by KH LeMoyne
She waved at the talismans adorning his mother’s gravesite and the delicate paintings. “Her teachings sent you in search of more faith?”
“In a way. I sought other tribes, other shamans. The wolf is accepted by many.”
“One of them convinced you to return and claim your place?”
“No. I wandered across my father’s territories for years before my mentor shadowed me. First, he befriended me. Later, he bullied me into assuming my role.”
Her heart stopped, and a rush pulsed in her eardrums. “Vendrick.”
“There are beasts who lived before my kind. Our myths, those of shifters as told by my mother’s people, originate from them.” He stared out across the endless lines of peaks. “You have the ability to see us, but I’m also skilled in deciphering one shifter from the next. Vendrick was an enigma. At first I considered our random meetings in different towns, our continued sighting from month to month, no different from running into the same tinkers and carnivals along my journey. I could smell the beast in him and not decipher it, though I know his power carries the vibration of age as well.”
“Did he seek out other shifters or only you?”
“Such curiosity.” He curled his fingers around the ones she’d laid over his palm. “Territorial alphas have a reputation for withholding information from each other. From the few I trust, I’ve learned Vendrick made his rounds.”
That the enigma of his life, a creature who monitored and developed other alphas, found the time to save her as a child widened her view of her past. She’d felt special being saved by Vendrick, important somehow. Now she was merely a piece on a playing field, one Deacon’s mentor moved and positioned for an endgame she might never understand. Uncertain how she felt about that, she reverted to a previous topic.
“Is your father buried here?”
“His body was found at the edge of our lands, several years after my mother’s death. A silver bullet to the head, the shot not fatal to his human side, yet capable of slowly destroying his wolf. He’s buried on that spot.”
“Murder. Who would risk attacking an alpha?”
“My conclusion is no one.” He plucked several strands of grass and let them blow from his hand. “My father ruled with an iron fist, but most respected or feared him. He preferred clearly defined hierarchies in the clan. He didn’t cleanse his territory of other species like our vicious alpha to the north. The alpha to the east was powerful, old, and building his troops. He hardly bothered with conquest in other areas. My father would have been hundreds of years old, yet after my mother’s death, I suspect he realized how much he physically and mentally needed her.”
Lena swallowed hard. Corbin King’s only tie to controlling his alpha power had been his wife, no matter how strained their relationship. Would an alpha so determined to control everything around him submit to destroying himself instead of losing control? “How old were you when you left Black Haven?”
“A teenager, still young enough to be very naïve. I wanted to see my father as a hero. When atrocities from the next territory crossed our borders, I took him proof. My isolation within the clan and my ease with my mother tainted whatever interactions my father and I had. I seriously misjudged the animosity and bitterness he felt toward me. Not only did he ignore the injury to our own people that I had found, he took my concern as a challenge to his judgment.”
Lena bit her lip, listening as her gaze ran over the peaceful shrine. “I gather their mating wasn’t a love match.”
“After all these years, with hindsight, I believe my father did love her—in his way. He was smitten when he took her. Enthralled once he had her.” He let out a rueful laugh. “I suspect she shared some of those feelings, but between his determination to make her submit to his will and her resistance to considering other options, they were doomed.”
“Why did he choose her?” Lena gestured toward the land beyond the cliff. “You said that isn’t your territory.”
“My father admitted he’d been drawn to my mother’s reputation for healing and visions. He anticipated she would bow to his dominance and share her gifts with him. However, after he stole her from her tribe, he refused her input and advice.”
“Your father kidnapped your mother?” Maybe that was the custom way back in Corbin’s day, but Lena didn’t get that impression from Deacon’s scowl. “I’m guessing it wasn’t an acceptable form of courtship.”
He didn’t answer, but his jaw tightened.
“What happened after you left?”
He shook his head. “He shut her away in a hut not far from here. Refused her the company of anyone, though she had few friends. He saw to her basic needs—even visited her, I’m told.”
“From what you’ve mentioned, I can’t see her accepting his sentence.”
With a sigh, he turned and leaned against the stone. “No. Though my mother didn’t flee or bemoan her fate. Instead, she chose a harsher punishment and rejected my father as her mate. He deserved the bleak existence that would have brought, but she suffered as well. Between the two of them, they were too stubborn and damaged for compromise.”
“They lived separately, yet basically down the street.”
“One day, she found a way to escape. She didn’t make it far. Just beyond the perimeter of Black Haven. If she’d chosen a clear night instead of a blizzard, she might have survived.”
“You seem to know whenever I’m in trouble.” Or was that admitting too much about their own bond? It hurt her to imagine a woman with Deacon’s eyes and black hair fleeing into the night, determined to escape or die. A sad ending for them all. “Why didn’t he sense her struggle?”
Shaking his head slowly, he looked her way, but his hooded eyes remained unfocused and clouded with recollection. “I’ve never had an answer to that. By the time I learned of her death, I was far away, and few people felt comfortable enough to discuss the tragedy with me.”
“So how did you find out about it?”
