True Alpha

by Ranae Rose

  “I want to try to stand,” Mandy said after a while.

  “You sure?” Jack asked.

  “Yeah. My knee is feeling a lot better.” It still hurt, but it finally felt whole, not shattered.

  Jack helped her to stand and pain flared in her knee, more intense than she’d anticipated. Still, it wasn’t unbearable. With Jack’s support, she was able to walk. Slowly, she made her way over to the lawn. “How’s he doing?” she asked as she approached Daniel.

  “His fever’s gone,” said Clarissa, “and the bleeding has stopped.”

  Mandy’s heart practically melted with relief.

  “He’s going to be okay,” Clarissa added, sounding sure of herself. “It’s just a matter of waiting for him to wake up.”

  Mandy walked the short distance to where her father was stretched out on bloodied blankets, the only other wolf she’d ever seen with a coat the exact same color as hers. “How is he?” she asked, feeling more timid than she had when she’d asked about Daniel, as if she were intruding on her mother and the man she barely knew, drawn to his side by the knowledge of his sacrifice.

  “His pulse has picked up,” her mother said, her voice higher than usual and a little shaky.

  “He’s healing,” Ronnie said, his low voice contrasting starkly with hers. “He should make it.”

  Relief coursed through Mandy as she stared down at the dark wolf and the woman kneeling by his side. “Mom, you didn’t eat your dinner.” A plate sat beside her folded legs, untouched.

  “Oh, I’m not hungry. I’ll eat something later…” She stood slowly, brushing off her legs and sending pieces of grass fluttering onto her food. “Mandy, I’m so glad you’re okay.” She wrapped Mandy in a hug that was just loose enough not to cause her any undue pain. “I was so afraid when your father told me you were missing. How do you feel?”

  Your father. The words echoed through Mandy’s mind, eliciting strange emotions and dozens of questions. “A lot better,” she said absentmindedly, her mind whirling. Would her mother and father go back to being a couple after this, reunited after thirty years of separation and heartbreak? It seemed incredible, but her mother didn’t look as if she ever intended to leave his side.

  “I’ll wait with you,” Mandy said, slowly easing herself to the ground as Jack helped, supporting her on the way down. The future of her mother and father’s relationship wasn’t what mattered at the moment – they could cross that bridge when they came to it. For the time being, Mandy settled next to her mother and waited. Jack sat beside her and wrapped his arm around her waist again.

  What would Jack think – what would he say – when her father came around? He’d clearly been furious when he’d spoken with Mandy about her father’s role in the ordeal they’d all just gone through. She couldn’t deny that her father was to blame and didn’t fault Jack for being furious, but no one could hate someone who’d jumped in front of a gun for them, could they?

  Chapter 15

  Another hour dragged by, and Mandy’s pain became so insignificant that she hardly even felt it. She was able to hurry to Daniel’s side without any help when he woke, rising in his wolf form and quickly pulling a blanket over himself for cover before shifting. “Everyone’s okay?” he asked, his gaze flickering over each person present on the lawn, as if counting and re-counting them. “Where’s Will?”

  “He went to take care of the shifter hunters’ bodies,” Clarissa said, the lightness of her tone at odds with her morbid words as she wrapped her arms tightly around Daniel. “How do you feel?”

  “Not bad.” He hugged her back, his blanket forgotten. “You weren’t shot, were you?”

  “No,” she said, her voice muffled by his shoulder. “I’m fine.”

  He scowled. “You said something about the shifter hunters’ bodies. Tell me you all killed every last one of those bastards.”

  “We did,” Clarissa mumbled, “even Mandy took one out.”

  “Mandy?” Daniel raised an eyebrow in her direction, his gaze settling on her belly. “The baby’s okay, then?”

  She nodded. “I bumped my belly in a scuffle with one of the hunters, but everything seems to be fine.” She wrapped her arms protectively around her middle; thinking about those bumps and the terrifying worries that had accompanied them still sent a shiver of fear down her spine. She’d been lucky…

  “How’d you do it?” Daniel asked.

