“Of course,” the alpha answered cordially, flagging down a passing waiter then pressing a tall flute of something alcoholic into my hand. “And I’ll bet you’ll feel better after a drink.”
I wouldn’t feel better post-imbibing, and I would need my wits about me when playing games with tricky werewolves. Still, I sipped obediently, the bubbles of a quality champagne tickling the inside of my nose. I barely managed to stifle a snort in reaction, proving that my sensitive palate was limited to baked goods alone.
Except my lack of sophistication was beside the point. Forgetting the champagne, I proceeded to launch into my own song and dance. “Something happened on my first night here, before I met you,” I told the pack leader, going on to explain the bare bones of Harmony’s near-rape combined with the scent of werewolf I’d found lingering around her apartment complex the very next day.
“Could you tell who the offender was?” Chief Greenbriar asked, his tone attentive yet calm. I wouldn’t have dared tell a story like this to Wolfie without my mother in the room because Dad had been known to shift into lupine form the instant his protective instincts were aroused. Was my host’s polished poise a sign that Chief Greenbriar possessed more control over his emotions than my hot-blooded father? I hoped so. Still, instinct told me to be vague, and I paid heed.
“It was dark and I was exhausted,” I said by way of reply, telling the truth but not the whole truth and hoping my companion would spin the intended misunderstanding within his own head. “I know it’s tough to do anything without being able to pin down who’s at fault, but I was hoping you could still find a way to protect the human female? She has a pup and doesn’t deserve to be harassed by dangers she can’t possibly understand....”
“Of course. Consider it done.” Chief Greenbriar’s hand landed on my shoulder, the weight meant to be comforting but instead reminding me far too tangibly of my own near-rapist’s touch. Only an effort of will locked me in place when both human and lupine halves of my character itched to wriggle free.
“Now tell me about my son,” the pack leader continued. “And why he couldn’t come out with you tonight.”
This time, I didn’t have to lie. “I have no idea what Aaron’s up to,” I answered, shrugging. “But he was polite when he dropped by to say he had to bail. I hope you won’t hold it against him.” Or me, I added silently.
Chief Greenbriar wanted to, I could tell. But even though he’d ordered my attendance at dinner tonight, he’d forgotten to require me to attend with his son in tow. And here I was, sipping champagne I clearly hated while appearing just as out of place as a baker tends to be at your average white-tie affair.
In the end, the city’s alpha opted for fairness. “Tomorrow night, Aaron will be present,” the older male promised.
Then a shifter hailed my companion from across the room and I was left alone in my corner of the busy party. Sticking the mostly full glass of champagne behind a planter, I slipped out the side door and hoofed it back to the empty subway station.
My duty was done. Now I could finally finish this seemingly endless day.
Chapter 15
Of course, Dad refused to be soothed by my half-hearted text. I should have guessed as much, but I was still surprised to find three missed calls from the male parental unit when I checked my phone on the walk up to Harmony’s apartment building half an hour later. One I could have ignored, two might have been staved off with a second text...but three meant business.
Leaning my head against the smeared safety glass of the entranceway, I sighed and accepted that dealing with Wolfie’s worry was a mandatory prerequisite for collapsing into my own bed. On the bright side, the scent of werewolf around the front door was fading, no additional shifters having passed by the spot since I walked out the door this morning. So that was one danger out of many that appeared to have become less tenacious than formerly anticipated.
Still, I wasn’t quite ready to don a happy face for the sake of my discerning father. So, when my phone rang yet again, this time with my mother’s name showing up on the screen, I decided to take the easy way out and use Mom as a conduit to Dad.
“Why are you avoiding your father?” Terra greeted me the instant I accepted her call. Rolling my eyes, I dropped down onto the concrete planter—devoid of life but full of cigarette butts—that marked one corner of the grungy doorway.
“I’m fine, Mom, and how are you?” I teased half-heartedly.
