The Fallen Cross Pack Series: Boxset 1-4

by Aliya DalRae

  Once Jessica learned that there was no longer a job for Maggie to go to, she left well enough alone. She only spoke when Maggie addressed her directly, which wasn’t often, and they were usually yes or no answers.

  Except for that little declaration this morning about Maggie leaving her. Kid had actually clung to her legs as she was trying to leave the house, begging her not to go. Mama, Mama, please don’t go. Don’t leave me like Daddy did. Please, Mama, please!

  Christ.

  Just when Maggie thought her bones would crawl out of her skin, she saw Duronda’s skinny legs and pimply face as the hooker burst through the door in a gust of autumn wind. The woman strutted up to the bar, making eye contact or saying hello to every potential John on the way.

  Maggie wanted to strangle her.

  “About fucking time,” Maggie growled as Duronda hopped onto the neighboring barstool. “I’m about to die here.”

  Duronda narrowed her eyes and looked Maggie up and down. “Better watch your attitude, girl, or I’ll just turn around and walk back outa here.”

  “I’m sorry,” Maggie said, as she reached a shaky hand out to the other woman and grasped her arm. “I’m hurtin’s all. You got it?”

  Duronda rolled her eyes and nodded toward the bathroom. Maggie went ahead, and the hooker followed a few minutes later.

  By the time Duronda joined her, Maggie’s hands were shaking so bad she couldn’t manage her own rig. The hooker was happy to help her out, and soon Maggie felt the world fall away. All of the sorrow and all of the pain, the responsibilities of her life simply melted away as her mind floated off on a hazy cloud.

  The last thing Maggie remembered was lying in a cold alley. Her legs weren’t holding her properly, so she’d decided to sit for a minute—just a minute—until things cleared up a bit. She slid down the grimy brick wall of the bar she’d just exited, and though she landed funny, it was just for a minute.

  Her head felt like a giant balloon, full of memories and nightmares, but nothing close enough that she could reach out and grab on. Nothing to anchor her, to keep her from floating away into the midnight sky.

  Her heart was pounding, and she was aware enough to realize that each breath she took was more difficult than the last. Fear enveloped her. She felt sure she was dying, yet the thought brought about an unexpected peace. Because if it were true? If Patrick really had been hurt? Well, then maybe, just maybe, she was on her way to meet him again, in heaven or hell, it didn’t matter which.

  When she opened her eyes to meet her death head on, she knew the time had come, and Jessica had been right after all.

  Because there was Patrick, looking glorious with his hair too long and his eyes too bright, holding out a hand to her and saying the most wonderful words she’d ever heard.

  “Let’s go, Mags. It’s time to take you home.”

  Bitter

  End

  Chapter One

  “L et’s go, Mags. It’s time to take you home.”

  Patrick held his hand out to her, and she lifted a shaky palm, placed it into his. She looked like she was seeing a ghost, and Patrick supposed in a way she was. The man she knew nearly two years ago, the man she’d married and had a child with, was a distant memory. In his place was the creature Patrick had become, and yet he had never given up on the hopes that this moment would someday come. That he would be able to hold his Maggie, to touch her, to bring her and their daughter home to him.

  He never imagined it would be like this, though.

  Maggie sat in the filthy alley, her entire body shaking from the effects of whatever drugs she had taken. Drugs that, almost certainly, Patrick and his Pack had been responsible for putting on the streets.

  “Paddy?” her voice was raspy, her breathing shallow, but it was a voice that struck the chords of his very soul.

  “It’s me, baby.”

  Maggie gripped his palm, then grabbed onto his arm with her free hand, her fingers thin and claw-like as she dug them into his skin.

  “Paddy?” A fat tear tumbled over her eyelid and dredged a path through the grime on her cheek.

  “Come on, Mags. Let’s go home.”

  Maggie’s face contorted in a mask of hope and fear, disbelief shrouding her eyes before they fluttered closed. “Oh, Paddy,” she whispered on a ragged breath before falling into unconsciousness.