  “Daniel,” Clarissa admonished, managing to frown as she hugged him. “Reliving that confrontation is probably the last thing Mandy wants to do right now.”

  “It’s all right,” Mandy assured them. She was still so flooded with relief that she hadn’t had time to even begin feeling squeamish over what she’d done. Everyone was going to be okay – armed with that knowledge, she could face anything. “I worked a nail loose from the wall and stabbed him in the throat with it.”

  Daniel’s eyes went wide, shining a bright shade of gold in the moonlight. “Sounds like you gave that son of a bitch what he deserved.”

  “We all did,” Jack said. “It took the whole pack, plus Ronnie, Will and Michael to rescue Mandy.”

  “Michael,” Daniel repeated, his eyes flickering toward the large brown wolf lying motionless a few yards away. “Looks like he didn’t exactly obey orders to stay hidden with Kimberly.”

  Mandy kept a straight face despite the irony of Daniel complaining about someone not following orders. But then, he had followed orders perfectly that day, according to Jack. Maybe she’d been too hard on him in the past.

  “He sure as hell didn’t,” Jack agreed, “but he jumped in front of a gun for me, and then again for Clarissa and Violet, so I reckon we’re all lucky he decided to interfere.” He shot a pensive gaze in Michael’s direction, his eyes bright as they reflected the moonlight.

  Daniel’s eyes widened. “He jumped in front of a gun for Clarissa?”

  “If not for him, I wouldn’t be alive,” Clarissa said, her voice pained as her gaze flickered toward Michael.

  Daniel went pale, and the animosity disappeared from his expression. “And here I thought I was gonna get to be the big self-sacrificing hero.”

  Jack laughed. “Don’t worry. Michael may be a hero, but I’ve still got a bone to pick with him – after all, he’s the one who got us into this mess in the first place.”

  Mandy’s stomach tied itself in knots as she glanced at her father. Jack wouldn’t be too harsh with him, would he?

  That question seemed to be on the verge of being answered when the big, dark wolf moved, twitching and then rolling onto his stomach, lying with his paws extended. His blue eyes shone softly in the moonlight but were quickly hidden by a curtain of strawberry-blond hair as Kimberly threw her arms around his neck.

  As she embraced him, he was so motionless that he might have still been unconscious. Long minutes ticked by, each one increasing Mandy’s nervousness a little more. Unlike Daniel, he didn’t seem to be in any hurry to shift back into his human form and speak to anyone.

  After a while he finally rose, Kimberly’s arms slipping from around his neck. His bandages clung to his chest and shoulder, spotted red with blood, though he walked almost normally despite the fact that a bullet had been cut out of his chest less than two hours before. Kimberly walked by his side and together they climbed the porch steps and disappeared into the cabin.

  Mandy shot Jack a questioning glance.

  “I reckon if he was gonna run away again, our cabin would be the last place he’d go,” Jack said softly, placing a hand against the small of her back.

  He was right. Michael emerged a few minutes later, human again and clad in the same clothes Mandy remembered seeing him in before. His green backpack had been lying on the kitchen table when Jack and Ronnie had carried Mandy out of the cabin; it seemed he’d gone inside to put on his clothing. She could hardly blame him for not wanting to face a bunch of strange, possibly hostile wolves while wearing nothing more than a bloody bandage.

  When he emerged fr
om the cabin, he descended the porch stairs, her mother’s hand clasped in his, his expression guarded as he approached the waiting group.

  For a few moments, nobody said a word.

  “How does your chest feel?” Mandy was the first to break the silence.

  Her father lifted his eyes and they met hers, the exact same shade of blue she saw every time she looked in the mirror. Despite the identical color, there was a certain something in his eyes that she’d never seen in her own – a depth, a fearfulness, a chilling sense of regret. “It could be a lot worse.” He lowered his gaze and she felt the weight of it on her belly. “I’m so sorry, Mandy.” His voice was as rough as sandpaper, and he didn’t raise his eyes as he continued. “I never meant to lead them to you. It was damn stupid of me, I—”

  “They’re dead now,” she said firmly as something wound its way through her heartstrings, making them quiver. “And everyone’s okay. I’m fine, and so is the baby. No lasting harm done.” That was the beauty of being a wolf shifter – one night under the moon, and you were always as good as new, save for a fresh scar or two.

