“She did this to herself!”
“She did whatever it is she did for a reason. I know Barbie. She wouldn’t just walk away without good reason.” He sighs again.
This angers me because he gives her so much faith and trust while it took him ages to trust me. I tell him that and get a chuckle that makes me want to slap him.
“Honey, we’ve been together for mere days. Believe me, this is not ages. Now stop trying to pick a fight with me and hush. It’s going to be okay. I’ll tell Nick what you heard, and we’ll try to go from there.”
“Go from where exactly? It’s not as if I gave you a whole lot of information here, Logan.” I huff, snuggling closer when he chuckles.
“You’ll give me more if you get it. For now, I’m just glad you found a way to get Nick’s ass out of the mess I made and give us more time,” he murmurs.
It tickles me that for once someone is proud of me for having the lying talent, though honestly, he threatened to tan my ass if I ever used it on him or the family.
I hate to admit this, but I don’t think I could, so it’s a moot point. Those weirdos laugh at every insult, keep being nice, and know enough about my salty wit to know when I’m lying or not.
Apparently, I have tells. I call bullshit; I’m a pro.
“What’s gonna happen now? Barbie is out there somewhere. Julia is gone and won’t come back until she’s ready. Brig is hiding out and doing whatever it is that asshole does because he’s avoiding the Kendalls.” I sigh, giggling when he slaps my ass admonishingly.
“I told you not to worry. That’s my job, baby. Now get some rest because I’m making love to you in the morning, and I won’t be pleased with a slacker.”
I grin, falling asleep soon after, my mind drifting away from everything that I know I can’t fix. Not alone.
# # # #
Logan
I run, letting go of all the tension inside of me and give my wolf free rein, allowing him to enjoy the freedom of the wild and soak up the unchained sensation of having nothing to think of but the run and the thrill of the hunt.
I hear Banner behind me a ways, his bear picking up speed to come abreast of me, the low rumble of his growl making me chuckle and run faster.
It’s been three weeks since I got my ass saved by my mate, had my entire life transformed, and then had to accept that sometimes life doesn’t always turn out the way you think it will.
I still haven’t found anything on Barbie, though I do suspect that the conversation Hannah heard was more a message than an SOS, as if Barbie herself was telling us to be on guard and not slack off now that the pack seems to be at peace once again.
While things are calmer, I took that message to heart, and I’ve kept my men working hard to ensure the boundaries stay secure, as secure as they’ve proven to be lately at least.
Running harder, I let go of the tension and experience the shift in all its glory, savoring the experience because in the last few months I’ve been too busy and wrapped up in my own head to really enjoy it.
Today is the first time in a long time that I have shifted for the hell of it instead of just to keep myself healthy and of sound mind. I was going to do it earlier, but with Hannah and Mom ready to murder each other and Nick still seething about the Barbie situation, free time is in short supply around here.
When we reach the boundary of Glacier, I stop in a clearing that is far enough away not to have even one sighting and shift, grabbing the pants I had Hannah tie to my back and shoving my legs into them.
“God, that felt good.” Banner sighs, putting on his own pants before following me to a stream and dropping down to lean his back against a tree trunk.
“Yeah, I needed that,” I admit, following suit and soaking in the peace of not having anyone else or anything to cloud a perfect day.
I adore Hannah, and ideally, she’d have run with me, but the female is driving me nuts. She’s bad tempered and snarky and a bitch to be around, and then she flips, becoming this sweet, unsure person, whom I expect to start foaming pea soup at the mouth any minute.
So instead of having a run and setting her own wolf free, I left her with Mom yelling about a mating ceremony and color schemes and God knows what.
“Hannah still making you nuts?” he laughs.
“Dude, she put sand in my coffee and hid the scent with sugar, so I didn’t know it until I drank half and felt the grit in my teeth.”
He laughs harder, his eyes twinkling merrily, and for just a moment, I think I see something that resembles loneliness flit across his face. It’s so fast and hidden I almost miss it until he follows with a sigh and shakes his head.
