by Kari Gregg
Chapter Four
TWO YEARS LATER…
“Daddy!” Michael cried, scrambling to his feet. Beaming, he threw himself into his father’s arms. “You aren’t s’posed to be here. Uncle Jamie said.”
“I know, I know. This can’t wait, buddy.” Ian’s brother scooped Michael off the ground, although the boy was growing fast. His father wouldn’t be able to lift him much longer. Mouth compressed to a thin line, Jamie did his level best to ignore this intrusion. Ian’s brother held his son in his arms and concentrated on Jamie, Devon’s dark eyes like Ian’s, except troubled and pensive. “You need to follow me.”
Jamie glared, his fingers pinching and pulling any hint of weeds from Ian’s meticulously pristine grave. “I need do nothing.”
“It’s your Da.” Devon sighed. “He wants you.”
“First for everything, I guess.” Irritation twined with alarm in Jamie’s chest. “Too bad what he wants hasn’t meant anything to me since he kicked me out at sixteen.”
Devon frowned. “He’s your alpha.”
“He gave up any rights to me as both my alpha and my father when he rejected my mating with Ian, which I’ve made abundantly clear in the many years since.” Jamie chopped an angry hand through the air and a rain of fresh dirt slipped from his fingers to pelt the green, green grass. “Why are we arguing about this?”
“Because he’s dying.”
Regret knotted Jamie’s stomach for what might have been, for what should have been. His shoulders drooped, weariness swamping him. He returned his attention to where the pack kids had buried his mate’s remains. “Everybody dies.”
“Jamie.”
That’s all he said, Jamie’s name, but Jamie’s blood curdled anyway because Devon’s voice sounded like his brother’s. Ian’s would lower like that when he was in a snit over some stupid stunt Jamie had pulled, full of exasperation and censure.
“Ian would have wanted you to make peace with your Da.”
Recognizing a painful truth, Jamie flinched. Ian had desperately wished Jamie would reconcile with the pack and Jamie knew the distance he’d maintained since Ian’s death would have disappointed his mate. Of the two of them, Ian had always been the kinder man. Compassionate. Forgiving where Jamie could never be. Being with Ian had made Jamie strive to be better, though, and that hadn’t ended at Ian’s death. His mate still inspired and encouraged him every single day. Jamie’s head hung low. “Just Da?”
“If that’s what it takes.” Devon rocked his weight from foot to foot. “Lisa has hardly left your dad’s side, but she cleared out for the next hour.”
“Why doesn’t Uncle Jamie want to see Aunt Lisa?” his nephew asked despite his father’s shushing him.
“She isn’t your aunt.” Jamie pushed to his feet. “I’m not your uncle either.”
“Daddy was Uncle Ian’s brother and Aunt Lisa is your sister.” Michael beamed. “That makes us family.”
“We’ve tried explaining the situation to the kids, but they won’t have it.” When Jamie scowled at him, Devon rolled his eyes. “Your momma always said the whelps had the sharpest instincts of any of us.”
Jamie nodded. “Great instincts,” he agreed. He rubbed his dirty hands on his thighs. “Lousy judgment.”
“You ought to know.” Devon snorted. “Are you coming to see your da or do I have to drag you to Burnt Fork?”
“I’d love to see you try.” Ignoring his pervasive dread, Jamie stiffened his spine and marched toward the creek and beyond, to the territory in which he was raised and the land his feet hadn’t touched since he’d mated at sixteen. Devon fell into step beside him, Michael clinging to him with skinny arms. “What about…him?” Jamie asked, watching his step over the burbling water on which Jamie relied in the dry season.
Like the other pack members, Devon’s footwear was readymade boots humans manufactured instead of the moccasins covering Jamie’s feet. Devon splashed through the creek.
Not that Jamie didn’t own boots too. He did. Once winter snows piled into the valleys, nothing else would prevent frostbite, but he’d invested hours making his from a bear hide Ian had stolen from a trio of scavenging coyote. Since he couldn’t rely on luck to repeat that gift, Jamie and Ian had reserved wearing the boots Jamie had made for them from the carcass for only the coldest season.
