What can you do when you realize you made the wrong decision?
Zach has stayed away from his mate for years because he had to, but only in the last few months against his will. He had to help his sister, but he knows he hasn’t done it the right way. Still, he has no way to get away from Stan, his sister’s mate, or at least that’s what he thinks.
Kameron, just like almost every other member of the pack, has known something was wrong with Zach for months, but as the Alpha, he didn’t have the possibility to do much about it while he had other and more pressing emergencies on his hands. Now that everything seems to be fine finally or as close to it as it can be, he finally looks for Zach, and what he finds nearly crushes him.
Even after Kameron rescues Zach and his sister from months of abuse, old and new problems rise on the horizon, problems that will put a on strain their budding relationship. Will it be strong enough to resist even Kameron’s bad faith, or will the newly formed couple crumble under the pressure?
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Zach
Copyright © 2015 Catherine Lievens
ISBN: 978-1-4874-0387-4
Cover art by Latrisha Waters
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.
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Zach
Gillham Pack Two
By
Catherine Lievens
Chapter One
Zach cast a longing glance at the house in front of him.
He was hiding between the trees, not that it had stopped several people from seeing him in the last few days. He would have to be more careful, maybe stop coming here. He didn’t want to, though.
So far, he’d been lucky. All the people who had caught him spying on Kameron had been friends, or in Xavier’s case, at least not an enemy. Zach knew that if Stan or Tom found out he was coming here at least once a day, they would make him pay. He wasn’t sure his body could take it, not with how it was already bruised and hurt.
He was being beaten way too often, and his body was starting to feel it, even if he was a shifter. In the last month or so, he had been healing a lot slower than before. The fact that Stan didn’t even wait for him to heal before beating him again anymore was making it even worse. Injuries added up, and by now Zach was black and blue even in places he didn’t know could bruise, and the bruises weren’t going away.
He had seen the horrified look in Xavier’s eyes, and the anger in Jonah’s. But there was nothing he could do to avoid it, not if he wanted his sister and Kameron to be safe.
“Zach?”
Zach jumped, his heart racing at the thought that Tom or Stan had found him. He turned, his knees buckling when he saw it was only Xavier. The human looked worried, and Zach couldn’t blame him. He had seen himself in his mirror that morning, and his two black eyes and the split lip weren’t pretty. “Hi.”
Xavier moved closer, one of his hands rising as if he wanted to touch Zach. “What’s happening to you, Zach? Who’s hurting you? I know we don’t know each other, but I could help you.”
Zach shook his head, his now too-long hair flying everywhere. He didn’t mind the length, actually, even if he had never worn it this long. It was useful when he wanted to avoid looking at someone in the eyes, since it fell just below them. “There’s nothing you can do, not without putting yourself and others in danger. I can’t let you.”
“You could talk to Kameron, or if you can’t, to Andy or Nick. They want to help you—you know that, right? Even Jonah is worried.”
It was tempting. Zach desperately wanted to get away from the men who were hurting him, to tell someone what was happening. He finally wanted to be able to claim his mate. He couldn’t. He couldn’t, not if he wanted the few people who were important to him, the few people he cared for, to be safe.
He had thought everything would get better when Kameron defeated Alpha Erskine. He was wrong. Things were even worse for him than they had been when the old Alpha had been alive. At least then, he was still free to do what he wanted. He had even somehow managed to get closer to his mate without Erskine noticing anything.
He was in love with his mate, and he had hoped they would bond, since it looked like his feelings were reciprocated. Then his world had fallen apart.
“Zach? Are you okay?” Xavier’s voice was so full of worry and tentative friendship that Zach was tempted to accept the offered hand and tell him everything.
Then he thought about Andy, Xavier’s mate, and the little boy who had started living with them a few days before, and he knew he couldn’t. He couldn’t put even more people at risk. “I’m... fine. Thank you.”
Zach avoided Xavier’s eyes as he finally moved away from the tree he had been leaning against and started walking away.
“Wait! Please, Zach, I want to help you!”
Zach ran away. Xavier’s insistence made it that much harder to continue resisting and he couldn’t stand it one more second. He heard Xavier protest again, but by then he was too far for the human to follow him.
Zach ran, tears flowing from his eyes at the thought of what he had lost. He ran as fast as he could, and as much as he wanted to continue running, to run until he exited pack territory, he knew he couldn’t. So when the path leading to Stan’s house appeared, he took it.
Zach slowed down when he got to the house. He listened, trying to figure out if Stan was in the house, but he heard nothing. He opened the kitchen door, scowling at the pile of dishes in the sink when he saw it. He would have to wash them before Stan came back from work if he wanted to avoid a beating. At least the pig wasn’t going to touch Ellie, and that was the only reason Zach was doing this. He needed to protect Ellie.
