by Lisa Kessler
His eyes opened and tears clouded my vision. The corner of his mouth curled up slightly as he whispered, “Where’s Aren?”
My brother, already changed into his human form, limped forward. Lana held out her hand to help steady him as he sat down at our father’s side. When Aren took her hand and accepted her help, something inside of me started to crumble.
Of course he would accept her now. Our father had given his blessing, and I was about to become Alpha.
Aren’s eyes met mine, and I knew in that instant that he believed in me. I didn’t deserve it. I didn’t even want it. Not yet.
“Aren,” our father whispered. He reached up to clasp Aren’s cheek, the pad of his thumb sliding over my brother’s skin, leaving a trail of blood behind. “You have made me a very proud father.”
Aren took a deep breath, but his face remained stoic. “I love you, Dad.”
Malcolm started to smile, looking from Aren’s face to mine. “I love you, too. Both of you.” He focused on Aren again. “Watch over your brother and his mate. I know she’s not what any of us expected, but…” His eyes met mine. “I trust Adam’s judgment.”
My heart pounded in my chest. I wasn’t ready to be the Alpha. I still needed my father.
I looked over at Lana, watching her fingers smooth back Malcolm’s silver hair from his forehead. She didn’t look like she even realized she was doing it, but she cared for others more than herself. She was going to be an amazing mother to our children. God… Our children. We were going to have a family.
I was going to be a father.
But I wanted my father to live to see it. I needed my father.
“I will always be with you, Adam,” he whispered.
I smiled as a tear escaped the corner of my eye. “How do you do that?”
His eyes sparkled. “What?” He knew exactly what I was asking.
“How do you know what we’re thinking?”
“You’ll soon find out. Being Alpha comes from your heart and soul, son, not an instruction manual.”
“What if I can’t do it?”
He took my hand. His skin felt cold.
Lana looked over at Jason. “Can you get something to cover Malcolm please?”
Jason nodded and headed in the direction of the downed Nero team.
How did she know what I wanted before I even asked? Could everyone do that but me?
My father smiled up at me, his voice now a whisper. “If you ever need help, turn to your mate. There is a bond between you that will make both you and your Pack stronger.”
Jason came back with a few shirts and a windbreaker. He and Aren covered Malcolm, and I watched his eyes drift closed again. His breathing got more rapid, thinner. Jason took his pulse and our eyes met.
“Not long,” Jason mouthed.
I squeezed my eyes shut against the tears that threatened. Kneeling beside my father, I took his hand, holding it tight. “I’m sorry, Dad.”
“For what?” he murmured without opening his eyes.
“For never paying attention when you tried to teach me things. I’m sorry I spent so much time being a selfish bastard.”
His eyes opened, and he gave me one last smile. For a moment he looked like he did so many times when he stood in my house telling me to grow up and stop wasting my life. The weight of how much I was going to miss him cut through me like a dagger.
“I always knew you would be there when I needed you most.” He gave my hand a weak squeeze. “I need you now. The Pack needs you.” His breath hitched, and his lips pulled back in pain. “Lana needs you,” he wheezed. “Tell my grandchildren I loved them before they were even born.”
I pulled him into my arms, holding him tight, as if I could force his spirit to stay inside his ailing body. “Don’t go. Please.” I heard his breathing get shallower and panic seized me. “Please, no. Dad, I need you. No.”
I heard his last breath, and then he was still. I held him tight, oblivious to the wind that stung my bitter tears. The Pack circled us and howled at the moon, singing my father’s soul to the other side.
…
Back at the barn, I stared at my father’s face. He looked peaceful, like he was only sleeping, but he wasn’t ever going to wake up. The pyre was built out back, and tonight we would celebrate his life and finish the ceremony by cremating his remains. I hadn’t slept. I couldn’t.
