by CJ Cooke
“You owe them nothing,” Grey reassured him. “You should only give your loyalty to those who have proved they deserve it. It shouldn’t be something you have to prove to them. They should be working every day to prove to the rest of us that they deserve it, and they haven’t. They’ve failed us all.”
Hunter nodded sadly.
“Who were you going to report back to?” Tanner asked, “Just out of interest.”
“Wells, I was part of his team. He wasn’t my alpha as such, but each Councillor controls their own team of guards.”
“Is he working with the Council or against them?” Grey asked him. “I can’t get a read on him. He knows things about me, and I know he’s going to call it in to collect. But we need to know if there’s anyone on the Council that could potentially be an ally to us.”
Hunter just shook his head. “I don’t know. I started asking questions because of the sheer amount of people that seemed to disappear into the cells. You cannot trust Stone. I know that much for sure. But there’s something about Wells. I don’t know if he can be trusted.”
“What do you mean they disappear into the cells? How many are they holding down there?” Grey asked in concern.
“That’s the thing—none. There’s no one down there. People get pulled before the Council. They’re nearly always sentenced and sent to the cells, and then they just disappear. I have no idea where they go from there, but there’s no one down there. With the number of shifters that have come before the Council just while I’ve been there, there should be at least fifty down there, but the cells are empty.”
“So they’re moving them to a different location?” I asked, confused. “We don’t have a prison or other holding facility, do we?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I was asking,” Hunter shrugged.
“We should ask Sean,” Grey said thoughtfully. “If anyone knows, it would be the underground.”
Hunter’s eyes widened in shock again, and I realised we’d kept him out of those conversations before.
“Oh yeah, that’s another part of the crazy,” Tanner laughed. “Can you believe it’s all happened in the space of a couple of weeks?”
Grey just shook his head in exasperation. “We’ll talk everything through, I promise you. We just can’t do it right now.”
Hunter nodded in understanding. He was a better man than I was. If I was in his shoes right now, I wasn’t so sure I’d be able to just stand by and wait for someone to give me the answers.
25
Calli
River was acting weird, and everyone seemed to realise it, but as I headed back into the house with Maverick, I also realised he probably had a reason, and I just hoped they’d fill me in later.
I led Maverick over to the kitchen table, and we both sat down. His fists were clenched on the tabletop, and I could tell whatever was going on, he wasn’t happy about having to talk about it.
“You don’t shift,” I simply said, because we couldn’t just sit here all day, and to be honest, his attitude towards his wolf completely baffled me.
“No,” he said through clenched teeth, almost refusing to expand on it any further.
He was looking down at the table, his dark hair falling over his face. My fingers itched to push it back and I found myself adopting his same clenched fists to stop me from reaching for him.
“Do you want to tell me why?” I asked gently.
“I don’t particularly want to talk about it.” He stared down at his fists, almost refusing to meet my eye, I found myself softening a bit towards Maverick. Even my wolf was starting to look at him differently. What had he been through to reach this point?
“Okay, I’m going to assume that it’s a psychological thing and that you could shift if you wanted to. And I’m also going to assume that whatever reason you have for keeping your wolf locked up inside of you is because of your father?”
He didn’t say anything. He just kept staring down at his clenched fists.
I slowly reached out and gently laid a hand over one of his fists, and he seemed to look surprised to suddenly see my hand lying there. When he finally looked up, I could see the sadness he was trying to hide.
“You can talk to me, Maverick. I won’t tell the others if you don’t want me to,” I reassured him.
“Why would you do that? Why would you keep secrets from your mates for me?” He seemed genuinely surprised at my promise.
“You’re my mate too,” I pointed out. “You’re supposed to be part of our family.”
“Family?” It was almost like he didn’t know the meaning of the word.
I didn’t know what to do or what to say. This was the sort of thing River would be good at. I wanted to be able to reassure Maverick he could open up to me. That I would try to understand and help him, I just didn’t know how to put that into words for him.
“I’ve never had that,” he said quietly, “A family, I mean.”
I squeezed his fist tighter, and he slowly unclenched his fist and turned his hand over before threading his fingers through mine, holding my hand.
“He sent me here for you, you know,” he told me, looking down at his hand holding mine. “He wants you.”
“I know.”
Maverick looked up in shock, and I smiled at him gently.
“He didn’t exactly make it a secret he wanted me for himself. When I was first brought before the Council, he was talking about bringing me back to your pack and breeding me himself.” I felt the urge to vomit as I said the words but swallowed it down. “It doesn’t take a genius to work out what his intentions were in revealing you to us.”
A rumbling growl sounded in Maverick’s chest as I spoke, and I couldn’t help but smile at the sound of it. If he was that distressed about his father’s intention, there was hope for him.
“He didn’t even tell me about you until about an hour before I met you,” he admitted.
“What did he say?” I asked. It wasn’t what we were supposed to be talking about, but maybe it was a way to get Maverick to open up to me.