He moved around the house, slowly opening the door to his sister’s room. She was on the bed, her baby bump clearly visible by now. It made Zach smile, that was until he remembered that if he didn’t find a way to get them out of this situation, Stan would start hurting Ellie again as soon as she had the baby. He would probably hurt the baby, too, and that wasn’t something Zach could let him do.
“Zach? Where have you been?”
Zach opened the door completely. “Out. How are you feeling this morning?”
Ellie was thin, too thin to be pregnant. Her belly looked oversized on her small frame, and her eyes were huge in her face as she looked at Zach. “I’m fine. The baby is kicking up a storm, but it’s okay.” She smiled down at her belly and stroked it. The movement made her sleeve slide up her arm, exposing the new bruise on her wrist.
Zach gently grabbed her hand and looked at it. “When did he do this?”
“Last night. He... he couldn’t find you.”
Zach hid behind his hair as he tried to keep the tears in. “I’m sorry. I—I’l
l stop going out.”
Ellie snatched her wrist back. “No, you won’t. You can’t. The only thing that allows you to go on is him, Zach.”
“No, you and the baby are. I can... I can do without him. I did for years.”
Ellie shook her head. “You have to talk to him. He can help us.”
“But what if Stan and Tom find out?” Zach was scared, so scared, not for himself, but for Ellie and the baby. He knew she was right, of course. She was six months pregnant and Stan was still hurting her. She had never seen a doctor, so they didn’t even know if everything was okay, if the pregnancy was going well, if it was a boy or a girl. Zach wasn’t stupid, nor blind. He knew Ellie would be hurt if he didn’t find a way out of this situation. It wasn’t working anymore, not that it ever really had.
“He’ll get us out before they can hurt us. I know he will. You just have to tell him what’s happening and he’ll come get us.”
Her eyes were pleading, and Zach knew he would have to do it. He wanted nothing more than to do just that anyway. He realized that waiting and watching as Stan and the others hurt him and Ellie had been stupid, that even if he had done everything they had asked, nothing had changed. He should have gone to Kameron as soon as he found out what was happening in Stan’s house, but he was too scared of losing his sister.
He had done what Stan had asked. He had left Kameron and moved in with Ellie, even if he knew it was the wrong thing to do. Ellie had been only at the beginning of her pregnancy, just four months pregnant, and she had bled more than once. Zach couldn’t let her lose the baby, so he had accepted everything Stan had wanted, especially since he had threatened the two most important people in his life. Now he was paying the price for his stupidity, and he wasn’t the only one.
* * * *
Kameron leaned back in his chair, his eyes never leaving the trees outside his window as he wondered if Zach was there, looking at the house, looking for him.
It was time to help him.
Kameron had wanted to find out what was happening with Zach for weeks, but every time he started thinking about it, something else happened, something more important, and he had to wait. First, it was Jonah’s return and the raid. Then Keenan got kidnapped, and they had run to rescue him. Now he and Dominic had to solve the problem of the wendigoes.
He knew if he really wanted to help Zach, he was going to have to push everything else away and concentrate on him for a while, but he wasn’t sure it was something he could afford to do. He was the Gillham pack’s Alpha. An unwilling Alpha, but Alpha nonetheless, and he had to think about the pack first, and only after about himself. He had known that when he had accepted Dominic’s proposition, but he had thought Zach was going to be there for him, supporting him through the hardship.
Zach had left, though, leaving him alone.
Kameron’s fingers played with the leather bracelet wound around his left wrist. Zach had made it for him, and he had never taken it off, not even when Zach had disappeared suddenly and hadn’t returned. He still remembered that day.
Kameron had been away for council business but eager to go back home to Zach. Zach had moved in with him some weeks before that. While it might have looked like a rash decision, Kameron had already known he was in love with the man, and he couldn’t have cared less about what the other pack members would think. It had taken so little to fall for Zach, and even now that Kameron hadn’t talked to him for two months, he still loved him deeply.
Everything had been going fine between them. Kameron had felt a pull toward the smaller wolf, but his scent wasn’t a mate’s scent. Even with that, Kameron had known he was going to ask Zach to mate with him. He didn’t care if they were fated mates, he was in love with Zach, and he wanted him.
He had thought Zach cared for him as much as he cared for Zach, but when he had come home that afternoon, Zach was gone. Most of his stuff had disappeared with him, and Kameron had been worried until he found a note. In it, Zach just told him he was moving in with his sister and her mate, and that Kameron shouldn’t try to talk to him anymore.
Of course, that hadn’t discouraged Kameron. He wasn’t Alpha for nothing, after all, and he was stubborn. He had looked for Zach and he had cornered him as soon as he had caught him on pack land.
It hadn’t done him any good.
