by Quinn Loftis
Decebel blew a sharp breath as he pinched the bridge of his nose. “You know how protective we are of our females.”
“You say protective; I say bordering on unhealthy psychopathic codependency syndrome. But let’s not get technical or anything,” Jen bit out through clinched teeth.
To Fane and Jen’s surprise, Decebel didn’t take the bait. “Do you know anything?” he asked simply.
Jen stared at him for several seconds before responding. “You know it’s not any fun when you don’t react.”
“Perhaps, I’ve finally learned my lesson,” her mate countered.
Jen snorted. “You, a male Canis lupus, learning his lesson? That’s like saying it’s possible for penguins to tap dance out of your ass every time you fart.”
Had Fane not been so concerned about his mate, he would have given that point to Jen. He was sure one day her witty comebacks would make their way into a book for all of humanity to experience.
With Decebel left glaring at her, she turned to Fane. “She didn’t tell me anything. I asked her how you were doing, tried to give her some much needed bedroom advice, and talked about girl crap you guys aren’t privy to know about. That’s all. I didn’t get the ‘I’m up to something’ vibe from her at all.” Jen paused and tapped her lip. Thia was attempting to grab her finger, no doubt so she could shove it into her little mouth and gnaw on it. “That is a little disconcerting. Somebody look out the window and tell me if the sky is falling because that’s as likely as Red being able to keep something from me.”
“Maybe she wasn’t up to anything. Maybe she decided to do something after she left you,” Fane suggested, sounding calmer than he felt.
Jen shook her head. “I still should have sensed something. I’ve known her since she squeezed herself out of her mom’s girly bits.” She walked over to one of the loveseats in Decebel’s office and sat down putting Thia in her lap. The worry that was marring her mate’s and Fanes’ faces was now mirrored on her own.
Fane turned toward the door intending to leave and go sniff out his mate, literally, but Jen’s voice stopped him.
“Maybe I should go,” she said and stood and handed Thia to Decebel. “Sometimes a girl needs a little space. And if that’s what she’s doing, putting a little space between you two, then you tracking her down might not go over real well.”
Fane’s wolf was practically roaring at him to ignore the female and go after their mate. To his beast there was no such thing as space between them. And though Fane knew that Jen’s words could be true, he didn’t like to think that his mate needed space from him.
She is ours, no one else’s, his wolf snarled. But Fane knew that wasn’t true. Yes, Jacque was their mate, but she was also Jen’s best friend, Vasile and Alina’s daughter-in-law, and pack member to the Romanian pack. There were many who would claim a piece of her, and he knew that wasn’t a bad thing, but his wolf didn’t like to share―nordid Fane―but the man in him had learned to be more reasonable. She is ours to protect, Fane told him, but we are not all she needs and, perhaps, now Jen is right. He felt his wolf trying to take over, unwilling to accept the man’s decision, but Fane was able to maintain control.
“You will let Decebel know she is safe so he can tell me.” He had meant it to come out as a question but Fane knew that is not how it had sounded.
Jen quirked a brow up at him. “Because I know how hard it is for you males to relinquish control to another, I will ignore the fact that you just gave me an order.” She turned to her mate and rose up on her toes to press a quick kiss to his lips and then left without waiting for Decebel to agree to her actions.
“She has taken well to being an Alpha female,” Fane said as he took a seat and prepared to wait—something he was not good at—for news about his mate.
Decebel sat across from him with Thia cradled in his large arms. His amber eyes met Fane’s, revealing the tight control the Alpha himself struggled to maintain. Fane looked away out of respect for him.
“She has,” Decebel agreed though his voice was tight. “She is the mother of my child, light to my darkness, and other half of my soul, but that doesn’t change the fact that she is also a pain in my—” He paused looking down at his daughter. Decebel rarely cursed and especially not in front of Thia, regardless of the fact that she couldn’t yet understand him. “Well, you get my point.” He sighed, leaning back on the couch that his large form dwarfed.
Fane understood to an extent what he was saying. Jacque wasn’t as bold and outspoken as Jen, but then few were. But his redheaded mate had a temper, and she definitely didn’t let him dictate to her, which most of the time was more of a turn-on than an annoyance. No male of his species wanted their female to be compliant all of the time; just as none of their females wanted a male that would cower from her outbursts or lay down stupidly while she ran off into danger. The friction that existed between them was, ironically, tied directly to the passion they felt for each other. So even though he was sitting there worrying about her, frustrated with her actions and ready to tear through the forest to go after her, he wouldn’t change a thing about her.
“Yes,” Fane finally spoke. “I definitely get your point. I’ve asked you before, 'Would you have it any other way?' Now I ask you again after the time you’ve been mated and the things you’ve been through together. Would you have it any other way, Alpha?”
A sly smile took the place of his scowl. “And be bored out of my mind with a female that catered to my every whim? No way. I’ll take worry, fighting, fear, frustration, and all the other emotions that come with being mated to a feisty female over boredom any day.”
They both sat in contemplative silence, though Fane was barely holding himself still. It felt so unnatural not to be the one checking on his mate and the one fixing whatever it was that she needed fixed.
