by Kari Gregg
They looked to Kenneth now that Da had died, but they looked to Jamie too.
He needn’t do more than stand at Kenneth’s side. Tradition dictated that, if Kenneth’s rise to alpha was challenged, only Kenneth would face the fight, not Jamie. As Kenneth’s mate, tradition demanded Jamie do nothing, absolutely nothing.
No one issued a challenge, though.
The pack streamed toward Kenneth and Jamie standing on Da’s doorstep, Devon leading them. Breaking protocol, Devon grabbed Jamie, tugging him into a fierce hug accompanied by hard thumps on Jamie’s back that made Jamie’s lungs rattle. “He would be proud of you and happy for you,” Devon whispered in Jamie’s ear, for him alone, before drawing back to smile and kiss both of Jamie’s cheeks in turn. Only after he’d given the proper greeting to Jamie as alpha mate did Devon turn his attention to Kenneth. His gaze dropped, his jaw tipping to the side to expose his vulnerable neck. “My alpha,” he said, voice steady and ringing with confidence.
“You welcomed my mate before me?” Kenneth asked with a sly chuckle. “Rebel.”
“Brace yourself.” Devon snickered. “You’ll find many in Burnt Fork willing to balk at the traditions and ritual of alpha ascendency to return Jamie to us as our own.”
Jamie’s eyes rounded, but Kenneth laughed, his shoulders shaking with his mirth as he watched Devon’s son climb into Jamie’s arms like a monkey, only to sloppily buss both of Jamie’s cheeks. “As long as we are both accepted as the new alpha mates, I don’t care what order in which the pack recognizes us.”
Michael squirmed in Jamie’s grasp. “Alpha Kenneth!” Eyes twinkling, he leapt out of Jamie’s arms.
“Michael,” Devon growled in warning, at which point the boy abruptly halted. Frowning at his father, he lowered his gaze and angled his jaw to the side to expose his throat, like Devon had. “My alpha,” the boy said, impatiently tapping his foot while he waited for Kenneth to acknowledge him.
Kenneth, rather than the boy, reached forward, but the boy burrowed into Kenneth’s embrace no less.
Behind them, soft as a whisper, trembling and broken-hearted, Lisa sang.
Chapter Thirteen
DAYS LATER, the whelps gathered to leave.
Kenneth leaned over a deer carcass he’d dragged from the woods and hung from a tree, where he’d gutted, skinned, and butchered it. Once he’d realized Jamie was fond of venison but hadn’t enjoyed much of it since Ian’s passing, Kenneth had made an effort to provide as much as Jamie could want. Jamie recognized this as part of their strange mating dance, but he appreciated the gesture nevertheless, as Kenneth appreciated Jamie not flipping out when one of the pack adults came to retrieve a whelp from shifter craft training instead of letting the kids find their own way home like they had when Jamie had made his home in the Between. Kenneth lingered nearby when the day’s lessons were done. As long as Kenneth was close, Jamie had discovered he could stand the presence of the others. He’d grown better at attempting awkward and stilted small talk with the parents.
The pack hadn’t abused Jamie’s tentative overtures. They hadn’t descended en masse. One or two showed at a time, day after day.
Jamie, slowly, became accustomed to his pack again.
When the last mother escorted her whelp from Kenneth’s back yard, Jamie slipped to the door and carefully returned the herbalist primer he’d borrowed from Kenneth’s library. He’d begun teaching the kids essential foraging that afternoon. Evening primrose, chicory, red clover, and elderberries grew abundantly in Burnt Fork and all were useful as food or in medicines. While the pack healer produced the salves, tinctures, and teas that sufficed for most minor ailments, Jamie liked to teach the kids the basics. He and Ian, after all, had survived without the support of a healer for a decade. He’d learned. They’d made do.
After sliding the precious book into its place on the shelf, Jamie gulped down a glass of water and returned outside to watch Kenneth process the deer. Since Kenneth had stripped the hide, Jamie snatched up a tool and started scraping away the clinging fat and sinewy.
“—more wildlife activity to the north,” Everett, whose den next to his mother’s was located not far from the mountain pass to Bitter Creek, said. “I think something’s scaring coyotes down from the high places.”
