by Leela Ash
It had to stop. Gabe was going to go after them and finish this fight once and for all. He would protect Valerie and make good on his claim, both on the girl and on the land where his shop stood. There was no other way.
18.
“I miss you more every day, Moll,” Val heard Gabe’s deep, rumbling voice say. She froze in the hallway. She had never actually seen Gabe come inside and place the rose in front of the picture frame on the mantel, but she had noticed that every single day, there was a different flower there.
They were always roses; always fresh and always unbelievably beautiful. Somehow, he took care to choose the most perfect flower he could to honor his wife with, and now, she had caught him in the act of removing the day-old rose and replacing it with one that was so fresh it still had speckles of dew on its delicate petals.
She was sure he had heard her approaching, but he seemed lost in thought, oblivious to his surroundings as he spoke to the picture frame, his voice low and tortured as he spoke of his small troubles; the brakes were going bad in his car, and the sink was starting to leak again.
“And there’s something strange going on at the shop…”
Gabe’s voice halted abruptly. “But that’s something I have to unravel on my own. If you have any guidance for me, I’d really appreciate it. I really got myself into a mess this time.”
A mess? Was he talking about bringing Val into the house, or was it something else? Something to do with work? Maybe that strange noise she had heard in the basement was as important as she had feared it might be. Hacker had been asking her about whether she had heard strange noises in the basement of the record store. Was it possible that whatever those shifters had been looking for was in Gabe’s basement, not Randall’s? And if so, then what the hell was it? Why would anyone be so willing to die for it?
Val turned around, less than eager to embarrass Gabe by letting him know she had witnessed something so personal. Sheducked into the first room in the hallway to hide from him. Valwaited until she heard Gabe’s heavy footsteps leave the living room, muttering to Molly about how he was going to go fix the brakes now and that he would talk to her again tomorrow.
It was sweet, in a way, and also heartbreaking. Did he believe his wife could hear him? Had he been doing this since the day she died, or was it something he had done gradually to cope with the loss? If that was the case, then no wonder he found it so hard to move on. She was the only person he had to talk to.
Val was about to step out of her hiding place when she realized she was in a room full of boxes. It was a small room, barely bigger than a walk-in closet, and she couldn’t fight her curiosity. One of the things she had always done to make herself feel better about the dark prospects of being put into a new foster home was snoop around the house and see just how much she could piece together about her new “family” by seeing the kinds of possessionsthey kept in their homes. Usually, she was able to learn a lot about a person based on just a few things, and since Gabe was so difficult to get to know, she found it impossible to resist.
She waited until she was sure he had heard him leave the house before she tentatively opened the box closest to her. Val had grown very good at placing things back exactly as she had found them, and that gave her the courage she needed to continue her search.
Very carefully, she lifted a bulky photo album out from the box. It was a wedding album, with a photo of Gabe and Molly on the cover. Gabe’s face was flushed red and he was smiling broadly, his face young and darkly handsome. He had an edge to him, even then, but standing beside Molly, he seemed softer somehow. She had probably known just what to do to keep him in line. Val probably would have liked her.
Without intending to be, she found herself completely consumed by the photos in the album, and had devoured every picture she could of Gabe’s handsome, chiseled features and the bright, easy smile that seemed to come so naturally to him in the presence of his wife. Before long, she had reached the end of the album, her heart filled with warmth toward Gabe and also heavy with a sense of understanding concerning the depth of the loss he had endured.
She reached eagerly into the box, thrilled to find another album stacked beneath the first, and sat on the floor in the dim light of the little room, flipping through photos of people she didn’t recognize; every once in a while pausing to study the shockingly handsome face of the man who had claimed her. She felt a strange sense of pride to be his; to belong with a man who was so clearly capable of handling anything life threw his way. Anything, that is, except the loss of his mate.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?!”
Val nearly leapt out of her skin when Gabe’s voice growled viciously behind her, and the album was snatched out of her hand.
“I’m sorry! I just…”
Gabe’s eyes flashed darkly and Val’s voice trailed off. There was no way she could defend herself this time. She had been snooping, and she was caught red-handed. That had never happened to her before. Why hadn’t she been paying better attention?
“You have no right to this area,” Gabe said, glaring at her. Val felt both embarrassed and ashamed, but there was nothing she could say to make things right.
“I know,” she mumbled, looking down at her hands. “I don’t know what I was thinking…”
But she knew exactly what she had been thinking. She had wanted so desperately to understand Gabe better. He was so aloof and cold at times, and yet, when he was warm, she wanted nothing more than to be by his side for the rest of her life. It was a complex situation with no real solutions, and she hated herself for getting into it in the first place. And in a way, she hated him, too, for putting her there.
“You weren’t thinking at all, is my wager,” Gabe said.
A wave of fear coursed through Val. How much patience could a man like Gabe have? His wolf could come out at any second. It wouldn’t stop for anybody if it was prompted to attack, would it? Not even if he had claimed her.
But Val’s fear seemed to snap Gabe out of his rage, and he looked at her again, this time with a look that fell somewhere between exasperation and pity.