He laughed. A hoarse, raw sound. “From a human trader in Seattle. He’d witnessed my father burying a woman in a shallow grave at the edge of the stronghold, a place as isolated as the prison he forced on her. The hunter was so inebriated, no one gave his tale of a madman digging a grave any credence.”
Lena couldn’t imagine the conflicting guilt and anger Deacon must feel. She covered his shoulder with her palm and rubbed. “You found her and moved her here—and still believe he killed himself?”
“I’m certain he experienced overwhelming power without balance. I also like to think he finally realized that losing her love was more tragic than being denied her magic.”
Love. Lena’s heart raced with a sudden urge of its own. Want. Need. Love. No, she couldn’t let herself go there. Especially not for a random mention.
“Do you suffer from the overload?”
“My core, the alpha part of me, seeks energy—or maybe seeks to release it.”
“Yet you haven’t turned on any of your own people.”
He laughed and pulled her braid so she’d look at him. “I’ve never believed I was like my father in that respect. Faced with the potential to destroy those I love I’d—”
Lena glanced away. One mention was an accident, a mistaken slip of the tongue. But twice. Could he love her? If he really knew her, knew the burden of deaths she carried, love wouldn’t be a possibility. Her wishes were only painting a picture she wanted to see. Those wishes buffeted at her without mercy, for the light in his eyes reflected the love she wanted—patient and fierce. As strong as her feelings for him. With a shake of her head, she focused on him. “If left uncontrolled, I hardly think you’ll seek power and suck some poor soul like me dry?” She forced a laugh.
His stare bore through her, the scar on his cheek pale against his drawn features. “It’s not funny.”
“It’s a little funny. If anyone sucks me dry, I promise to come back and haunt them.” She made a weak attempt, curling her fingers to show claws. At least that won her a smile i
n return.
“Just anyone?”
“You. Especially you. Morning, noon, and night.”
He moved closer. “Why me?”
“Because you have the option of getting charged in a sexy way. Don’t think I missed your golden eyes and growly power the other night.” She slid her hand along his neck. “Wasting that by sucking me dry would be a crime?”
“A first-degree offense, I agree,” he said before a quick nip to her neck. The stroke of his tongue followed, reheating her blood. “The more powerful I get, Lena, the more tenuous my control.”
“I don’t see how managing your control is any different from learning to handle any new skill. A little practice and a little juggling.”
“Is that what you thought when you joined the ranger service. Just a little practice and juggling and my new life will be under control?”
“Not really. Your vision quest brought you home. Mine ended my career.”
“Was your work a quest?”
Jarred by the quick reversal from his life to hers, she exhaled slowly. “Looking back, it seems like one big rush of events. It was my life. Those people—well—sometimes you get so caught up in the energy of what’s happening that you don’t stop to analyze whether you’re in the right place doing the right thing.”
“Only a powerful motivation would have forced you from what was obviously a calling.”
“Not motivation.” Swallowing against the tight squeeze in her throat, she glanced away. “I decided I didn’t add value.” How could she admit that her very presence spelled destruction for the shifters she’d come to see as her private gift? “Others were better off with me gone.”
“I doubt that.” He stepped in, bracing her back against his chest as he rested his chin on her head.
Sunlight dappled the path beneath the tree limbs below their rocks, but the mile they’d walked brought them within view of the snowline. “Where are the boundaries of your territory?”
“Black Haven is only one of the shifter sanctuaries in this part of the world. The territory under my control stretches from a point north of Vancouver to Mazatlán.” He stopped, his brow furrowed as she turned in his arms, stunned.
“You mean most of the western American seaboard?”
With a nod, he walked on, exiting the tree line to a meadow-covered hilltop. He gestured for her to sit beside him on several rocks. “The far end is somewhere in Michigan and down until the edge of Tennessee.”
Dazed, she slouched and watched him take out a small thermos from his pocket. The sweet smell of cinnamon and cocoa wafted in the air as he unscrewed the top. He handed her a steaming cup of chocolate ambrosia and settled on an adjoining rock near her knee. Running through a quick mental visual of North America, she tried to ignore the heat of his touch and the slow erotic flush spreading through her with his nearness. “That’s a huge amount of land. How many shifters are there?”
“In my territory—close to fifteen thousand.”
“You’re an alpha to fifteen thousand people?”
Cup halfway to his mouth, he paused, then pointedly eyed her still-full cup. “There are designated lieutenants, alphas in their own right, in the denser populations, but ultimately their well-being falls to me.”
She stared at him, contemplating how she’d fallen so hard and fast for someone with so much control. Power was seductive, though it hardly mattered to her. If anything, his responsibilities warned her not to dally with long-term thoughts, despite her undeniable connection with him.
She had nothing to offer him or his people.
He drained his drink and after she finished hers, poured the rest of the hot chocolate into her cup. “The concept is more overwhelming than the reality. Trust me. We are no different in many respects from the humans we live next to and work with. We mate, sometimes marry and have children.”
Mate. Marry…children. She swallowed too fast and coughed, quickly blinking tears away. “Do you know them all?” she asked, covering her train of thought. “I mean—I never met the Secretary of the Interior when I was a ranger.”