“Since we’re here and we’ve got nothing but time,” Decebel said breaking the quiet, “why don’t you tell me what it is that has you thinking you are incapable?”
Fane’s eyes snapped up. “Why is that the conclusion you’ve come to regarding my battles?”
“Because I was young once upon a time. I remember what it was like to have the confidence that is innate in a dominate wolf and to then have it ripped from your grasp because of something that was out of your control.”
Fane knew the Alpha was speaking about his sister’s death.
“I did not handle what happened to Cosmina with great poise,” he continued. “I broke under the weight of the guilt I felt for being unable to save her.” Decebel narrowed his eyes on him, not in a stern manner but a calculating one. “What each of us endured in the In-Between left us wounded in some way. Some of those wounds run deeper than others. Instead of just grazing the skin, the wound has pierced muscle, tendons, and, in some cases, even broken bones. A shallow wound will not heal at the same rate as a deeper wound, and sometimes when a wound has begun to heal it endures more trauma and is reopened. Something has reopened your wound that was just beginning to scar, and the scar had not had the time to harden.”
Fane closed his eyes, remembering the peace he had felt when he finally let it go. Why had he picked it back up again? He kept coming back to the same questions. What had caused him to begin having the dreams again, which in turn renewed the flames of the memories he thought he’d doused?
“I have this timeline mapped out in my mind, and I keep going over it and over it trying to figure out at what point I picked up the burden that I thought I’d let go of,” Fane told him as he leaned forward with his elbows resting on his knees and his hands laced together clenching and unclenching.
“Have you come to any conclusion?”
Fane shook his head. “There hasn’t been anything, no so-called trauma, that has happened since getting the females back. Things have been so calm.”
Decebel glanced down at his sleeping daughter as he responded. “Does the trauma always have to come from a negative source?”
Fane wanted to growl a
t he continued metaphors but bit it back because he knew Decebel was just trying to help him. “What do you mean?”
“Sometimes wounds are reopened during a time of celebration or fun. I’ve had many battle wounds open up while sparring with other wolves, and the sparring was all in good nature with no animosity between us, and yet that something good was still traumatic to the wound.”
“Are you deliberately dragging this out in order to distract me?”
Decebel chuckled. “Okay, perhaps, my age is showing through my council. What I’m trying to say is you have recently had something that is worthy of great celebration happen to you. But regardless of how good it is, it is also going to change your life in a very big way. Maybe you should consider the upcoming birth of your first child as the possible trauma to your wound.”
“I’m not unhappy about Jacquelyn being pregnant,” Fane said as he shot to his feet and began to pace. “I know that we are both young and didn’t really plan for this to happen so soon, but neither of us regrets it.”
“I’m not implying that you do,” Decebel parried. “I’m simply saying that maybe the stress, because there is stress when having a baby whether you are happy about it or not, has caused some of those worries and doubts to resurface.”
Fane continued to pace back and forth across the room. His mind was replaying Decebel’s words over and over again as he considered the truth that was in the Alpha’s suggestion. It was true that Fane was over the moon about their baby, but it was also true that he and Jacquelyn both had worries over being young parents. They would be foolish to think that they knew exactly what they were in for. Fane considered the things that he had thought about in regards to being a father, things he had pushed back because of the other worries rearing their ugly heads once again. He made a sharp turn heading back in the opposite direction and then his feet froze as the truth came crashing down on him like a bucket of ice water.
His head slowly turned to look down at Decebel. “I understand,” he breathed out. The weight was still there, but he finally understood what the weight was from. “Before, when I couldn’t get past it, it was because at first I couldn’t let go of the things I’d seen. And once I moved on from that, it was because I felt as though I had failed my mate.”
Decebel nodded his understanding but said nothing.
“And after I finally accepted that what had happened was beyond my control, I was able to let go of the burden. But now there is another who will fall under the cloak of my protection. Someone small, vulnerable, and completely dependent on me and Jacquelyn.” His voice shook as he bowed his head in surrender. “And it scares me to death.”
Chapter 5
Jen walked briskly out of the mansion. A quick retreat was always best when attempting to pull the wool over a wolf’s eyes. Jen was a little surprised that Fane had bought the BS she’d been spewing about Jacque needing space. Granted, there were definitely times when a girl needed some breathing room from the overbearing men they were mated to. But, in this instance, Jen knew that was not what was going on with her friend. Jacque was in too much turmoil over what Fane was dealing with to want space from him. If anything, she probably wanted to be by his side, curled up in the safety of his embrace, just to have the reassurance that―despite his ghosts―he was still willing to let her in. For Jacque to have closed the bond after having Fane do that very thing only a few months ago, instead of letting his mate be what he needed, meant she was in some sort of deep defecation. Okay, so that was a ridiculous way to put it, but she was trying to curb her foul tongue to be a better example for Thia. “Oh, the things we do for our little drool factories,” she muttered as she climbed into the black SUV that she repeatedly told her mate was ridiculously cliché’ for werewolves to drive. He didn’t really care what she thought was ridiculous—his words. She couldn’t repeat what she’d said back since she was trying to tame her tongue.
