Their Shifter Academy 3: Undone

by May Dawson

  “I’m about to talk myself into moving in here with you,” Jensen told Chase as we stood in the basement, which was already decorated in Early Man Den, with a giant pool table and stolen street signs and framed movie posters decorating the walls. “At least every Saturday night when they let us loose.”

  “As long as you’re buying the beer,” Chase said.

  We left behind a scandalized realtor, but walked away with some ridiculous plans, the kind that were supposed to be pretend but weren’t quite anymore.

  They were the kind of ridiculous that made me want to stay in this world.

  I was headed down the front steps as Jensen and Chase argued around me about what kind of honeymoon Maddie would want to go on, and about the feasibility of going on multiple honeymoons, and if each honeymoon would be one-on-one or if we should all get to go.

  Then I saw the black falcon, sitting on the hood of the car, head cocked to one side. Eerie yellow eyes watched me. As soon as I nodded, acknowledging that I saw the damn bird, it strutted to the edge of the hood, then flew away, soaring toward the north.

  Fuck. A message from home.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Maddie

  The next morning in the car, I toyed with the hem of my t-shirt absently, hoping I didn’t still smell like sex.

  We hadn’t wanted to infringe on the tarot card reader’s hospitality any longer than we must. This morning, we’d put away the canned goods, then carried the mattress up, but still, when she gazed around the room, I couldn’t help but feel like signs of our debauchery abounded.

  “We need to track down what happened to...Joan’s husband.” I couldn’t call them my mother or father anymore. Not until I knew. “He said he was my father. Joan said she searched for him—”

  I assumed he’d died somewhere along the way, and the strange message I’d received came from somewhere else. But there was still a part of me that beat with hope that I’d find him alive, and that he didn’t know about me, and that we’d develop some kind of relationship...

  My phone dinged just then. Piper.

  Finn thinks he found your dad. 420 Bearing St, Eastmont.

  Piper’s pack had been working on running down what might have happened to my father by tracking down financial records. Something must have turned up.

  I stared at it. “This shouldn’t be this easy.”

  “Maybe Joan didn’t really want to find him,” Ty suggested.

  My lips pursed at that thought.

  The thought made my chest tight, but I patted the dashboard. “Let’s go.”

  As we were driving, Ty glanced over at me. “Do you want to talk about your dad?”

  “I do not,” I said. “Pretend I’m a wolfish boy. Assume that’s how much I want to talk about my feelings.”

  “What about last night?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t have regrets, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  His lips tightened. Maybe he had regrets. The realization made my chest hurt.

  “We should talk about it at some point. What it means,” Ty said. Then, he added, “Or did you and Penn already decide?”

  I couldn’t deal with Penn-and-Ty right now on top of things with my parents.

  “It means that you’re a beautiful man, and we had amazing sex,” I snapped. “And that I’m even more curious about the Fae world than I was before.”

  He nodded slowly. From the look on his face, he didn’t appreciate my quick, pat answer one bit.

  I couldn’t help being cold right then. I didn’t know what to say or do. The memory of last night’s festival of fucking and worse, feeling, felt like a night I’d spent drunk and now I was hungover. I’d told Ty I loved him. I’d spilled enough about my feelings for a lifetime.

  I couldn’t be vulnerable right now. Not when I was about to face my father.

  Even though he seemed irritated with my reluctance to talk this morning, that fell away as he drove. He turned bright and easygoing again, making little jokes and arguing with me over the radio. When he grinned as he batted my hands away from the radio, his high cheekbones swelled, his smile wide and bright.

  He was so handsome it was ridiculous. I felt a growing ache in my chest that I’d hurt his feelings, but I wasn’t sure how to fix that now.

  His ability to make everything comfortable again after I made things weird made me feel safe.

  “You know what worries me?” I asked. “About you, and Jensen, and Penn?”

  He would know what the three of them had in common.

  “What?”

  “You all matter to me an awful lot,” I said. “I don’t want to ruin things.”

  “As friends?” He asked.

  “As whatever we are,” I said. “The future is so complicated. We don’t even know what next year will be like. But I like right now, in the moment—”

  “In the moment, things are pretty much a mess,” he reminded me.

  “True,” I said. But I did have them. For now.

  I needed Chase and Silas, Rafe and Lex, too. Even if I didn’t know what would happen between them and me, I did need them. Somehow.

  He was quiet for a few long seconds, and then he said, “You ever feel like you want things to change and you don’t, all at the same time?”

  “Yeah. That’s...exactly it.” I wanted things to be easy and comfortable between Ty and me. And I wanted to dive deeper into a relationship with him, to get to know him better, to have more nights like last night.

  “I feel that way too,” he said. “But that’s just not how life works. Things are going to change.”

  “Something bad is coming,” I said. “I don’t know if it’s...magic...that makes me feel that way, or if it’s in my head, or if it’s my wolfish instincts…”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I think you’re right.”

  “This is making me feel better. Not.”

  “The thing is, Maddie, whether or not things get worse? I don’t think that has anything to do with us. Not me or Penn—even though we have some shit to work out, we’ll be on your side. We’ll be here. When things get bad.”

