She still didn’t regret it.
She shot an angry glare toward her brother. “You lied to me as much as he did. Don’t expect me to be there cheering you on come morning.” She strode onto the Grey Wolf territory. The crowd of packmembers parted for her as if she were a live wire and if they touched her, she might spark.
“Mae,” Maverick tried to stop her.
Colt held him back. “Let her go, Maverick.”
Mae paused, glancing back toward where her brother and Rogue still stood. “For what it’s worth, I hope neither of you win.” She snarled at both of them. “I hope you tear each other to pieces.”
Mae shifted into wolf form and ran. She ran back to Wolf Pack Run, a place that now felt as foreign and unlike home to her as the opulent walls of Rogue’s mansions. She didn’t stop until she’d reached the private safety of her bedroom. She locked herself inside, closing all the doors and windows to keep them out, all of them, before she allowed herself to cry.
She didn’t want to let them see her crumble.
But now that she had allowed herself to fall to pieces, she didn’t know if she could pick herself back up.
Chapter 24
That night, as Rogue was supposed to be sleeping, he lay awake, staring up at the explosion of stars that stretched for eternity across the forests of Big Sky Country, recollecting every subtle detail of Mae’s kiss. The slap he’d expected. He’d anticipated it even. He deserved it. He knew that, but the kiss she’d gifted him with had been unexpected.
And the pain he’d felt from her during that kiss was slowly eating away at his insides.
He was sprawled across the forest floor outside the small camp they’d erected just across the border of the Grey Wolf territory. He was supposed to be resting. Come sunset tomorrow, he was supposed to bring himself to fight the battle of his life, to reclaim his place as packmaster, a role that had been stolen from him, and when he won the battle, to change the lives of rogue wolves everywhere.
But none of that seemed to matter anymore.
Not without her.
“Ye’ve finally realized it, haven’t ye, ye daft ijit?” Murtagh approached him, sitting down on a large rock beside Rogue.
“Realized what?” Rogue mumbled in between sips of whiskey. He’d downed enough Jack Daniel’s that any human would be drunk as a skunk, but with his wolf metabolism, he was just getting started. There wasn’t enough liquor in the world to numb the pain in his chest.
He’d thought his black heart gone, a shriveled hole in his chest.
He’d been horribly, terribly wrong.
“Ye finally realized I was right. That the loss of that lass will be the death of ye.”
“I’m not dead yet.”
“Ye will be soon if ye drown yerself in any more whiskey.” Murtagh snatched the bottle from Rogue’s hand.
Rogue growled, but Murtagh ignored him.
Gripping it by the neck, the Scot drew a long swig himself. “Is the revenge worth it?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t beaten him yet.” He was lying through his teeth, and Murtagh knew it.
“We both know ye could beat her brother any day with both hands tied. There’s no question. So how does it feel?”
“Like I’ve drunk too much whiskey?”
Murtagh snarled.
“What do you want me to say, Murtagh?” Rogue snarled back. “That I’ve royally fucked over the only good thing I’ve ever had in my life? Because if that’s what you want to hear, I’ll say it. You were right. It wasn’t worth it. Not by a long shot. Losing her again will be the death of me, and it’s death that I’ve chosen by my own hand.” Rogue ran his fingers through his hair. “But you have to know, it really wasn’t about the revenge. It was justice for the rogue wolves, and more importantly, it was for her. It always has been.”
“If ye really mean that, you have a right dumb way of showin’ it.” Murtagh shook his head.
“I’m not sure where I went wrong. When all this is through, she’ll have everything she ever wanted.”
“Except for you.” Murtagh mumbled several colorful curses as he stood. “The moment ye went wrong was when ye chose to bury the past, Jared.”
Murtagh wandered away, heading back to where the other rogue wolves were still celebrating near the campfire. Something in Murtagh’s words resonated, but not in the way the rogue wolf meant. Rogue didn’t hesitate.
Within an hour, he found his way into Maverick’s office. Slipping the locks proved far easier than expected, and it was there he waited. It was just before sunrise when the door finally opened and the packmaster eased inside.
To Maverick’s credit, he sensed Rogue’s presence immediately. Maverick’s gaze never faltered from the dark corner where Rogue stood veiled in shadow. It was as if the packmaster were anticipating the next move of a coiled snake ready to strike.
After several prolonged moments, something in the fire of Maverick’s gaze shifted, as though he’d found his resolution. Finally, he prowled across the room toward Rogue. The heavy sound of his leather boots as he approached held all the forceful promise of the blade clutched in his hand.
But Rogue was ready for the onslaught. He didn’t fear death; he never had, and he’d experienced far crueler fates than a valiant death at the hands of a true warrior, a man who took his kills with swift and unrelenting justice. As Maverick stood over him, a deep snarl ripped from Rogue’s throat, and he held his opponent’s gaze. But the sharp, fatal brunt of the other man’s blade would never come.
He knew Maverick too well, and they’d been down this path once before.
Suddenly, Maverick thrust his knife straight against Rogue’s throat. “I should kill you. Right here. Right now,” the packmaster snarled. A deep growl tore from his lips. “What makes you think I’ll spare your life again?”
