Birthright (Pale Moonlight Book 1)

by Marie Johnston

Sanders tried really hard to keep pity out of his expression, but Porter smelled it. “That was before you spent every waking minute building, carving, staining…” He struggled, looking down at the pavement. “Have you talked to her at all?”

  “She won’t want to talk to me.” There. Porter said the words that kept him up at night. His behavior drove her out of his house, and his life. His insomnia wasn’t because he was sleeping on the living room floor. Her scent stayed preserved in his bedroom like a mausoleum of gigantic regrets.

  “And you know that how?”

  He was an asshole? He was selfish? Hadn’t treated her wishes with respect? “Because I don’t want to talk to me either.” There it was. The flicker of sympathy in Sanders’ eyes that reflected how pathetic Porter felt. “Besides, it’d do no good. Her life is there, mine is here.” Porter stomped to his pickup to climb in and go back to his garage of solitude.

  Was it sad that he’d moved everything out of his living room? Just being in his house was torture so he spent as little time within its walls as possible.

  “Denlan, it’s not the middle ages. It’s not the days before cars were invented. We have these things now called phones, internet…Skype.”

  “Don’t be a dick.”

  “I’m not, dude. Now that you’re in charge, we have more internet access than ever.”

  Porter shook his head, resigned to the fact that Maggie was out of his life and it was because of him.

  His friend refused to give up. “Meeting our mates doesn’t mean everything’s hunky-dory and we can live happily ever after. It means I’d better put the damn dishes away or Betha will stomp around the house mentioning everything else I don’t listen to her about. It means that when she announced she wants to become an accountant, I’d better find some fake documents to help her go to school. It means that I have to apologize. A lot. Because she’s never wrong.”

  Porter smiled despite himself. He adored Sanders and Betha. Not just because his friend had ripped the band aid off and revealed that yes, he thought the fairy tale came with the mating bond.

  His smile faded. “I fucked up, Sanders. Bad.”

  “We all do.” Sanders clapped him on the back. “Get used to crawling back to her on your knees. It won’t be the first time.”

  Porter considered Sanders’ advice the entire ride home. What if he called Maggie and she told him to fuck off?

  What if she didn’t?

  He hung onto that thought. For the first time in so many, many weeks hope bloomed. After all, it was either Maggie or no one. He couldn’t imagine dredging up interest in another female any time in the next century.

  That gave him years to grovel his way back into her heart.

  So… How should he reach her? Drive within range and tap in telepathically? No, what if she was doing something important, like…fighting someone?

  Email? No, he didn’t know her address, or if she had one.

  Phone? He didn’t know her number.

  Quit being a damn pussy and call the girl.

  Every clan leader had a way to reach the Guardians. As the newly appointed mayor, the information was already in his computer. He just needed to dig in and find it. The contact wouldn’t get him directly to Maggie, but close enough. Several of the Guardians were mated males. They’d know all about spontaneous idiotic episodes of male brain.

  ***

  “Pass the peas, please.” Armana smiled at Cassie.

  Jace’s mate grinned and passed the bowl of veggies Maggie had never seen her mom eat, proving she was really trying to gain ground with Jace. He was still cool toward her, but they continued their weekly dinners together in Jace’s cabin, away from the others at the lodge.

  Same dinner, different week. Maggie and Jace talked shop. Cassie chatted with Armana.

  Maggie shoved the last mouthful of briquette in and chewed quickly. Jace had a plateful left because she’d asked him to explain how he invested the Guardians’ holdings. While her financially minded brother geeked out, she finished dinner.

  He wrapped up an explanation she only half followed. She pushed away from the table. “I’ll get dishes tonight.”

  Cassie’s shrewd mind interpreted what Maggie was doing. She snapped her fingers. “Shoot. I forgot I told Kaitlyn I’d stop by tonight.” She smiled at Maggie and Armana, kissed her scowling mate and started for the door. “If you’ll excuse me.”

  Silence filled the cabin once the door shut.

  “Your mate doesn’t lie very well, Jace.” Armana smiled fondly.