  His shoulders eased a little, as if the news had relieved him of a burden. “All of them?”

  “All six,” Mandy assured him. “Dead as doornails.” She swallowed a wave of queasiness as the image of a rusty nail protruding from the fair-haired hunter’s throat rose before her mind’s eye. She should have chosen a different expression.

  He breathed a long sigh. “Until this morning, I hadn’t encountered any sign of them for nearly a year. It was the longest I’d ever gone without clear evidence that I was being pursued, and I got complacent. Careless. I stayed in one place for too long – here – and I led them right to you. I never would’ve come if I’d had any idea. I only wanted to see what had become of my daughter, to meet you even though I knew it would probably be the only time I’d ever be able to speak with you. I wanted to, just once.”

  Mandy drew a deep breath as she remembered that strange morning in the cabin when her cleaning had been interrupted by a knock at the door and the revelation that her father was still alive and well, miraculously present on her doorstep. Though only a couple days had passed since then, it seemed so long ago. Steeling herself for the others’ reactions, she straightened her spine and squared her shoulders.

  “You were wrong. It wasn’t the only time you’d ever see me. Your hunters are gone now, aren’t they?” Her gut twisted as a chilling thought struck her – what if there were more? What if the half a dozen men they’d defeated had only been a few of many? Who the hell had those men been, anyway?

  To her relief, her father nodded. “Those were the last of ‘em.”

  “Then you have no reason to keep running,” Mandy said, her voice loud and clear even though a part of her crumbled inside when she considered the possibility that he might still try to leave, to come up with some excuse. “We’ll be seeing a lot of each other from now on.”

  He finally raised his gaze, his eyes locking with hers. “If you want to see me after what I’ve done—”

  “I do,” she said firmly.

  “Then you will. I don’t know exactly what I’m gonna do, but I’m done with running.”

  As she continued to meet her father’s gaze, something tugged at her heart again. Before her nervousness could take over and cause her to second-guess herself, she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him. “Thank you for saving my mate.”

  He tensed at first, but soon relaxed against her, exhaling as if the breath had been knocked out of him as he raised his arms and returned her embrace. Her belly made it awkward and somewhere in the background, a lonely cricket actually chirped, but she didn’t care. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  He relaxed a little more, and she continued to hug him for a few moments before stepping back. When the embrace was over, she felt ridiculous just letting her arms hang at her sides, not knowing what to do with them. But she could feel a new connection between herself and her father, and she wasn’t about to let it slip away. “How about I fill you in on what happened after you were shot and you tell me why you were being hunted in the first place?”

  He hesitated for half a moment before nodding. “All right.”

  The night stretched on as the others said their goodbyes; after the day’s events, there was an almost tangible feeling of oneness in the air, an undeniable sense that the pack was more tightly-knit than ever. But there was also no denying that everyone had been awake for twenty-four hours, and dark circles ringed everyone’s eyes. The other Half Moon members returned to their cabin and Ronnie climbed into his truck, heading for home. The cabin seemed strangely quiet when only Jack, Mandy and her parents were left.

  They settled on the front porch, where the moonlight would finish healing the last vestiges of Mandy and her father’s injuries. Mandy leaned into the crook of Jack’s arm while her mother sat beside her father, her expression tense beneath a halo of hair that had grown frazzled throughout the day, but was still pretty. Judging by the look on her face, she was even more on edge than Mandy.

  “We might as well tell you about what happened after you were shot,” Mandy said. “I have a feeling it’ll be a much shorter explanation than yours.” In truth, there wasn’t much to tell – he’d witnessed much of the action, save for what had happened between Mandy and one of her captors in the shack. She and Jack worked together, filling in the gaps in each other’s stories. When they finished, Mandy’s heart was beating a little faster, not because of the memories of her ordeal, but with expectation. Finally, after all these years, she’d know exactly why her father had abandoned her and her mother.