“She’s a good female. Don’t let her temper fool you, Logan, she’s soft inside.”
“Christ, you’re a fool. That female doesn’t have a soft bone in her sexy body. She refuses to be nice to Mom and tells Mika on a daily basis that her ass is fat and she has two chins,” I say with a grunt, hearing Banner choke on laughter before he collects himself and snorts occasionally.
“She’s just having a hard time fitting in man. She’ll get there. Besides, don’t tell me you don’t like it,” he argues, getting a considering look from me.
“Well, I mean, I do, but she only does it because she knows it pisses me off too,” I say, throwing a pebble into the stream to keep myself from admitting that I do not always like it.
Here’s the thing. The females in my circle are all there for each other all the time. I want that for Hannah, all that closeness and friendship, but instead they’re getting cursing, her refusal to open the door when they show up, and lately when they just barge in she’s un-fucking-pleasant.
And not always in a funny, oh my God she has no filter way, but in a nasty, I want you all gone way. It’s so embarrassing that half the time I have to leave and pick up an extra shift just to stop myself from yelling at her.
“But?”
“But it doesn’t stop there. She doesn’t like the females coming over, she refuses invitations to go over there, she yells at me when I try to get her to try a little harder, and just last night she left and went out to the bar and only came home at midnight.”
I did not like that. I was going to storm down there and drag her home until I realized that’s what she wanted. So instead, I sat at home, ate sandwiches since Hannah sucks at cooking, and went to bed, pretending to sleep, when she finally crawled in after twelve.
Right now, we’re at a sort of stalemate. I’m at peace and happy about things, but with Han it’s an on-again, off-again happiness that’s driving me crazy.
One reason for that is our bond. It just isn’t there. It started small, faint, a whisper, and I expected it to grow the more we share and the more time we spend together, but it just hasn’t.
It’s not there, and I don’t know why.
“Give her a break, Logan. Hannah isn’t used to all this happy shit all the time. Let her ease into it. Don’t try to force it all on her at once,” Banner says with a grunt.
“I’m not forcing it. I just… she has to get into the way things work in the family. She can’t just keep herself separated as if she’s superior. Talk to her, Ban. She listens to you,” I plead, shoving to my feet when he explodes up and towers above me, his fists clenched.
“See Logan, that’s your problem. You aren’t ever satisfied! You hate her, and then you want her. Then you accept her as she is, but no, wait, she needs to be nicer, kinder, more of what you have in your head the perfect mate should be than who Hannah is,” he snarls, throwing me a nasty look when I blink.
“I’m not—”
“You know why Hannah’s friends with me and why she talks to me when she won’t talk to you?” he demands, shoving me away when I stalk closer, the jealousy inside me rearing its ugly head. “Because I know she can be mean and bitchy and I don’t care! I still love her, the friend I always missed because that’s who she is and I don’t judge her for it. You want a mate who’s perfect? Go fucking find one if she’s not it,
but don’t you dare stand there and tell me that she doesn’t meet your high and mighty goddamned standards just because she isn’t a bubble of fucking sunshine. If you wanted to mate someone like Meek you should have mated Meek. If you want someone like Mom you should have left Hannah alone and mated another bitch!” he yells, slamming me back with a fist to the gut.
My wolf rises up, snarling its aggression, but Banner isn’t bothered by the warning. He just keeps glaring, those golden eyes of his flashing sparks of blue.
“That female has been hurt her whole life. Beaten, abused, pushed into a box that she didn’t fit in. If you fucking loved her, you’d want her just as she is Logan, not the way you want her to be.”
Before I can say another word, he shifts and takes off, back in the direction we came, his wolf snarling far into the distance before I lose track of him.
I stand, completely still and shocked because he’s right. I’ve been making Hannah and myself miserable because I want her to fit my mold, to be what I want instead of seeing her and being what she needs.
