by Kimber White
I couldn’t breathe. My body still quaked not only with Clint’s close call with Marcus, but all the things I’d heard just before that. I slumped against the wall and buried my face in my hands.
Clint was on me. He slid his hands beneath my elbows and pulled me back up. His forehead creased with worry and his green eyes glowed brighter as he searched my face. The memory of his kiss lingered in my mind. After everything that happened, I still wanted more.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked, his voice ragged.
“Tell you what? Which thing? I can’t even…”
“You know exactly which thing.” His voice gained strength. He let go of me. Running his hand over his face, he charged down the hall until he ended up in Pat’s kitchen. The delicious scent of her homemade chicken soup hit me full on and my stomach roared with hunger.
Clint turned on me. Pat had a long farm table in the center of the room that seated twelve. With cabinets painted green, she had copper pots and pans hanging from hooks near the stairs off the back of the kitchen. He’d lived in the house his whole life, but Harold constantly banged into them. I knew both Harold and Pat would be here any second. They would have more questions I didn’t know how to answer.
“This Peter,” Clint said, pacing. Rage colored his face. His footsteps fell so heavy, I worried he’d fall through the hardwood floor. “He’s made a full on challenge for you. Why didn’t you tell me?”
I was angry. I wanted to shout that it wasn’t his business. I had enough keyed up wolves in my life, I didn’t need to add a tiger to that mix. And yet, heat and desire flared through me as Clint’s possessive anger made his eyes flash even brighter.
“It’s pack business,” I said, knowing full well it wouldn’t satisfy him one bit. It was the kind of thing Jarred would say.
“Bullshit!” He whirled around and crossed the distance between us in two powerful strides. His stripes appeared again. On instinct, I reached for him, running my hands along his chiseled upper arms. Clint’s tiger instantly quieted; his stripes receded.
“Okay.” I tried again. “Then, it’s complicated. You heard what Marcus said the same as I did. And by the way, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t try to rip off the heads of any more members of my brother’s pack. Aunt Pat was right. If you’d lost your cool and attacked him out there, you’d have more than just a bunch of Venezuelan jaguars after you. And they’re not just Jarred’s pack. They were my father’s. They’re mine.”
The words felt hollow in my mouth. Were they mine? I’d lived my whole life surrounded by my father’s men. They were loyal to my brother now. Marcus had just proved he was willing to put himself between a full grown tiger and me. Even if his emotions were misplaced, he’d done it for me. At the same time, I’d never felt more isolated from the wolves of Wild Lake than I did right now.
“They’re willing to sell you off to the highest bidder!” Clint couldn’t hold back his roar any longer. It bounced off the walls and shook the pots and pans. His hands were on me, pulling me toward him. His anger stoked mine. Fire burned inside of me and my vision went white. I knew my wolf eyes blazed right back at his tiger’s.
There was movement toward the front of the house. The front door slammed shut and heavy footsteps clomped down the hall. Clint pulled away from me. Reason had won out and he seemed to know how much harder it would be if Marcus or any of the others found me in his arms.
Harold, Pat, Marcus and Sarah walked into the kitchen together. Of the four of them, only Sarah shot me a smile. That girl might have been sixteen, but it seemed she had the soul of someone older and wiser. It was one of the reasons she spent more time here on the farm than back in town with girls her own age.
“You okay, honey?” Pat asked, though she kept her stare leveled at Clint.
“I’m fine. I’ve been fine.” I wanted to say so many other things. I wanted to rail and scream and ask them why no one had ever told me about my father before. He left for me. He’d died because of me. He’d wanted to mate me off to keep the peace among the packs. I hated and loved him all at the same time. But, most of all, I missed him. The grief I’d pushed down for so long rose up. Behind me, Clint seemed to sense the change in my emotion. I felt his hand lightly touch the small of my back. It bound me to him. Tethered me. At the same time, it took my breath away.