  Patrick lifted her into his arms and carried her to the SUV that waited for them at the mouth of the alley. The driver’s door opened, and Nadia was there, his Pack’s equivalent of a doctor. She had been a paramedic in a previous life, and Patrick owed her his very life. Their uncomfortable past notwithstanding, Patrick trusted the female with the Pack’s most important business, including the retrieval of his wife.

  Patrick laid Maggie on the rear seat, and Nadia pushed him away before jumping into the back, armed with her stethoscope and a syringe full of something.

  After listening to Maggie’s chest for a moment, Nadia capped the needle and stuffed it into her coat pocket, then turned to Patrick.

  “She’s going to be fine, I think.”

  “You think?”

  “Yes,” Nadia growled, “I think. Her breathing is a bit erratic, but her heart is strong and steady. Once we get the drugs out of her system I believe she’ll make a full recovery.”

  “And how long will that take?” Patrick asked. “Before she’s clean? Before she can be trusted to…handle her own affairs?”

  “I don’t know.” Nadia patted Maggie’s leg as she climbed out of the SUV and closed the door with a quiet click. “I’ll need to talk to her when she’s not tweaking. Find out what she’s been taking and for how long.”

  Patrick swore and dragged a hand through light brown hair that he’d taken to wearing a little on the long side.

  “Don’t do that,” Nadia said, moving her face into Patrick’s line of sight when he tried to avoid her. “Don’t be blaming yourself. You did what you had to do to survive, and so did she.”

  “Yeah, but if we hadn’t been putting that crap out there…”

  “Then somebody else would have been. It’s time you get over the shit Devaris made us do and realize that you are the Alpha now. Thanks to you, we’re not the ones flooding the streets with that poison anymore.”

  Patrick looked through the window at his sleeping wife and shook his head.

  “How long?” he asked again.

  “Weeks, at least,” Nadia said. “Maybe months. It really depends on her.”

  Patrick blew out a breath and rested his weary back against the side of the Chevy. He knew what he had to do, hated it worse than anything he’d ever done, but there was no choice. Pushing himself away from the vehicle, he gave Nadia’s shoulder a pat and walked to the ancient red pickup truck that was parked behind Nadia’s SUV.

  Butch leaned across the cab and rolled down the crank window, asking a question with his deep brown eyes.

  “She’s pretty bad off,” Patrick said, knowing that wasn’t the information Butch was looking for. The lump in his throat made the next order nearly impossible to give, but he somehow managed it.

  “Make the call.”

  Chapter Two

  W hile Butch carried out that heartbreaking request, Patrick rode with Nadia back to the old camp. He and a few of the Pack still resided there, just until they could move on with their lives. Patrick had managed to acquire fresh identities for the entire Pack. Most of them had wasted no time in finding jobs and homes to call their own as they embraced the new life Patrick had given them. For himself, he’d chosen the last name Dane, simply because he had a particular fondness for Great Danes. Given the circumstances, he liked the irony.

  The cabin that had once belonged to a great Alpha, Butch’s father, was being restored, or rather, rebuilt. Patrick looked forward to the day he would be able to move out of the oversized Boy Scout lodge he lived in now, and into an actual home.

  Butch had been gracious about giving the place to Patrick. He said that it was built for a
n Alpha, and only an Alpha should live there. They had decided to have a small cabin built on the property for Patrick’s second in command. Butch would be near enough should his Alpha need him, but far enough away that he could enjoy his privacy. The Pack had paid extra for the contractors to expedite both homes, but even with that, the jobs were weeks away from completion. Until then, this place was it.

  Nadia drove up the graveled lane and pulled the Blazer to a stop in front of Patrick’s current residence, while Maggie slept on in the back. He sat silent for a long moment, before Nadia nudged his shoulder.

  “You gonna sit here all night?”

  “This wasn’t the home I wanted to bring her to,” he said, his eyes bright as he gazed at the rundown shanty with its thin walls and thinner glass windows.