“Another cat probably,” his mate, Lucy, replied, her stare focusing on Jamie who bent over the hide and industriously worked while they talked. “We haven’t seen signs, no clawed trees or prints or scat, but we wanted to make sure you were on guard.”
Wanted Jamie to stay away from the pass, anyway.
He could have told the three of them that he’d seen the mountain lion a few days ago, a mother with a pair of cubs, but why? To avoid the area and thereby avoid provoking the cat’s parental instincts, he’d tracked the animal to her den. Cats usually didn’t take on prey as big as men unless they were starving or protecting their young and this cat’s coat had gleamed, golden and silky, the bulk of her rangy body as she’d run showing off muscle and a healthy amount of fat.
Not the cat Lisa had seen him fighting. Jamie bet his life on it by visiting Ian in the pass as often as he ever had.
“I’ll take a look later,” Kenneth said, continuing to butcher the deer. The other two helped cut the meat and Kenneth shared pieces with his helpers.
Once Jamie had scraped the hide clean of fat, he fetched a huge urn from their root cellar. Lucy joined Jamie to help haul it to the creek for filling and back again, without yammering at him for which Jamie was grateful. Back at Kenneth’s den, Jamie dumped the hide into the water and nodded his thanks when Kenneth handed him a bowl of pink goo—the brain Kenneth had removed from the deer’s skull while Jamie had retrieved the water.
“Thank you,” Jamie said to Kenneth, glad to have avoided that disgusting chore.
Kenneth beamed. “Any time.”
Heartened at Kenneth’s approval, Jamie turned to Lucy. “Thanks,” he mumbled to her as well.
“You’re welcome,” the woman said while Everett gaped at him.
Beside her, Everett curled his arm around his mate’s waist. “I wanted to help, especially after Ian passed away. Pay back how much your family helped mine after my daddy died, but once we’ve finished training, we’re supposed to stop pestering you. Plus, Lucy came from Bitter Creek pack which made her a stranger to you.” He jerked a diffident shoulder. “Well. Doesn’t matter.”
Lucy snorted. “What he’s trying to say is helping feels good, even if it’s only fetching a heavy pot of water from the creek.”
Attention on the hide, Jamie tried for a smile. “I appreciate it,” he said, though the words felt like shattered glass in his mouth. Not that he wasn’t genuinely grateful for Lucy’s aid. Jamie’d hauled enough water from the creek to fully grasp the labor involved in carrying that much weight and Kenneth’s den was located farther from fresh water than his cabin had been in the Between.
After the couple had left to return to their own den, Kenneth kissed Jamie’s temple. “It’s okay to go,” he said.
“No. It’s not.” Sadness rolled over Jamie when he met his mate’s stare. “I should stay. My place is here, with you.”
Lifting his hand, Kenneth cupped his cheek in his palm and shushed him. “I won’t deny that sometimes I’ll feel possessive and jealous. But not today. I’m secure in who you belong to, enough to acknowledge who you loved before we quickened. I realize you’ll need to make your peace with Ian sometimes.” He smiled, gaze sparkling with affection. “Go. Talk to him. Find your balance.”
Jamie arched an eyebrow. “Their report about the cat?”
Chuckling, Kenneth released him. “You don’t love me yet. If that animal is the one that attacks you, you’re safe for tonight.” He jerked his chin to the north, toward the mountains. “I’ll finish the hide. Go on. Afterwards, when you’re ready, come back to me.”
Jamie walked, but not to the rocky outcropping where Ian died. He followed a worn path to his old den in the Between, where I
an was buried. His relationship with Kenneth had changed over the past days. Not just the sex, although their coming together had been explosive. Magical. Every bit as intense as what he’d shared with Ian, but in a different way. That hadn’t unsettled him, though, nor learning to interact with Everett and Lucy. His nerves had jittered, but Everett had been one of the kids he’d taught in shifter craft. He’d grown to adulthood, but Jamie saw enough of the boy he’d nurtured and cared about to ease his anxiety.
