by Kaia Pierce
Too hopeful, I told myself, my eyes fixed on Caleb’s back. He was a few paces ahead of me, his shoulders broad under his denim jacket, his black hair no longer covering the back of his neck.
Before, looking at Caleb made me feel excited as my body anticipated all the pleasures he was about to inflict on me. Now, I felt all of that, and then some. I was getting feelings, which was exactly what I didn’t want to happen.
I liked Caleb. A lot. But I had a job, a pack, and a real alpha to think about. Caleb and I were just playing house. At some point, I had to get back to real life.
In real life, Caleb was getting even closer to challenging Kaden to an alpha fight, and I was running out of time.
“You can stop right here,” Caleb suddenly said.
I tripped to a stop and steadied myself against a nearby tree. Some damp slush dripped off of its branches and exploded wetly on top of my head.
“Keep your phone turned on and your camera pointing that way. I’m supposed to meet Henderson just by that split log over there.” Caleb pointed through the trees to a spot several yards away.
I hated how awkward I felt in my boots and bulky clothes. “Mind if I wait in my wolf form?”
I shrugged out of my parka. Caleb turned halfway, cocking one eyebrow as he watched me undress. My heartbeat in my throat, I shifted. Once I was a wolf, I crouched on the ground.
Caleb nodded in approval. He trudged the rest of the distance to the split log, and he began to pace as he waited.
I scanned the area with my wolf’s eyes, looking for movement, but all I could see was Caleb. It seemed like ten whole minutes passed before somebody else finally showed up. I saw him, a crooked figure in the distance, before I heard the crunch of his boots stepping through the snow. My ears pricked up as he drew closer.
Carl Henderson?
I stood, preparing to shift back.
“What are you doing here?” Caleb said sharply.
I hesitated and crouched back down. My ears pricked. The man was still picking his way over the landscape, too far for me to be able to see his face. I could still hear his voice, and I was surprised to find that I recognized it when he spoke.
“Did you think you would fool me, Kaden?” Garland Grayback responded.
My stomach turned when I realized who it was. Something’s not right, I thought. Garland wasn’t supposed to know about this. But he still thinks Caleb is Kaden.
Caleb stumbled backward a few steps. His silence was enough to tell me that he was too shocked to reply.
“It was clever of you to target Carl, but wrong to think that he wouldn’t turn around and ask me why you were so interested in meeting him alone,” Grayback continued.
He finally stepped out of the trees and stopped just a few paces away from Kaden. He was tall, gray-haired, and surprisingly fit for a man who was well into his sixties. His black wool coat and brown leather gloves looked expensive, even from a far-off distance.
Garland spread his hands and shrugged. “Carl’s not coming, Kaden. But you know who is?”
“Who?” Caleb said with a growl.
“My betas.”
I was engulfed by a rush of dread. Oh, no…
Abandoning my clothes and my phone, I got up and moved closer.
“We have a truce!” Caleb bellowed.
Garland laughed. “Of course we do. Do you see any betas around?” He gestured at the empty landscape. “They’re not coming to attack you. They’re outdoorsy. They just happen to be out here hunting. In their human forms. With guns. For sport, you know.”
I went cold, colder than the frozen earth beneath my paws. I was still looking at Caleb, but what I saw in my mind was another scene, from a lifetime ago. The wolf with gold-pierced ears, turning my former pack alpha into a bloody pile of ribbons.
Slowly, Caleb began backing away from Garland. “Are you threatening me, Grayback?” he said. To my surprise, he didn’t sound scared, but angry.
“We have a truce, or did you forget that already?” Garland said, still chuckling. “My betas are hunting animals, not people.”
The violent memories of my past made me sick. Something inside of me was begging me to intervene, to do something before I could witness even more violence. Without a plan, I got up and started moving towards Caleb, determined to get between him and Garland.
As if I could protect him, a conflicted voice whispered in my mind. But that didn’t even matter to me. I was going to do anything to make this bad feeling go away, to feel safe again.