Zach had refused to talk to him, to look at him even, and had run away. Kameron had tried to forget Zach after that. He had tried to convince himself that obviously Zach hadn’t cared for him, hadn’t been in love with him. He had buried himself in work, and it had worked, for a while.
Zach was never far from Kameron’s mind, however, and even his wolf seemed to be mourning. Then people had started to get worried. More than one person had come to him to tell him they had seen Zach with bruises and wounds, and it had made Kameron think about him. He cursed the day he had accepted the Alpha position, because it meant he had to play by the rules. He couldn’t just get in that house and whisk Zach away.
He couldn’t, but that was where Jonah was going to be useful. The man had volunteered to help Kameron solve this problem, and he was waiting for Jonah, Andy and Nick to arrive. They were going to go over everything they knew again, and hopefully this time no one was going to be kidnapped while they were talking.
Kameron was still immersed in his thoughts when he heard the back door open and voices getting closer. Every single member of the pack had the right to just come in his house and roam the ground floor, but the second floor was off limits. It had always been that way, and Kameron took care to avoid having anything too personal around the floor that was accessible to everyone. It was like a common space for anyone who wanted to use it. In the last few months, it wasn’t rare to see groups of teenagers flocking the living room to watch TV and just be together. Kameron was glad to have reinstated that tradition. He loved having people around.
Someone knocked on the office door, but they didn’t wait for an answer. Andy came in, followed by Nick.
“Boss.”
Kameron showed his teeth to his Beta. “Really? Again?”
“Well, you are.”
“What can I call you, then?”
“I can call him boss for you if you want me to,” Andy quipped, earning himself a growl from his best friend. “Hey, as the pack’s Beta, you are my boss, you know?”
A second knock came, this time from the front door, and Kameron rolled his eyes. Jonah still hadn’t gotten used to walking in the house as if he was a pack member. He might not be one, but Kameron didn’t care. If it were up to him, Jonah would be both a member of the Whitedell pride and a member of the Gillham pack.
Andy rose from his chair and disappeared, coming back soon after with Jonah in tow. Once they were all sitting down, the atmosphere got more serious.
“So. Last time we were interrupted,” Jonah said, looking at Kameron. “Can you tell me everything from the beginning?”
Kameron nodded. “Nearly a year ago, Erskine planned an attack on the pride. Derick found out and ran away to tell Dominic. Erskine attacked anyway, and Zach was one of the wolves he sent there. Luckily for Zach, he wasn’t hurt too badly, and he came back home. A few days after that he came looking for me and told me that the pride’s Alpha wanted to talk to me. That’s why I started spending time with Zach. In the beginning it was just because he was a lot closer to Derick than me and it was easier for Zach to communicate with him, but I soon started to care for him.”
Kameron turned his chair around and looked out at the trees again. “I felt—still feel in fact—a pull toward him. There’s no better way to explain it, really. I never noticed it before because while I knew Zach, it was from afar. He’s a lot younger than me and I tried to stay out of Erskine’s sight as much as I could, but once I started having more contact with Zach, I realized there was something there. The only weird thing is that he doesn’t smell like mate to me, even if both my wolf and I feel the pull. I... I was actually planning to ask him to mat
e with me.”
Kameron heard a few gasps coming from the men behind him. He turned around and smiled at them. “That’s when he disappeared. At first I thought that maybe I had been the only one feeling something, but then people started seeing the bruises, and I know something is going on.”
“What about Ellie? Last time, you told me she mated with Stan when Erskine was still the Alpha. Does one of you know if they are fated mates? I don’t know the girl, but I don’t think she’d mate with Stan otherwise,” Jonah said.
“I went to talk to their parents,” Nick explained. “They’re terrified, but they won’t say by what or who. I think it’s a fairly good guess to say that Ellie was forced to mate with Stan, and I guess Zach moved in with her to protect her.”
“But why now? Ellie has been mated for over a year, but Zach moved in with her only months ago,” Andy asked. “And why hasn’t Zach said something? We could have helped them. We still can.”
“I think the only thing to do is to go talk with them while Stan isn’t home. If we see that they’re hurt, we can bring them here,” Kameron decided. He looked at the men behind his desk, and when they all nodded, he knew they were going to solve this. “So, Nick. Are you ready to do something about Stan?”
* * * *
Zach was cleaning the kitchen when he heard the front door opening. It was too early to be Stan, so it had to be one of his friends. Which one didn’t matter, because Zach hated the whole lot of them. They all were part of Erskine inner circle once, and even with Erskine gone, they still scared most of the pack’s members.
Kameron was doing a good job at changing things, but he was only one man against seven that remained from the inner circle and years of fear. He couldn’t do miracles.
“Boy, where are you?” a voice bellowed, and Zach shuddered. Great, it was the one he hated the most. Bud.
Zach Page 1