“These are pack lands,” Marcus snarled to Clint. Pat reached for him, touching his arm. Marcus’s eyes glowed gold, but he kept his wolf in check. “But you knew that, didn’t you? You came anyway. Jarred knew there was something wrong at the Backwoods. He told me he sensed something. I figured Lucia just had him all keyed up. So what the hell are you doing here? You know it’s within my rights to call all the packs down on your head.”
“Enough, Marcus,” I shouted, sensing Clint’s anger rising. I couldn’t bear to look back at him, afraid my own feral side would win out. “Clint’s not here to cause trouble.”
“The hell he’s not!”
Clint’s thunderous growl shook the pots again. Harold moved, putting himself at Aunt Pat’s side. Sarah watched everything with a kind of detached curiosity. It was odd that she was still here though. Why hadn’t Pat just sent her on home?
“Clint’s here because of me,” I answered, straightening my back. “As a friend to me. He needed a place to stay.” I was about to give Marcus the highlights of what Clint told me, but as I started to, I realized it wouldn’t help one bit. Clint was on the run from another group of shifters. Telling Marcus that wouldn’t do much for his resume.
Finally, I did look back at him. My heart dropped. Clint was barely hanging on. His eyes glowed like green fire and his stripes were out again. If he shifted here in the middle of Pat’s kitchen, Marcus would rightly take it as an act of open aggression.
“Clint, is it?” Harold said. “You may be a friend to our Lucia here, but I think even you can see how you’re being here is stirring up trouble she doesn’t need.”
“She needs someone to protect her,” Clint glowered.
“We protect her!” Marcus charged forward. I got my hand up just in time and shoved him back hard. He slammed into the opposite wall.
“Enough!”
Marcus’s fangs were out. Aunt Pat shot me a pleading look. There was just no way these two could stay in the same room together much longer.
“Honey,” she said. “Why don’t you have your friend go wait out at the cabin? I think he knows the way.”
Her look was kind, but devastating. She knew. She’d known all along.
“I’m not leaving her alone with…”
I turned on Clint. I hated asking him to leave, but Pat was right. Until Marcus calmed down, this was going nowhere good. “You don’t have to worry about leaving me alone. I told you. Marcus is part of my brother’s pack. And it’s not like I’m defenseless. You all seem to keep forgetting that. Just go to the cabin. I’ll come find you in a little while when everything’s...calmer.” It was a lie. Nothing could possibly get calmer after this. He knew it, but he also knew Marcus hadn’t given him an idle threat. If he brought the packs down on our heads, things would go from bad to horrible.
“I’ll go,” he said, a vein popping near his temple. “But I won’t be far.” He turned his attention to Pat and Harold. “I owe you my thanks for your hospitality.”
“Just see that you don’t dishonor it,” Harold said. Blind though he was, he seemed to stare right through Clint.
I knew Clint had more to say. I also knew how hard it was for him to turn his back and walk away. Because it was ripping me apart too. He dropped his head in deference to Pat and Harold, but refused to look at Marcus. Then, he found the back door and left us.
Shaking, I turned back to Marcus. He gripped a chair back so hard I thought he might break it. Pat peered up at him and tried to smile.
“What do you expect me to do?” he said, leveling a hard look at me. “What the hell have you been thinking?”
I wanted to yell, stomp my foot, remind hi
m that I was a grown woman and this was all my own damn business. Except, I knew it wasn’t. Not now. I might be all those things, but I was also a Wild Lake wolf and I’d kept something big from all of them.
“You should go too, Marcus,” Pat said, her tone softening. “You know Lucia’s safe here. You need to calm down first, then we’ll all decide what to do.”
“Do you want me to lie to him?” Marcus’s voice rose to almost a shriek. Pat was still talking, but he directed his rage at me.
“No,” I said, struggling to keep from yelling right back. One of us had to stay calm though. “I’ve never lied to you or my brother. And I never lied to my father either.” He understood my implication and it made him go pale. It just started to dawn on him that I’d overheard everything out at the barn.
“Lucia, your father…”
I held up a hand to silence him. “No. Not now. I’ve heard enough from everyone. Aunt Pat’s right. We all need to calm down first. I’m not asking you to lie to my brother. I am asking you to let me be the one to tell him. Can you at least give me that?”