I had left Lana sleeping in my…our bedroom. She’d worked right beside me all through the night, helping the Pack dispose of the bodies and all other evidence of the fight with Nero. Knowing she was close helped me focus on the work. I’m sure she had plenty she wanted to say to me, but she didn’t push. I also knew I probably should say something to her about the twins—or at least I figured they would be twins. It was in our natures—and about me being the Alpha now. But I didn’t have time for words, and somehow she seemed to understand.
When we had first gotten back to the ranch, we’d fallen right into bed. At some point Lana drifted off, but I kept staring at the bruises and cuts around her tiny wrists. We never found Sasha’s body, but we assumed she was part of the death toll. Lana had seen Aren drag her away—her remains could’ve been left for scavengers. I didn’t ask him outright if he’d finished her, but I didn’t have to. He would’ve told me if she’d escaped.
Sebastian slipped away. He may have gotten away in the Nero van, or maybe he ran during the fight. It didn’t matter right now.
The sun was rising. A new day. I stood in my barn with all I had left of my father. His empty shell.
“Couldn’t sleep?”
I turned around to see my brother, on crutches, making his way down the barn aisle. I nodded and focused back on Malcolm. “Yeah.” Aren pulled a stool over and sat beside me. I shook my head. “I still can’t believe he’s gone.”
Aren nodded. “Me neither.” He paused and looked over at me. “I’m glad you told him about Lana.”
“He wasn’t happy about it at first.”
Aren shrugged. “If I brought home a jaguar for a mate, you wouldn’t have been happy for me at first either.”
I thought about it and had to agree. “I guess you’re right.”
“She was amazing last night,” Aren said quietly. “In spite of everything, she never lost her head.”
“So you trust her now?”
He nodded. “With my Alpha’s life.”
My shoulders tensed. “Don’t call me that.” I looked at our father and blinked hard to hold back the bitter tears. “Not yet.”
Aren rested a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “You acted like an Alpha last night.”
“I cried like a boy who lost his father.”
“You were. So was I. Doesn’t make you any less of an Alpha.” His hand lifted from my shoulder as he went on. “None of us were thinking straight last night. We never would have cleared the lake of the evidence. In the chaos, the wolves would have scattered and met back here. But we stayed and we made the right choices because you did, Adam. In spite of the pain and fear and rage, you put the Pack first.”
I clenched my jaw to bite back the wave of emotions brewing inside of me. I met Aren’s eyes and whispered, “I was going to leave this morning with Lana. I wasn’t putting the Pack first then.”
Aren shook his head. “You wouldn’t have gone.”
“You’re wrong. I was ready. We were going to leave this morning to draw Nero away from Reno.”
He was quiet for a moment, and I watched for any sign of how he was feeling, but Aren’s face was a mask. Finally he looked up from Malcolm and met my eyes. “Are you still leaving?”
His question jarred me. “I don’t know.”
Aren’s brow furrowed, and he shot up off the stool, wincing in pain when he put weight on his injured ankle.
“You don’t know?” he fumed, grabbing a crutch to lean on. “You selfish asshole. How can you say that, Adam? If you leave now, then you leave the Pack with me, an injured Alpha. You remember what that means, right?”
> “What does it mean?”
We both turned and saw Lana walking toward us. Her dark hair was mussed from sleeping and she looked exhausted, but somehow in spite of all that, she had a glow of natural beauty that blinded me.
Aren glared at me and then answered Lana. “If he doesn’t become the Alpha of our Pack, then I would be next in line. Since I can’t lead the Pack right now, one of the others would have to step forward.”
I finished it for him. “Once they step forward, they have to fight Aren to the death for the Alpha spot unless he agrees to leave Pack territory.”
Lana’s eyes widened. “What?”
Aren nodded and snatched up his other crutch. He kissed her cheek as he passed by and growled, “Please knock some sense into my idiot brother.”
Chapter Forty-Three
Lana
I watched Aren go, trying to steady myself. God, was I so starved for a family that a simple peck on the cheek from Adam’s brother made my heart sing? Apparently the answer was yes, because the small gesture made me feel like part of the family.
