by Amber Lynn
Paul was doing a good job of staying on the opposite side of the room from me. I had to wonder if his instincts were finally kicking in.
“Because you’ve met him possibly once before you went looking for him and he refused to come to our wedding. I think that’s pretty indicative of where his motives lie. I bet it drove him crazy that I stayed with you after he pretty much gave you the playbook on how to get me to kill you. Serves the jerk right.”
There was going to be payback for the stunt, if I decided to grace Jack with my presence. I had a feeling I was going to have to at some point, since I didn’t have anyone else to ask about male wolves getting marked.
“So at no point you thought about reclaiming what was yours?”
It would’ve hurt his feeling to laugh, so I kept my reaction to his words to myself.
“I wished I could’ve shown you what you were missing, but I couldn’t even do that. I didn’t stop sleeping with you because of what happened with Selina’s father, at least not for the reason you probably think. I kept my distance because the two of us bonded in a way only wolves can, and that bond makes it impossible for anyone else to touch me the way you used to.”
I didn’t hide the sadness in my voice as I said the words. I couldn’t look at him, and looking down at the girls didn’t help, so I walked over to the balcony doors to glance outside.
“There’s got to be a way to break that bond. We were together first, and I thought our bond was as tight as they came.”
“It was. What happened shouldn’t have. I’ve tried to figure out what I did wrong that day, but I didn’t do anything different than I did any other time I went for a run. I was already pregnant with Sierra and I’d never had any issues with other wolves. Most of the ones around here have heard of me and give me wide berth.”
There wasn’t anyone other than Jack who actually had a permanent home in the city. The other wolves I picked up at times were just passing through town.
“So who is this guy? And what’s his excuse for trying to wreck our marriage? He does realize that we’re legally bonded, right? Whether we’re able to have the same relationship we used to or not, I still want us to be together and raise our girls.”
“That’s why he came barging in today. For some reason he’s hung in the shadows so far, but he told me very clearly that as far as you and I are concerned, there is no more you and I. As enlightening as your admission today was, for your safety, I have to insist we go along with that.”
“Is that why you won’t look at me? You think I’m some kind of coward who just caves, and you don’t want to think about how weak I am.” Paul finally moved from his spot and stood a few feet behind me, not reaching out to touch. “I’m not going to let a stranger come in and tell me what I can and can’t do when it comes to my wife and kids.”
“He’s not trying to take the girls away from you, Paul. He just wants to make sure you don’t get any ideas about rekindling what we once had. He can’t take away how we feel about each other, but he can, and will kill you if you touch me.”
“You don’t think my protection detail can handle him?”
For not wanting me to think of him as weak, his words proved to me how different our worlds really were. A wolf, even a weak one, would issue a challenge, not bring his bodyguards into the mess.
“I don’t think an army could handle him. I don’t know what’s different about him, but he’s not a normal wolf. He’s been able to hide from me, which isn’t something that I’ve ever heard of being done.”
“So what exactly do you see happening now? I don’t want to give up on us, and now that I understand my earlier mistakes, I can fix the part that drove you away.”
I finally turned to look at Paul. I assumed since he hadn’t seen my face when I’d mentioned he’d be dead if we had any kind of relationship, that he didn’t believe my words. I couldn’t really read the look on his face, which was a little rare for me. I’d seen about every expression he had in his arsenal.
“You have the fact that he wants to kill you and that I cringe every time you touch me stopping that from being possible. I don’t know how we can move forward with those two very big issues.”
“Do you still love me? You said just a second ago that he can’t change the way we feel about each other. I know I love you unconditionally.”
“I wish you didn’t. I wish hearing that I was a monster who lurked out in the woods scared you a way.”
I really wanted to reach out and grab his hand to comfort him. I would’ve if I wasn’t sure Selina’s father would somehow know and hold Paul responsible for my action. He’d left my ability to feel him open, and I knew he hadn’t left the premises.
“That didn’t answer the question of whether you still love me.”
I smiled at his persistence, but refused to actually say the words. It wasn’t going to help either of us since it didn’t matter.
“I imagine your security detail isn’t going to deal with you being off the grid much longer. Maybe you should go check in with them. I doubt anything else life-changing will happen today.”
“I know we haven’t been extremely close for a while now, but you have to know that I’m not just going to leave you here. I want you and the girls to come back home. We can figure out our next moves from there.”
I looked over to the girls, who hadn’t moved an inch. I knew they wanted to go back home. Sierra had more or less spelled that out for me, and Selina didn’t like change. She went with the flow, but I could see the unhappiness in her eyes.
“As long as it’s about the girls, and has nothing to do with you and me, I think he’ll allow that. I’ll have to sleep in their room, though.”
I had no idea what he’d really allow. He hadn’t come barging in during the conversation, so I assumed he was a little lenient. It sounded like Paul understood the situation better. I still could see the gears in his brain working, trying to come up with a solution so we could stay together.
