by May Dawson
When we were leaving, he walked Ty and I outside the house. The house was lit brightly from within. The soundtrack from some kids’ movie played loudly enough for us to hear the perky music even outside, and when I glanced in the window, Marie danced with her kids good-humoredly in the living room. An ache lodged in my chest. No wonder he’d chosen this clean, bright world.
I told him quietly, “I still need an answer to my question.”
“I raised you, Maddie. For those early years before you were taken from us.” He glanced down at his hands. “You must wonder why I didn’t come back.”
“No,” I said, and my voice came out broken. He looked up quickly, but I forged on, swallowing the shards in my voice. “I don’t care. I just want to know if you were my biological father.”
He hesitated, as if choosing his words carefully would make a difference, and my breath froze in my chest.
“No,” he said, and he went on talking, but my blood rushed through my ears, drowning out his voice.
I’d known it was possible he wasn’t my father. But hearing it was so final. I stumbled, and I realized I’d accidentally taken a step back off the driveway into the uneven grass, as if I could back away from the truth.
He reached out as if he would steady me, but his hand paused near my shoulder before he dropped it without ever touching me. “Your mother was pregnant, and she was scared…”
“What was she scared of?”
His lips pursed regretfully, and I willed him to just say it. My heart was beating so fast I almost couldn’t bear it. I just wanted to get away from this conversation, but I had to know.
“Your father wasn’t a shifter.”
I’d been waiting to hear those four words. They still fell heavily, making the world lurch around me.
If my father was a witch, then I’d be taking my life into my hands if I went back to the academy.
“Who was he?” I demanded. Tell me it was some human, just some human. Maybe that was why I couldn’t shift as easily as most shifters.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Listen, Maddie, that wasn’t why I never came back. I didn’t want to be with her anymore. It wasn’t about you.”
“You found out sooner or later that I was alive.”
“Marie was pregnant with Keren and I didn’t want to drag her into that world—she still doesn’t know what I am—”
“It’s all right. You don’t have to justify it to me.” It didn’t matter, and yet, I couldn’t stop myself. “It’s not like you’re the only person to have a complicated family life. It’s the twenty-first century. People manage. But it’s okay, I get it.”
I wasn’t really his. There was no reason for him to come back for me.
“Maddie,” he said, a hopeless note in his voice. “You don’t understand.”
I took a step back toward the car. “You’re right. I don’t.”
Tyson’s face went tight as he took in my emotions, and his hands folded into fists. I shook my head at him, my eyes blurring with tears, before I turned on my heel and rushed to the car. Tyson caught up with me a few minutes later.
“He says he doesn’t know anything about who your biological father was,” Tyson told me. “But I asked him to write down everything he remembers about Joan from that time. We’ll find some kind of lead.”
“Okay.” I turned away so he couldn’t see my face.
He rested a comforting hand on my shoulder. “Maddie, are you…”
He faltered. Wolves don’t deal well with emotion.
“Crying outside the house of not-my-father who raised me for years but couldn’t be bothered to pop up when I turned out to be alive? After hearing that I’m a witch and will have no future in the shifter community? No. Of course not.”
Tyson’s hand on my shoulder was comforting, but then his fingers tightened the second before he spun me around.
Tyson met my gaze evenly. “You’re not a witch. You might have magic, but you aren’t running off to join a coven, are you?”
I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. You know what people will think…”
“No one can decide who you are but you, Maddie. It doesn’t matter who your parents are.”
“That’s a nice idea,” I said. “We both know it’s a lie.”
Tyson pulled me into a hug, and I let my eyes drift shut as he drew me into the warm solidity of his chest.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said, my throat thick. “We could go to my mom’s house next. Someone tampered with her memories for a reason. She might not remember who my father was, but maybe there’s something there…”
“Let’s go,” he said without hesitation.
But he should hesitate.
“Maybe you should go back to the academy,” I said. “You heard him. I can’t go back. Maybe they’ll try to kill me. Maybe I’m some kind of witch sleeper agent, maybe they did something to my brain besides wiping my memories. Maybe I’m a danger to you all.”
“Maddie,” Tyson tried to break in.
“Hell, maybe the witch who posed as my father really was my father. Maybe that’s why he was so much more terrible to Piper than he ever was to me.”
“You’re spiraling.” Tyson’s fingers curled into my shoulders, shaking me ever-so-gently back and forth.
“I’m scared,” I admitted.
Tyson didn’t deny that I had good reason to be scared.
“I know,” he said. “But I’m here. We’ll figure it out together.”
“Didn’t you just hear me say that I could be a danger to you?”
“Speaking of hearing. Why don’t you listen to me for once?” he asked, fond exasperation written across his face. “I know you better than that, Maddie. You could never hurt me. And I’m not going anywhere. All right?”
“You’re crazy,” I said.
“Sure,” he agreed. He drew me into his arms, and I let him pull me into the warm comfort of his chest. I wrapped my arms around his lean waist, my breath hitching as I fought back tears.