Adam was sitting on a stool, facing his father’s body. I couldn’t imagine his pain. I’d always wished for a father, wished I’d even just known who he was. I used to imagine he’d be proud of me. Maybe he was a writer like I was.
But Adam had all of that. And now his father was gone.
I stepped up behind him and massaged his shoulders. They were like cement. His head fell forward, and he moaned. I kissed the back of his neck while I did my best to loosen the knots. I could almost feel the weight of the world resting on his broad shoulders.
“What were you and Aren fighting about?” I figured it was best to approach calmly, casually, though I knew where the conversation would inevitably go. Adam was not leaving his brother here to be killed.
“He was telling me what a great Alpha I was last night, and I let him know that until Malcolm got shot I was planning on leaving with you. Now I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
I wrapped my arms around him and closed my eyes, breathing him into my lungs. I felt his fingers lightly trace over the bruises from the handcuffs.
“They’re never going to leave us alone, Lana. Nero will be back.”
I didn’t want to think about Nero or the blood and body parts we cleaned up last night. I wanted to pretend we were a normal couple, just for a little while. I opened my eyes and saw Malcolm pale and motionless on the pyre. I couldn’t hide from this though.
The horses nickered as I moved around to sit next to Adam. “I wish I had the right answer, Adam. I feel like I’m just treading water, trying not to sink into panic. So many questions are rattling around in my head. Your Dad can’t be right about me being pregnant. You haven’t bitten me. I don’t even know if that would work since I’m already a different kind of…animal. And now that he’s gone, you can’t leave with me. You have to stay here and lead the Pack. They need you.”
He took my hand and looked over at me. “But I can’t do this without you.”
My eyes were already raw from crying, but they brimmed with tears again anyway. “Your Pack will never be safe if I’m here.”
His green eyes narrowed. “I’ll never let anyone hurt you again, Lana.”
“Then you’ll spend the rest of your life fighting them.”
“No.” He leaned over and kissed me so soft and slow that my heart ached. I opened my eyes again, and his gaze held mine, demanding my attention. “I will spend the rest of my life loving you.”
A tear spilled down my cheek. “Your father would be alive right now if it wasn’t for me.”
He cupped my check, brushing away my tear with the pad of his thumb. “If it wasn’t for you, I never would have learned to love anyone but myself.”
“I know Malcolm said I was part of the Pack, but they didn’t get a say in that. Do you think they could ever truly accept me?”
“Aren already has. The rest of them will too. It may take some of them longer than others.”
“They’ll resent me after a few more visits from Nero.”
He shook his head. “We’ll be ready for them in the future. They won’t catch us off-guard again. Plus, we already know what Sasha and Sebastian look like so we’ll watch for them. Don’t underestimate the Pack, Lana. We can protect ourselves.”
“Believe me, I saw the carnage last night.” I stared at my hands. “I was going to leave last night. While you were running with the wolves. I already had a plane ticket to leave for Chicago.”
He was up off the stool so fast that I flinched. “Why? I told you I’d go with you.”
“I didn’t want you to give up your family for me. It wasn’t right, Adam. You’d never be happy without them.”
“So you weren’t even going to give me a choice? You were just going to walk away?”
His words stung. I got up and crossed my arms. “I loved you enough to walk away so you could keep your family. You have the one thing I’ve always wanted. How can I take that from you?”
He shook his head and raked his fingers through his dark hair as he walked over to pat Bruce. “Let me get this straight. I was ready to give up my entire life for you, and you were planning to dump me the entire time.” He looked over his shoulder at me with a disgusted look on his face. “So did you come down here to tell me goodbye, or are you just going to surprise me when you leave?”
“It’s not like that. I didn’t want to hurt you or your family.”
He spun on me. “What part of I love you did you miss? When I told you that, I meant it. You didn’t think it would hurt when I found out you were gone? You didn’t think it would rip my heart out to find you left me while I was a wolf and vanished without a trace? I thought we were a team. I trusted you.” He looked up toward the sky and shook his head. “I should have listened to them.” His eyes met mine and he whispered, “They told me a jaguar could never love me.”