I’d let him figure out that was impossible on his own. I’d already said it, and there wasn’t another way for me to articulate it.
“We can work that out. If anyone asks why, we can just say the girls aren’t feeling well and you needed to be close by. It’s only the guards that come back to our quarters, and I highly doubt they’ll ask.”
I almost mentioned his personal assistant making trips from time to time, but I decided to bite my tongue. Since the girls hadn’t sprung awake from hearing we were going home, I assumed they were really sleeping. With all the chaos of the day, I thought letting them rest for a while was a good idea.
I almost thought to myself that nothing could go wrong with us hanging out in a hotel room as a family for a little while, but that would’ve been asking for trouble.
Chapter Six
Surprisingly the rest of the day had gone smoothly enough that by the time I snuggled in with the girls in our sleeping bags on the floor in their room, I could almost pretend the day hadn’t happened. Almost.
Paul had tried to convince me the man would be okay with him having his own sleeping bag with us, but his begging got him nowhere. Even if he didn’t think the threat was credible, I wasn’t going to risk his life so he could play happy family.
I felt his eyes watching me as I stirred first thing the next morning. My internal clock told me it was just after six, which meant I’d slept in a little later than usual. I ignored his stare and checked on the girls, who both appeared to still be sleeping.
“How early does your day start?” I asked as I stretched. In the confines of a sleeping bag, that was easier said than done.
“As I mentioned yesterday, my calendars are basically clear. I’m sending Charlie in my place to the few things I had scheduled later today.”
Charlie was the Lieutenant Governor, who was planning on running when Paul didn’t run for reelection, so he was eager to get out and kiss all the babies he could. Paul and I had never discussed his decision to not run for a second term.
Knowing that he knew about me made me wonder if I had something to do with it.
“I’m going to need to run a few errands today, and the girls probably shouldn’t come with me. Do you think you can watch them for an hour or two?”
“Do you really need to ask? No matter what happened yesterday, they’re both my girls and I’ve never shirked my responsibilities when it comes to them.”
I climbed out of my sleeping bag and adjusted my sleeping shirt. I’d worn a pair of sweats to ensure someone sneaking into the house that night didn’t decide I was dressed inappropriately while sleeping hundreds of feet away from my husband.
I got up, glancing down at the girls again to see their eyes were still closed. I was surprised Selina hadn’t woken up, but they’d had a busy night describing to their father every single detail I had them hide over the years.
I walked over to the door. Understanding we were going to walk and talk, Paul moved back as I got closer. He’d taken all the new information in stride, but there were still questions I had about his overall knowledge and his actions over the years.
I closed the door behind me and nodded my head towards the room we’d recently shared. He didn’t immediately start walking, so I took the lead. I didn’t waste any time jumping in with my questions once we were both in the room.
“You found out about the attack, as some would call it, before the girls were born. Did Jack also tell you that Selina wasn’t yours?”
“No, but I assumed. As helpful as I thought your brother was, I’m starting to realize he left out a lot of details.”
I’d already told him that, so I didn’t bother mentioning various times where I’d figured out the same thing. We’d stopped a few feet apart just inside the room. I didn’t really want to be in there, but we didn’t have a lot of semi-private places to talk.
“Is that why you’ve always treated Selina differently than Sierra?”
Paul looked at me like I’d asked him to explain some mathematical theory. I didn’t think the question was that difficult to understand, but I went ahead and explained it. I got from his expression that he didn’t think he treated the girls different.
“You and Sierra have all your little secret conversations and Selina has always been left out of them. Since they’ve been up walking and talking, I don’t think I’ve …” Paul cut me off before I could finish my sentence.
“Wait just a second. You honestly think I love Sierra more than I do Selina? That has got to be the most preposterous thing I’ve ever heard. I interact with them the way their personalities tell me to. I’ve learned that’s the best way to keep those little baby fangs of theirs out of my arm.”
It was my turn to don a confused look. “How many times have they bit you?”
I knew of rare occurrences when fangs had popped out, but I wasn’t aware of skin breaking. It was a good thing changing a human into a werewolf took more than just a little bite.
“I never counted. Since they’ve gotten even more advanced in their little frames, the incidents have gone down. It’s funny that they had their fangs before their baby teeth grew in. Is that common?”
Our children had treated him as a snack and he didn’t seem to think there was anything wrong with that. I wished I’d have seen the signs so I could’ve shared more with Paul. Life would’ve been so much easier.
“This sucks,” was all I could come up with to say. Going forward things would be different, and we could have the family I’d always wanted. I just couldn’t do that as Paul’s wife.
“Is there something wrong with the bites? I didn’t worry about disinfecting them the first few times because I hoped they’d infect me or whatever needs to be done to change a human to a werewolf, but when I found out nothing was happening, I started cleaning the wounds pretty thoroughly.”
Paul rolled up the sleeves of his button-down shirt to show me the faint marks where his wounds had healed. I’d noticed he’d worn long sleeves more, but I thought it had to do with scratches or something from his rendezvous with Katie.
