by Rae Foxx
Forbidden Trust
Rae Foxx
Market Street Books
Text Copyright ©2021 by Rae Foxx
The Series, characters, names, and related indicia are trademarks and © Rae Foxx.
All Rights Reserved.
Published by Market Street Books
No part of this publication may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher. For Information regarding permission, write to:
Rae Foxx at [email protected]
Production Management by Market Street Books
Printed in USA
This Edition, March 2021
Contents
1. Emmet
2. Lucy
3. Lucy
4. Emmet
5. Emmet
6. Lucy
7. Lucy
8. Emmet
9. Emmet
10. Lucy
11. Lucy
12. Emmet
13. Emmet
14. Lucy
15. Lucy
16. Emmet
17. Emmet
18. Emmet
19. Lucy
20. Emmet
21. Lucy
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One
Emmet
“Did you see her, that damn Alpha sitting there like she owns everything?” Sam snarled into the dark before he promptly threw another amber beer bottle into the fire where it shattered and sputtered.
This was what the night had degraded to, drunken complaining and all-out bitching.
I should tell them to knock it off, they were being unreasonable. But I couldn’t find the words. I was grumpy, too, albeit for a different reason.
Tonight was the night all of my childhood fantasies had been shattered by one bastard. A bastard from our rival clan at that.
“Fucking Noah,” I mumbled under my breath, staring into the fire as Sam and the others continued to rant and rave about their own problems.
Not like they had lost the love of their lives. They were salty because they didn’t like a woman telling them what to do.
Idiots needed to grow a pair, but now was not the time to tell them that.
“She has been here all of two months and…” Rich waved his arms in the air as though he was about to perform a low-rate magic trick instead of making his point. “Two months of a bitch.”
He chuckled to himself, making it clear he had forgotten what he was going to say, and took another drink.
More drunken laughter followed, all of the men adding other choice nicknames to the stereotypical ‘bitch’ that Rich had provided. I had a few of my own, but not for Cami; for Noah.
Seeing Emma there with that smile on her face, the smile that I’d never been able to put there no matter how hard I had tried, made me sick to my stomach. My stomach growled and knotted up inside me, the physical effect of the heartbreak attempting to turn the contents of my stomach out.
Good thing I had the perfect remedy.
“Pass me another beer,” I said, reaching my hand out to Sam who was grabbing another one for himself.
“Slow down there, Emmet.” Rich laughed at me, even though he passed me the ice-cold bottle. “You’re just lucky we found you wandering around out here before you hurt yourself, boy.”
They all chuckled at that, not that I cared.
“I need it.”
“We all need it with how that bitch sat there at the Alpha’s table, eating and joking. She can’t even make a good speech. I mean, what the hell was all that ‘the time we have been given’ bullshit? We don’t need that nonsense!” Everyone cheered and raised their beer to Sam who was still snarling at the memory.
“Just...fuck ‘em all. All the females. All the ones who think they own the world because they have something good between their legs.” I raised my glass beer bottle and then regretted the words immediately.
Emma wasn’t just some female.
Ever since we were in nursery school together and she gave me my first candy corn near Halloween one year, she’d owned me. I hated candy corn to this day, but it didn’t matter. Every year when I saw those little orange, yellow, and white fuckers on the store shelves, all the memories flooded back and renewed my love for her.
It wasn’t just the candy. She was gorgeous, all of her. Strong and independent, yet caring and sweet. Emma had it all. I had vowed myself to her years ago.
Didn’t matter about that jerk Noah that she’d met in the fucking filthy river of all places. Didn’t matter to her that he was the enemy of our pack.
Even an enemy was better than being mine.
My wolf disagreed with the sentiment. He had never really been on board with Emma, but I forced it down his throat. She was mine. Was be the operative word.
“Here, here! Fuck ‘em all. All they do is bring us down.” Sam was getting rowdier and rowdier the more the alcohol kicked in.
Someone would have to carry his sorry ass home and stop him before he stumbled into the damned fire. Not that I was that far behind him. I’d been downing shots since noon as I sat in tortured misery, stuck in the middle of a wedding march.
Gods above, Emma had looked fucking amazing in that dress. For a short while, as she walked down the short aisle, with nothing more than some rocks making a path for her, I imagined that she was walking toward
Gods, I needed to get over it. I was starting to sound like them.
“We need to fix it!” Sam continued, standing and swaying as he waved the bottle in the air. “Fix it and then we can walk around with some pride about what pack we belong to. It’s time we reclaimed our former glory!”