I couldn’t listen to another word. I turned and ran from the barn, his final stab following me out. “After we made love in the barn,” he called after me, “you said you’d love me forever. What an asshole I was to believe you.”
…
Aren leaned against the doorframe while I jammed the few personal belongings I still had into a bag. For a split second I thought it was Adam, but the crutch and wrapped up ankle gave him away. He raised a brow as I zoomed past him in search of my tennis shoes.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
I’d spent the better part of the last half hour bottling up my feelings and trying to morph them into self-righteous anger. Adam had twisted everything around. I did love him. I loved him enough to leave him. I was being noble, not hurtful. The bastard.
“I’m leaving.”
“Now?” He straightened up on his crutch. “Where are you going?”
“Anywhere but here.” I pulled the sides of the bag together and massaged the zipper until it finally slid over the opening.
“What happened?”
I sighed, trying to keep my rage simmering so I couldn’t fall apart. “I know that he told you we were planning on leaving this morning so we could keep Nero away from the Pack, but—”
“He told me he was leaving because the Pack would never accept his mate.”
“Well, I didn’t want him to do that for me.”
“Did you tell him that?”
I sighed. “I thought so. I don’t know.” Tears were threatening again. I took a deep breath and tossed the bag over my shoulder. “My laptop was in Adam’s Jeep when Sasha shot out the tires. Was it still in there when Luke and Logan went over to tow it back?”
He nodded. “Yeah, they left all your stuff beside the sofa last night.”
“Thank you.” I moved past him, noting again the subtle difference between his scent and Adam’s. Adam always smelled musky, like a forest after rain, a wildness to it. Aren’s was similar, but where Adam oozed charm, Aren didn’t. His scent was harder to describe. His scent reminded me of autumn, spicy and intima
te, with the aura of winter. Almost as if he had a wall constructed around himself. I shook off the thoughts, picked up my laptop, and went to call a cab.
“So now you’re leaving him, but you’re mad at him for being upset that you’re leaving?”
I sighed and looked up at Aren with the phone in my hand. “I don’t want to go. Not anymore.”
“Then why are you packing?” His brow furrowed.
“Because.” A sob strangled my voice. I cleared my throat and squeaked out, “Because I told Adam I was planning to leave last night so he could stay with all of you and Nero would leave the Pack alone. And now he thinks…” I wiped a tear away. “Now I need to go.”
Aren glanced toward the barn and back at me. “So my new Alpha is an asshole?”
I laughed through my tears. “He’s not an asshole. But he’s not happy with me.”
Aren hobbled over and sat next to me. “Here’s a secret for you, little kitty, and I’ll deny it if you ever repeat a word.”
I wiped my nose and nodded.
“My brother, Adam, is a total horse’s ass when he doesn’t get eight hours of sleep. I’m not saying whether or not you deserved whatever it was he just dished out down there, but we just lost our father and our Alpha. He just got an entire Pack to lead dumped on his shoulders, and on top of all of that, he’s going to be a father himself.” He gave me a little nudge with his elbow. “All that packaged with no sleep, and I bet Adam can’t even stand himself, let alone any of us.”
Placing the phone back on the charger, I took another deep breath and looked at the carbon copy of the man I loved with all my heart. “I love him, Aren. I didn’t want to hurt him, but I didn’t want him to give up his family for me. He doesn’t know how lucky he is to have all of you in his life.”
“The question is, will you give us the chance to have you in our lives? I know you’ve seen me on less than my best behavior, but can you handle an entire Pack? Because in spite of our bad attitudes and fighting, we always know beyond a shadow of a doubt that if we need help, we’ve got each other’s backs.”
“But you’re all wolves. I’m…not.”
His mouth curved into a crooked grin. “We’ll still be there for you even though you’re a kitty.”