Fine by Alanna. She seethed as she marched after him. The call was the third she’d received all month, though the others were for verbal arguments and refusing to listen to a teacher. Those were on top of the days he’d missed for cutting class.
The boy was growing more and more out of control with each passing day. Eighth graders were supposed to test their boundaries, but Atticus outpaced his classmates in all the wrong ways.
He was just like Wyatt.
Despite all the talks and chances and parenting techniques, despite everything she tried to keep him in line, the boy just kept pushing. Kind words had gone out the window months ago. Completing schoolwork? Forget about anything being done unless it was within the hour between waking and the bus arriving. She doubted he even had a floor in his room anymore, covered as it was with clothes and shoes and records, of all things.
No, Atticus didn’t take after her in the attitude department. He was more like his father. Stubborn, challenging authority at every turn, unafraid of danger and immune to risks. He’d make a powerful alpha one day.
If she didn’t kill him first.
Her inner tigress stretched out her claws and needled Alanna’s mind. An uncomfortable and all too familiar churn sank to her stomach. Alanna shoved back against the press of the beast. Questions lurked down that path and she wasn’t sure if she was prepared for the answers.
“I can’t believe you,” she muttered as she slid behind the wheel. “Suspended for brawling? You better not even think about video games or television for the next month. And all those new records you bought? I’ll be taking those.”
Atticus rolled his eyes and turned his head to stare out the window.
Great. The silent treatment. Because he couldn’t manage that before getting into another fight.
“Was there even a reason for it this time?”
Daggers of silence stabbed at her.
When they arrived home, Alanna dragged out the cleaning supplies. Atticus sighed heavily and rolled his eyes again, but set to work scrubbing down their small apartment.
The silent treatment continued while Alanna watched from the kitchen table. He didn’t make a peep while she cooked dinner hours later, and only raised his eyebrows at the plate fixed with his least favorite vegetable she set in front of him.
His scent did all the talking for him. Hurt and aggressive, the stench punched at her as well as any fist. Something bothered her boy down to his very core and she didn’t know how to fix him.
Once the plates were cleared, she cut pieces of pie for them both, hoping the silence had gone on long enough for an olive branch to poke through his prickly exterior. “Will you tell me what happened now?”
Atticus chewed the insides of his cheeks and glared at the table. “He called me a bastard.”
Alanna sat back with shock. “Oh, honey...” She crawled her hand forward to touch his fingers.
He yanked his hand away from hers. “It’s true, isn’t it? That’s what happens when you’re not mated and he’s dead. I’m a bastard.”
“That’s an ugly, outdated word,” she said. “You’re my son. Your father would have loved you—”
If he’d lived.
The words died on her tongue and her tigress surged forward.
She didn’t know if Wyatt was dead. Not anymore. Not since she’d joined other members of the town during the battle for Redwater.
In the middle of it all, she thought she’d caught his scent and spied his white wolf soaring through the fight. She’d managed glimpses, only. The beast had been fast, whirling from target to target with blood streaming down his sides. The multiple wounds hadn’t slowed him in the slightest.
And then she’d been tackled and lost sight of the ghost of her past.
What the hell was she supposed to do? To think? Thirteen years had passed since she’d last seen him. Everything she knew about the night he disappeared had soured with the taste of a lie. Wyatt, her father, who knew how many others kept her in the dark for thirteen long years.
If she’d seen him. If she hadn’t imagined everything out of some crazed desperation and combined blood loss.
But that scent… Smoky, dark, delicious… It had haunted her dreams for years after he disappeared and again after the battle.
She felt like she was losing her mind.
“What aren’t you telling me?” Atticus demanded, eyes brightening to golden amber. Her eyes, in his tiger form. Her shifter genes at work there, too. But the grey that stared at her time and time again was pure Wyatt.
“Atticus,” she warned. “You know you can ask me anything about your father.”
“How? You won’t even say his name!” He shoved to his feet and stomped toward his room. A moment later, the door slammed shut and his music blared from behind the wood.