Whining my regret, I shift and take off, hoping like hell I can make this up to her.
# # # #
Hannah
“Oh God! Oh God this hurts more than it should. Way more.”
I shudder, hearing Mika yell those words all the way from her room at the clinic, my nails digging into my palms when she lets off another scream and Bear growls, his panic clear in the tone.
We’re all here, all the Silvertons and Kilters as we wait for Mika to have her young, something I didn’t think I’d see since it’s been two lousy fucking months of vacillating between staying or leaving.
Some days it’s all I can do not to just walk out the door and keep going. And those are the good days. Most days, I spend on eggshells while Logan tiptoes around me on his own chickens, trying to…
I don’t quite know what he’s trying to do, but the point is I don’t like it. We have sex, he spends time with me, and we’re getting along, but that is it.
There’s no bond. There’s no understanding. Just two people living together in a mating that is incomplete. And I can’t fix it because the truth is, it’s not my problem to fix.
Hell, it’s not even in me to let go of the hurt I feel and yell at Logan that he’s killing me inside. He’s doing this. Because he doesn’t love me. Trust me, I’ve heard his thoughts enough that I hear the male justifying my every action in his head, while feeling a disappointment I don’t know how to deal with.
I don’t cook or clean or do laundry. I hired a female from town who wanted to start her single life independently from her family for that. I don’t go to his mom’s house and knit or shoot the shit just because…because I don’t feel comfortable when they all start cooing about bonds and love and all that stuff I don’t have.
Most days I spend in the little parlor off the back porch, just sitting and staring at the snow and think about everything. My father is officially no longer a part of the council, his scandals having forced the others to remove him and put the Banes patriarch in his place.
As for Goose, he’s just gone, and no one can explain it. Does it make me a bad person to admit I find it hilarious that his parents and family are still looking for him? And probably will keep on forever?
Like I care.
I only care about me right now, and I feel like shit. It hurts, a lot, loving a male I know doesn’t want to love me. He doesn’t want to love me, even if he does care so much that sometimes I find myself getting emotional with gratitude that he feels that way.
And there I stop because why should I feel grateful that a male cares? Why should I feel grateful that he doesn’t despise me anymore when I should feel slighted because that is all he’s willing—even subconsciously—to give me?
I deserve love! Me. I may not be perfect. Hell, I know I’m a mess inside most days, fighting against everything I feel, but I deserve someone who will look at me and think his world starts and ends with me.
I should look at my mate, my Fated, and have what Mika and Bear have. Banner told me a long time ago that if he was ever lucky enough to find his Fated, he would love her no matter what.
Race, age, weight, gender even—that made me laugh because Banner is as hetero as they come. Point being, I want that. I’m finally free of my family, of the dictates and regulations I lived by, and I want more.
I want everything.
I just don’t know how to get it. I’ve tried to change myself to make Logan happy in the last few months. I’ve tried to force myself to learn, to adapt as I always do but it’s not working!
I can’t cook, so I find myself losing my temper and becoming more of a bitch. I actually told him I’m not his slave and stormed off to hire someone. With his money.
I can’t knit for shit. I can’t bake, something that drives me crazy because I hate that Mika does that for him, encroaching on a part of his life that I feel is my territory.
He loves her, laughs with her, teases her in a light-hearted way he doesn’t have with me. And I am so fucking jealous it kills me just to see her sometimes.
So I stay away, refuse their overtures, and content myself with the knowledge that hey, if I’m not happy at least I’m alive and my father can’t touch me without getting the Alpha riled up. Or the council.
Say what you want about those bastards, but they follow the laws.
Lately though, more and more than I want to admit to, I find myself feeling empty, adrift, uncertain of everything I am and everything I feel. I am unhappy and alone, all the time. I have no one who looks at me and sees me for me, besides Banner, but even that has stopped because he hardly comes around at all anymore.
Alone.
