“Fiona?” Aidan whipped around and tried to still his expression when Fox’s eyes widened in surprise. “What did she say?”
“She never told me for sure. But she told me all about you. And…uh…bought me your graphic novels.”
Aidan stared at Fox, saw the dark eyes, dark hair, and finally the truth in the shape of his mouth, the cut of his cheekbones.
He had a son.
Fire burned in his stomach, his chest. The pain almost brought him to his knees. Raven hadn’t told him. She’d lied to him. His own father had known and never told him. Even Fiona hadn’t told him. He needed to have words with Raven. But first he had to deal with his son.
Holy shit, he was a father.
His heart pounded, and his lungs refused to draw air. He found himself scrambling to sit down before he fell down.
“I hope you don’t mind much,” Fox said, worrying his bottom lip.
Aidan’s gaze jumped to Fox. A lump formed in his throat. This boy, this young man was a part of him. He’d been denied knowing him, raising him, being a part of his life. No more. “I don’t mind. I’m stunned…proud and honored. And I’m so sorry I never knew.”
“That’s okay.” He shrugged a shoulder. “I know you had no idea.”
“I should have known. If I had, I would have been here for you.”
Fox looked down, the toe of his boot playing with a shirt lying on the floor. “What do we do now?”
“I don’t know.” Aidan rubbed his face. First thing he needed to do was find Raven. “But I’d like to be part of your life. Would you be okay with that?” Fear rushed into him. What if Fox didn’t want a relationship with him? Didn’t want him as his father? Seriously, what did he have to offer the boy?
“Yeah. I’m okay with that.” Fox smiled and Aidan recognized the same dimple in his cheek that he sported.
How had he not seen it before?
Fox stayed until his dogs grew restless. Aidan awkwardly patted him on the back and warned him to be careful. Fox gifted him a full smile, and promised to keep the truth he’d revealed until Aidan had a chance to talk with Raven.
They were sure as hell going to have a talk.
After watching until Fox was out of sight, he entered the cabin. The dank, dark, hellhole he’d grown up in. The same place Earl had met with Fox many times with no plans to ever tell his own son he had a kid. He must have loved knowing that he had a relationship with Fox while Aidan had no clue Fox existed. The fucking bastard. It was just the kind of thing he’d get off on. Aidan clenched his fists. All this time Earl had secretly laughed at him, ridiculed him over and over for not being married, not having a family, not being man enough. And all along Aidan had a son he hadn’t been aware of. A son Earl could have easily told him about, but chose not to for whatever sick reason the asshole had come up with.
Aidan punched the wall. His fist crashed through the drywall, his knuckles coming back bloody. How he wished the bastard was alive so he could kill him again.
Aidan jerked on his coat, grabbed his keys, and slammed out of the cabin. He couldn’t have it out with his father, but he sure as hell could have it out with Raven.
He’d asked her if he was Fox’s father and she’d lied to him. Lied to him. How could she? She’d known how much he’d longed for a family, and she’d taken that away from him.
He stomped over the cleared path, feeding off the pain stabbing up his leg. It sure as hell beat the pain cutting into his heart.
Right in front of him, between him and the SUV, stood the black wolf. Aidan came to a full stop, breathing hard.
“Scram,” he yelled, throwing his arms into the air.
The wolf crouched into attack position. Its front legs spread wide, head low, and growled in response. Its teeth glinting like knifes in the setting sun.
Hair on the back of Aidan’s neck stood at attention. Okay, so maybe he wasn’t going anywhere, just yet.
“Fuck.”
He wanted to leave. Needed to find Raven. Needed to give her a piece of his mind.
Tell me to stay away from my own son. Deny him the right to be a father. He needed…
He needed…
He needed to stay put. At least until he got himself under control. If he went to Raven now, who knew what he’d do.
“Shit.” He kicked at the snow.
Last year he’d done the unthinkable. He and Sonya had gotten into a fight. A heated fight. He had lost his temper…and hit her. He’d never regretted doing anything more in his life. He’d watched his father hit his mother, beating her bloody. After his mother drank herself to death, his father had turned to him as a punching bag.