Marcus swallowed hard. He curled his fist. He seemed ready to launch into another tirade, but once again, Pat’s steadying hand on his arm calmed him.
“Fine,” he said. “I’m heading to Traverse City in the morning to meet Senator Logan at his office there. We’ve still got a business to run in spite of all this...chaos. Jarred thinks I can talk some sense into him about this highway project. But, I’ll be back by tomorrow night. If you haven’t told your brother about...him, then I’ll have no choice.”
I nodded and spread my hands wide as a gesture of peace. Well, not so much peace, but maybe a temporary truce.
“A tiger?” Marcus said, his voice rising. “You let a damn tiger onto Wild Lake lands? Lucia, what the hell are you thinking?”
“Come on,” Harold said, coming to my rescue. “Patsy and I will walk you out. There’s nothing more to be done tonight, Marcus. This will be between Lucia and her brother now.”
I knew Marcus had so much more to say. So did I. But, he let Pat take him by the hand and lead him back down the hall. Harold followed close behind. I stood frozen in the middle of the kitchen until I heard the front door close. Only then did I sink into a chair at the kitchen table and bury my face in my hands.
I don’t know how long I sat there. I’d forgotten that I wasn’t alone. Then, Sarah quietly slid into the chair beside me. When I looked up, she was smiling.
I threaded my fingers through my hair and turned to look at her. Her wide brown eyes held both kindness and wisdom. I’d known her since she was little. She had a knack with Aunt Pat’s horses and seemed able to anticipate their movements before they made them.
“I’m sorry about all this, Sarah,” I said. “Clint didn’t mean to scare you. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
She rested her chin in her palm. “Oh, you didn’t.” The smile hadn’t left her face. Sweet as she was, Sarah was an odd girl, too. To me, she always seemed to be living in her own little world apart from all the rest of us. Pat said it was because she could see things we couldn’t. I never understood what that meant.
“Oh, Sarah. I’ve made a real mess of things, haven’t I?” I folded my arms on the table and rested my head on them.
Sarah reached over and rubbed her hand gently over the curve of my skull. “It’s not your fault, Lucia. It’s fate.”
“What?” My heart skipped. My wolf stirred as if sensing a threat. But there was no one here but Sarah and me.
Sarah laughed. “You seriously don’t know?”
I sat up. “I’m sorry. I’m just not in the mood for riddles.”
Sarah sighed and sat back in her chair. “I saw it the minute I laid eyes on your tiger. I’m surprised you didn’t.”
“Saw what, Sarah?” I didn’t like the look she was giving me. Too calm. Too...happy.
“Clint, is it? Your tiger? Lucia, for a being with preternatural senses, you’re sure pretty dense about what’s right in front of you sometimes. But, don’t worry. I told you, I saw it in a vision. I’m never wrong about these things. That tiger is no ordinary tiger. He’s yours.”
I couldn’t breathe. It got hard to see as if every light had just gone dim. My heart thundered and excitement flooded through me. I wanted to ask her what she meant, but that would just be a deflection. I knew. She knew I knew.
Sarah shrugged and got up from her chair. She grabbed a kitchen towel from the counter and started toward the sink. Pat had a pile of dishes that needed washing. “It’s gonna get real interesting around here, that’s for sure,” Sarah said. “Who would have ever thought Jarred McGraw’s sister, the only Wild Lake she-wolf in a generation, had a tiger for a fated mate?”
Her lilting laugh cut straight through me as my heart beat wildly with the truth of her words. Clint was mine. I was his. My God, we were fated mates.
Twelve
Fated mates. Sweat broke out on my brow. My heart beat so fast I don’t know how I kept my wolf back. If I’d been outside, I probably couldn’t have. But, sitting here in Aunt Pat’s kitchen with Sarah in front of me kept me grounded.
“It’s okay,” she said. Sarah was so young. But, those of us on Wild Lake knew to respect her insight. Aunt Pat thought she must have been part gypsy, or even had witch blood.