“Kenneth usually sticks close to your da, but I think he’s checking snares with Gracie’s sons. He made himself scarce to make it easier for you to say yes to coming.” Devon side-eyed him. “He won’t be around.”
Jamie grunted, but his stomach nevertheless churned. “Good.”
“Goddess willing, Kenneth will be our next alpha. I wanted to hate him. I loved my brother. Didn’t understand him, but I loved him. Nobody in the pack was more prepared than me to resent Kenneth on general principle when he came to Burnt Fork days after Ian’s death.” Devon frowned. “Kenneth changed my mind, though.” He huffed out a sharp breath. “Not right away and I won’t say learning our way around each other has been problem-free, but he helped me realize the hurt and anger I carried didn’t belong to him. He taught me that letting Ian go wasn’t a betrayal of his memory. Kenneth will change your heart too, if you give him a chance.”
“If you want me to keep walking, you need to shut up.” Goosebumps pebbled the skin of his arms at the achingly familiar woods through which they crossed. The closer they drew to Da’s cabin, the more Jamie recognized that tree and this rock. He and Ian had built a fort as boys through a screen of scraggly pines on their left. Jamie had fallen and broken his arm at the age of six while climbing the maple right ahead. “I’m saying goodbye to my father because I missed that chance when my mother died and Ian would’ve wanted me to make my peace with Da before he passes,” he said. “I’ve agreed to nothing else.”
“Kenneth is nice,” Michael chirped up, his wide grin broadcasting the degree to which Jamie’s nephew purely did not give a fuck about Jamie’s snarling discomfort with the subject of future mates, prophesied or not. “He says boys can be seers, same as girls.”
Jamie arched an eyebrow at Devon while they walked. “Really?”
“Michael’s eyes are green, not the blue of a seer, but the Goddess has nevertheless gifted him with the sight, if not as strongly as your sister and Aria. Kenneth thinks his talents should be encouraged.” Devon shrugged. “Our next alpha believes in upholding traditions that strengthen us, but also relaxing traditions that limit us from reaching our full potential.”
Michael nodded. “Kenneth says tradition can sometimes be silly twaddle.”
Surprise shot through Jamie as they passed the Burnt Fork pack cabin nearest the Between and his eyebrows shot up while kids playing in the front yard joined their plodding trek to pack headquarters, which was also Jamie’s old family home. “None of you have run him off?”
“Run who off?” one of the scampering kids asked.
“Kenneth,” Michael answered.
“He said I can go to college in the city if I want,” a girl not yet old enough to join the group for shifter craft training at Jamie’s meadow said. She scowled at Jamie. “He said Alpha Frank’s cancer proved our healers can learn plenty from human doctors, even if our physiology is different from theirs. Alpha Frank wouldn’t have lasted near as long as he has without human chemotherapy.”
The bottom fell out of Jamie’s stomach. Buzzing filled his ears. “Cancer?” He’d known his dad was ill. The kids had mentioned it along with Kenneth’s increasing importance in the pack. Both were strong indicators preparation for the succession of the next alpha progressed smoothly and if Jamie knew anything about his father, it was that Da wouldn’t step down until his final breath left his body. Not because his father craved power. Leadership had always weighed heavily on his father, the responsibilities for his pack awkwardly accepted. No, Jamie knew his dad would remain alpha as long as he could because of Jamie and what giving up his position would require.
When the kids had spoken of his father’s
sickness, Jamie hadn’t asked questions, though. Couldn’t. Nausea had roiled his stomach whenever he thought of losing his last parent. His father had been terrible, a source of bitter disappointment and resentment to Jamie since his teens, but Frank was still his da, the same man who had held Jamie as a child, taught him to hunt, and set aside the day’s chores to listen to Jamie’s boyish chatter. Once upon a time, Jamie had been no different than Michael settled comfortably in his father’s arms, as secure in the strength and protection of his parent’s love for him as any pack whelp. Fear clenching his gut, Jamie glanced at Devon. “Da has been ill since Ian died, almost two years.”