He’d lost his temper, just like his father had, hitting Sonya in a fit of rage. She’d promptly hit him back, knocking him on his ass, and broken off their relationship.
It had scared the shit out of him. He’d called a therapist, gotten into counseling, willing to do anything not to turn into Earl. He wished he could talk with Dr. Foster now.
But he had a fucking wolf barring his escape.
Aidan took another step forward, and the wolf bared his teeth again, its gums black, a sharp contrast to the gleaming white teeth. Its lips twisted as though to say, “Go ahead. Make my day.” There was no sound, the growl silent this time, and somehow, this act of aggression scared him worse.
“Fine. Have it your way.” Aidan backed up, keeping the wolf in his sights until he reached the cabin and let himself back in.
He yanked off his coat and tossed it onto the mess of the other junk littering the place.
What the hell did he do now?
Aidan stayed away from Raven for two days. It had taken him that long to cool down. His anger had gone a long way in helping him clean up Earl’s place. There was nothing like anger to fuel a project. While the place wasn’t actually comfortable, it was clean. He’d bagged up Earl’s clothes, those worth keeping, burned the others, and set aside what he needed to take to Fairbanks and donate to Good Will. There wasn’t much. Even in death, Earl didn’t have a lot to share.
The black wolf had continued to hang around, barring any chance of escape. It was the damnest thing.
God, he hoped he wasn’t hallucinating.
It was Monday morning, there was no sign of the wolf, and he was on his way to have it out with Raven. Weird that the wolf disappeared when Aidan had finally leashed the beast raging inside him. There was so much he had to do, and the wolf had literally kept him a prisoner. But he hadn’t the heart, or the desire, to shoot the animal.
Besides keeping Aidan from talking to Raven, the wolf had kept him from dropping off Earl’s stuff, and gathering supplies. He also needed to contact his editor and agent and let them know how he could be reached. He had no plans to leave Chatanika at the moment. If ever. Not with his son living here. He wasn’t going to uproot the kid and take him to Seattle unless Fox wanted to visit on vacation or something.
The things they could do together. Vacations, sports, fishing. The list was endless. He had so much time to make up. Time he’d never get back.
Raven had so much to answer for.
He parked in her driveway and headed toward the front door. The day had dawned, around ten-thirty, to a dismal gray, promising snow. As if they needed more. He knocked on her door, clamping down on his anger as it threatened to rage. He could do this. He could have a discussion with the woman who had lied to him, betrayed him for the last twelve years, without losing his temper. Being angry was one thing. His anger was justified. Losing control of that anger would be something he couldn’t allow.
He knocked again, thankful for the frigid, icy air. He peered around. Silence greeted him.
Don’t tell me she wasn’t home? Not when he had waited this long.
Wait a minute.
He walked toward the studio attached to the house by an enclosed walkway. Muffled music could be heard from inside the insulated building. He should have figured she’d be in her studio. He found the door and knocked. Waited.
Nothing.
Enough of this.
He tried the knob, and it turned easily in his hand. Heat greeted him, warm, beckoning. Deceptive. Music was next, the soul sounds of Marvin Gaye…and Raven’s off-key voice singing along. How dare she sing when his life was tied in knots with her lies? He followed her voice, breathing in the rich, musty smells of clay. Around a metal shelving unit full of drying pottery pieces, he found her sitting at the wheel, wearing worn, mud-covered overalls, her hair secured in a loose knot at the top of her head. Tendrils brushed her serene face. Her hands were working smoothly, rhythmically together, pulling up the walls of a large vessel. A vase, maybe. She stood and carefully lowered her arm inside the narrow opening, her arm disappearing to her elbow, all the while singing along with I Heard it Through the Grapevine. Fitting.
“You lied to me.”
Raven jerked, her head popping up fast, her arm bumping the sides of the cylinder. The form teetered grossly off center and then collapsed.