“Watching you, my enemy, get shot, even by accident, would be extremely bad for P.R. However, if you happened to invite an omega—”
Suddenly, Caleb pivoted around and cupped his hands around his mouth, facing my direction. “Liam! Run!”
The air around me trembled with the urgency in his voice.
I stopped, confused.
“—an omega in his wolf form, who could be mistaken for any animal—”
Caleb’s frantic eyes finally picked me out from against the wooded backdrop. “Run!”
Garland’s mouth moved, but his words were swallowed up by a booming crack, the loudest sound I’d ever heard. In contrast, the immediate seconds that followed were the most silent and still seconds I’d ever experienced in my life.
In that silence and stillness, I stopped breathing.
My right hip felt warm. I glanced down and saw the scarlet earth beneath my feet. My mind buckled in confusion.
A short moment later, I drew a breath, and the world slid back into place around me.
Then, my legs went out.
I landed hard. Now, I could feel the actual pain of it. The gunshot to my hip burned like fire, as if someone had stabbed me to the bone with a red-hot iron. My entire body jerked in reaction.
Footsteps pounded towards me.
“He can always shift back to heal himself. No muss, no fuss, so that leaves you free to think about what you’ve done.” Garland’s tone turned suddenly dark. “This is just a warning, Daniels. Try to pull something like this again, and you can forget about our truce.”
“Oh, god. Liam…”
Caleb sounded much closer. When I realized I was closing my eyes, I opened them to see Caleb skidding to a stop right beside me.
His breaths were quick and panicked as he knelt down. His trembling hands gripped my mane. “Shift back. Do it. Now!”
A thousand knives stabbed my insides. I was delirious from pain. Caleb had to shake me a few times before I could even try.
I heard him making gulping noises and cursing under his breath. “Goddamn you, Liam. Shift!”
Aren’t I shifting?
As much as I wanted to shout the words, the most I could manage was a faint whine. Convulsions ripped through my body as I endured each agonizing second.
I’ve been shot. Am I dying?
Caleb released my fur and backed away. He made those gulping sounds again, and I realized that he was actually crying.
“Please,” he whispered. “Please help me…”
Shadows fell over my vision, closing in from the outside. I’m dying, and I can’t even see him shedding tears for me…
“Don’t worry, Liam. I’ll call for help. Just hang on…”
There was a dry sob, and it was the last thing I heard.
Chapter 12: Caleb
Don’t take Liam from me, too.
It was my first time being in my brother’s house, but it wasn’t my brother I was praying to.
As I sat on his living room couch, Liam was shuttered away in a bedroom with a witch friend of Kaden’s pack, and I was bargaining with God. I’d never been religious, but I had nobody else to turn to.
In just a single moment, I learned that Liam was my only ally in this world.
I clasped my hands between my knees, stiff with grief and clenching my teeth. I have nothing else. At least give me this. Give me Liam. In my mind, I was shouting at God. All I want is just one reason to keep living. Just one.
Only a co
uple hours ago, the sound of the gunshot had torn through me. I watched in horror as Liam’s wolf body was wrenched slightly off-kilter, a burst of blood erupting on his right side. Garland’s parting words faded in and out as I realized that Liam had been shot, and it was all because of me.
When Liam didn’t shift back, I knew that it was serious. At that moment, all I could think about was saving him, and I didn’t care what it would take.
So I called Kaden.
Now, I was left feeling useless as I waited for Rowan to emerge from the hallway to tell me that Liam would be okay. Kaden had assured me that he would meet me here, but he’d yet to arrive.
At the moment, I was alone.
I was no stranger to solitude, but I couldn’t bear to think about being alone anymore if that meant losing Liam.
There was knock on the door. I jumped up. When I answered it, I didn’t find Kaden on the doorstep, but a blue-eyed, brunette woman with a kind face. Her brow was creased with uncertainty as she looked at me.
“Kaden?”
I shook my head. “No. I’m Caleb.”
Her expression didn’t change. “Oh. I’m Diana. How is he?”