Alanna rested her face in her hands and mouthed the words. Wyatt. Wyatt Dawson.
Her heart tightened with pain and her tigress stretched through her with longing. Her first love. The man she thought she’d mate. He was supposed to be dead and somehow, miraculously, mysteriously, still lived.
She’d gone through an entire pregnancy, birth, teething, potty training, elementary school, and middle school without a change in the story or a blip on the radar. Wyatt was dead. Executed for crimes against the shifter code. The line had been fed to her the night he failed to meet her for a date.
He’d been wild, sure. But a human killer? She just couldn’t believe the evidence.
She hadn’t even begun breaking out of her grief when she figured out she was pregnant.
Her tigress growled and swiped at the past. Alanna crushed those painful memories with the force of ten thousand swinging hammers. Besides, the present had enough hurt and confusion without adding in events she couldn’t change.
Could she even shift current ones?
Alanna sat with a glass of red wine until Atticus’s music died and the light under his door blinked to darkness. She swirled the glass before taking a sip and setting it back on the table, then reached for the phone and pressed in a familiar number. Ginny answered on the third ring.
“He got into another fight, Ginny. This time he says the other kid called him a bastard. And then he snapped at me like I’ve been deliberately keeping his father from him.”
To everyone in Redwater, Ginny and Charles Miller were permanent fixtures as the owners of Miller’s Bake Shoppe. To Alanna, they were her guardian angels, her knights in shining armor, her surrogate parents. They’d taken her in and given her a job when no one in her family would acknowledge her existence.
Being shunned for an unexpected pregnancy and ruining her chances of a successful arranged mating sure put a damper on the old support system. Thirteen years later and members of the streak were still more likely to ignore her than not.
But not Ginny. She’d become a mother overnight and remained Alanna’s closest confidant. She was always there with an ear and advice.
Raising Atticus alone meant Alanna needed both frequently.
Ginny sighed on the other end of the line. “I don’t know what to tell you, sweetheart. You knew he’d have questions one day.”
“Questions, sure. I even thought I had the answers ready. But now...?” Alanna took another sip of her wine and put the words to air in a whisper. “What if he isn’t?”
“Isn’t what, dear?”
“Dead.” Another harsh breath spilled her bottled emotions across the table. Grief. Anger. Confusion. Above all, longing for what once was and could have been. “I saw him, Ginny. The night the Slayers were kicked out of town. Wyatt was there.”
Ginny was quiet for a long moment. “Well, that certainly changes things.”
“Yeah. Just a few.” Alanna blew out a breath and sat back. “How do I explain to Atticus that the father he’s been told was dead is actually alive? Skies above, Wyatt’s probably at the bar right this minute.”
“You have to talk to his father, first of all,” Ginny insisted. “You can’t give
Atticus any answers until you have them for yourself.”
“Where do we even begin?” The question kept her up at night and locked in place with her hand on the doorknob.
What did she say to a ghost?
How did she even feel about said ghost? Relief? Anger? Both swirled together in a jumble she could hardly pick apart.
“By marching in there, twisting his ear, and asking—politely—where he’s been all these years. I’m sure the resulting argument will flood out after that.”
Alanna laughed at the picture in her head. Even her tigress rumbled with amusement. Ginny made it seem so easy when the reality was the exact opposite.
After they hung up, Alanna padded to Atticus’s door. She used to watch him sleep, thankful she had the last piece of Wyatt left in the world. It was a comfort during the rough times.
Alanna peeked into Atticus’s room, then flung the door open.
Atticus’s bed was empty. His window fluttered with the breeze blowing in from outside.
Of the boy himself, nothing.
Scrawled on a paper fluttering on his pillow, he’d written, ‘Gone to meet my father.’
Panic welled inside her. Bile stung her throat and tongue. Alanna’s tigress roared with all the fury a protective mother could muster when danger breathed down her cub’s neck.