“Damn it.” Raven plopped onto the wooden seat, shut off the wheel, and mushed the clay into a messy mound of mud. “Don’t ever come in here and surprise me like that. Do you have any idea how long that took me to shape?” She narrowed angry eyes at him and flipped muddy slip off her hands. It splattered onto the floor, some landing on his boots and the cuffs of his pants. “What the hell are you doing here, Aidan?”
“You lied to me,” he repeated, advancing farther into the room.
She seemed to catch onto his mood. She forgot about the clay mess on her wheel, reached for a towel, and slowly wiped off her hands. “Lied to you about what?” she asked with a slight tremble to her voice. One she tried to conceal with a haughty lift of her chin.
“Fox.”
Raven swallowed, her eyes not quite meeting his. “What about Fox?”
Aidan stalked toward her, stopping just within reach. Leaning down, he slapped his palms down on the bench, caged her in with his arms. “Give it up, Raven. I know he’s my son.” He said each word clearly and distinctively.
Her eyes flickered to his, her pupils wide, her honeyed skin went icy white. She opened her mouth to speak, but he cut her off. “Don’t you dare lie to me again.”
She shut her mouth and rapidly looked around the room. There was nowhere to go, and she started to tremble. He didn’t take pity on her, kept his arms like bars on the sides of her hips, jailing her in on the bench where she sat, his face right next to hers.
“H-how…how did you find out?” she whispered.
He slowly straightened as she admitted the truth. He knew from Fox that he was his father, didn’t doubt the truth, but having Raven confirm it was like a punch to his already bruised and battered heart. “Why, Raven?”
She met his gaze, hers unsure. Fear shined for a fleeting moment before hard resolve replaced it. He wanted her scared. She should be quaking in her muddy overalls.
With a slight tremor, she got to her feet. “Why?” She gave a laugh. The sound scornful and disbelieving like he’d asked a stupid question. “Your father killed mine. He wasn’t even cold in the ground, and I’m supposed to let everyone know that I was carrying the grandbaby of his killer.”
“I had a right to know.”
“I had a right to protect my child.”
“Our child. From me?”
“Yes, from you.” She threw down the towel she’d wiped her hands clean with, the muscles working in her jaw, her breasts rising with each rapid breath she took.
He slammed his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. “You should have told me,” he said, his voice an edge of steel. “He’s my son.”
“Yes, he is, but I couldn’t allow him to grow up with that kind of influence.”
Emotions swamped him. It was easier to fight, harder to feel. He grabbed her shoulders, his fingers digging into her skin as he gave her a hard shake. “I am not my father.”
“How was I to know what kind of man you would turn into? All the evidence pointed that you would follow in Earl’s footsteps.”
“What evidence?”
“You have a temper, Aidan.”
“A lot of people do.” He let go of her and stepped back. Anger no longer had a hold on him. Instead sadness swept in, depressing as it suffocated. “Why were you, of all people, so quick to believe the worst of me?”
Raven felt sick to her stomach. She’d convicted him based on his father’s sins. But—
“I thought you knew me,” Aidan said quietly. He looked at her, his eyes wounded, lost. Turning, he walked away from her, softly shutting the studio door behind him.
Slam it, she wanted to yell. He had a right to. He was supposed to be mad. Mad she could deal with. But wounded, lost, hurt. What did she do with that?
Her stomach churned like a pot of boiling water. Why was she feeling guilty? Shameful. She’d been a scared, pregnant teenager. What the hell did any eighteen-year-old kid know, especially when they were going to have a kid? She hadn’t made the choice not to tell Aidan about Fox lightly. A lot of reasons had gone into the decision.
But were those reasons the right ones?
She rubbed the back of her neck. What if she had been wrong all these years? No, absolutely not. She’d been right about Earl.
Could she have been wrong about Aidan?
Had she blamed him unfairly? Her mother had always thought so, but Lynx and Tern had agreed with her when she’d sent Aidan packing. They hadn’t known she’d been pregnant, though.