“Not so fine when I’m saddled with a worried mate,” she muttered. I could almost see Mom’s pursed lips and drumming fingernails. “Wolfie thinks you’re mad at him. Want to tell me what’s going on?”
“Mad at him?” And now I felt like the worst sort of scoundrel. I’d been evading my father’s calls so Wolfie wouldn’t show up on my doorstep with the cavalry in tow...and here Dad thought I’d somehow gotten pissed off enough to give him the silent treatment. How was it possible to hold a grudge against the teddy-bear/rottweiler hybrid that was my adopted dad? “I swear I’m not angry. Can you tell him that for me?”
“I’d make you tell Wolfie yourself, but your father’s out putting the pups through their paces,” Mom countered. Then, caving as she always did when faced with a potential breech in family cohesiveness, she added, “He’ll be glad to hear you’re doing well. Any sign of your brother?”
And that, likely, was what Dad really wanted to find out with his frequent calls anyway. Luckily, I trusted both of my parents with my life, so I downloaded every little detail...well, except for the nearness of my own miss earlier in the evening. Okay, and I might have left out my supposed engagement and the crazy attraction I felt for a human professor too. But other than that, I told her everything.
Mostly.
Mom was no dummy—she knew I was sidestepping key points. But unlike Dad, Terra wasn’t adept at pushing the right buttons to get me to spill. So, after a few minutes of increasingly idle chitchat, she finally let me go.
And even though I hadn’t told the whole truth and couldn’t feel the Haven pack through the invisible tether that bound us together, I climbed the stairs with renewed energy. Because just touching base with home had put a spring back into my step. Meanwhile, as I exited the stairwell at the proper level, I could hear Rosie’s laughter creeping out from underneath the Garcia door.
The portal in question opened before I even had time to knock, and my favorite toddler ran out crowing “She’s here!” in baby-ese. Okay, so I’m totally guessing at the words. But the sentiment was obvious. Regardless of the details, the sight of welcoming faces was sufficient to carry tired feet over the last few paces between the outside world and my current safe harbor.
Today I’d baked and fought and hunted and lied. And now, at last, I was home.
“WE DON’T HAVE PIZZA for dinner every night,” Harmony informed me, biting her lip as if she expected to be judged for lackadaisical culinary decisions. “But the lawyer I work for just won a big case, which means I get tomorrow off with pay. This is a celebration.”
Rosie babbled something that sounded like “sick bay” but might have actually been a repeat of her mother’s final word. Grinning, I pulled the sticky mass of pudgy limbs and boundless energy into my lap and snuggled her close while eying the final slice of pizza in the box. Maybe I should consume that lonely triangle of cheese and dough...just to make my hostess feel better about not cooking from scratch, of course.
There were only three of us sitting on the floor around the coffee table at the moment, the matriarch having disappeared into her room the moment I walked through the door. And despite the momentary wet blanket the older woman’s absence caused, our celebratory mood was now so powerful that I had a hard time reminding myself that these people weren’t pack.
Well, back home I would have honored a success by baking. So even though my legs ached and my eyelids drooped, I leveraged Rosie down onto her bare feet and padded into the tiny kitchen in search of supplies.
“What are you looking for?” Har
mony asked, coming up to stand behind my left shoulder. She and I were still getting to know each other, so my companion left three more inches of air separating us than rightfully belonged. Still, the human’s voice was easy when she added: “If you’re still hungry, I think there’s leftover stew in the fridge.”
I opened the door of the appliance in question, but I wasn’t looking for stew. Instead, I pulled out a jug of milk and a carton of eggs, then went hunting other baking paraphernalia in the nearby cupboards.
“Which do you like better—cookies or cake?” I asked Rosie after ascertaining that the bare minimum ingredients for each were indeed present. Then, realizing my mistake, I swung around to face her mother instead. “Except I’m betting it’s past Rosie’s bedtime and maybe she’s not allowed to have sweets anyway....” The human metabolism, I knew, made werewolf-level consumption of sugar unrealistic.