Until I couldn’t anymore, and I sobbed into his shoulder.
He didn’t pretend I had nothing to be afraid of, but he held me as I fell apart.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Tyson
We were running out of ideas. Maddie seemed subdued as we drove toward Joan’s house off the island. Her natural state seemed to be a bright, constant energy, and seeing her like that made something protective and tight build under my skin. I wanted to make her smile again.
But these were problems that I couldn’t fix.
When her cell phone chimed with an incoming text, her lips tugged to one side. “Just a friendly reminder from Rafe that we have to be back at the academy in less than twenty-four-hours. Or… never.”
“Did he say that?” Nothing would surprise me. Rafe wasn’t the type to pull any punches.
“He wants me back by late afternoon,” she frowned. “Clearborn wants to see me. Rafe wants to talk first.”
“You’re in trouble,” I teased.
Her lips arched up in a smile. “Aren’t I always?”
As we followed our route to the address Piper had texted, Maddie sat up, frowning. We were headed further and further into the city, and Maddie said, “It can’t be here…”
I tapped my phone, mounted to Lex’s dash and displaying Google maps. “Six miles to go. Wait, you knew where your mom lived, didn’t you?”
Something guilty flashed across her face before she shook her head. “She has a house on the island, too, and that’s where we always met. Piper would never have let me go to some random house with Joan where I would have no protection.”
“From the covens?” I asked.
She hesitated. “That was part of it.”
So, Piper had wanted to protect her from Joan, too. I didn’t think asking more questions about that dynamic would improve Maddie’s mood.
The last few miles flew by in silence. Maddie stared out the window at the endless concrete and the cars. “I can’t i
magine her living here. Surrounded by so much concrete and metal, and not the forest and the sea…”
“Do you think she had a reason? Her job…”
She shook her head. “She bartended, mostly. I think a good bartender can find work anywhere.”
“But she must have had some reason she chose here.”
“Oh, I’m sure she did. Until lately, she always had some kind of plot.” Her jaw tightened. “And the one time she slipped and was just real, she set me up…”
The look on her face, with her set jaw and her lashes closing as if she was seeing the future and it looked bleak, tore at my heart.
“We’ll find a way out of this,” I promised. “So what if it turns out one of your parents is a witch? You’ve only ever used those skills to do good things. You saved Rafe, didn’t you?”
Her lips parted in surprise.
“I’m not stupid, Maddie,” I reminded her.
“Do you think the Dean and Clearborn know too?” There was a note of fear in her voice.
“No,” I said, too quickly to be convincing. “I was there when you blacked out. Rafe was bleeding—but not heavy—on both sides. As if he’d taken two bullets that both glanced off his skin, or as if he’d healed from the inside out…”
She tugged at the ends of her hair, looping it around her fingers, then looked down at her soft blond strands as if she’d realized what she was doing. She tucked her hair back behind her ears before plastering it down with her hands. “Piper always scolds me when she sees me playing with my hair. Because people will think I’m a ditz.”
“No one who knew you would think that.” I reached over and ran my fingers through her hair, and she swayed into my touch faintly.
I racked my brain for something I could say to make her feel better. It would be a bonus if that something were true.
“I know shifters are hard-headed and obnoxious, but I think eventually, they’ll see the truth about you. The truth about magic.”
“Is that hope worth risking our lives for?” she asked, tilting her head as she studied me. “Worth risking all our lives?”
Her voice was dark.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. It was the kind of gamble that couldn’t be undone.
“I should tell you,” she said, “since it seems like there’s some kind of magic for you, too…”
I still wasn’t sure about that, and my lips tightened as I held back my protest. She didn’t need to hear it right now.
She hesitated long enough that I prompted her, “What is it?”
I felt keyed up, but my voice still came out gentle. I wanted to be who she needed right now.
“Rafe said maybe we shouldn’t go back,” she said reluctantly. “If we have magic. You know how wolves feel about magic…”
“Where would we go?”
“We could go to Northsea territory,” she said. “You and me. We’d have each other, at least.”
She flashed me a sad smile. It would be a life of captivity. We’d be safe inside the borders of their pack lands, and Northsea territory stretched far now. But we’d never be able to leave it unless pack culture changed.
“And they’d welcome us in? Even…”
“Yes,” she said quickly, her eyes widening. “Of course. They aren’t like that…they don’t think magic is a bad thing. All that matters is what you do with it.”
“Maybe someday the packs will all think that way.” I slowed the car, before nosing over into a parking space.
Maddie was still watching me. “You don’t want to even think about it, huh?”
“I’ve spent most of my life thinking about how I could make a life for myself outside my own pack territory. Ever since I saw my alpha rip my father’s throat out.” I cut the engine. “I’m sure your pack is great, but I’m not aiming to trade my freedom to any alpha for my food and my bed, ever again.”
I hadn’t meant for my voice to come out so tight and full of emotion, but it betrayed me.
She gave me a long look, her gaze full of sadness. Well, I’d done a great job lightening the mood.
“Let’s go,” I said. “Do you have a key?”