“Really. Why do you want to look at these stupid old pictures anyway? Don’t you think I’ve aged well enough to let the past stay buried?”
Val wanted to laugh, because the truth was that no matter how handsome Gabe had been in his youth, now that he was an established older man, there was something even more sinisterly attractive about him. He was sexy and confident in a way he hadn’t been as a young man who had been striving to prove himself to his wife and pack. He knew who he was now, and he was all the more attractive for it. But that wasn’t the kind of thing she could just say to the man. Not when, just a few seconds before, he had been just one step away from biting her head off. Possibly literally.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been putting my nose where it doesn’t belong… That was inexcusable. It’s something I used to do with my foster families.”
She normally didn’t talk about her past, so she was surprised when she let the information slip. Gabe raised his brow at her.
“What was the deal with your foster families, anyway?”
Val sighed, standing up from the area where she had perched to look through Gabe’s photo albums. She shrugged at him.
“If you want to know, maybe we should go somewhere else and talk about it.”
Gabe considered this and pursed his lips.
“Fine. But only if you let me tell you the stories behind some of these pictures. People making their own presumptions about some of these things could make me look bad.”
Val wasn’t sure what to say as Gabriel gripped the photo albums and led her out of the room. He settled on the couch and nodded for her to sit beside him. She did, but more because she was afraid of angering the wolf than because of a genuine interest in being close to him.
“I’m sorry I got so angry,” Gabe said, as if he could sense her fear. “I don’t want you to worry. No matter what, it’s my job to
protect you, even from myself. If I sense you feeling distressed, in any way, I will be there. Me. Not the wolf.”
“Well, sometimes, the wolf,” Val said, remembering the way the silver beast had leapt to her defense in the alley by the record store. The memory made her shudder, and Gabe put his arm around her comfortingly.
“Only when it’s what’s best for you,” Gabe promised.
Somehow, when she looked into his deep brown eyes, Val believed him. The wolf didn’t want to harm her. In fact, it had never done anything but save her life, and her jobs, several times already. Maybe she didn’t have anything to worry about.
“Thank you,” she said nervously. But Gabe quirked his brow and she laughed.
“You don’t have to say things like that to a shifter,” Gabe said. “If you’re grateful, happy, angry, scared… we can tell. We can sense it. That’s what makes the wolf act, or not act. Whichever is the best for you in the moment.”
Val nodded and Gabe took a deep breath.
“Well then. Where did you leave off in this album?”
He flipped the one she had been looking at open and sat down on the couch, patting the seat beside him. They spent the rest of the night like that on the couch together, talking and laughing as they looked through the photos in Gabe’s boxes. They learned a lot about each other; from Gabe’s first shapeshift to his days on the varsity football team in college.
When she went up to bed, Gabe held her gaze almost as if there was something he wanted to say to her, but he couldn’t quite get it out. Instead, he smiled, and her body was electrified by the suddenness and beauty of it. It was the first time she had ever seen him smile like that, and her heart pounded hard in her chest.
“That looks better than in the pictures,” she said quietly.
Val smiled shyly back at him and then turned away toward her bedroom, wondering whether she should have just kept her mouth closed.
But when she laid down, the beauty of the night they had shared washed over her like a warm blanket, and she closed her eyes, happy beyond belief that, for the first time since she had arrived, she felt like she could actually belong there.
19.
Gabe lingered in the living room a few moments longer, until he could tell Val was safe and sound in her bed. He shapeshifted quietly and crept through the house as her breathing became more rhythmic, until she finally crossed the boundaries of sleep. Then he leapt outside through the open window in the kitchen. He was going to hunt down the boys that had been harassing her in front of his shop; the idiot kids he had thought were just around causing trouble; putting graffiti on his mailbox and practically casing the place. He had originally thought it had been those kids that had broken in and gotten high in the sub-basement, but the smells didn’t match.
And yet, he knew they had to be connected somehow. Val had told him as much. And now that he knew she was safe for the night in his home, he was going to figure out exactly what they knew.
It was disturbing how quickly he caught on to their scent. They were in the woods just a few blocks away from Wayne Avenue, where the stores that had been broken into were located. The wolf was enraged by the discovery and soon, Gabe was trotting full pelt toward the area. He stopped just short of the gathering of suspicious wolves, carefully calculating which way the wind was blowing so the group of boys wouldn’t catch his scent before he had gathered the information from them he needed.
“God, these rules are stupid! Why can’t we just go in there by force, man?”
“You already know that as long as shifters live on human turf, we have to follow human law as much as we can. And according to those laws, the store doesn’t belong to us.”
“Well, it doesn’t belong to him either! We should have every right to the portal!”
“You’re a frickin’ idiot! You know the magic doesn’t work that way!”
“Well, maybe I don’t, Ren! And don’t call me names, you asshole!”
“The magic isn’t going to work for someone who doesn’t rightfully belong there. You already heard Hacker when he told you about it.”
“Well, what does Hacker know anyway? He’s dead.”
The boys took a moment to laugh at the fact, which Gabe personally found to be in bad taste, and then they continued talking.