She’d bring him back home to safety. Then she’d make sure he never left the damn house again.
Chapter 3
Wyatt shoved his hair out of his eyes and punched open the door to the bar. Music and laughter and good times were already in full swing, the scent of booze and easy smiles sinking like a stone to his already sour stomach. Fuck, he didn’t even have a good reason like nursing a bottle until the early hours or finding company with any of the willing females tracking him across the bar.
His wolf lifted a lip in disgust. Only one woman would satisfy.
Wyatt shoved the beast to the back of his head. He couldn’t dirty Alanna. He didn’t want any of the others. How many watched because they were ordered by Harris?
“You’re late,” Jensen growled.
“I’m here,” Wyatt snapped back. “That’s all you’re getting out of me tonight.”
Jensen’s eyebrows melded with his hairline. Wyatt tensed his fists and braced himself for the fight. Those words would have had him laid out in three seconds flat in their old pack.
By the Broken, he wanted a fight. Craved it as much as he wanted Harris dead or Alanna in his bed. He needed to let off some steam before he cracked.
Jensen merely shrugged and shifted his gaze down the bar.
Wyatt’s wolf snarled at the disrespect until he followed where Jensen looked. Noelle, his mate, nursed a water and watched them from under her lashes.
His wolf laid down with a huff.
Mating Noelle had not only turned Jensen soft, but she’d infected the entire pack. A mate was a weakness Wyatt couldn’t afford as well as a gift he didn’t deserve.
He shook off the itch between his shoulder blades and set to taking orders. The work was easy enough. Mindless. Smile here. Pour there. It kept his hands busy while his wolf threw himself at the cage of his mind. The beast wanted out, to run, to soothe the frantic strain arcing from his snout to his tail.
There was no shaking the sense of being watched. Especially when Russ and Bennett pushed their way to the bar.
Fuck.
Wyatt directed a glare at the two men sauntering through the door. They made a beeline for the bar, which killed any hope they were there to find a warm body for company.
“No shit. I didn’t believe the rumors. The White Wolf lives!” Russ ran a hand down his open mouth like he needed to wipe away crumbs from the side.
Maybe he did. Wyatt’s existence in Redwater was one hell of a morsel.
“We thought you were dead,” Beckett added sourly.
They’d been a little threesome of trouble back when they were kids. Trouble turned to minor illegal activities as they aged into teenagers. What else were they supposed to do when no one gave a shit what they did with their time?
Currently? They worked for Harris Ayers. That’d been one hell of a surprise to see in his months of stalking. Low-level shit, like running errands. Wyatt doubted they were trusted enough for the big jobs.
As always, Harris’s name tinged his vision red. His wolf vibrated with a low growl, a warning sound to anyone who approached.
Wyatt’s scowl took in both men. Their pupils were blown wide and they smelled sour with booze. “What are you doing here?”
Russ laughed a harsh note that didn’t touch the eyes he let wander over the nearest female. “Just checking out the merchandise.”
“We’re the only bar in this whole fucking town and you’re just now showing up? Cut the shit, Russ. Why are you here?”
Russ shrugged like the words and aggression in the air didn’t bother him in the slightest. “We got a message for you. Leave town. Tonight, preferably, but our boss will give you till midday tomorrow.”
So Harris knew he was in Redwater. He looked forward to another match. Maybe the fucker would actually show his face instead of letting his weak little cronies do the dirt for him.
He sure as fuck would keep pushing until he did. Harris needed to pay.
“Oh yeah? He going to come help pack some boxes for me, too?” Wyatt let his wolf bleed into his eyes.
“Careful, Wyatt. You don’t know who you’re messing with.”
He slid a scowl to Russ. “I know exactly who I’m fucking with. You run back home now, you hear? No doubt daddy needs to hear I said fuck off.”
“Touchy, ain’t you?” Bennett whistled. “You really lost your trusting nature out there in the wilds, huh?”
