by Tami Lund
“I cannot. I can’t go back. I’m sorry.”
She made crepes with raspberry puree, and Reid devoured his, while she picked at the food on her plate.
“Because of the one who abused you? He’s still there?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. She had no idea where Miguel was. Before she left, Alexa had told her he’d disappeared. While the vast majority of the Chosen One’s followers had either been killed or captured, Miguel had been one of the few who had simply vanished. Lightbearers could not literally vanish, of course, which meant he was probably still alive, and was hiding somewhere. The Chosen One had remained hidden for ten years. Miguel had learned from the best.
“I’ll protect you.”
She considered telling him, admitting that she was mated to the very man she feared. But she held back. How would Reid react to learning he was sleeping with a woman who was mated to another? Would he see it as a betrayal? He was a possessive man; he told her it was a shifter trait. She did not imagine he would appreciate the fact that technically she belonged to another, even if she wanted to be with him.
“You don’t understand.” She stood, began clearing their plates from the table.
“Then tell me. Explain.”
“Why don’t you explain those scars on your back?” It was an unfair response, she knew, as soon as she said it. But she could not take back the words, and she watched as he closed up, right before her eyes. She literally watched the transformation, as his face shifted from open, earnest, hopeful, to shut down. She turned away from the sight, placed the dishes on the counter, and continued on, walking down the hall to the bedroom, where she gathered the various pieces of clothing and other items that had collected at his apartment since they started sleeping together. She had begun to leave quite a large amount of herself at his place, after only a very short time with the man.
“Don’t leave.”
He stood in the doorway, blocking her exit. His eyes were glowing again. His emotions were high, although she doubted he was turned on at the moment.
“I have to go to work.”
“Not for another four hours. Don’t leave me.”
“I’m…Reid, I can’t. Please don’t ask me. I understand you believe Finn is your brother. I suspect he is, too. Your features, your coloring is so similar. Even your actions, your mannerisms are—”
“I’m suddenly extremely jealous of my brother, if you know so much about him.”
She laughed, surprised that she was able to at all, at the moment. “I told you, he’s in love with Cecilia. He appreciated my cooking, nothing more. And I never saw him as anything more than the man who loved my cousin.”
“That’s a relief.”
She gnawed on her lower lip. “I wish I could even just tell you how to get there without me, but I cannot. The charms around the coterie are such that none except those who are direct descendants of the king can tell anyone else its location.”
He snapped his fingers. “My sister.”
Carley’s eyes widened. “I remember Finn and Cecilia going to visit his sister. In Tennessee, I believe.”
“He took a lightbearer to visit my sister?”
“Well, she followed him, after he went by himself. I think she was afraid he planned to stay there.” She paused, then added, “If he really is your brother, which I truly believe, the more I think about it, then your parents are there, as well. When they returned, I remember Cecilia mentioning that their reception hadn’t exactly been warm and fuzzy.”
“They lived their entire lives under Quentin’s reign. And I imagine they blamed the lightbearers for the demise of their pack. Even though we are all better off with Quentin dead, it is very difficult for a shifter to walk away from the only pack he has ever known.”
“You did.”
He nodded.
“It’s because of those scars, isn’t it?”
He said nothing, but shifted his gaze to stare out the window.
“He did it to you, didn’t he? Your pack master, I mean. You would never have left, otherwise,” she guessed.
“I didn’t leave, even afterward. I didn’t leave until I received word that the pack master was dead. And I presumed at the time, so was my brother. I figured without Quentin holding them back, my parents would make their way to my sister in Tennessee. And I was free to get away from pack life, from the oppression of a bastard pack master. Except I haven’t felt…whole. Or complete, I guess, since I left.”
Her heart ached for him. She wanted to help him, to do what she could to make him feel whole again. But she could not take him to the coterie. Anything but that.
“I’ll go with you,” she blurted.
His head shot up, his eyes glowing almost as brightly as they did when they made love.