What had rattled him was how comfortable he and Kenneth had been with each other. They were learning each other’s personal tics. Like how Kenneth jumped out of bed at dawn every morning, wide awake and raring to take on the day, while Jamie took longer to climb up from sleep. Kenneth often returned to their bed to rouse him in other ways. That wasn’t the same as he’d had with Ian, who’d had trouble waking in the morning too. They’d frequently begun their days snuggling and cuddling and perhaps gently loving each other. What he had with Kenneth was different, but still good.
When he reached the rough stone under the tree in his old yard marking Ian’s grave, Jamie plopped down in the grass. The wrens chirped as they always had and the creek gurgled nearby. The familiar scent of clover tickled his senses, reminding him of his old home, as did the gentle warmth of the sun. “You would’ve hated Kenneth,” he told Ian’s grave. “Everything about him. How careful and deliberate he is.” Jamie smiled. “You said whatever was in your head, consequences be damned, and you couldn’t be still, always had to be doing something. Anything.” He patted the earth. “I initially hated him too. Because he wasn’t you, then because he was nothing like you. The two of you are practically opposites. I understand that’s for the best now, though. I don’t think of you when I’m with him. I can be with him, totally with him, without either of us standing in your shadow.”
He blew out a long breath. “That doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten you or that I’d ever want to forget. I miss you, Ian. I always will.
“But turns out, the pieces of my heart you took with you to the next world...I don’t want those pieces back. I gladly gave them to you. They are yours. Maybe losing you didn’t shatter the lot, though. Parts of me are still unbloodied, unbroken. I think those parts of me are his.”
“I’ve been guarding what was left of me so fiercely. Trying to hang on, y’know?” One corner of Jamie’s mouth curved. “I was protecting what was left of my broken heart for the wrong reasons. I didn’t need to keep it intact for me. I was too stubborn to realize I was keeping it safe for him all along.
“You’ll remember how stubborn I can be.” He chuckled, but wistful sadness faded away his mirth. “I...I talk to them, Ian. Not a lot. I can’t manage that yet.” He picked at a blade of grass, fiddled with it. “You were right. I wish I could’ve told you to your face. You would’ve crowed about it and given me that grin.” He blew out a choppy breath, emotion tightening his throat. “I wonder sometimes if I made your last year’s worse, if you would’ve been happier if I hadn’t...if I hadn’t...”
“Nothing you could’ve or might’ve done would’ve made my brother happier.”
Jamie startled, his spine stiffening at the intrusion.
“He loved you,” Devon said from the front porch. “Even towards the end, when he treated with us, he never regretted a single second with you.”
“We fought about that. How could he talk, laugh, and work with the family and friends who had betrayed us.” Jamie lifted a hand to rub the bridge of his nose, then waved that hand at Ian’s brother. “No, I’m sorry. I’m being a dick. I’m glad he dug his heels in about dealing with the pack. Knowing he had a chance to repair whatever relationships he could salvage is a comfort. We knew what the prophesy had to mean, what would happen. At least he had the chance to say his goodbyes.”
“He didn’t do it for his sake. Or ours.”
“I know.” Jamie’s shoulders slumped. He didn’t flinch when Ian’s brother’ hand fell to his shoulder and squeezed.
“He begged us. When the time came, he didn’t want you to suffer alone. Sending the whelps to you to learn shifter craft was his idea. He thought the connection with them would help you after he was gone.”
Jamie snorted a laugh. “He would never admit it, but I guessed as much.”
“He didn’t want to be the reason you lost what made him fall for you to start with. He said you’d be difficult, that it was in your nature to fight and you wouldn’t easily let him go, but he swore if your alpha mate loved you half as much as he did, you’d open your heart, not only for him but for all of us again.”
Jamie stroked the ground, cool in the shade of the tree, not warm like Ian had been. “Of the two of us, he was always the better man.”
“He was wrong, Jamie.”
Jamie made himself look up, meet Devon’s gaze.
“The alpha isn’t just capable of loving you half as much. He could...God, Ian would hate him, but Kenneth has that inside him too. He could love you with the same crazy passion, fascination, and enthusiastic selflessness as Ian did. You know what I mean. You felt it for Ian.” Devon crouched down. “It’s like winning the mega bucks lottery. You had that once and you lost it. Ian’s death was terrible and everything that happened before it went horribly wrong too. You won a second chance, though. So did we. Ian gave us that. You can love and be loved again. And this time, maybe if we all try, we can get it right.”