“Not a whole lot of room for trust in my world,” he growled. His skin itched. His wolf whined to let loose on the smirking men. “Especially when old friends are bringing the knives.”
Some life finally sparked in Russ’s eyes. His lips peeled back with the snarl rattling in and out with every breath.
Fuck yes.
Wyatt needed the release. Needed to feel his fists connect with something. Needed to send a warning to Harris not to fuck with him. If Russ and Bennett wanted to side with the old man, then they could carry their bruises back to him.
Jensen clapped a hand on his shoulder and hauled him away from the bar. “We need a keg. Get one.”
Wyatt snarled at the whiff of alpha power infused in the words. His wolf wanted to snap and fight against the order.
More pressure sank through him, chipping away at his resolve.
He shook off Jensen’s grip and stalked to the back storeroom.
Fucking town. Fucking pack. Fucking alpha orders keeping him from a brawl he needed to keep himself steady. At least with the Vagabonds, he could lose himself in the crowd. A three-person pack of just him, Jensen, and Ellis meant they were supposed to check in with one another and end the nights with hugs and kisses and promises to call the next day.
He didn’t want their companionship. They were a means to keeping sane, that was it. He wouldn’t survive going lone wolf. He needed something to tether him to his human skin when his fucked up wolf wanted to bleed the world.
His wolf rolled through him, wild energy frantic to break free and run on four feet. Run from Redwater, that sounded about right. But the beast flashed sendings through his mind that contradicted Wyatt’s wishes.
A gorgeous tigress prowling through the Slayers, blood on her claws. Sounds of fighting fading to a distant din. Only her breath and heartbeat filled his ears.
Mate.
Wyatt snarled at his inner wolf. Not his. Never his.
The scuff of a step jerked him out of his thoughts. He crouched low and listened. Were Russ and Bennett really stupid enough to make a play right after they exchanged words in a packed bar? No wonder they were just messenger boys.
There, at the other end of the storeroom.
Wyatt eased down the wall, tracking the steps c
oming toward him on the other side of the supply rack. At the end, he peeked around the corner to get a look at the idiot with a death wish.
And nearly laughed.
A boy no more than thirteen or fourteen cautiously stepped down the aisle, pausing to listen every two steps. He was dressed in dark jeans and a black Ramones shirt. Big, black boots didn’t exactly help his stealthy infiltration.
Well, the intrusion was just what he needed. Harris was gunning for him and old friends made their allegiances know, but hell if the brazen intrusion didn’t cut the tension. Even his wolf sat back in his head, tongue lolling out in amusement.
Wyatt pasted on a stern expression. He leaned against the end of the rack with his arms crossed over his chest. The boy’s back stayed turned as he crept down the aisle. Idiot kid needed to pick up some skills before he tried pilfering the booze again.
Wyatt cleared his throat. “Looking for something?”
Fear jumped in the boy’s scent as he whirled around. His dark hair was clipped short on the sides and left long and messy on the top. Bright amber shined in his eyes before simmering back to a stormy grey much like his own.
Wyatt’s brows shot together. “Daring, I’ll give you that. I might have even tried the same trick once or twice as a kid.”
And taken his licks for it when he’d been caught.
The kid chewed on his lip before setting his jaw. “Are you Wyatt Dawson?”
Wyatt frowned at the boy. Fuck, was Harris using kids as spies, now? He didn’t have a problem framing up a teenager for murder, so maybe it was right in line with how the old bastard operated. “Go on, kid. Get out of here.”
“Answer the question,” the boy demanded.
“Don’t have to answer thieves.” Wyatt jerked his thumb over his shoulder and towards the door. His mild amusement was fading fast. “Last chance. You’re not walking out of here with a bottle, so you best get to walking. No telling what my alpha will do.”
Probably coddle the hell out of him and call his parents. Maybe ask them to go easy on the kid or offer him some job sweeping up the front stoop. The kid didn’t need to know that.
Tequila and Tigers: Book Two: Shifters and Sins Page 2