  “Those are big promises,” I said, wanting to believe them, and at the same time, knowing the time might come when I should push them away to protect them.

  I glanced away out the window. It was all too easy to imagine myself running back to Blissford. I could picture myself stuck on pack lands because I couldn’t leave the protection of the Atlantic pack. I’d be a prisoner there, but trapped with people who loved me.

  But I shouldn’t sentence my guys to live in Blissford for me, even if they were willing to go.

  Tyson swore under his breath, as if he knew he wasn’t reaching me and it frustrated him.

  “I found a Christmas CD,” he told me, punching it into the CD player. “I didn’t really think of Lex as being a jolly kind of guy, but you seem like you could use some Christmas cheer.”

  “It’s October.”

  “Christmas cheer is year-round.”

  “It’s actually just annoying.”

  Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas filled the car. I groaned as I leaned back, covering my face with my hands.

  Then he asked, “You and Lex didn’t meet until spring, did you?”

  “Right. Prospective student visit. Met him, and you, and various other men sure to make my life far more complicated, all in one fell swoop.” I touched his arm to make sure he knew I didn’t mind.

  “Where does he go for Christmas?”

  The question made an ache lodge in my chest. Suddenly I could picture Lex listening to Christmas music in his car, tapping out the rhythm on the steering wheel as he drove with nowhere to go.

  And Ty must have felt alone too, during all those holidays in the alpha’s house when his parents were gone.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I hope maybe he’ll come home with me this year if he wants to. Damn the rules. And you…”

  I glanced at him sideways. “If you want, I’d love if you came
home with me.”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Northsea. It’s October.”

  I had to grin. Typical Tyson. I could tell he liked the idea, that it even meant something to him to be invited, but he gave me that mischievous smile and deflected the whole topic.

  When we got to 420 Bearing Street, we parked on the street. There were no cars in the driveway.

  Ty glanced at my face, and I wasn’t sure what he saw there, but he unlatched his seat belt. “Hang on. I’ll see if anyone is home.”

  He bounded up the steps to the front porch and rang the bell. When no one answered, he quickly meandered through the side yard, and circled around to the other side. I was already getting out of the car.

  “Let’s get to know him before we get to know him,” I said, tossing Ty his lock-picking kit.

  When we got inside the house, I was drawn through the entryway to the photos on the living room mantle of a sandy-haired man I knew from other photos. He was older, but I felt a jolt of familiarity. I knew this man from my baby photos, where he’d blown out the candle on my first birthday cake as he held me, or where he’d slept on the couch with me on his chest.

  If those photos were even real.

  He had his arm around a petite brunette in a lot of the photos. The kids in the rest of the pictures all had dark hair too. They were young, maybe early school age.

  He’d had kids after I’d come home from the coven. He might’ve known that I was alive.

  But maybe he hadn’t known.

  Maybe it didn’t matter either way. I had a mission here.

  The two of us went to work, searching the house thoroughly. It made me feel better to snap on gloves and move, working through the house in a systematic manner, searching for any evidence he used magic.

  But there was no evidence of anything but a normal guy living a nice life.

  We headed back to the car and waited.

  An SUV came down the street, and I felt Ty’s attention focus. I was already staring at it, but even though I caught a glimpse of the man driving, I didn’t feel some magical thrill of recognition. The SUV pulled into the driveway of the house we’d just searched.

  There was a sudden, senseless lump in my throat. “We should confront him and see how he reacts.”

  I should use his name. Tom. But it didn’t feel natural to call him something other than dad, and it didn’t feel natural to call him dad, either.

  Ty glanced at me as if he saw right through me, but all he said was, “Okay.”

  “You keep an eye on how he reacts,” I said. Reluctantly, I admitted, “I might be distracted.”

  “Of course,” Ty said, as if it were nothing, as if I wasn’t betraying my weakness.

  Tom went in the front door with his two kids. The next thing I knew, the garage door rattled open. His car slid out under the opening door as soon as he could possibly clear it.

  “He scented us in the house,” Ty said. “You go, Maddie. He’ll be more likely to see me as a threat.”

  “Little does he know you’re the nice guy who loves Christmas carols and I’m the actual badass.” There was a deep pit in my stomach, but I automatically moved forward anyway, even though everything in my body screamed to run away.

  Tom saw me when I was halfway to his car. His eyes widened, and he stopped suddenly in the driveway.

  I thought he recognized me, but when he got out of the car, he said quietly, “What were you doing in my house?”

  He paused half out of the car, ready to duck in and run. In the backseat, I could see the top of the kids’ heads.

  “Are you in some kind of trouble?” he asked, his gaze troubled as it met mine. “Do you need help?”

  God, my dad was a nice guy.

  Funny that hurt.

  “Yeah, I do,” I said. “I’m not here to hurt you. Neither is he.” I jerked my thumb over my shoulder to Tyson.

  “Why were you in my house?”

  “I wanted to know who you were,” I said. “Since it’s been a while since we met. Dad.”

  He touched his finger to his lips quickly. When he got into the car, I half thought he was going to run away for real. But he reversed the car back into the garage. When he got out, he looked over the car door at me, still frowning.