Devon dipped his head in grim acknowledgment. “Radiation helped for a while and he regularly traveled to the cancer center in the city for treatment to slow the disease’s progression. He did whatever he could to win time for you to mourn Ian’s loss.” His face paled. “But their medicines have stopped working. His appetite is gone. He sleeps a lot and he’s confused sometimes. Hospice told us he’s showing every sign of entering his final days. To be mentally clearer, he asked us to cut back his dose of morphine this evening. He should recognize you. He might not remember what year this is, though, or that Ian is gone.” Devon winced. “You need to brace yourself.”
Horror swamped Jamie in intense waves that crippled him. How? How does anyone prepare themselves for the suffering and death of a parent? Their relationship had deteriorated to nothing, a void Jamie had felt inside him despite all the love he and Ian had shared, a blank space only occasionally and temporarily filled by angry hurt. Truthfully, Jamie had grieved for his father since he was sixteen. He thought he’d come to terms with the absence of his family and their support, but turned out absence wasn’t the same as death. While his father still lived, a small secret part of Jamie had hoped.
As his footsteps carried him unwaveringly to the home he’d known as a boy, Jamie struggled to accept what could not be changed. Instead of climbing the familiar steps of the front porch, he searched the yard and recognizing the flat rock marking a patch of earth at the tree where Jamie had once swung from a tire swing, he headed there. Just as he had tended Ian’s grave at his own den, Jamie knelt in the grass and let the cool green spears thread through his fingers. Someone had planted a ring of cheerful daisies around the rock marking his mother’s grave, where no weed dared grow. If Da was near the end—which he must be if the pack had pushed to fetch Jamie from the Between—then he wouldn’t have been capable of tending Momma’s grave for a while. Lisa then. As pack seer since their mother’s death and the one who had apprenticed to take over the kiln producing ceramics and pottery for trade goods, not to mention a sick parent to care for, she must have been busy, but not too busy to honor their mother.
Jamie had honored Momma by staying away. No matter how much and who his avoidance had hurt.
Heart breaking, he stroked the cool grass and gulped, already fighting back tears. “I wanted to come to you so many times,” he told her.
Behind him, Devon shuffled his feet. “She understood.”
“Momma was stoic.” Digging his fingers into the grass carpeting her grave, Jamie nodded. “Gran’s prophecy for Momma promised struggle and tragedy, but also the strength to endure.”
“She endured all right.” Devon exhaled a long breath. “More suffering than any woman should have to bear.”
“She shunned us too. When Da spoke the command, Momma didn’t stand up for us…for me. Her own son. Instead, she obeyed him.” With that reminder refreshing the hurt betrayal inside him, Jamie pushed to his feet and pivoted to stare at the cabin, belly clenching at what he expected to discover inside it. “You can go,” he said to Devon, though his attention didn’t waver from his childhood home.
“We’ll wait for you.”
“I’ll go home immediately after.” Jamie grimaced. “I won’t make trouble for anyone. There’s no need for an escort.”
“I’m not sticking around to play bodyguard.” Despite the burden of his son, Devon grasped Jamie’s biceps. “You’re welcome on pack lands. Whenever you like.” He squeezed. “We’re worried for you. I am. Ian wouldn’t have wanted you to handle the aftermath of seeing your dad again on your own.”
Jamie shrugged off the comfort of his grip. “I’m fine.”
Devon wrinkled his nose. “You invest a lot of energy trying to convince everyone, including yourself, that you’re all right, but we aren’t stupid. You aren’t okay.” He sighed. “I’ll wait.”
Swallowing the lump lodged in his throat, Jamie nodded in acknowledgment…and gratitude. He wanted to thank Devon. Along with everyone else in Burnt Fork, his mate’s brother had heeded the will of the pack alpha in shunning Ian and Jamie, but in the years that followed the forbidden mating, Devon had also been the first to cross into the Between. For love of his brother, Devon had risked trading with Ian when he and Jamie had needed it most. Had hunted with them too, helped Ian and Jamie take down bigger game. Jamie wasn’t sure he and Ian would’ve made it through those first harsh winters without Devon’s aid.
The angry, bitter part of him knew that was why Da had chosen Devon to fetch him, but with gritty determination, Jamie shoved those ugly feelings aside. Instead, he climbed the steps of his childhood front porch with feet that felt like they’d been weighed down with anchors. When he reached the front porch door, though, he froze. Couldn’t move a muscle.
Was he supposed to knock?