There was no point in rehashing the past. What did she do now? She needed to talk to Fox, but what if he hated her for keeping the truth from him? What if she lost him? Aidan could take her to court. Fox could choose to live with Aidan. The thought crippled her.
All right, stop it now. Fox wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t leave her. To be truthful, he wouldn’t leave his dogs.
She needed to smooth things over with Aidan. And she’d better do it now, before Aidan told Fox anything.
Raven shut down the studio and entered her house, slipping out of her overalls into a pair of jeans, and wrote a quick note to Fox in case she wasn’t back by the time he got home from school. She struggled into her parka and mukluks, grabbed her keys and left.
The drive over to Earl’s was fast. Too fast, she didn’t have what she wanted to say organized in her mind by the time she arrived. Her stomach churned, but she was better off confronting this situation head-on rather than waiting. There had been enough waiting. While she’d have happily kept the fact of Fox’s parentage quiet until the end of her days, she had to admit she felt relieved having the truth out there. A purging of sorts. In fact, it felt like her stomach was going to purge everything she’d eaten in the last twenty-four hours.
Raven parked her Suburban next to Aidan’s rental and climbed out. The sun reflected fiercely on the snow, hurting her eyes. Squinting, she viewed the path Aidan had forged, coming up quick when she spotted blood staining the snow.
Bright red, fresh—frozen—blood.
She looked around at the peaceful, crisp, serenity of the wilderness. There was nothing to suggest she should be on guard.
Except the blood in the snow.
Blood trailed toward the back of the cabin. Had Aidan stepped into another trap? She hurried, but was watchful in case there was a threat she couldn’t see or feel.
The door to the cabin stood wide open, sending another shiver through her. Slowly she entered, softly calling Aidan’s name.
No answer.
The hair on the back of her neck rose. The blood trail led through the kitchen and into the main room. She followed, finding Aidan face down on the floor.
“Aidan!” She rushed over, dropping to her knees. Blood congealed in an ugly spot on the back of his head. She felt for his pulse, giving a sob of relief when she found it strong and steady. “Aidan?” She shook him. “Come on. Wake up.”
He grunted but didn’t open his eyes.
“Aidan, you have to wake up.” She shook him again, hard
er. He groaned but still didn’t open his eyes.
There was no phone and no way she could get him to Eva by herself. She could leave him and get help, but disregarded that thought as soon as it entered her mind. No way was she going anywhere without him.
Raven rose to her feet and rushed back to the door, shutting and locking out the cold. Aidan hadn’t done this to himself. Unless he’d slipped and fallen. But then he would have fallen on snow. There hadn’t been anything sharp or solid around the blood she’d seen. Had someone snuck up and hit him?
She grabbed towels, wetting them with the pan of melting snow on top of the stove, and returned to Aidan. Placing the wet cloth on the back of his head brought another groan from him.
“Where the hell did you come from?” he grumbled.
“My place.” She almost sobbed in relief. “What happened?”
“Someone hit me.” He cocked a brow, his eyes still closed. “Sure it wasn’t you?”
“Not this time.” She continued to carefully clean the wound, his dark hair making it hard to tell if she was getting all the blood. A huge goose egg had formed, which relieved her. If his head was swelling on the outside, it wasn’t swelling on the inside. “Did you get a look at him?”
“No. It could have been a her.”
He was quiet for a long while, and Raven began to think he might have slipped into unconsciousness again. She gave him another shake.
“Stop doing that. My head hurts bad enough without you tossing me around.”
“Keep talking to me then so I know you aren’t dead.”
“Having me dead would make your situation easier.”
“Haven’t you figured out that I prefer things complicated.” She changed cloths, glad to see the new one coming away cleaner. Good. It didn’t look as though the wound was still bleeding. “Eva needs to look at this.”
He groaned. “Just kill me now.”
She choked on a laugh. “You’ll be better for it. You might need stitches.”
“Is it still bleeding?”
“No…I don’t think so.”
“Then I don’t need Eva, but I do need to get up off this floor. I’m freezing.” He pushed his upper body off the floor. She helped him get to his feet, catching him as he wobbled.
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