, staring at the sea. The gentle rush of the tide rolling over the sand, coupled with the occasional squawk of seagulls in the distance, put her at ease. The sunset painted the soon-to-be night sky in various shades of orange, blue, and yellow as a cool saltwater breeze coated her face. She closed her eyes and took it all in. She’d never been to the ocean before. Hell, she could count the number of times she’d left Montana on one hand.
A pair of footsteps approached. The sound of cowboy boots clopping against marble.
Mae glanced over her shoulder as Rogue slid next to her. He leaned over the balcony beside her, resting his weight atop the ledge. She was surprised he was still here. She’d thought she was alone.
“I thought you were headed down to Tijuana with Murtagh and your crew,” she said. She hadn’t expected them back until morning.
“Boone has never been south of the U.S. border and was eager to head down there, so I took him off guard duty and sent him with Murtagh and the other wolves instead,” he answered. “I think he had it in his head that once they had what we needed, Murtagh was going to allow him to drown himself in tequila shots, but we both know Murtagh runs a tighter ship than that.”
Mae chuckled. “Yeah, Boone doesn’t have a chance.” Murtagh wasn’t likely to let the young wolf get away with anything.
Mae turned back toward the ocean, watching the roll of the crashing waves.
Rogue adjusted the brim of his Stetson to sit higher so it would no longer darken his eyes. Silence passed between them as the quiet serenity of the seaside washed over them.
“Where are you?” he asked her, training those icy irises in her direction.
“What do you mean?” She turned toward him.
“When you look toward the ocean like that, I can tell you’re thinking of something. You’re here, but it’s not the waves you’re looking at. Not really.” He touched the brim of his Stetson again. “You don’t fool me, Princess.”
“You’re right,” she admitted. “It’s kind of ridiculous how easy it is for you to read me.”
“It’s kind of ridiculous how easy you are to read,” he teased. He faced the mansion again, leaning his back against the balcony.
She smiled. The sunset illuminated the smooth side of his face, but as the remaining rays shifted slightly, the puckered scars were bathed in the orange glow too. The lighting reminded her. “I have something for you.”
He raised a brow. “You do?”
She nodded. “Let me go get it.” She disappeared into the mansion, returning a few minutes later with a piece of paper clutched in her hand. “Here.” She extended it toward him.
He accepted the gift and glanced down.
It was the portrait she’d been drawing of him, with the sketch pad and graphite pencils he’d bought her, the portrait she’d told him she’d wanted to draw that night together in his bedroom.
She thought she might have rendered him speechless. She considered it a compliment that she could do that to a man like Rogue with little more than a pencil and some paper. She’d never been more proud.
“Mae, it’s…” He struggled to find the word.
“Breathtaking?” she finished with a small smile. “Just like I said it’d be.” She drew in close to him, pointing over his shoulder. “It’s the contrast. Light and dark. Scarred and unscarred. You made a great subject. I’ve been working on it since you left the sketch pad on the bed for me, but I wanted to make sure to finish it before…”
The Adam’s apple in his throat gave a knowing jerk. “Before tomorrow.”
Mae bit her lip as tears started to well in her eyes. She wouldn’t cry now. She wouldn’t.
“What’s on your mind, Princess?”
The tears continued to threaten. “Tomorrow,” she said softly.
They both knew what lay ahead of them. Once they had the antidote, they could return to Wolf Pack Run. She’d long since gathered he intended to strike some sort of deal with her brother, something that provided the antidote for both her pack and the rogue wolves, but Rogue had been vague about the details. That was his way though. She was coming to realize that. Even now that she was close to him, an air of mystery still kept him hidden from her—always slightly distant and just out of full reach.
But with the antidote secured, it’d be more than his mysterious ways that separated them. He’d go back to his life and she’d return to hers. Sure, she missed her family and packmates, and she knew they’d be worried about her—and Tucker would likely be glad for Murtagh to stop looking at him as if he belonged on a roasting spit, that was for certain—but she wasn’t eager for the other aspects of their adventure to end yet. If she was honest with herself, she’d enjoyed the escape of being away from Wolf Pack Run.
And more importantly, she didn’t want to end things with him yet.
“I know what you’re thinking, Princess, but don’t you remember what I told you? What I warned you about?”
She shook her head.
The edges of his lips turned up slightly, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. Not by a long shot. He wasn’t ready for
what was between them to end either. She sensed it.