They all cheered like they were about to go into a drunken battle and Sam tossed the half-full bottle of vodka into the fire. The glass smashed against one of the logs and the entire bonfire ignited like a mini-nuke had gone off right in front of our eyes. A random hare that had hopped out of the surrounding forest had been so scared that she dropped a dozen pellets of shit behind her before hopping off in a scared fluster.
As a twenty-five-year-old pup, I didn’t fit in. Time to get out of there.
“For now, let’s get you home before you burn all of our fucking eyebrows off.” I tossed my bottle to the ground. Sam didn’t protest when I sidled up to him. He wrapped his arm around my shoulder and his weight leaned against me.
He wouldn’t even remember his traitorous, treacherous plan in the morning. Hell, he might not even remember his fucking name.
Maybe I would wake up and forget that I had spent most of my life loving a female who had mated to someone else.
I should be so lucky.
Two
Lucy
I cranked the heater up one more notch, drowning myself in heat as I approached the Silver Moon pack lands. My routing app said that I was twenty minutes from my destination, but it kept sputtering and trying to reroute me so who knew how accurate that was. I was so far from civilization that I was sure it had no idea where I was anyway.
If memory served me correctly, I would start seeing the tops of the houses after the next tur
n in the road. The temperature was sure dropping fast enough for me to be close. I was going to need more coffee to keep me warm up here.
I had forgotten how cold it was.
At least I would have extra caffeine to help me wrangle some of my nerves. A psychiatrist with newly found anxiety issues. Go figure.
At least my wolf was happy about the transition. She still mourned her mate, but familiar lands and people were what she needed. And room to run. The city didn’t have much of that.
“Please turn left… right… follow the road to the waterfall…” My GPS chimed neurotically, and so I turned the sucker off.
“You have officially lost it.” I wasn’t sure if I was talking to the GPS, or to myself.
Probably both.
My old beater followed the curve in the road and sure enough, the peaks of houses began to peek through the trees.
“Home,” I said with a grumble.
I hadn’t been back to Silver Moon pack lands since I was freshly eighteen and determined to find something else out there, convinced that this pack and these people were not my cup of tea.
Somehow, in my pompous search for meaning, I’d found my calling and my mate. And then I lost everything.
Now, I was back with my tail between my legs.
I slowed down, my car chugging along as I moved along the dirt road that circled the back of the pack houses, which all sat in a ring. Releasing one shaky breath after another, I moved closer and closer to my final destination.
Of course, I heard where I was going long before I saw it.
“Ahhh!” The piercing scream rattled my window as the old picket fence and the back garage came into view, my sister bouncing up and down beside the already open garage door.
Of course she was waiting for me.
My sister was jumping around like a kangaroo, waving frantically as I pulled up to the garage of the house I had grown up in. Mom and dad had passed a few years ago. Amanda was all I had left.
And Amanda was a squealer.
“Hey,” I said, killing the engine and opening the door. I didn’t get more than a leg out before she was pulling me out, smothering me against her as though she was trying to find a way to absorb me.
“Lucy! You’re here!”
“I’m here,” I mumbled into her right breast, the one I was currently being smashed into. She didn’t care. She gripped me harder and swayed back and forth as though she was rocking a baby to sleep.
Damn. She was already going overboard with this shit.
“You’re choking me, Mandy,” I stammered out, trying to get out of her death grip. She finally let go and put her hands on either side of my face, inspecting me. It was something our mom used to do.
“Look at you. You beautiful, beautiful woman.” Shit. Here we went, tears were already welling in her eyes. “It’s going to be okay, Lu. We are going to make it okay.”
“Please don’t--” I started, but she cut me off, smashing me into her boobs again.
“Welcome home.”
It didn’t matter how many times people told me it was going to be okay; it wasn’t. It wouldn't. If only because every time someone said that it felt like I was getting run over by a semi.
“I’m fine, Mandy. It’s just been a long drive,” I lied, pushing down the heartbreak that was shattering through my chest again.
I was already regretting coming back to Silver Moon. I should’ve gone somewhere for a fresh start, where no one knew me or my history. That would’ve been so much easier.
“I know. I know.” She used that mom voice on me and wrapped her arm around my shoulder, tugging me toward the two-story log cabin that we grew up in and was now hers. “But it’s still okay to cry, and it’s okay to move on too. But one thing at a time.”
“Where are the kids?” I asked, desperate for a subject change. At this point, with the overwhelming emotions lapping over the edge of what I could and could not contain, one mention of Clint’s name out loud would crack the perfect facade I had built myself.