  Maggie chuckled, almost breaking Jace’s sour mood, but he remained stout. “Cassie hasn’t needed to lie to me.” The tone of his statement sounded as if it ended with an unspoken until you got here aimed at their mother.

  Armana’s face fell, her hands folded on the table.

  “It was my fault,” Maggie interjected. “I wanted to change it up tonight so you two had a chance to talk. To each other.”

  “We’ve talked,” Jace grumbled.

  “I explained everything to you.” Armana was folding her cloth napkin into tiny squares, then undoing it all to start over again. “But we haven’t talked since then. I understand your feelings toward me, son. I wouldn’t push it, I knew you needed time, but it appears to bother both your sister and your mate.”

  He threw his hands up, biceps bunching under his shirt’s material. “What am I supposed to do? Say it’s great talking to you after the last thirteen years of you cutting me out of your life?”

  Her brother needed to back the hell off. “Jace—”

  Armana held up a hand. “It’s all right, Maggie. I can take a lot. You and Jace are alive and well. It’s all I’ve wanted from the beginning, even after I lost your father and Keve.” Armana’s voice broke on the last few words.

  Maggie and Jace glanced at each other.

  “I’m sorry, Ma.” Maggie sat back in her chair to hug her mom. “I’ve never thought of how awful it was for you.”

  Jace slouched back in his chair, too. “Look, it’s not that I don’t want in you back in my life.” He shrugged. “Before I left home, it was a push-pull between us. We argued half the time, then…nothing. I don’t know to act around you now. It’s like we’re strangers.”

  “He’s right, Ma.” Maggie caught her mom’s gaze. “It’s like you’re still you, but we’re different.”

  Armana grabbed Maggie’s hand, reaching out for Jace, whose brows drew down like he wondered if his mom really wanted them to chain together holding hands. She beckoned him with her fingers. He finally rested his palm on hers, easily dwarfing it.

  “We start from here.” Armana squeezed them both. “We have each other, and we have Cassie and the Guardians.” She turned to Maggie, her nurturing mom expression in full force. “And it’ll work out for you and Porter. Like us, he has things to work out.”

  Maggie tried to prevent doubt and loneliness from registering on her face, but Jace picked up on it. “You really want him back?”

  Sighing, she freed her hand from her mom and crossed her arms, suddenly defensive. “Come on. Has it always been smooth sailing between you and Cassie?”

  “No. She stabbed me in the back. Literally.”

  Armana’s mouth dropped open with Maggie’s.

  He nodded to say yeah, totally. “I’ll tell you the story sometime. She did it to save us. Totally different reason than Denlan.”

  “That may be so, but we live a long time, with passionate emotions—including anger.” Armana’s gaze turned retrospective. “Bane could piss me off like no one else.”

  “Dad?” Maggie’s few memories were of gentle words and a big laugh.

  “Oh, darling. One day, after I spent the whole night up with you when you were a baby, he took Keve to run in the woods. It had stormed the night before and he didn’t think anything of it. Thought there was no issue with letting Keve run home—and through the house—on all four muddy paws.”

  “I remember that,” Jace chimed in, focusing on the table
like he was prying the episode out of a locked vault. “You handed a squalling Maggie to Dad and left. You were gone for the rest of the day and all night.”

  Armana’s blue eyes crinkled at the corners. “I ran the woods and remained a wolf to sleep in the woods all night.”

  “And you came back to a spotless house,” Jace finished.

  They all laughed. Maggie was struck with how good this felt, for the first time in months, she felt like things might turn out all right.

  Then the chasm Porter left in her life yawned wide.

  “Have you dreamed anything?” Armana asked.

  Maggie shook her head. “I’ve tried. Nothing on Porter.” Nothing. “I think I pick up Seamus once in a while, but it’s like incoherent fury. I sense his complete identity is wrapped up in Lobo Springs. In his mind, he made the town and it turned on him and he can’t focus his rage.”

  Jace drummed his fingers. “Have you told the commander?”

  “It only happened twice, and I couldn’t determine where he was other than in the wild. But yes, I reported it both times.”