  He had envisioned Maggie’s homecoming a thousand times, his red-haired beauty and the little girl who brightened their world standing on the steps of the grand cabin. They were always smiling and healthy in his visions, beaming with joy as their little family was reunited.

  Bringing her to this hell hole was not in his plans. This was where his life had officially ended, and he had never wanted them to know how dire things had been for him. He only wanted them to know love and happiness. This place would provide neither.

  “Patrick.” Nadia put her hand on his arm and pulled his gaze to hers. “If she’s the woman you say she is, she’s not going to care one bit about what kind of roof you put over her head. All that’s gonna matter is that she’s got you back.”

  Patrick nodded, and struggled once again to force down that golf ball that seemed to have replaced his tonsils.

  “Go on, now. Take your bride inside and see that she gets some rest. I’ll be back tomorrow to check on her. I imagine she’ll be jonesing pretty bad by morning, so we’ll need to get started on her recovery ASAP. She’ll probably sleep until then, though, so I’ll get out of your hair.”

  Patrick nodded again, forced himself to pull the door handle, to get his ass moving.

  With Maggie in his arms, Patrick swung the door to his lodge open and carried her across the threshold. Memories flooded him of the day they had moved into their little apartment in Dayton. Maggie had been several months pregnant at the time, and they were both giddy with the excitement of the life that was ahead of them. She had never been a small girl, and Patrick liked that she not only had some height to her, but that she had curves in all the right places.

  They had laughed back then, as he pretended to struggle with her weight before collapsing onto the floor in a tangle of arms and legs. Patrick had kicked the door closed, and made love to his blushing bride right there on the rug that would soon hold the dinette set they picked up at the Salvation Army.

  Now, Maggie was like a feather in his arms, a combination of his newfound strength and her having lost those magnificent curves making her feel small and fragile.

  He carried her to the bed that sat against the far wall, and pulled back the covers before laying her down, removing her shoes, and tugging the blankets up to her chin. She curled into a tight ball beneath the weight of the sheet and bedspread, her body shaking so bad that the entire bed was aquiver with it.

  Patrick went to his minifridge and pulled out a beer, cranked off the top which he flicked into the trashcan, then drained the bottle in one go. He then retrieved a second bottle, grabbed the chair from behind his desk and pulled it to the side of the bed. He sat down with a thud, his heart heavy as he watched the love of his life sleep off the bitterness of the world he’d left her to.

  Chapter Three

  M aggie’s head was swimming. She’d had the most incredible dream, spun from the worst night she could remember since Patrick had gone missing.

  In the dream, she’d passed out in an alley, the drugs Duronda had shot into her arm having gone straight to her head, leaving her in a dizzy fug. She had stumbled out the back door of the bar and landed flat on her ass, incapable of standing or any other kind of human action.

  She was at the end of her rope, ready to throw in the towel and let the drugs take her off to the other side, and that was when it had happened. He’d appeared to her like a fallen angel, his hair a mass of silky curls, and he’d offered to take her home.

  It was a beautiful dream, but with the bed hard beneath her ass and her body itching with the need for another fix? She knew better than to give it more than the brief acknowledgment she had given all of the other dreams. There was no sense in dwelling on what could never be. Still, she squeezed her eyes tight in an attempt to bring the images back, if just for a little while.

  When sleep—and the dream—failed to take her, she rolled to her back and opened her eyes.

  Above her a lattice of wood beams crossed each other beneath a bare ceiling, all of it looking as though it had seen neither sandpaper nor finish in its entire existence.

  She turned her head to the left and was met with the sight of a wall in much the same state as the ceiling above. Her heart skipped a panicked beat as she struggled to remember what she had done the previous night, and with whom. Had she been so stoned that she’d actually left the bar with someone? Good God, what had happened?

  Slowly, and with great trepidation, Maggie turned her head toward the interior of the room. The sight before her made her breath catch.