He moved, scooted onto his back, and placed his head in her lap. The position only intensified her longing. Instead of considering a future she couldn’t have, she wanted them both naked now, his body skin to skin with hers. Yet when he reached beside his head and gently clasped her knee, her urges calmed and the world stopped spinning too fast.
She softly stroked along his dark brown strands shot with streaks of russet and black. He turned and rubbed his cheek against her belly with a growl. Teasing him, she ran her fingertips along the white patches at his temples and massaged. His growl eased into a soft hum.
“I don’t do it alone,” he murmured quietly. “It’s a joint effort. Everyone has a place and responsibility. I choose to govern, not rule. There is a life here for those who want one.” Now open, his golden eyes stared into hers, and her breath caught again. An invitation? Her pulse rushed at the thought.
He lifted his palm and pressed her throat, then trailed his hand until it lay between her breasts, a cover for her heart. “I have men and women who crave responsibility to care for others. They get that opportunity in our clan. Their only requirement is loyalty to me, but I don’t need or want to be in everyone’s business. It’s a fair trade.”
“Says the alpha.” She smiled in spite of herself. His chuckle warmed her heart. “You get into the personal business of the people here. They all have their stories that revolve around you too. Even Shanae has stories after being away for years.”
He rubbed his eyes. “I was born in this stronghold. So, in essence, the people of Black Haven maintain a special bond with me.”
“Right, except you spent years on your personal walkabout. How many out there have stories you know?” She raised her brow, pleased finally to tease him. “I’ll bet you meddle with them like you do with Shanae.”
His brows drew together. “Alphas don’t stoop to meddling.”
“Manipulation.” She placed her empty cup on the thermos. “You basically gave Matthew and Shanae your blessing.” She pointed a finger at him as he opened his mouth. “Don’t even bother to disagree. Your personal team of dangerous loners is loyal to the core.”
He twisted a bit, forcing her not to look away. “What you describe isn’t hard. Loyalty requires staying power and consistency.”
She inhaled. “Staying power isn’t my strong suit.”
He grasped her hand and pressed her palm to his lips. “I wasn’t born like this. When I became the alpha, I watched and worked with everyone to develop personal profiles. I assessed the international territory alphas and decided which would make powerful allies or potential threats. I visited every inch of my territory to choose lieutenants. I tested and vetted each one. I still make rounds.”
“How many territory alphas are there?”
“Fourteen of us right now.”
How did he take this all in stride? Working his charm up and down the chain to impact lives in ways she couldn’t imagine, not to mention his reluctance to take credit. He at least admitted the effort it took. His honesty about the hard work called to her as well.
His people didn’t shy away from him, because he hid little from them and let them in, as he’d let her into the nuances of shifter life. His actions pulled her to him with a symmetry and rightness that stirred something deep within her, something requiring bonding with strong emotions: loyalty, compassion, pride, love—ties she couldn’t break, ties she’d die to defend, ties that edged her fears into a small tight corner.
But fear of the past still had a claw hold.
He curled to sit and then rose, wandering toward the meadow’s edge. “When I left, I never intended to return. It seems like another lifetime now.”
“You were a child.” She left the rock and joined him, tucking her hand in his. He linked fingers with her and then lifted them, contemplating the joining as if it were new, unexpected.
“It took me a long time to gain the trust
of those I left behind. People hope, and destroying dreams takes a toll. Fortunately for them, I was born to be an alpha.” His grip tightened, and his eyes glowed. Then he closed his eyes, exhaled, and kissed her fingers again. “I was my people’s opportunity for change. They expected more from me than just giving up.”
She silently pictured the adolescent, beaten and exiled from his home. Especially hard when he stood before her stronger than any man she’d ever met.
“So you came home.”
“And I cleaned Black Haven one challenge at a time.”
“I can’t believe Vendrick was the same creature who rescued me from my parents’ car.” Lena bit her lip.
Deacon’s gaze dropped to her tightly clenched hands. Whatever conflict brewed in his mate’s memories, her reluctance to trust him yet was obvious. “He’s old, you know. Powerful beyond anything I can imagine.”
“Now you’re scaring me,” she said with a weak smile.
He made a show of sniffing around her shoulder and then tapped her nose. “A lie. Nothing scares you.” He tasted her lips again. At last she melted against him. Her worries might be strong, but her body wanted him. Then she broke the kiss and stared at him with eyes too wise for a human. Of course, she’d already been exposed to more of his kind than most humans, his people’s wonders as well as their tragedies.
“I may not have known you as a teenager, Deacon, but no one is stable at that age. Besides, I believe your time away gave you perspective. I can credit Vendrick for mentoring and maybe guiding you, but only you fought for your clan. You protect the lives of your people now.
He cocked his head a bit and smiled. “After I returned, he met me on the outskirts of this sanctuary and put me through my paces. He taught me things about shifter power and our people I suspect my father never knew. I spent my days training those around me. I spent my nights with him learning and searching for shifters like myself who were too close to the edge or floundering alone.”