  “I grew up surrounded by shifters in Georgia, a member of the Eastern Cypress Pack. Maybe you’ve heard of it – most shifters have. It was a small pack, and it doesn’t exist anymore.” He paused, a shadow passing through his eyes and dulling the soft glow moonlight had cast on them.

  “I haven’t,” Mandy said. “I didn’t even know I was a shifter until about eight months ago.”

  “He’s right; most shifters have heard of the Eastern Cypress Pack,” Jack said. “The massacre is infamous, and so is the family of shifter hunters that did it – the Gruens.”

  “I was twenty when our pack was massacred by a group of shifter-hunters,” Michael said, “members of the Gruen family. I was on a hunt at the time with several others, and by the time we got back to the little mountain village we all called home, it was over and done.”

  His voice roughened and his eyes went a flat, steely blue. “They murdered over a dozen shifters, including women and children – everyone who’d been home at the time. Less than ten people survived, and all of them – all of us – had lost family. The pack was just too shattered to band back together after that; anyone who could’ve stepped up as alpha was too bent on revenge to take the time to care for the young, the old and the emotionally crippled. So most drifted away, abandoning pack land and starting over somewhere new, joining other packs. Three of us banded together to repay the sons of bitches who’d murdered our family and destroyed our pack.”

  Mandy was aware of little besides her speeding heart and her father’s words as she leaned into the crook of Jack’s arm, listening.

  “In a matter of months, we’d tracked down and killed all of the murderers. After that, I didn’t know what to do… I’d always loved music, and I had this idea that I wanted to write songs. So I headed to Nashville to start over. It was strange, bein’ out of the mountains and living among humans in the city. But the distraction seemed like just what I needed at the time, and then I met your mother.” A brief smile graced his lips, accompanied by a flash of pain in his eyes. “At a bar. She was waiting tables and I was playin’ my guitar and singin’ a song I’d written that wasn’t any good, though she insisted it was.”

  A sense of wonder crept over Mandy. Her father played the guitar – he sang? And his music was what had drawn him and her mother together. How romantic, and she’d never known. Her mother had
never mentioned how she’d met her father.

  “I knew she was my mate as soon as I laid eyes on her. Even through the stink of liquor and my own sweat under the stage lights, I could smell her scent, like strawberries and cream.”

  The look in his eyes softened for a moment, and Mandy could see him as a nervous twenty year old, sweating under the lights at some Nashville bar, his heart speeding as he set eyes on his mate for the very first time. Her heart ached as her mother reached out and took his hand, a similar expression on her own face. For a minute they just sat there, looking happy, as if they were seeing the inside of a Nashville bar instead of the dark stretch of woods in front of the cabin.

  “Fortunately for me she seemed pretty smitten with more than just my music,” he said. “We started seein’ each other and I knew she was it for me – I never wanted to be with anyone else. She was my mate, even if she didn’t know it; I never quite got around to tellin’ her I was a shifter. I was young and stupid and afraid she’d reject me if she knew. So I kept my secret, and pretty soon, she was pregnant.”

  Mandy rested a hand on her own belly, her imagination whirling as she imagined the same love and excitement blossoming between her parents when they’d been barely out of their teens. It was so sweet, it made what had happened that much more bitter.

  “I was so damn excited I hardly knew what to do with myself. I kept writin’ my songs, playin’ as many bars as I could and scraping together cash to pay for the hospital bills and baby clothes. But before your mother delivered, I got news from one of my old packmates – one of the other two who I’d worked with to take revenge on our pack’s destroyers.”

  All warmth and happiness evaporated from his expression, gone as quickly as it had come. “His name was Billy, and we were about the same age. His mate had been one of the few who’d survived the massacre – she’d been in town buyin’ groceries, at the time. She’d gone to stay with distant relatives in another state after the slaughter, and he’d joined her after we’d exacted revenge. They had a little baby.”