My hands trembled. I pulled them back into my lap. “Sarah, this is anything but okay.”
Her face still lit with that knowing smile. “I have a fated mate too. I haven’t met him yet. I don’t even know who he is. But someday, I know I’ll face the same dilemma you have. And I’ll count on you to help me through it.”
“Sarah…” I had so many questions for her. Part of me wanted to deny what she told me. It would be so much easier. But, I didn’t get the chance to finish my question. Aunt Pat walked into the kitchen and shot Sarah a stern look and lifted her chin. Still smiling, Sarah took the cue. She reached over, squeezed my hand, and scooted her chair back.
“Probably best if you head on home,” Pat said to her. “Steer clear of the farm for a couple of days. I’ll send for you when things settle down a bit.”
Sarah tilted her head. I didn’t have to have her sight to know the question in her mind. When exactly did Pat think things would die down? But Sarah left without asking it. Now, it was just Pat and me. She slowly sank into the chair Sarah had just exited. Her laser gaze turned my heart. Was it disappointment she felt? Shock? Worry? Probably a combination of all three.
“Pat,” I started.
She held a hand up to silence me. Worry lines creased her brow. “Honey,” she said. “Let me say a few things. Then…”
“If it’s a lecture, I don’t need it.” I hated how short my tone was. But, I was barely hanging on. My feral nature clawed to get out. I wanted to shift. I wanted to run. Above it all, I just wanted.
“Yes you do!” Pat rarely raised her voice to me. The echo of her shout cut straight through me. She narrowed her eyes and two red dots colored her cheeks.
“Lucia, I love you like my own daughter. You know that. There’s nothing you could say or do that could change that. But, I’m terrified.”
Such a simple, yet gut-wrenching statement. I wanted nothing more than to take the pain and worry from her eyes.
“Clint isn’t here to cause trouble,” I said. “He just needed a place to hide out.”
She raised a brow and leaned back hard in her chair. “You should have come to me.”
“And said what? Honestly, what could I have said?”
She slammed a fist on the table. “This is my farm, Lucia. You brought a tiger here without talking to me first. You think I don’t know he’s been staying at the cabin? My cabin? Honey, you should know by now nothing goes on around here I don’t know about.”
My head throbbed with my pounding pulse. If I didn’t shift soon, I’d have a monster of a headache. “I’m sorry. I really am. I think maybe I was just hoping to give you an out. In case my brother started snooping around.”<
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“You wanted me to lie to him?”
“No! I just figured if you didn’t officially know Clint was here, you wouldn’t be in a position to have to lie.”
“You sound like a politician,” she said.
“And you’re deflecting. Aunt Pat, I heard what you and Marcus said out there. Jarred admitted to me the other day that my father was the one trying to broker a mating proposal for me. And yet, no one bothered to let me in on it. And you should have told me why he went down to Ohio by himself. Don’t try to deny it now. I heard you. He went there to fight for me. And he went alone because he knew what was going to happen.”
I hated causing Pat any more pain than she’d already experienced. It had been two years since my father died. She’d only recently come out from the shadow of grief.
She took my hand. Tears played at the corner of her eyes, but she stayed strong and stoic. “If I’d told you any of that, you would have tried to go down there with him. He knew that too. You and Jarred were what mattered. And I don’t think he knew what was going to happen. He didn’t have some death wish. Or if he did, he certainly never shared it with me. You and I both know he would have never wanted you to blame yourself for any of it.”
“I don’t.” Now it was my turn to hold back tears. “Oh, Aunt Pat. I wish I could be what all of you want me to be. You think I don’t know how much trouble I’ve caused? That last thing I want is for the packs to be at war because of me. But, I just can’t do it. I can’t mate with Peter or any of the others. Believe me, part of me wants to. I tried to deny it. It irritates me to no end that Jarred is right about something. He is though. Something’s different inside of me. He said it was the Rise.”
She was smiling. Pat pressed her cheek against her palm. The tears that had glistened in her eyes a moment ago turned into something more joyful.