But Rosie was already dancing around my feet shouting “kak, kak, kak!” at the top of her lungs. Oh boy—I’d created a monster. I winced as I raised pleading eyes to the mother who was bound to shoot us both down.
Only, she didn’t. Instead, Harmony flicked on some music and lifted Rosie up to twirl around in the small space. Then, setting the munchkin down on the counter beside my baking gear, my hostess put me out of my misery.
“Usually this would be too late for dessert. But I don’t have to work tomorrow, so I can stay up and wait out Rosie’s sugar high. Plus,” my companion said, lowering her voice and leaning in closer, “we never get homemade treats. Mama doesn’t approve and I’m a terrible baker.”
“You won’t be after tonight,” I promised, donning my teaching hat and feeling excitement course back into my veins at the same time. Harmony needed to know how to whip up something delicious at the drop of a hat—that was an essential life skill. “This recipe is so easy I could make it in my sleep. Actually, I think I did make it in my sleep once,” I clowned, causing my smallest helper to hoot with laughter.
Of course, happy toddlers are clumsy toddlers. In her merriment, Rosie kicked her heels with delight....and knocked the entire carton of eggs off the counter. Only quick shifter reflexes managed to nab the container before its contents splattered all over the kitchen tiles.
That was a close one—in more ways than one. Glancing at Harmony out of the corner of one eye, I was glad to see the human’s attention had been sidetracked by holding her daughter steady on her elevated perch, causing Harmony to miss out on my supernatural speed.
Time for a bit of distraction.
“Here, how about you take pictures?” I offered, pulling out my cell phone and swapping it for the container of salt Rosie was about to upend. Sure enough, the human toddler was just like the pups back home—obsessed with the idea of taking selfies—and the plaything became an immediate hit.
Child safely sedated, Harmony and I got to work...or rather, to play. Because despite baking for half the day already, moving around a tiny kitchen with my cheerful landlady filled my stomach with a strange sort of melty happiness not so different from the sensation I knew I’d get once the cake popped out of the oven and I imbibed the first steaming bite.
Of course, the kitchen was really too minuscule for two bakers. At first, we bumped into each other, laughing at our own clumsiness. But then something clicked and we were more dancing than cohabitating. Harmony’s arm reached out to grab the measuring spoons and I instinctively leaned the other way to pluck flour out of the cupboard behind my back. We were on a roll.
“And that is how you bake a cake,” I intoned in my most serious, professorial voice as we slid the second round pan into the hot oven. Harmony’s cheeks were glowing and she appeared five years younger than when I’d first met her. Meanwhile, Rosie was still snapping photos with the vigor of a born paparazza.
“Let’s see if you caught any good shots,” my hostess said, pulling Rosie onto her hip and beginning to page back through the photos her daughter had recently taken. Predictably, the toddler reached forward to grab at the phone, and her mother tweaked the youngster’s nose playfully while holding the device just out of reach.
But then fun fell away as Harmony’s face paled. The other woman’s chin rose and her brow furrowed, then she turned the screen around to face in my direction.
“Why do you have a picture of Derek on here?” my hostess demanded, her voice abruptly both brittle and cold. “Are you the reason he left his daughter behind?”
Chapter 16
No wonder Harmony and Rosie had felt like pack from the instant I met them. My hand trembled as I set down the butter knife I’d been using to test the doneness of the cake a moment earlier...a cake that suddenly appeared far less appealing than it had before my hostess dropped her verbal bomb.
“Kak, kak, kak!” Rosie chanted from her mother’s arms. But the kid was bound to be disappointed, because no one was going to be eating cake anytime soon.
“Don’t you move,” Harmony told me, pointer finger extended and tone as adamant as that of any alpha werewolf. Then the human disappeared down the hallway, her voice softening as she soothed Rosie’s fractious complaints before tucking the child into her crib to sleep.