“He said there was a witch in one of the packs that could shift into a wolf and he thought you could be the answer to our species breeding problems. He said he would place me in the pack so I could find a way to bring you in. He never told me you were my mate, and he never told me about… my brother.”
My heart broke for him at having to walk into the room and find all of that out without any kind of warning. What kind of person was his father that he didn’t even think it was important enough to tell him Tanner was his brother beforehand?
“Tanner is a good man, Maverick. You should take some time to get to know him,” I said quietly. This is what he needed. He needed a proper family. People that would show him he was important, that he mattered.
“I kind of hate him,” he laughed and then looked at me in embarrassment. “As soon as I saw him and I realised what my father was saying was true, I decided to hate him.”
“Because he got away,” I said, filling in the blank. It didn’t take a genius to realise that Maverick had been through hell in that house.
He just nodded sadly. “How can he ever want to get to know me?” he asked before adding quietly. “I killed our mother.”
“No, no, you didn’t, Maverick. Your mother dying in childbirth is not your fault. You were just a baby, and it’s a tragedy that no one speaks about, but women still die every day giving birth to their children. It's not the fault of the child,” I stressed to him.
Maverick shook his head, and I could tell this wasn’t something he needed to hear from me. He needed to hear it from Tanner.
“What was it like? Growing up there?”
His head dropped back down, and he fell quiet. I almost felt like he wasn’t going to say anything before he quietly whispered. “It was hell.”
I squeezed his hand tighter. I wanted to sit in his lap and wrap him in my arms, but I didn’t know if we were there yet. I also wasn’t entirely sure he’d welcome the cont
act. What must his childhood have been like? Had anyone even held him before? I doubted his father ever would have.
“Do you want to talk about your wolf?” I asked, trying to steer us back to what we needed to be talking about. I couldn’t see a solution to this. Grey wasn’t going to allow him to stay with the pack if he wasn’t in the bond. I wasn't entirely sure I liked the idea either, not with the kids being here. If it had just been the adults, I maybe could have stomached the risk, but not with the kids. They’d all been through so much already.
He shook his head, and I didn’t want to press him, so I decided to change the subject.
“I’m not a witch,” I told him. “Well, no, I suppose that isn’t true. My mother was a witch, so I’m half-witch. But my father was a shifter. That’s why I can shift into a wolf. I’m half shifter too.”
He looked up at me in question, and I just nodded. “It’s okay. You can ask questions, I don’t mind.”
“How is that possible?”
“Wow, straight to the hard one,” I laughed, and he gave me a shy smile. “I don’t know, it just is,” I shrugged.
He looked at me suspiciously, and I grinned. “I said you could ask me your questions, not that I’d know the answers to them all.”
Maverick just shook his head again, but he seemed to be softening towards me. Relaxing even.
“So you can do magic?” he asked.
“I can heal people, but I haven’t really had much practice with other magic. I’m hoping to start learning, though. My mother left me some books, so I’m going to try and learn more.” That was an understatement, maybe I wasn’t quite as open as I could be, but also, we didn’t have time for the whole story right this moment.
“Why didn’t your mother teach you?”
“Because she was afraid if she did, we would be caught.” He looked confused, so I clarified, “We spent my entire childhood hiding. My parents believed if they were caught by any of the packs, or either Council, we’d all be killed.”
“They were wrong,” he pointed out.
“Some things are worse than death,” I muttered, thinking back to his father wanting to breed me.
Maverick nodded in agreement, and I felt like he was far more familiar with that feeling than I ever would be.
“And your wolf, you… shift?” he asked with a visible cringe.
“I do. We have a bond, and I care very much for her. I’m not sure I’d have been able to survive losing my parents without her and Jacob with me.”
“You know what it’s like to lose someone,” he realised.
I nodded because I knew if I spoke now, my voice would betray how much it still hurt, and I didn’t want to sidetrack this conversation to my problems and away from Maverick. I had a feeling if I did, we’d never get back to what we were supposed to be talking about because he’d cling to the excuse of changing the subject.
“Your wolf is always with you, Maverick,” I said slowly, not sure where I was going to go with this. “You haven’t bonded with him, though, have you?”
“No,” he said sullenly, leaning back in his chair and pulling his hand out of mine.
I’d pushed too hard, and he was pushing back, but he needed this. If he could realise the bond that he could have with his wolf, I thought it would go a long way to helping him come to terms with what I was fast starting to believe was a hellish childhood.
“Why?”
He huffed, and I thought he was about to make a break for it, but when he stood up, he moved into the kitchen, and to my surprise, he actually turned on the kettle and started to pull out cups from the cupboard.
“I came into my wolf when I was twelve,” he told me as he started to make drinks. “I didn’t understand what was happening. My father spent as little time as he could with me, and while the house staff were there to look after me, they weren’t allowed to speak with me. I was alone. All of the time. Even though the house was always full of people.”