“Why didn’t you tell me about this?” I closed the distance between us and took his arm in my hand so I could study it.
His arm looked like someone had mapped out a game of connect the dots. There had to be over forty dots, which meant the girls had bitten him at least twenty times.
“I was worried it was their way of rejecting me. You may not have been paying attention to my body, but I was still paying attention to yours, and I never saw any bites.”
“That’s because I heal differently than you. Pups always go through phases where they decide to chew on anything that comes within an inch of their mouths. You should’ve told me about this.”
“What would you have done differently than I did? I’m their father and should be able to handle every aspect of them growing up.”
While I was still looking over his arm, he reached out with his other hand and cupped my face with it. I growled softly as a warning. I’d been doing a lot of growling, which came as second nature to a wolf. It was usually easier for us to communicate between each other that way.
He didn’t care about my warning, probably because he didn’t understand what it meant.
“That particular rumble means you’re going to lose that arm if it doesn’t move in the next second.”
“I’m aware. That doesn’t mean I’m going to just stop showing you affection. He can claim our marriage is over all he wants, but like you said, we have history that isn’t just going to go away.”
“You didn’t see his face when he said that affection needs to stop. He was ready to kill you then, and there’d be little I could do to stop him.”
“Why? Can you explain that to me? He wasn’t there when the girls were born, he hasn’t been there since. Why is it so important to him now?”
I let go of Paul’s arm and reached up to remove his hand from my face. I was feeling sorry for him, so I didn’t immediately let go of his hand.
“I’m not a mind reader, but I’d say it has to do with the fact that I was considering ways to make things work after what came out yesterday. We would’ve run into problems eventually, but I was questioning whether filing for divorce was the right move. I have no idea why he didn’t show up sooner. I suspect he’s as odd of a wolf as I am.”
“I don’t understand why you think you’re odd. Your brother hasn’t told me much, and the research I’ve done was based on Hollywood, so I’m taking that information with a grain of salt.”
It was nice that Jack hadn’t revealed how messed up I was. If Paul had to hear about it, it was best I got to explain things.
I let go of his hand and walked over to the bed, keeping my back to him as I stared down at the purple comforter, which had been pulled up, but the bed itself wasn’t exactly made. It’d been a while since I’d looked at the bed with anything more than disgust. I was over the disgust, only sadness remained.
“You’ve never really pressed for the reasoning behind my family not coming to the wedding, or showing up ever in our life together. To explain why that is, as simply as I can, that’s because I’ve never heard of another werewolf who married a human. In order to even leave my family I had to fight my way through every female in our pack. Most people don’t beat the crap out of their mom so they can make their own decisions.”
“Why?”
It seemed we were destined for at least one of us to be confused for our entire conversation.
“I couldn’t leave without fighting her, so I did. It’s the way things work.”
“I understood that part. I wanted to know why you went against your traditions to try to fit in here. Or I guess why you had to. I’ve met your brother and he blends in pretty well. Did he have to fight his way out of the family?”
Paul didn’t seem to be capable of having the responses I expected. I turned to look at him, curious what he wanted for an answer.
“They were already shopping around for a husband, who I wouldn’t have had a say in choosing.
That coupled with the fact that I never seemed to fit in made it easy for me to venture out into the world. As far as Jack goes, I can’t explain why he’s here. We don’t mingle with humans. For most werewolves it’s hard to hide their extra aggression, and the only thing I’ve ever agreed with other wolves about is that humans aren’t ready to find out we exist.”
“Is there a bloodline issue? Will others like you look down on Sierra because I’m her father?”
“That’s the part that I never understood. There’s nothing different between the girls as far as what they are, so it makes no sense that human relationships are banned.”
Paul thought things over in his mind for a second. I considered sitting on the bed while I waited for his next question, but decided to just focus on the door. I’d thought there were going to be a lot more questions on my side of things, and that I’d be driving the conversation. I supposed there were questions he’d been holding onto for years, so I was fine just answering.
“I don’t think I can make this sound pretty, so I’ll just ask it after prefacing it with what I’m about to say is not the way I feel. Is there anyway the guy from yesterday would consider you inferior because you’ve slept with me? If your family doesn’t approve, maybe if we spell out exactly how involved we’ve been, he’ll think you aren’t worthy of him.”
It was a good thing I’d moved my attention to the door, because after a comment like that, I assumed it would break down any second. I’d felt the man lurking relatively close by, and I was pretty sure he was within hearing range.
“How did you feel when you found out someone else had touched me that way?”
“I wanted to kill him. I asked your brother if he’d found out who it was, but he just laughed. I thought that was because of you telling him not to look, and that’s how he explained it, but I get the feeling it was something more than that.”
“I imagine it was, which is why I’m going to go talk to him today. I need to figure out exactly what he knows, because it was pretty clear that guy has been talking to my family. As far as him deferring to you because of our past, that isn’t going to happen, and telling him any details he hasn’t already figured out is a bad idea.”