“No idea. We’ve only been here for twenty minutes.”
I let her in, forgetting all about my swollen, red eyes and dripping nose. I was tense with anxiety, and I was relieved to finally have someone to worry with. Diana left her boots by the door and hung up her coat and scarf.
“Hot chocolate?”
“I…sorry, what?” I stammered.
Diana rolled up the sleeves of her flannel shirt. “We can sit around twiddling our thumbs while we wait, or we can do something with our hands. So would you like some hot chocolate?”
“I…I guess.”
I followed her, bisecting a line through the living room. The kitchen, a room I hadn’t even seen yet, was just around the corner, and Diana moved around in it as if it was her own. She opened and closed the refrigerator and cabinet doors, assembling a collection of ingredients on the counter: a carton of whole milk, sugar, a can of cocoa powder, cinnamon, nutmeg.
“Have a seat,” Diana said, in a voice that was used to giving orders.
I pulled out a chair and sat at the table.
“So, you’re Liam’s mysterious beau,” Diana stated as she set a pot of milk on the stove.
Startled, I bolted upright in my seat. “Who else knows?”
To my surprise, Diana laughed. “Just me, I think. I’m pretty observant and I know Liam, so it was obvious to me that he was hiding somebody from us.”
“You’ve known him long?”
“Oh yeah. I found him years ago, back in Kansas City. He was just this little boy, too tiny and too skinny for his age, living on the streets with a few other shifter orphans. Sam and I weren’t married yet, and the Black Paw MC was just a crew and nothing more. But it was his idea to turn the club into a pack and adopt those kids into it…”
Liam lived on the streets?
When he told me about his past, he’d stopped at the moment when the larger pack took his mother away, and I hadn’t thought to ask what had happened after. In my mind, Liam was always just like he was now, sensitive, nervous, and twenty-seven years old. It was hard to imagine him as a child. Now that Diana had told me, I could clearly picture him as a scrawny ten-year-old, starved to the size of a boy two years younger, lean and quick from fighting to survive. Visible ribs, a smudged face, blisters on his feet from constantly outgrowing his shoes.
I could picture it all, because it was how I’d grown up, too.
“He had a tough life, but he came out as sweet as anyone else,” Diana said, which echoed my thoughts exactly.
“I didn’t know that about him,” I said numbly.
The milk began to sizzle in the pot. Diana made one more trip to the refrigerator and pulled out some butter. She dropped a small piece into the milk, put it back in the refrigerator, and winked.
“My secret ingredient. Don’t tell anybody,” she said with a finger to her lips. After adding a pinch of salt, she began to whisk in the other ingredients.
A few minutes later, she was ladling the hot chocolate into a pair of earthenware mugs. I heard the front door open and shut on the other side of the wall just as I took my first sip. It was good hot chocolate, but I could barely taste it. I was too busy thinking about other things.
My mind chanted the words with each quick, desperate beat of my heart: I. Can’t. Lose. Him…
“That must be Kaden,” Diana said.
I abandoned my drink and followed her out of the kitchen. When I reached the living room, I was surprised to see not only Kaden, but Rowan, too.
In her ponytail, sweater, and jeans, Rowan looked nothing like the doctor that Liam undoubtedly needed, yet all hope of his survival rested on her shoulders. She barely even looked old enough to drink at bars.
“Well? Is he okay?” I asked sharply.
Rowan’s eyes snapped up to meet mine, slightly magnified by her glasses. Her lips parted slightly. She glanced at Kaden, like she was asking his permission to speak to me.
“Just answer my question.” My voice was louder than I meant it, but it finally got the job done.
“He’ll live, but he’s still too weak to shift. Once he gets his strength back and turns back into a man, he’ll be healed up completely,” she said.
All three of us, Kaden, Diana, and I, exhaled in relief. But I knew that nobody was as relieved as I was. I knew it in my heart, my gut, and the deepest pit of my soul.
Thank you, I prayed, to whoever was listening.
I started making my way toward the hallway. “I want to see him.”