  “Good.”

  The three went quiet again until Armana broke the silence. “I’d love to hear about what you both do during the day.”

  Maggie was relieved she wouldn’t have to go back to her room and be alone with her thoughts of how shitty her life was without Porter. She and Jace talked over each other, entertaining their mom well into the night.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Maggie was getting worse, not better.

  Huffing up a steep incline, she clawed with her hands to the crest and jumped as far as she could to the other side. Branches scraped her face, dirt and debris clung to her skin, but still she ran.

  If Jace saw her, he’d say she should be in her wolf form. If Master Bellamy knew what she was up to, he’d say she needed to run smarter. The mad speed she tore through the woods with wasn’t about training or adapting to her heritage. It was about running until she couldn’t feel the loss and betrayal that laced every thought of Porter Denlan. Running until she numbed to the pain throbbing in her heart.

  Her pace increased. She passed the boundaries of the Guardians’ wards, uncaring of the repercussions. She was sick of being confined, tired of every one using their heartbreak home brews on her. Escape was a necessity for her sanity.

  The visit with her mother and Jace two nights ago had turned out well. She’d went to bed so optimistic only to lie awake all night and drag ass the next morning.

  Circumventing tree trunks, low hanging branches, and thick underbrush, her sneakers took the abuse. By the time she was done, they’d be shredded. Maybe they’d let her out to go to town and shop.

  Fuck! Maybe that was it. She just needed to get out. She woke up to lessons with Jace, spent the day getting kicked around by a centuries-old shifter who didn’t look much older than her mother, went to bed getting her ass handed to her by Kaitlyn. In between, when she tried to eat, Cassie showed up to “talk.”

  Actually, her sister really was just trying to get to know her, but Maggie wasn’t in a place to chat. Because she didn’t want to just pick Cassie’s therapist brain, she wanted her to be a fucking crystal ball and tell her whether Porter was done with her.

  It should be Maggie who was done with him. Pining for a male she’d known less than a week—ridiculous. Jace tried convincing her it was the mating bond. If only! Her mother was steadfast that all would be all right, Maggie just needed to relax and let it happen.

  Relax? Her hormones kept her up at night, writhing in bed because her body yearned for his touch, and stealing her focus during the day. She held on to every detail of their late night cuddle talking about their lost loved ones, how he snatched her out of Seamus’ way when he vaulted out of the window, then buffered her fall with himself, and that last night together when they really connected.

  One day, she’d watched Kaitlyn nibble on chocolate. The deep brown squares reminded her of the color of Porter’s eyes. Pathetic! And she knew it but couldn’t help the feelings tormenting her.

  Cars humming in the distance alerted Maggie that she was getting closer to the highway. Even though she was running as a human, she craved complete isolation. Adjusting her course, she charged deeper into the trees.

  The only saving grace to the last two months was that no one told her to move on, encouraging her to head to Pale Moonlight, meet some male shifters, and purge Porter from her system. This mate business was serious shit, and apparently she wandered unchartered territory getting rejected by hers.

  Alas, despite how her heart yearned for its mate, he ranked as a complete asshole and Maggie needed to discover a way to live without him and reach her full potential.

  But what if he came groveling back…No! The gut wrenching feelings on the what-if cruise were dangerous.

  He’d had two months. If he crawled on his knees back to her, he’d have reached her by now.

  Slowing to a stop, she rested her hands on her hips until she caught her breath. Scanning the woods, she discerned how far out she was. Time to get back.

  Pivoting, she loped along the same path she’d plowed on her way out.

  An awareness dawned on her, beginning with a tingle along her spine, like she was being watched.

  Pretending nothing was amiss, with each inhale she breathed deeply. The scent of another shifter tinted the air. A male.

  The Guardians mentioned other shifters ran the area outside of West Creek. Heavily wooded with few recreation areas for humans, it was the safest place to run their wolves for miles.

  She tasted the air again. This scent was familiar. Where had she encountered it before? It was like…tobacco?