As she headed in the direction of the Romanian pack mansion, Jen kept expecting Dec to contact her through their bond. To her surprise, she pulled up into the driveway without so much as a ‘get your cute butt home’. It might have been smart of her to consider why her mate was acting out of character, but she didn’t want to take the time. She knew it wouldn’t be long before Fane came to the same conclusion she had about Jacque shutting the bond, and then he would be a pissed off Canis lupus who’d been duped by his mate’s friend—and it was not for the first time.
As soon as she started up the front steps to the Romanian pack mansion, Jen let her wolf’s senses take over and picked up Jacque’s scent. Only it wasn’t headed into the building. Jen turned and looked out at the forest that had caused her one too many headaches.
“What are you up to, little Red?” she muttered under her breath as she followed Jacque’s trail into the forest. Jen realized, after twenty minutes of walking, that she clearly hadn’t thought her plan through. “A coat would have been smart,” she huffed at herself, “and earmuffs, gloves, a canteen of hot chocolate. Bloody hell, Jennifer, you act like you’ve never trekked through the cold mountains before.” She couldn’t help laughing at her ironic statement considering in recent months the forest and mountains had practically been home. Now, as she once again trudged through the foliage, she wondered what could have caused her best friend to return to the woods that was home to many unseen supernatural beings.
Night was falling rapidly and the temperature was dropping as she climbed higher into the mountains. She’d considered phasing to her wolf, but she didn’t like the vulnerability of being naked out here, even if it was only briefly while she put her clothes back on. Not to mention, she’d have to carry her clothes in her mouth.
“How is Jacque?” Her mate’s voice flowed into her mind. She was surprised at how long he’d gone without reaching out to her, though he would have known in a heartbeat if something was wrong. Jen considered his question. She had to play her cards carefully or he and Fane would be ripping through the forest like obsessed mad men.
“She’s good.” Jen didn’t specify that the ‘she’s’ part was meant to be short for ‘she was’ and not ‘she is’. So she wasn’t technically lying. The last time she’d seen Jacque she was good.
“Has she explained why she is closing the bond between her and her mate?”
“Not in so many words,” she hedged.
“What has she said?”
Jen could tell he was growing impatient with her, not that it was anything new. “We haven’t really made it to that part of the girl time. We’ve just been taking a stroll down memory lane. Again, not a lie,” she thought to herself. They both had indeed strolled through the forest where tons of memories remained. They just hadn’t been together while doing it.
“Do you think you could please ask her to let Fane know she’s alright?” Even in her head she could hear the bite in his question.
“I can ask her. That doesn’t mean that she will do it.” Jen stopped to look around because she hadn’t been paying attention in the least to where she was while she’d been answering Decebel’s questions. She shivered when she saw her surroundings and realized where she was. The large boulders protruding from the mountain and deep crevices brought back not so happy memories. “Good times,” she muttered as she remembered being pushed into one of those crevices by Martha, the she-wolf who’d fallen in love with a human and only wanted to be with him. Don’t ask Jen why the nut job thought pushing her into the side of a mountain would make her dreams come true. Apparently, when crazy people do crazy crap it totally makes sense to them.
“Why is your heart beating so fast?” Decebel’s question had her returning to the present, pushing back the memories of Martha and her craziness. Sometimes she appreciated how in tune her mate was to her. And other times she really wished he was as clueless as most women thought the male gender to be.
“Because I’m walking, briskly.”
“You and Jacque?”
“Exactly, I am walking, and Jacque is walking, and it’s
at a speed that causes the heart to beat more quickly. This way blood can get oxygen to my muscles so that I can walk briskly.” The words were just pouring out of her even as she screamed at herself to shut the hell up. She still hadn’t lied, or at least she hoped not. It was probably a pretty good bet that Jacque really was, in that moment, walking. Crap, she was in a damn forest. What else do people do in a forest but walk? Okay, so maybe there other things they could do, she conceded with a sly grin.
“Other things, who, could do where?”
“Bloody hell does the man miss anything!” “Listen, B, you know I love our little chats, especially when they get spicy, but I can’t focus on you and Jacque at the same time. So I’m going to need you to skedaddle, while we continue our girl time.”
There was a long pause but she knew he hadn’t retreated. It took everything in her not to beat her head against a tree when he finally spoke.
“So you’re telling me that you and Jacque are having girl time while walking, briskly. Which has caused your heart beat to increase to get oxygen rich blood to your muscles so that you can walk, briskly. And because it takes so much focus to walk briskly and talk about girl stuff, you need me to skedaddle?”
The undisguised humor laced with suspicion had Jen vowing that as soon as she saw him, she was going to kick him. The location of that kick was still up for debate.
“Exactly. So glad we’re on the same page, K. Kiss Thia for me. Don’t forget to sing to her, Don’t wait up, love you, bye bye.” Jen slammed the door on their bond. She was actually breathing hard as if she’d said all of that out loud and not just in her mind. She could feel Dec’s frustration with her. She hadn’t shut the bond completely, just enough that he couldn’t read her every thought. Regardless, she knew she was going to get a lecture from her fur ball when she returned home. “This had better be worth it, Jacquelyn Lupei,” she muttered as she continued through the now dark forest.