I’d thought that by now I would have been with young as well, something I was looking forward to so badly it surprises me the level of pain I feel. I have no bond though and without at least some bond, it won’t happen. Us shifters, we’re a funny breed. Everything that happens with us is based on a strange mix of biology, mysticism, and emotion—and if one is off, nothing will follow.
Hell, even the Rubens mating resulted in six young, and I know for a fact that female partly despises her male.
Me. Nothing.
And I resent it, a lot. Because that bond, it’s not on me. It’s on Logan, who doesn’t seem to understand that it’s him holding back, not me.
Sighing loudly, I scrub at my forehead where a tension headache is forming and watch the other mated pairs share soft moments while my own mate paces up and down and avoids Banner like the plague.
“Don’t you ever dare bring that dick near me again!”
We all hear that wail, followed by the magical cry of a young, and laugh when Bear growls, his emotions overcoming him so much we feel it all the way here in the waiting room.
Logan grins, his face transforming, as they all whoop and hug, sharing in this moment. Turning to me, his smile drops, and it hits me so hard I feel like someone just poured cement into my chest and closed it back up.
Fuck. God that hurt, I think, forcing a wobbly smile to my face when Ros comes over and hugs me, her joy and excitement bleeding into some of my cold places.
“A young! Oh Hannah, it’s so beautiful,” she whispers teary eyed, her smile tender and affectionate when I awkwardly pat her back and try to show what I don’t feel.
I can’t. I’m empty.
“It is beautiful. She’ll be a fantastic mother,” I retort, giving her the answer that is expected, my chameleon traits coming to the fore to save me and show a face I know is appropriate right now.
Ros nods, swiping at her tears with a rueful chuckle, and walks off just as Banner joins me, his sigh washing through me.
“You need a fucking drink as bad as I do, babe?” he whispers when everyone starts wandering off, leaving us alone.
It doesn’t even surprise me when Logan follows, not once thinking of me.
“A bottle, baby. I need a fucking bottle,” I whisper back, shaking myself when he snar
ls and grinds his teeth. “What say we go play happy for a few minutes, meet the standard, and then sneak off.”
“Sounds about right. In fact, it sounds like a lifeline, honey,” he murmurs, taking my hand in his to pull me beside him as he trails the other well-wishers.
I don’t know what I expect when I step into the room, but it isn’t pain on a scale that almost brings me to my knees. Mika is shining, the cursing, cussing, screaming invectives of before replaced by a female so ablaze with joy she glows where she’s sitting up in bed, proudly showing off a little male young who is every inch Bear’s son.
Oh Lord, I want that, I think, watching Bear lean over his female, adoration and pride shining in his blue eyes.
“Keep your chin up, baby; we’re almost home free,” Banner murmurs softly, the words barely a whisper of sound.
I feel them though and feel his support, as I plaster a smile on my face and walk forward to see the boy.
“He is huge!” I mutter, getting a chuckle from Mika as she shifts to let me see him.
“He is! I thought my tool box was going to split apart! This is Brandon Sloan Silverton,” she says proudly, smiling when I lean in to stroke a finger over his soft cheek.
He smells like a baby, the faint scent of blood still clinging to his skin in a way that makes what Mika just did so monumental. It’s her blood on him, in him. Her pain that brought this prefect young into the world.
I want that so badly I feel my breath hitch before I adjust my expression and grin, looking at both her and Bear.
“Congratulations and may your blood prove strong,” I say, giving them the old words of the elite, a blessing that I pray will prove strong and true.
Bear smiles softly, his throat working when I lean my head down and touch my forehead to the foot of the bed, the gesture a supplication that offers my life in love to one so tiny and helpless.
“Thank you, Hannah, and may your own be just as fruitful,” he whispers back, giving me the old words in return.
They are a returned blessing, a moment of respect and awe that I always wanted, all my life, but for me, they feel bittersweet. Hurt. They slice me open and make me bleed inside because I know this won’t be me.
Greyriver Shifters Page 45