  A loud pop preceded heat searing through her leg. She lost her balance, careening into the ground, rolling until she clotheslined a tree trunk. The breath whooshed from her lungs.

  The male approached, she rolled to her good side, trying to regain her bearings.

  Get up! Assess the situation.

  The first observation was that she’d been shot. The second item in her assessment was her lack of a weapon. Rookie mistake. The others never went anywhere without a weapon strapped to them, unless they were furry with four legs.

  Hand-to-hand combat it was. Rising to her good leg, she dropped to a fighting crouch. A chuckle from the right had her hopping around to see the shifter. Her injured leg screamed with the movement, the scent of her blood permeated the air.

  Seamus.

  He stalked toward her, his menacing presence clogging the air around them. His thick-bodied swagger ate up the space between them. Mean intelligence shone in his eyes and Maggie realized how much she’d discredited his threat to Lobo Springs, to her. Wearing grass-stained slacks and a ripped silk shirt, the male could’ve strolled into a board room and commanded every ounce of attention.

  His green eyes glowed, he was the predator and she the prey. A smug grin twisted his mouth. “I knew it was only a matter of time before they let you out. The Guardians have quit searching for me, thinking I slunk into the hills to lick my wounds. I don’t give up what’s mine.” He raised a sinister black gun, aiming it point blank at her head.

  Ohshitohshitohshit.

  She darted to the left, diving and rolling so her good leg took the brunt of the fall. Seamus tackled her, rolling her onto her back. She landed only a few punches; he straddled her, mercilessly grinding down on her injury with his knee.

  Stars filled her vision, her teeth ground into each other to keep from screaming—out loud. Instead, she broadcasted to every Guardian who popped into her mind.

  Seamus is here and he’s got me!

  “The only way to get back what’s mine is to take what’s his.” He sneered, pressing the cool barrel of the gun to her temple.

  Porter—

  Her blackout immediately followed the blast.

  ***

  Porter sat on the floor, a.k.a. his bed for the last two months. The number to the West Creek Guardians scrawled on the yellow s
ticky note he held between his fingers. He thought of circling his bedroom again, to torture himself with how much he missed her, how vitally important it was he attempt to get her back and then keep at it until she relented.

  What if she didn’t forgive him? Could he blame her? After Sanders helped him see the light, the town had suddenly needed him every waking minute. He’d come home, convincing himself to call only to realize how late it was and then justify how he couldn’t disturb the Guardians at that hour. If only the number he had was a direct line to Maggie. That was his biggest concern. He’d call; they’d hang up. Finally, he had a reprieve and there was no way to find out if he didn’t make the damn call.

  His heart jackhammering in his chest, he pulled out his phone.

  Porter!

  Jerking back, his phone clattered to the floor, the note fluttered away, but he ignored it.

  Maggie?

  Silence.

  Maggie?

  Nothing.

  Maggie!

  He searched for the phone. Nimbly picking it up, he dialed, the number branded into mind.

  She’d sounded like she was in pain, that one word steeped in panic.

  The phone rang and rang.

  Porter hit end and resend. More ringing, still no answer.

  End. Resend.

  Ring.

  No answer.

  End. Resend.

  “Motherfucker, Denlan!” Jace’s exasperated voice finally answered. “What!”

  “Where is she?”

  “What do you care?”

  “Where. Is. She.”

  Jace exhaled a long suffering breath. “Gone. She got out a message that Seamus found her. We’re scouring the area.”

  What the fuck was she doing out of the wards with Seamus loose? If he asked, Jace would likely hang up and he needed information on Maggie. “Where was she taken?”

  “We’ll find her. Go back to being a mayor, Denlan.” Jace disconnected.

  Asshole!

  Porter dialed another number. Voice mail picked up. “Sanders. Maggie’s in trouble, I need to go. You need to take over for me.”

  Rushing around his house, he gathered anything he might need in as little time as possible. Seamus wasn’t going to flee with Maggie into city limits. He’d be a fish out of water, only he wouldn’t have the decency to suffocate and die. Porter was heading toward the garage when he stopped and turned back.