  “I guess you better come in,” he said.

  Inside the house, the two kids ran off to help themselves to snacks from the kitchen. He didn’t introduce us, and they didn’t seem to care, shedding backpacks and jackets and dumping them on the floor.

  “Come into the kitchen. Do you want anything?” He glanced around, his nostrils flaring. “I’d tell you that we’ve got tea, Coke, apple juice, but I guess you already know that.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “We had to know what we were walking into.”

  As much as we could.

  “Yeah, normally the best way to start a family reunion isn’t with a B&E,” he said.

  “Is that your fatherly advice?” My voice came out sharp.

  He hesitated, as if he was debating what to say next. Tyson leaned against the kitchen counter, crossing his arms. Maybe he was trying to blend into the furniture in the middle of this family moment, but his movement drew both our gazes.

  I studied Tom. “You don’t seem surprised to see me.”

  He must have known I was alive.

  “I figured you’d find me one day if you wanted to,” he said. “Even as a kid, you were too smart for your own good.”

  He said it fondly.

  My lips parted, about to ask a question, but the kids ran into the kitchen. The little girl was older; someone had pinned a ridiculous big sparkly bow on her ponytail that flapped when she ran.

  “Daddy, can I have a cheese stick?” She asked, swinging open the fridge door. “I’ll get one for Rhett too.”

  “Sure,” he said.

  The little boy pulled open the pantry door. “Can we have applesauce pouches?”

  “Knock yourself out,” he said.

  The little girl turned so fast that she almost knocked the milk jug out of the fridge. She must have picked up on his weakness, because she asked, “Can we have Oreos?”

  Without comment, he reached up to the top shelf of the pantry and pulled down the box of Oreos. He handed a sleeve of cookies to Rhett, whose eyes lit up. “There you go. A well-rounded after school snack. Go play.”

  As the two of them ran off, their high voices blended into chatty, bubbly glee.

  My chest was suddenly tight.

  “I like Oreos too,” I said, holding out my hand.

  He gave me the most confused look, but handed me the box. I did love Oreos, but I didn’t even know why I’d said that.

  This is what happens when you grow up being tortured by the coven and raised by a stranger who turned into a sister. You get socially awkward.

  I crunched into an Oreo. Maybe I was just stalling because the question I had to ask felt so big and terrible.

  “Are you really my father?” I asked.

  His lips parted.

  Rhett ran into the room, his socks sliding on the linoleum. “Can we watch TV?”

  “No!” Tom exclaimed.

  Rhett’s feet slid all the way out from under him, and he crashed into the ground. He started to cry.

  Tom picked him up and held him on his hip, bouncing him absently. “That’s why I tell you not to run on the linoleum,” he said, before kissing his hair. “Are you going to survive? Do we need to amputate?”

  Rhett raised his head from his shoulder, where he’d snuggled as if he belonged there. “You know what would make me feel better?”

  “No,” Tom said.

  “Watching Pokémon.”

  “I don’t want to tell you no a third time.” Tom put him down on his feet and gave him a playful push toward the door.

  “Well, we don’t want you to either,” the girl said from the doorway.

  The garage door rumbled open. He put his head down, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You two have some ter
rible timing.”

  “Us?” I asked, glancing at the kids. “Or them?”

  “All of you,” he said. “Kids, go see if your mom needs any help bringing dinner in. You two want to stay?”

  The kids ran off.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Didn’t think I could get rid of you anyway,” he said.

  “You have a nice family,” I said tightly.

  He hesitated, then said, “I don’t want them to know.”

  My stomach dropped, even though I’d expected that.

  “Yeah, I figured you wouldn’t. I don’t plan to blurt out the truth, don’t worry. You want me to be a cousin or something who dropped by unexpectedly?” A sharp edge broke into my voice, even though I didn’t mean for it to.

  “That would be great.”

  “Perfect.” My tone was frosty.

  “And who am I?” Ty asked lightly.

  “You’re my boyfriend,” I said.

  Given the conversation we had earlier, he might be the boyfriend who was sick of my shit.

  A woman followed her kids back into the kitchen. She was petite, her black hair pulled back in a smooth knot at the nape of her neck. She had a polite, perplexed smile fixed on her face.

  “Hey honey.” He moved to give her a quick peck on the cheek. “My cousin Maddie stopped by unexpectedly. And this is…her boyfriend. This is Marie.”

  She gave him a curious look, raising her eyebrows. Shit. He didn’t know Tyson’s name. The two of us had jumped right into our angsty conversation.

  “Tyson,” Ty said, holding out his hand. He flashed her a charming smile, and her eyes widened before a genuine smile bloomed across her face. Tyson went on, “Forgive us for just stopping in. We were driving through and we stopped on a whim.”

  “It’s nice to meet you both,” she said. “Well, I ordered too much Chinese food. I always do.”

  Soon, the six of us were seated around the oval table in their dining room. When Marie asked me if I could grab some more napkins after one of the kids spilled their milk, I pretended I didn’t know where they were in the buffet behind my chair. But I’d searched underneath the napkins looking for evidence he was up to something nefarious.