Mandy was coming too close to that.
“Oh, they’re around here somewhere, running around. You know how pack life is.” She grinned with all the pride and happiness of a mother, and I gave her the best smile I could muster. She saw right through it, her green eyes glinting dangerously at me. The color was the same shade as mine. It wasn’t the only thing that we shared. Her straw-colored hair was the same as mine, except hers was brittle at the edges and was currently tangled into a messy bun on top of her head, as though she couldn’t deal with it.
“Good. So where am I staying?”
“Right above the garage. We had it converted a few months ago, there were so many new pack members coming in who needed space.” Amanda gave me a wide smile as she rambled, and I half expected her to say that there were so many new
I gave her a look and she stuttered to a stop, although I could tell that wouldn’t be the end of it.
Damn it all, I might as well rip the bandage off for her.
“Clint. You can say his name, Mandy. I’m not going to shatter.” Lies. It was all lies.
I shattered into a trillion pieces over and over at the sound of his name. We had been mated but the legal system didn’t honor mating and of course, didn’t care. We’d simply never gotten around to getting married legally and never saw the point.
I saw the point now.
Days after Clint died, his family came to strip me from their lives as they had tried for so many years. When I left, all I had was the money in my bank and a beater car that I had been able to snag for cheap. His family didn’t let me take my nice Jag or any of the furniture and I didn’t have the strength to fight them. What was Clint’s desk when he was no longer sitting at it? Just a piece of wood, that’s what.
My beast whimpered inside me, remembering the day.
“I know you won’t. But in case you do, it’s okay to fall apart in front of me. I’m your sister. You don’t have to be so strong all the time. You are a beautiful, intelligent woman. And I know that after all this mourning is over, you will find someone else.” I let her ramble, the words a band aid against multiple stab wounds to the chest. But I smiled and nodded all the same, well, until that last bit.
“What did you say?” My tone was harsher than I’d intended, but she didn’t even flinch.
“Come on, Lucy,” Amanda sighed, throwing her arm over my shoulder again. “You’re only twenty-six years old. There’s someone else out there for you. You’re not going to spend the rest of your life alone. Don’t be silly.”
Silly. She called me silly for believing that Clint was the only one for me. That he was my true mate. Anyone who knew anything about shifters also knew that true mates were a once in a lifetime kind of thing. We didn’t just trip over mates like a tree root in the ground.
Fate made sure of that.
Alone was going to have to be enough for me. Besides, I was damned good company.
“There’s not going to be another mate for me, Mandy. Period.” She began to speak but I put my hand up. She wasn’t the only one who could mimic Mom. “I’m serious. I’m content with the time I got with Clint.” More lies. “It’s time to move on--just me. I have a career, and family, and friends. That’s enough to keep me happy.”
Tears welled in her eyes but she turned to wipe them away. “Well, I’m not giving up on someone else for you. You deserve a mate to grow old with.”
“I had one, Amanda. He’s gone. Don’t make this worse.”
She blew out a breath, fanning her blonde bangs out of her face. “Damn those drunk drivers. That man is recovering at home with his wife and kids while you have to deal with the consequences of his choices. It’s not fair.”
I shrugged and shared with her something I’d come to terms with in the last six months. “Life’s not fair, M
andy. It’s just life. It’s shit sometimes and that’s what makes it life and not perfection.”
No matter how many times I said those words, they still felt hollow. Even I hadn’t come to accept them.
Thankfully, Amanda didn’t fight me, she pressed her lips together and nodded once before gesturing to the set of wood stairs that led to the top of the garage.
“Well, here we are. I fixed it up some but feel free to make it your own while you’re here. Why don’t you go look around and I’ll have Henry help me unpack your car.”
It was clear that she wasn’t going to let me fight her on this, so I took the key from her and made my way up the stairs. Amanda was calling to her mate like a nagging barmaid behind me.
Stairs and the front door creaked as I made my way into the apartment, the place already flooded with light and mountain air.
“Home sweet home,” I muttered and inspected the place.
It was a studio apartment. Kitchen in one corner, bed in the other. A used couch and some sparse furnishings almost made the moss green color of the walls not so bad. I could work with this.
Sitting on the couch whose cushions gave a little too much, I closed my eyes and forced three cleansing breaths. I could do this. I could start over and make a life for myself.
After all, the only person I could rely on in this life was me.
Three
Lucy
After a shitty night’s sleep, I made my way to the Alpha house only to find that Cami, the new Alpha, and her mate Luke, had been up since the crack of dawn working in the fields.