She shook her head.
“Good thing you have a reprobate for a boyfriend then,” I said lightly.
Her lips curved up at the edges as she hopped out of the car. She looked at me over the top of it. “So you’re my boyfriend then, are you?”
“Unless you don’t want me to be,” I said. “Given what we did the other day… and the… Penn and Jensen are your boyfriends, aren’t they?”
“They haven’t given me their letter jackets or anything,” she said. “Although Jensen did give me a lovely little knife. I guess that was a token of affection.”
Her tone was light, teasing, and it made my heart lift in my chest. It was like Penn not to nail things down in concrete terms, to give it a name. As much as Jensen obviously loved Maddie, he was too sarcastic and guarded to talk about their relationship.
I came around the front of the car, and when she turned to me, smiling, I leaned in to pin her against the side of the car. Her face rose to meet mine, and I pressed my lips to hers in a sweet, tender kiss.
“Would you be my girlfriend, Madeline Northsea?”
She nodded, a smile still fixed on her lips. As I leaned in to kiss her again, her body swayed against mine. No matter how busy the street we were on or desperate the situation, the draw between us was magnetic. Just breathing in her scent had me hard with longing.
“I happen to have my old letter jacket,” I told her. “If you want it. Hanging up in my closet at the academy.”
I hoped we’d make it back there.
“I’d like that,” she admitted. “I hope we can go back.”
Instead of talking about the future, she tugged my shirt, pulling me down to her, and I covered her mouth with mine again.
And just for a minute, the sun shone on us, and the world was peaceful.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Maddie
Joan’s place was a fourth-floor walk-up. There was a faint odor as we climbed the stairs of wood rot and bleach. Ty glanced around, checking for cameras or prying eyes, but there was no one else on the lonely floor. As he jimmied his lock picks into the door, he blocked his work with his body from anyone who might come up the stairs.
I rang the doorbell, then leaned next to him, pretending that we were two fine upstanding citizens waiting for someone to answer the door.
Ty popped the lock. As I closed the door behind us, he moved rapidly through each room to make sure it was safe. I was pretty sure we would’ve scented anyone in here, but his protective urge still made me smile.
The two of us snapped on gloves, just in case. My mother’s apartment was small, just a living room/kitchen combo, a small bedroom and a bathroom.
When I opened her refrigerator door, it smelled like her milk had soured and her meat had turned. I pulled a face as I closed it again fast. There was a scent of garbage in the house too. I’d clean out the fridge and take out her trash before I left.
I wanted to believe she’d be coming back.
When I walked back into her bedroom, Tyson searched carefully under the bed.
“Nothing in the kitchen,” I said, moving around in the narrow path between the bed to the window. There were no curtains, and I wondered if she could see the moon from bed, despite the light pollution and the surrounding buildings. From here, I could see into the windows of the next apartment building, and the roof that jutted into the skyline. “My father must’ve been here since he took the necklace from her.”
Tyson’s back was to me as he pulled a box out from underneath the bed. “Do you think you would know? Sense him somehow?”
I didn’t think I would, but part of me hoped I’d see someone and just know. I knew I was being stupid, though. “He’s probably not a very nice person. He did something to my mother’s memories…”
Tyson lifted the top off the box to reveal what must be a dozen journ
als. “Maddie.”
“Is there one from the year I was born?” I demanded.
Together, the two of us lifted each book out and lay them chronologically on the bed. My mother had kept a journal faithfully. She hadn’t written daily, but she had written regularly, never missing more than a week.
There were no journals, though, for the year before or the year after I was born.
I flipped through the pages. My mother had tight, tense handwriting, as if her anger seeped out into her penmanship. In her most recent entries, she’d written larger, some of the sentences slanting off the lines of the pages.
I don’t remember anything before M was 2. Maybe I’ll forget her entirely the way she’s forgotten me.
Tyson gently took the journal out of my hands, and I realized when I met his worried gaze that I was biting my lip.
I raked my fingers through my hair. “Do you think he took them when he took the necklace?”
“Maybe,” he said.
I sat heavily on the side of the bed. “We can’t seem to get any closer to him.”
Tyson rested his hands on my shoulders, and my thighs parted to let him close to me as he began to massage my shoulders, easing some of my tension.
“Every investigation has its dead ends,” he said. “But something will move us forward. Trust me. I’ve watched a lot of Law and Order.”
I started to smile, then the window cracked behind him.
Ty’s eyes widened, his mouth parting.
He fell to his knees in front of me.
“Ty,” I said, sinking to the floor, slipping a hand behind his back to ease his way down as he fell. “Ty? What happened?”
My hand came away covered in blood.
“Shot,” he managed. “Someone’s been waiting for us. You’ve got to go. Now.”
“Oh no,” I said. “I’m not leaving you.”
“Maddie.” He gritted his teeth as he raised his head to glare at me.
“Would you leave me?” I demanded. He stared back at me, eyes narrowed. We both knew the answer to that. “So don’t think you’re better than me, jackass.”