Jamie’s shoulders sagged. “You make it sound easy.”
Devon tipped his jaw to a stubborn angle, dark eyes like his dead brother’s glinting with his determination. “It is that easy.”
“I don’t know if I can do it all over again. I want to truly be with him. I think I do anyway, but I don’t know if I can.”
“You already are. I’ll leave you to settle this with my brother, though. Ian said you’d need to. Know this, though: Ian had faith in you.”
Jamie was glad somebody did.
Chapter Fourteen
WHEN JAMIE RETURNED to their den, Kenneth leaned over his desk, tapping away at his infernal contraption again. He’d built a fire to ward off the chill of the evening, but the coals had banked. Kenneth’s den was bigger than the one Jamie had built with Ian, sturdier. He and Ian had done their best but both of them had lacked the skill and expertise to miter proper corners and chinking between logs to keep out the wind had been an endless battle. Instead of the hand pump in the kitchen area that provided water from a well, his old den had collected water on the roof, an arrangement that had required hauling buckets from the creek during the dry season. He’d been happy there, though. Could be happy here too.
Jamie knew he could slide to the floor next to Kenneth and lay his head on Kenneth’s lap, as he knew Kenneth would lower his hand to play with Jamie’s hair, pet him. Even though Jamie had left to spend time talking to his dead mate, Jamie knew he and Kenneth would be okay.
Since he didn’t see any purpose in resisting, Jamie walked to Kenneth and dropped to the floor. He sighed blissfully at the creep of Kenneth’s fingers at the crow of his head in Kenneth’s lap.
“You were gone a long time.”
“We had a lot to talk about.” Jamie nestled his cheek into Kenneth’s thigh. “Did you send Devon to talk to me?”
“No.” The tapping at the computer stopped. “What did he want?”
“You weren’t with the pack then, but you’re aware of what Ian did in the years before his accident.”
“I’ve heard.”
Jamie looked up at him. “Can we do this? Not just sex or to solidify your position as alpha or because the damn seers say so. We can fulfill all of that without...without...” He gulped around the boulder lodged in his throat. “What are we doing, Kenneth? You’re the leader. Tell me where you want this relationship to go because I don’t know if I can take losing the hope of mating again, not that too.”
“You’re a mess.”
Jamie choked down a bitter laugh.
“I’ve had two years to see your
bitterness in action, your anger, the hurt painted over you like an artist’s brushstrokes. I’m still here. I still want you. And you know me too.”
“Until the last couple of weeks, we never spoke.”
“When I arrived at Burnt Fork, Ian had been in the ground four days. You were wild with grief, hadn’t slept, refused to eat or drink. You wanted to die. Then, you recognized me. You didn’t know my name or what my favorite color is. Probably still don’t.” He smiled. “It’s green, by the way. You sensed me, though, and you slept. You rehydrated. When the pack kids brought game to eat, you didn’t drive them away.”
“You know me, Jamie. I’m the promise you chose to live for and the man who waited two years for your soul to heal after Ian’s death tore you apart. Nature chose another mate for you first, but I am the mate three seers prophesied for you, the mate that fate instead of biology revealed to and for you. You ask where I would lead you? Where we, as lovers, would go?”
Jamie shuddered because, deep down, the answer was inside him—all the way. Kenneth wouldn’t be satisfied until they’d mated in every sense, at every level, as strong and true as the blending of hearts and souls Jamie’d had with Ian.
Kenneth pinched his chin between two fingers, forced Jamie to meet his stare. “When have I ever led you? You will not follow where you do not wish to go. Two years of grief and ten years of mated defiance proved that. Fate appointed me alpha of this pack as well as your mate, but between the two of us, when all of the busyness is gone and it’s only you and me, we stand shoulder to shoulder and side by side. You weren’t a man to be led when you defied your pack to love that doomed boy and you certainly won’t be guided by me. You’re here because you want to be and that scares the shit out of you.”