Rogue had taken a chance and played his cards well, because he had been right. Maverick had a streak for mercy, which meant it was as he’d always suspected. He was the fiercer wolf, but her brother was the better man. A twisted laugh rumbled in Rogue’s chest. “Because you spared me for her sake. You won’t kill me unprovoked, and we both know it. You’ve always been too heroic for your own damn good.”
A twisted smirk curved over Rogue’s lips. “You know I can’t say the same.” His irises narrowed, and his eyes flashed to the gold of his wolf’s. One last challenge for old times’ sake. “Because if it were me holding that blade”—he locked eyes on the Grey Wolf warrior—“my enemy would be dead already.”
Maverick snarled. “Say your piece and be gone, Rogue.”
Rogue intended to do exactly that. Murtagh’s words had made him realize the truth. It wasn’t him or even Maverick that Mae needed, and it wasn’t hiding his identity to protect her that had been truly wrong, nor had his drive to protect the rogues been ill advised. None of those instincts had been fully wrong. He’d just gone about it entirely the wrong way. He’d done it the Rogue’s way. Not Jared’s.
But now that he realized, he still had time to set things right.
It wouldn’t bring her back to him, but it was the right thing to do.
For once, he didn’t have to question that.
“We both love Mae,” Rogue said. “So I’m here to make one final deal. This time, for her.”
* * *
The following afternoon not long before sunset, Mae stumbled from her bedroom, her eyes still swollen and puffy. She’d cried more tears than she’d ever known a person could cry in a lifetime, and she still wasn’t certain she was done crying.
She wasn’t certain she’d ever be done crying over him.
But she had a bone to pick with Maverick and questions she needed answered if she was supposed to find a way to heal, and she needed those questions answered now.
She found him in his office inside the main compound at the center of Wolf P
ack Run, the compound that housed all the elite warriors. The same one that as a child, she’d assumed Jared would live in.
When she entered, Maverick glanced up from what he was doing and immediately froze. He was looking at her as if she were a bomb about to go off right there in the middle of his office.
“Mae, I’m—”
She shook her head. “Don’t,” she warned him.
She knew her older brother, and she knew that voice. It was the same tone he’d had every time he’d apologized to her over the years, but she didn’t want his apology. Not this time.
“Save your apology for someone who wants it. I don’t forgive you, and I don’t know if I will for a long time. Maybe not ever.”
Maverick nodded. “That’s fair.”
Mae wrung her hands, trying to decide if she really wanted to know the answer to the question she was about to ask. “Why?” she finally managed. “I’ve gathered that you and Father lied about Jared’s death, but I…I don’t understand why.”
“Because Father told me to kill him and I didn’t. I let him live, for your sake and yours alone. For all intents and purposes, he was dead. At least for you, at least then. I’d planned to tell you one day, to let you make your own decision, but then he became the Rogue. You know his reputation. I chose to protect you. I chose—”
“For me,” she finished. “You chose for me. Packmaster or not, you had no right to.” She was shaking her head. “And you followed Father? You allowed him to order a boy’s death? You were supposed to do the right thing.” She’d always trusted him to before. He may have been overprotective of her, sometimes misguided, but she’d always thought his heart was in the right place. Now she wasn’t so certain.
“What else would you have had me do? I didn’t know what the right thing was, Mae. I was fifteen!”
“So was he!” Her hands clenched into fists at her sides as she tried to stop herself from shaking. “So was he,” she breathed.
“Jared may have been your friend, but he chose his fate. He knew our laws, but he still killed Buck. Our father was a good man. A fierce warrior who was loyal to his pack. A kind cowboy who…”
“Our father was a murderer! He killed Jared’s father and nearly him too. Do you not understand? He nearly murdered the boy who saved me from our beast of an uncle. The same uncle who spent night after night raping me!”
Maverick’s features went completely slack, and he dropped the pen he’d been holding in his hand. “What?”
“He didn’t tell you?” Mae shook her head. “Of course he didn’t. Dad was truly a manipulative, evil bastard, wasn’t he?”
“Mae, what are you talking about?” Maverick rounded his desk to come to her side, but she stepped away from him.
“Buck had been hurting me, assaulting me for months, Maverick.”
For once, her brother’s reaction wasn’t rage, anger, or disappointment. It was grief. “Mae, I didn’t know. I swear it. You have to believe me. I—”
“I don’t have to do anything, Maverick. Not for you or Father. Not anymore.” She released a long exhale through her nose. She’d kept her own secrets buried too long. “Jared was in my room that night, telling me how his father had gifted him with his blade. But then Buck came down the hall. There wasn’t time for Jared to leave. I told him to get in my closet and close his eyes, but he must not have listened. As he hid, he must have seen what Buck was about to do, because, all of a sudden, he burst out the door and was on top of Buck. It didn’t take much for Buck to overpower him, and then he was choking Jared, and I…I grabbed the dagger on the bed and I…I made him stop.”
The silence between her and Maverick was deafening.