Walk in, as if he was twelve again and the past many years had never happened?
“Go on,” Devon said from the yard. “He’s expecting you.”
Stomach twisting into anxious knots, Jamie lifted his hand toward the latch on the screen door. His pulse raced when the springs screeched as he pulled the door open, the sound a refrain from happier childhood memories. Da was a fantastic hunter, one of the pack’s best, but he was a horrible handyman, proven again when Jamie stepped over the threshold and the floorboards dipped under his weight. Almost fifteen years and the sagging oak floorboard still hadn’t been replaced.
Raw emotion caught Jamie by the throat.
He paused in the doorway, blinking away the glare of the sun from outside while his vision adjusted to the darker interior. So much was the same. Built by his grandfather from fieldstone gathered not far from Jamie’s meadow, the wide fireplace was streaked with ash and soot. Once upon a time, cleaning the debris from the fire and scrubbing away the grime had been Jamie’s chore and whoever had assumed his duties since seemed to enjoy the task as little as he had. Bookshelves comprising the pack’s library flanked both side of the fireplace, the treasury of tomes protected by rare glass doors that discouraged dust. As a child, Jamie hadn’t fully appreciated his proximity to and the availability of those precious pack resources, but after long years limited to his and Ian’s scant collection, he stared at the shelves of books with bald avarice. His fingers curled at his sides, itching to make a selection and sit in the overstuffed chair in the corner to while away an hour or two reading and learning like he had as a boy.
Those days were gone, though.
While his mother and Lisa both had ensured Jamie obtained whatever he needed to train the whelps, he’d nonetheless lost any right to peruse the pack’s library once he’d mated Ian. Jamie lingered at the door, feet stubbornly planted in place.
Regret flowing through him, he spared a glance for the rest of the cabin, surprised at the few changes. The kitchen table and chairs that had provided seating for family meals had been replaced in the years since he’d left the pack by a smaller table, no doubt the exchange made once he and Lisa had left to build their respective dens. The pack was nothing if not practical. Larger pieces of furniture would’ve been traded to growing families and Da wouldn’t have excluded himself from sharing, even if meetings with the pack alpha might’ve benefited by a few extra chairs.
Overhead, pots and pans hung from steel hooks no different than those in Jamie’s den and probably every other den in the territory, but where Jami
e’s rafters also included bunches of drying herbs, Da’s didn’t. His father too ill to forage, Lisa likely provided for those needs now, but the absence signaling his father’s weaker autonomy still jarred Jamie.
The bed dominating the left side of the great room was new too.
Steeling himself, Jamie studied the spot where his father’s desk had once stood, his pupils yet struggling to adjust to the darker cabin. A hospital bed. Astonishment swamped him that the pack had gone to the considerable toil and trouble of transporting such a large item. The pack maintained the road into pack territory only minimally to discourage casual travelers, few willing and possessing a vehicle capable of fording washed out gullies Bitter Creek’s frequent floods cut through the land. Even the pack’s truck, stuffed with trade goods, made the monthly journey from the territory with great difficulty. Hauling the hospital bed from the city must have been a taxing, challenging job Jamie preferred not to consider. That Burnt Fork had done it anyway spoke more loudly than words of Da’s need.
An IV stand dripping tubes flanked the bed, as well as a wheeled machine that blipped, a single green light flickering to disrupt the dim light of the cabin’s interior. A blood pressure machine had been shoved to one side, the cuff neatly folded in an attached wire basket.
Even squinting, Jamie could barely make out the lump nestled in the hospital bed. His breath caught at how emaciated the figure loosely draped in a sheet was, the cotton hardly masking the bony angles of his father’s too-thin body. When had Jamie seen Da last? True, the pack had shunned Jamie as a teenager, but that hadn’t stopped pack members from trading with Ian, nor had that ultimately prevented his father and a few others from spying on Jamie from the safety of the Burnt Fork edge of the creek. Jamie had caught Da checking on him in the years since Ian’s death especially, as well as Lisa, Devon, and one of Ian’s aunts. Jamie frantically searched his memory, fighting to recall the last time he’d spotted his father watching through a screen of green leaves and brush. A few months? Certainly no longer than a year.