I didn’t know why his father had decided to keep him if he wasn’t at least going to spend any time with him. He could have sent him to Grey’s pack with Tanner. They could've grown up together and had the chance not only at a life but at a life with each other. It’s almost like he wanted to punish them by keeping them apart.
“When father came home, I told him what was happening and that I thought I was going crazy. I begged him to stay with me, to not leave me alone, and he just laughed at me.”
Maverick brought the drinks over to the table and set a cup of tea in front of me. He wrapped his hands around his own mug and stared down at it like it held the answers to all of his problems.
“He told me I was changing, that I had an animal inside of me that was going to take control. He called me weak, a failure and a disappointment. And I just decided, I decided right then that I’d prove him wrong. He’d told me all my life I was worthless and I couldn’t take it anymore. So, I decided I was going to show him just how strong I was.”
I didn’t quite understand what he was trying to get at, so I sipped at my tea, and I waited for him to speak. There was a part of him that needed to tell the story. That needed to shed the burden holding him down. He needed this whether he realised it or not.
“I locked him down,” he told me proudly. “I made him a cage, and I slammed the door on it. I’ve never let him control me. I’m stronger than that, and I showed my father just how strong I was.”
It took me a while to realise what he was telling me.
“You’ve never shifted before.”
“No. I’m a man, I’m not a filthy animal, and I won’t be ruled by the weakness that becoming one would give me.” He seemed so proud as he spoke, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying. Didn’t he realise being a shifter was the opposite of being weak?
“That must have been very painful,” I said slowly, not wanting to upset him by telling him straight out just how wrong he was.
“Pain is nothing. I have lived with pain my entire life. Pain can be conquered. It’s what makes us strong.”
“Did your father tell you that?” I asked him.
“He taught me to be strong.” His eyes flashed with a fervour that was leaning towards madness. I didn’t want to push him too close to that while we were alone together. He needed to speak with someone with proper training, someone who would understand what he’d been through and help him come to terms with it. That person wasn’t me, no matter how much I wished it was.
“Can you still feel your wolf?”
“Yes, he paces the edges of my mind. Ever since I first saw you, he’s tried to push to the surface. He’d been so quiet for so many years. I’d almost thought he’d left me. But when he sensed you, it was like he came alive again. He wants to be with you.” He looked confused as he spoke. It was almost like he saw his wolf as a completely separate entity and not part of him. But I suppose that’s what would happen if you never embraced your wolf, never bonded with them.
“He would never leave you,” I told Maverick slowly, hoping not to push him too far. “He’ll always be there for you if you let him.”
Before we could get any further, Grey and the others walked into the kitchen. I saw him check me over to make sure I was okay, and even though a part of me found it sweet, another part of me was annoyed. I could look after myself. If he trusted Maverick that little maybe he shouldn’t have sent me into the house alone with him.
“We’ve decided to form the bond with Hunter. Maverick, we won’t push you today, but you need to decide if you want to accept the bond and stay here or if you would prefer to leave,” Grey told him forcefully.
Maverick stood from the table, with his eyes locked on me. All he said before he strode from the room was, “Just like family.”
Watching him walk away broke a tiny piece of me. He was hurting, and I wanted to go with him. He was right, family didn’t demand things of each other like this. What we were trying to do to him was wrong. He needed love and understanding, not force and ultimatums.
The pack was quiet as they watched Maverick walk out of the room towards the stairs, presumably to retreat back to his room.
“We need to talk about the plan for Maverick,” Grey told me, wasting no time.
“That was wrong,” I hissed at him, in shock at his sudden turn of emotions. “When did we become these people so filled with suspicions that we trample the people around us?”
Grey squinted in annoyance at me and the question. “Since we had children to protect from those that would take them from us and experiment on them. Since the people we always assumed were there to protect us made it known they would rather take our mate from us to breed then instead decided just to conduct medical experiments on her!” Grey shouted, his voice rising as he spoke. I could see his anger, and it was possibly the first time he’d turned it on me. Everyone looked surprised, but my primary emotion was pissed the fuck off.
“So help me, God, if you even dare to growl in my direction right now, you will not like what comes for you,” I growled at him.
Grey’s eyes narrowed, and for a moment, I actually thought I was in trouble. I was, after all, standing in front of an angry alpha and basically challenging him. But then he softened, reached out for me and pulled me into his arms, rubbing his cheek across the top of my head.
“Fucking hell, I thought I was going to have to be all manly and fight for your honour or something then,” Tanner swooned dramatically and then sat himself down at the table.
“How about we all take a breath and just say what’s on our mind,” River suggested, ever the peacekeeper.
“Maverick needs to take the bond before we can trust him, but we forgot that someone changed the bond when they joined it, and he’s going to get a big slap in the face with one of our secrets when he’s bonded,” Tanner told me.
They all looked at me in expectation, and I just shrugged. “I’m not going to tell you what he told me unless he says I can.”