“All great romances end tragically,” he’d said.
At the time he said it, she’d sighed at how swoony and romantic it had seemed, coming from a hardened cowboy like him, but now it didn’t. Now, it just made her angry with the constraints of her life, her circumstance.
Mae crossed her arms over her chest in an attempt to hold herself together. “If it ends tragically, it’s not a romance. It’s a love story, and a poor excuse for one at that.”
She glanced toward the ocean again. The blue of the water was quickly fading to black as night approached. “When we were in the caves, you asked me if I wanted romance, and I didn’t answer.” She leaned in toward him, and he drew her into his arms, pressing her into him in a way that was both wicked and sinful but also belied a new gentleness in his touch. “The answer is yes,” she said. “I do want romance, true romance, and I don’t want us to end tragically.”
He traced his knuckles over her cheek until he cupped her chin in his hand. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned from life, it’s that no matter how much we want something, we don’t always get it. I’ve had to learn that the hard way.” His eyes flashed to his wolf’s. “But we can make what we have worth it.”
He kissed her then. Fully and completely. Without holding anything back. He poured himself into her, and she allowed him to. The love, the pain, and the pleasure. Every ounce of it.
When she eased away, her lips were swollen from the intensity of him, and she felt the prickle of the stubble on his jaw brush over the smooth skin of her cheek.
“There’s one other thing on my mind.”
“Mm-hmm.” He had moved on from her lips and was trailing his lips down the curve of her throat. The brush of his canines as he nipped at the base of her neck, the lobe of her ear, sent a delicious chill down her spine. Her nipples stiffened.
“I know it sounds crazy,” she murmured, her words starting to sound more like pants as he continued.
He inhaled the scent of her before his hands dove beneath her shirt. His large hands cupped her breasts, the callused pads of his thumbs, hardened from years of working on a ranch, tickling sensations across the sensitive skin there.
“But when we were at the Gold Tooth and I had my…” She didn’t know what to call that little all-consuming flash of memory, and with what his hands were doing, she was struggling to think straight. “…episode,” she finally settled on, “you said for me not to go back there, but you seemed to have an idea of where there was.”
“We’ve already concluded you’re easy for me to read,” he purred. Using his thumb and forefinger, he rolled one of her nipples, and she stifled a gasp.
“So there wasn’t any deeper meaning to it?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he hoisted her onto the balcony, pushing her thighs open as he started to strip off her pants. Once she was bare, he dropped to his knees in front of her, his intentions clear.
She was learning that an alpha wolf like him was a man of insatiable appetites, and his hunger was solely focused on her, the most intimate parts anyway.
“Enough thinking for now, Princess.” He clamped onto her thighs, spreading her wide as he flashed that wicked grin up at her from where he’d settled between her legs. “There are more important tasks at hand.”
His mouth was on her within seconds, his tongue circling her clit in a way that was so delicious she struggled to hold herself upright on the balcony ledge. But she knew he wouldn’t let her fall. Not by a long shot.
Because if there was one thing she’d learned about this wicked cowboy wolf, it was that he might have been a damn good villain, but when it came to protecting her, nothing would stand in his way.
Chapter 23
To say Rogue had dreaded this day for the past twenty years was an understatement. He’d always known he would return to Wolf Pack Run to claim his rightful place, but he’d expected to feel triumphant, righteous. And he couldn’t.
Not when it felt like losing her all over again.
He never should have involved her in this plan, but when he’d heard about the antidote, he’d seized the opportunity as a means to an end but also because deep down, he’d wanted to protect her, be close to her again, and that had been his mistake. He never should have tempted himself. He’d thought he could resist her, but he’d been a goddamn fool to ever think that he could. But now that he was here, it was already too late.
And the dread that consumed him left him sick to his stomach.
No. Not dread.
Dread failed to capture the intensity of the vise grip that constricted and strangled his insides until he found it hard to speak. Since they’d left the SoCal mansion this morning with the scientist in tow, his captured presence promising a fresh round of antidote injections in the near future, and the formula to create them on a widespread scale in his pack, he’d barely spoken. Mae was equally silent throughout the private flight, and when they’d finally touched down in Billings, the mood among the crew could only be described as morose. It wasn’t until they were just outside the borders of Wolf Pack Run that the weight of what he was about to do floored him.