  The dream had reclaimed her after all. There, in a worn office chair, with his head resting on his fist, a lock of hair covering the side of his stubbled face as he slept, was her Paddy.

  She gasped, and the apparition before her stirred in the chair, eyes opening to reveal ice blue irises that focused on her immediately. Dream Paddy smiled at her, that slow, lazy smile that always made her heart dance, and she swallowed, hard.

  “Hey,” he said, his voice rough with sleep. “You’re awake.”

  “Paddy?” Maggie struggled to sit up, unable to decide whether to back into the corner by the wall, or throw herself at the man before her.

  “It’s me, baby. How’re you feeling?” Patrick transferred himself from the chair to the side of the bed, and Maggie reached an unsteady hand to him, flinching when her fingers touched solid flesh.

  “Dreaming,” she mumbled. “I’m still dreaming.”

  Patrick laughed and reached out to give her arm a playful pinch.

  “Ow!”

  “No dream,” Patrick said. “It’s really me.”

  “But how?” Maggie rubbed her arm, but couldn’t take her eyes from him. It was her Paddy. He was really there, just inches from her, teasing her as if he’d been gone but a few hours rather than the months and months she’d been forced to live without him.

  “It’s a long story, Mags, and I’ll tell you everything,” he insisted when Maggie opened her mouth to object. “There are some other things we need to talk about first, though.

  She looked down at herself, at her emaciated body where she knew if she lifted the covers she would see nothing but skin stretched over ribs and bones.

  “Maggie?”

  Unable to meet his eyes, she twisted bits of the bedspread in her fists. She felt his finger beneath her chin, and reluctantly raised her eyes to meet his.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, and Patrick pulled her into his arms, enfolding her in one of those patented hugs that he offered up to her whenever she was feeling low.

  “It’s okay,” Patrick said. “I’m sorry, too.” He pulled away from her, but kept his hands on her shoulders to brace her.

  “What happened to you, Paddy? Why did you leave us?”

  “As I said, I’ll tell you everything, but before we can move on…”

  A knock at the door interrupted them. Patrick went to answer it, leaving her feeling cold and alone.

  “How is she?” a woman asked. Maggie pulled the blankets up to her chin and backed herself against the headboard. The tremors throughout her body were a stiff reminder that she would be needing a fix, and soon. The thought of exposing that weakness to a stranger made her stomach churn.

&n
bsp; “See for yourself,” Patrick said, and motioned the woman inside.

  She was a small girl, with dark hair and lively eyes, and a smile that could put the most nervous soul at ease.

  “I’m Nadia,” the girl said, holding out a hand that Maggie shook on instinct. “It’s so nice to finally meet you.”

  Maggie looked a question at Patrick, but his only response was a shrug. Nadia laughed at the exchange, a warm, welcoming sound and Maggie liked her instantly.

  “You are all this guy’s talked about since the day he arrived. I’m glad to see he’s finally brought you home to us. Now maybe he’ll get some work done around here.”

  Maggie once again glanced between the two, but Patrick was shifting his feet and looking at the floor, so again there was no help there.

  “Speaking of,” Nadia continued, throwing a glance over her shoulder at Patrick. “Don’t you have some business to attend to somewhere?”

  “I’m sorry?” he said, looking up at the two of them.

  “Business. Elsewhere. Maggie and I need some girl time, and you aren’t invited.”

  “Are you sure…”

  “Out,” Nadia said, but the smile never left her eyes.

  Patrick leaned around the girl and kissed Maggie on the cheek. “Nadia’s our medic. You’ll be safe with her.”

  Maggie nodded, but his comment had done nothing to ease her anxiety. They were back together now. Why wouldn’t she be safe?

  Chapter Four

  P atrick left his lodge feeling a bit put out, and not a little nervous.

  He trusted Nadia, totally, but given what happened between them after his first change, leaving her alone with his wife was the last thing he wanted to do. Would she say anything? Probably not, but that didn’t make him feel any better.