“Don’t you see?” she said. “I killed Buck. It was never Jared. But when Father came in, Jared took the fall for it. He grabbed the knife and declared it was him. He confessed to protect me from the repercussions, and by the time I realized Jared wouldn’t receive any mercy from the pack alphas, it was too late.” She shook her head. “I suppose Father didn’t bother to tell them about what Buck had done. They must have thought Jared killed Buck in cold blood, and he wasn’t even the one to do it.”
“You never told me.”
She pointed an accusing finger at him. “You told me he was dead, yet you expected me to be honest with you? To tell you that I was too scared to come forward, to tell the truth about Buck, about the decisions I’d made that had supposedly led to the death of the only boy, the only man I ever…”
Loved. She was going to say loved. She did love him. Still.
I’ve already given you my past, my present, my future, he’d said, and she felt the same.
Oh, Jared.
She loved him then and she loved him now, despite the position he’d put her in.
Which meant she had a choice to make.
But how could she forgive him? He’d chosen his revenge over her.
“Love,” Maverick finished for her. “You love him still?”
She nodded. “I always have. I’ve never stopped. I’m fairly certain I fell in love with him the day we jumped from that tree together as children. The day he started calling me Mae-day. He was my best friend, and for the past twenty years, I’ve never been able to forget him.” She released a long sigh. “Please don’t kill him. I’m not sure I could bear it.”
“There will be no battle between us.”
“So you’ll surrender to him?”
“Never,” he growled. The fiery drive of a warrior who’d never known defeat flashed in Maverick’s wolf eyes. “I never surrender. I live and die by this pack. You know that.”
Mae had no doubt of that. Her brother was a fierce warrior, loyal to his pack no matter the personal cost. “If you’re not surrendering, then did you already—?” She couldn’t bear the thought.
“Don’t think so little of me, Sister. I wouldn’t kill him. Not knowing what he means to you. I love you too much for that. Why do you think I let him live all those years ago? Father ordered me to kill him. I thought he’d murdered our uncle, and still I didn’t—for you.” Maverick slid open one of his desk drawers and reached inside. “He showed up in my office this morning. Before sunrise. He was just sitting here in my desk chair. I have no idea how he got in.”
Mae shrugged. “He does that.”
“But he called the whole thing off, although not without making some negotiating demands first.”
“Negotiating demands?”
“He said he didn’t want to be packmaster. Not really. He said all he wanted was rights for the rogues.”
“So the rogues have their justice?”
At least there was that.
“Yes.” Maverick nodded. “But you have to know, Mae, not all of them are like Jared.”
“I know that.” She thought of Walker Solomon.
Good riddance.
“But some of them are like Jared, and they’re worth saving,” she added. “I know they’re not pack wolves, but—”
“It was never about pack status, Mae. With all our subpacks, pack shifters outnumber rogues. I had a choice to make, and I couldn’t allow the pack to be the constant target of human hunters. Too many lives would have been lost. The human hunters were out for someone, and the rogue wolves were their choice. Turning a blind eye may not have been fair, but it was for the greater good. Fewer lives were lost because of it. This new arrangement with the rogues may be beneficial to them, but the Seven Range Pact will have to terminate our agreement with the Execution Underground. We won’t have the immunity from their hunters that we’ve enjoyed for so long. It will bring hellfire down on all of us, lives will be lost, but it was that or allow the vampires to destroy our whole species before we got the antidote.”
For once, her brother looked tired, wary, as if he wasn’t sure of himself or anything anymore. She knew the revelation of her father’s character would tak
e a toll on him, more than the alpha wolf would ever admit. Maverick had always aspired to rule in the way he thought their father had, but now with the truth of their father’s transgressions out in the open, Maverick would have to grapple with the fact that his singular role model hadn’t been the man he’d thought him to be.
The weight of that would shake her brother to his core. She knew that.
Moving forward, Maverick would have to forge his own path. And she had no doubt he would. There was still a fire in his eyes, a will to fight. He’d do whatever it took to keep their friends and family safe. He’d even sacrifice his own life if necessary.
“Well,” she said. “Better to die with honor while protecting all of our kind, and I’m not worried, Brother. I know you’ll be able to handle whatever challenges are ahead. You’ll lead us through. With or without Father’s example.”
Of that, she had little doubt. Her brother might have angered her, but he was a formidable warrior—unrivaled in his skill—and when he needed to be, he was a just and fair packmaster who even, on occasion, had a penchant for mercy. She thought of Maverick’s treatment of Wes Calhoun, and his brother, Colt Cavanaugh, and now Jared as well. Other packmasters would have cast them out, killed them even, for their disobedience, but Maverick was stronger than that. His critics had called his mercy reckless, but he was too brave and courageous to care. He’d done what was just. What was right. He might have been misguided when it came to the rogues and to her, but his intention—protecting the Grey Wolves no matter the cost, protecting her—was honorable.
“You know I’ll do whatever it takes.” Maverick cast her a half-hearted smile. “But there was one more thing, Mae. Before they left this morning, he asked that you be freed from all your obligations as a Grey.”
Mae blinked. She wasn’t certain she had heard him right. “What?” she murmured.
“He told me to give you this.” Maverick extended a bundle of something toward her. “He left this for you. I was going to give it to you when you came in, but you didn’t let me get a word out at first.”
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