“The good news is, we know for sure where it is now. We smelled it even if we couldn’t use it. And the girl heard the humming.”
“It’s no fair,” one of the others said, his voice an annoying whine. “Why can humans hear it when it takes the perfect frickin’ conditions for a shifter to find it? They’re our portals!”
“Because the magic is more natural to us, you dope! Now, shut up. We have to figure out what to tell the boss.”
Gabe perked up. If there was a man in charge and the boys knew who it was, then he was getting somewhere.
“It ain’t our fault, though. Hacker wasn’t careful and that stupid old asshole wrecked him.”
“We were supposed to be standing guard!” Ren shouted. “It’s our asses on the line! He’s going to fucking kill us all! You know how he felt about Hacker.”
“Why would he hurt us? I thought he was your uncle, Ren.”
Ren was silent for a moment, the pain curdling in his breast sharp enough for all of them to sense, even Gabe.
“You don’t know my family, man. The only way to get them to care about you is to do what they want. Why else would they have us doing all their dirty work? It’s not for the glory, I’ll tell you that much.”
As much as the wolf despised the kid for the way he had treated Val, the way his voice broke made Gabriel want to protect him. He knew what it was like to have heavy demands placed on a boy’s shoulders, and how horrible it could feel when one couldn’t measure up, no matter how hard they tried. And it was clear he had been manipulated into the position he was in now. But that didn’t make it okay to do what he was doing.
“So what do you want us to do then? Run away like we’re just a bunch of cowards?”
“No! We have to figure out a way to get ourselves out of this mess. Something believable. Hacker was one of my uncle’s favorite men. Who knows why but he treated him like a real family member. Nothing like how he treats me. We got him killed. We fucked up. And he won’t think anything of getting rid of me, and probably all of you, too, for doing it.”
“But what about the pack?”
“Yeah! Pack loyalty!”
Ren’s anger radiated through the trees. “Our pack plays by different rules! What the hell is so hard about that for you morons to understand?!”
Everybody grew quiet, and Gabe consulted the wolf, and made a bold decision.
“What if I could help you?”
The boys were startled by the timbre of Gabe’s voice, and turned to him, their eyes wide and growls of fear deep in their throats.
“You can’t help me, old man,” Ren said miserably. “I’m dead meat. You don’t know my family…”
“No,” Gabe said quietly. “You’re right about that. But maybe, if you told me more about them, I’d be able to really hit them where it hurts and protect you at the same time.”
Ren was quiet as he considered this, and for a moment, Gabe was afraid the boy wasn’t going to take the bait. But he was desperate and afraid, and a wave of relief washed over Gabe when Ren met his eyes and gave a small nod.
“All right, old man,” he said. “I’m listening.”
20.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Val exclaimed as Ren walked through the front door.
She had woken up in the middle of the night after a nightmare and had needed someone to talk to, but when she got up, she had found the house completely empty. Gabe followed Ren in, a sheepish look on his face.
“What the hell is he doing here?!” Val demanded.
“Relax, kid. I’m on it.”
“Like hell!” Val cried, getting right up in Ren’s face. “Were you following me or something, you creep?”
“
Easy!” Gabe growled.
The noise startled Val and she frowned over at him.
“I hate it when you do that,” she mumbled.
Gabe rolled his eyes at her.
“I can explain everything,” Gabe said with a sigh. “But not yet. I have to talk with the kid here. He’s kind of in trouble.”
“What the hell?” Ren asked, looking from Val to Gabe in disgust. “Is it your job to take in strays around here or something? The lost little kids in the neighborhood?”
“Watch it, before I change my mind, you little shit,” Gabe said, his voice low and menacing. Everybody already knew that it was futile to mess with Gabe, and Ren clamped his mouth shut quickly, avoiding eye contact and taking on a submissive, puppy-like look.
“There,” Gabe said. “Now you’re finally acting like your true self.”
“Yeah, well, my family doesn’t acknowledge omegas. You have to learn how to blend in.”
“Well, you do a pretty poor job of that, kid. Let me tell you…”
Ren opened his mouth, angry enough to protest, but one look from Gabe cut him off.
“Seriously. What’s going on?” Val demanded. “I don’t like being around this creep.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Gabe said dismissively. “You can go up to your room then, because the creep and I have some talking to do.”
Val’s cheeks burned hot with indignation and embarrassment. “Are you sending me to my room like I’m your little kid or something?” she exclaimed. “Because I’m not going! I’m staying here to find out just what the hell is going on.”
Gabe shrugged halfheartedly, refusing to meet her eyes, and nodded his head toward the living room. Ren understood the unspoken cue and headed inside, sitting down on the couch with a heavy sigh.
“A lot of good it does you pretending to be an alpha,” Val muttered under her breath. They both heard her though; it was useless to try to keep whispers out of earshot of a wolf shifter. She had learned that much on her own when she had first moved into her apartment complex and had complained to herself about just how shady her neighbors were. They had responded in kind, howling and yelling about how they didn’t need any stuck up humans in their neighborhood. Giving them money on occasion was the only way to keep them happy enough not to harass her.