For my part, the day’s exhaustion fell back onto my shoulders like a ton of bricks, and I found myself sliding down the side of the counter to land on my butt on the newly mopped floor. I could smell cleaning agent all around me, the chemicals far too strongly scented to ever be used in a shifter household. And I imagined for a second that my brother had sat in this exact same spot, trying to decide what to do with a human woman he’d impregnated in complete disregard for the rules of shifter-kind.
A shiver ran down my spine as I—like he—considered the consequences. Chief Greenbriar didn’t seem like the type to fold humans into his pack against the mandates of nation-level werewolf law. Instead, the alpha would have ordered Derek executed for his crimes, slaying Rosie and Harmony right along with him. No wonder my brother had stopped returning my chat requests....
Shaking my head to clear it, I reminded myself that the alpha would have killed Harmony and her daughter first since loose human lips presented a much greater danger than Derek’s reckless dick. And that was an even worse thought than the initial one. The image of Rosie’s lifeless body splayed out across the white floor filled my mind, the vision of toddler blood running down the cracks between the tiles so vivid that I reached out as if to touch the stain.
Abruptly, the cupcakes and cookies and pizza I’d eaten earlier that day didn’t sit right in my stomach and I barely made it to the toilet before everything came back up in a stream of foul-tasting regret. Rosie was a bit over a year old, which meant it had been roughly twenty-four months since my niece was conceived. Coincidence that Derek had tracked me down at nearly the exact same time...or the beginning of a plan I had yet to fully understand?
“Please tell me you’re not knocked up,” Harmony demanded from behind my back, her words startling me into stillness. I couldn’t believe she’d managed to creep up on me unnoticed while I was vomiting into the toilet bowl, but I guess I had enough on my mind to explain the slip.
To my surprise, my hostess’s hands were kind as she pulled hair away from my face and wiped my neck with a damp washcloth. Then, in a further display of unwarranted generosity, she handed over a cup of water to clear the acid out of my mouth.
Despite her lack of overt anger, I still opted not to stand in Harmony’s presence. Instead, I kept my eyes carefully averted as I accepted the liquid, and I took my time as I went through the motions of swish and spit.
Finally, though, I was forced to speak. “Not knocked up,” I promised. Then, taking a deep breath, I told my companion the parts of the truth that were mine to give away. “Derek is my brother. Which, I guess, makes Rosie my niece.”
For a moment, my throat tightened again, but this time from an emotion I’d never before felt. I adored my pack, cherished every single one of the people both in and out of Haven who had wriggled their way into my hear
t and turned themselves into my family moments after I was born. And yet...none of those clan members shared my blood.
Well, that wasn’t technically true—Wolfie did. In a convoluted display of family fucked-up-ness that rivaled seventeenth-century royal families, our pack leader was technically my uncle in addition to being my chosen father. Because my birth dad had been Wolfie’s brother...until our pack ran the former through with a sword, that is.
Other than Wolfie, though, I’d never before touched a living soul whose chromosomes shared so many alleles with my own. Was our genetic similarity the reason why Rosie’s sweet little fingers had felt like a benediction every time they poked me in the eye?
I only remembered that Harmony was still present when the human dropped down into a squat by my side. “So where is he?” she demanded, her voice no longer furious, but anger still simmering beneath the words.
And it was at that moment that I realized Harmony was family too. She was my sister-in-law, I decided, marriage or no. Then, as I shortened the term to “sister” in my mind, warmth refilled the belly I’d so recently emptied of both dinner and lunch.
Still, when I gazed into my hostess’s face at last, I winced. No, Harmony wasn’t going to be pulling me to her bosom and welcoming me into her family anytime soon.
“I don’t know,” I answered at last, wishing I had something more salubrious to report. “That’s why I’m here—trying to track him down. I actually had no clue Derek found a m....” I paused. “A wife and daughter. Running into you was just a fluke.”
“Not such a fluke,” Harmony answered, inhaling deeply through her nose before explaining. “Derek was a bus guy. Whenever he traveled, he always came home on the Greyhound. So I changed my routes to go past the station whenever I could, just in case.” She paused, then added: “And we’re not married.”
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