“Wait—” Rowan began, reaching for my arm just as I ducked out of her reach.
“We need to talk,” Kaden added.
“No.” I stopped in the mouth of the hallway and turned around. I was careful to keep my forehead smooth, my expression neutral. Still, I could feel my mouth turning down on the sides as I fought back a storm of emotions. No matter what, I couldn’t appear weak. “I will see Liam first. Then, we can talk.”
Rowan and even Diana, who was still on the other side of the room, flicked nervous glances at Kaden. Thankfully, Kaden seemed to believe whatever fire was burning through my eyes. He simply pressed his lips flat and nodded.
It wasn’t a nod of permittance, but of understanding. My eyebrows rose in shock. I hadn’t expected that.
I turned back around and padded softly to the guest bedroom at the end of the hall. My entire body felt heavy and numb as I stared ahead at that closed door. I already knew that Liam was alive on the other side of it. What bothered me was how close I’d come to losing him—
And to losing everything.
I stopped just outside the door, lifting a sweaty palm to turn the knob, when I suddenly felt a tug on the end of my shirt. When I turned around, I found Rowan standing behind me.
“I have to tell you something,” she said before I could ask what she wanted. “It can’t wait.” She was whispering.
“It can’t?” Rather than annoyed, I was curious.
Rowan placed her hands on her hips and stared up at me over the rims of her glasses. “Liam’s pregnant,” she said so quietly that her lips barely moved.
*
Even as an unconscious wolf, Liam was still beautiful.
His furry, gray-and-black body was draped across the bed. Outside of the rise and fall of his breaths, he was completely still. A clean bandage was wrapped around his lower half. The nightstand was crowded with a mortar and pestle and a collection of bottles, the herbs and barks and oils of Rowan’s craft.
I sat on a chair beside his bed. Half of me ached to stroke his fur, to bury my face in it and feel the glorious warmth of his uninterrupted life flowing through his veins.
The other half was scared shitless.
Pregnant? I thought to myself. How is it possible?
I already knew how entirely possible it was. Kaden’s episode with his mate Josh proved
that male omegas could get pregnant, and I’d fucked Liam enough times to sire a village of shifter pups. It made sense; of course I got him pregnant.
It all made sense, but I still couldn’t believe it.
I wasn’t sure how long I sat there watching him, feeling dually grateful and apprehensive. He looked so much more fragile and delicate now that I knew there was another life inside of him, a life that I’d planted there. My seed. My wolf. My child.
I reached for his paw. He flinched, but otherwise continued sleeping.
“I can’t wait for you to shift back so we can talk about this,” I murmured.
Somebody knocked on the door and opened it without waiting for an answer. My back faced the door, but I still knew it was Kaden who was walking into the room.
“I just want a moment alone,” I said stiffly.
“We’ve given you more than a moment. Now, we need to talk about what we’re going to do next.”
I gritted my teeth and let go of Liam’s paw. I’d expected to be forced to have this conversation sooner or later. Naturally, Kaden wanted to know how Liam ended up getting shot, and I’d had plenty of time to think of a cover story.
“Grayback mistook me for you,” I explained slowly, carefully. I kept my back turned so he couldn’t see my face.
“It doesn’t matter how it happened,” Kaden said. He walked over and stood on the other side of the bed. Finally, we were face-to-face. He crossed his arms and gazed down at Liam. “If Grayback thinks he can ignore our truce and pick on us, then we need to show him that he’s making a huge mistake. You promised to help defend my pack from him, remember?”
“Of course I remember. I’m not planning to break that promise anytime soon.”
“Good. Because defense isn’t an option anymore. Not when Grayback does something like this. We’re going to get him back, Caleb. You, me, and my betas. Are you in?”
My hand was still on the bed, barely an inch away from touching Liam’s fur. On the outside, I was the picture of calm. Internally, my mind was a thorny snarl of conflicting thoughts.
For the first time since he walked into the room, I finally met Kaden’s eyes.
“Liam’s pregnant,” I said.