How would it feel to lose her again? Not like the first time. He knew that now. The first time, he’d given everything up for the love of her, and this time, he was losing the only thing that ever truly mattered to him—her. Even if it meant giving her everything she’d ever hoped for. That’d always been the true intent of his plan, even in the beginning.
She’s not for you, and she never will be.
Somehow, that didn’t seem to matter now.
He was riding atop Bee. Mae rode behind him, saddled atop a white Arabian, as they neared the border of the Grey Wolf packlands. His crew flanked them, and Mae even had hold of Tucker in a carrier bag tucked beneath her arm.
As soon as they drew close, the Grey Wolf warriors emerged from the trees. Of course they’d know the rogues were coming. Maverick might be sitting atop the throne to an empire that should have been Jared’s, but he was more than deserving of the role—formidable, fierce, cunning. He would have figured out by now who’d taken Mae, and it was likely only by the grace of the dozens of homes Rogue kept throughout the country that the Grey Wolf packmaster hadn’t managed to find them yet. It was like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
But Rogue had no doubt that had they taken longer, Maverick Grey would have searched every one of his homes. Hell, every place he’d ever rested his head at night. Maverick loved his sister, even if he had a fucked-up way of showing it, and he’d always been fiercely protective of Mae. Unfortunately, it was to a near fault. In adulthood, it had led him to keep her in a cage, trapped like a little songbird who wanted to fly free. Just as their father had.
That was what Rogue had to offer her that her pack didn’t. Freedom. To go where she wanted, to be who she wanted, to love who she wanted.
Even if that wasn’t him.
Maverick Grey stepped forth from beneath the pines. His Stetson shadowed his face as the sun drew low beneath the clouds. He was a massive wall of a man, nearly identical in size to Rogue. Long, mangy brown hair peeked from beneath his hat, making him look far more wolf than man, but unlike Rogue, his face wasn’t crippled and deformed. Only one thin, jagged scar cut through his eyebrow and stopped just before the lid.
The single shot Rogue had taken at the bastard twenty years earlier.
But it was the pair of striking green eyes peering at them that unsettled Rogue. They were so similar to Mae’s. It was damn near eerie.
Rogue had always hated that. It had seemed like a cruel twist of fate that one of his most fearsome rivals had the same pair of eyes as the only girl who could heal him and make him forget.
“Maverick.” Mae’s voice held a hint of affection as she dismounted. She was likely relieved to see him.
Maverick’s warriors
emerged from the trees, their weapons drawn. Rogue’s men responded in kind. His rogues didn’t outnumber the Grey Wolf elite warriors, but considering what they’d come for, it didn’t matter.
Rogue recognized most of the Grey Wolves immediately. The faces that in his childhood memories remained boys instantly changed into those of the grown men who stared back at him. Grey Wolf elite alpha warriors. They all were.
Except for Rogue.
Maverick. Colt Cavanaugh. Malcolm, Dean, even that damn goofy idiot Blaze, who’d run off to Caltech to study computer science when they were fourteen. Hell, Rogue even recognized Wes Calhoun, former packmaster of the Wild Eight, though he’d never known him in his boyhood.
There were a few new faces he didn’t recognize, but it didn’t matter. He wasn’t one of them anymore, and he never would be.
“Are you all right?” Maverick stepped toward his sister.
But Rogue’s men raised their weapons higher, warding him off.
Maverick snarled.
He would need to wait for Mae to come to him. She’d made her choice. She was standing on their side of the border. With Rogue.
Good girl, Mae-day.
He’d always known she had more of a heart for the underdog than her brother did. Her love for that damn pig was evidence enough, as much as the little bacon monster irked him.
“I’m fine.” She dismounted from her horse, setting Tucker’s carrier on the ground as she met her brother’s gaze. “I chose to go with him.”
The stoic packmaster didn’t so much as blink at the admission. Of course, what Mae thought would be a revelation wouldn’t be for Maverick. He had known Jared was still alive all along, knew he’d become the Rogue, and he had also known how Mae had felt about him. Her brother perhaps understood why Mae was drawn to him better than she did.
But she’d understand soon enough.
Mae released her horse’s reins, crossing the chasm between the two groups in order to stand on the border between them. One side of Rogue’s lips pulled into a satisfied smirk. It was the perfect image of who she’d become over the past few days. She’d changed, for the better. Anyone with eyes could see it. She was still a Grey Wolf princess but was also a woman who cared about those less privileged than her, whose kindness could stretch to the ends of the earth and back.
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