“To Tennessee,” she modified. “I’ll talk to the manager at the restaurant tonight. He won’t be happy, but neither will he complain too much, so long as I promise to come back.” She arched her brows.
“I’ll bring you back,” he promised. He strode across the room and swept her into his arms. “Thank you.”
He then proceeded to express his gratitude the way that Carley was quickly becoming addicted to.
Chapter 8
They did not leave until the following Monday. While he impatiently waited, Reid had Roman show him how to look up his family using the Internet. He even let Reid borrow his cell phone, so he could call his sister. Felicia was so relieved to hear from him that she began sobbing and had to hand the phone to her mate, Ben, who promised to let Reid’s parents know he was alive and well.
“Finn? Is—is he really alive?” he’d asked.
Ben had snorted. “Alive and well. Mated to a lightbearer, if you can believe it. Remember those magical beings your old pack master kept insisting were still alive? Turns out he was right.”
Reid blew out a sigh of relief. Even though Carley had already said it, to hear Ben, who knew Finn and Reid both, confirm it, made it all the more real.
“I know,” he said in reply to Ben’s comment about lightbearers. “As it turns out, I know one, too.” More intimately than any other being, ever. And he wished it could be more—if only he could get past his issues and give himself fully to her.
“Oh yeah? That’s so crazy, that for five hundred years, everybody but Quentin thought they were extinct, and now you and Finn both know one. And Quentin’s son is mated to one too. So when you coming to visit?” Ben shifted gears so quickly, it took Reid a moment to catch up.
“Soon. Hopefully in the next few days.”
“Felicia’s going to be over the moon. I bet your parents will be, too. How long you planning to stay?”
“I’m not sure. Not long,” he warned, thinking of Carley’s dedication to the restaurant. “I’m bringing someone with me. The lightbearer I know.”
“I think I’m glad Felicia mated to me when we were so young. Falling for lightbearers apparently runs in your family.”
Falling for a lightbearer? While Reid acknowledged that he was obsessed with Carley, that he had no intention of letting her go anytime soon, he wasn’t sure he was quite ready to call it falling for her.
“She has been hurt in her past,” he told Ben. “Tell my family not to make a big deal of this. She’s…skittish.”
* * * *
She was also nervous. He’d rented a car to drive to Tennessee, and Carley spent nearly the entire trip sitting in the passenger seat, wringing her hands and staring out the passenger side window.
“They don’t bite, Carley. Okay, they do. But only food, I promise,” he remarked, trying to relieve her tension. Funny, as nervous as he was, he found himself feeling more and more lighthearted, the closer they drew to the Nashville area, where his sister and parents lived.
“I could cook for them,” she replied. “Maybe then they’d accept me.”
“They will accept you because you’re with me. And if they don’t, we’ll leave.”
“You can’t choose me over
your family, Reid.”
He gripped the steering wheel and watched the road. “I don’t think I have a choice.”
Maybe his brother-in-law was right after all.
When he turned onto the street leading into the neighborhood where his sister lived, Reid guided the car to the side of the road and shifted it into park. He turned in his seat to face Carley.
“I don’t know what to expect,” he admitted. “I haven’t talked to my parents in nine months. Haven’t seen my sister in eight years. She has two pups that I’ve never met.”
“Okay.”
“They don’t know the story behind the scars.” He didn’t know why he mentioned them. Normally, he did his damnedest to try to forget they were even there.
She didn’t say anything, just looked at him with those overlarge azure eyes. He turned away from her inquiring gaze, stared out the windshield at the manicured lawns and well-kept, average-size homes. Already, he could see why his sister had put down roots here. Beside the fact that her mate’s pack lived here, this looked like just the sort of neighborhood Felicia used to daydream about when she was a teenaged pup.
“I made a mistake. A big one. The pack master caught me. Whipped me with my own belt. It was the most excruciatingly painful and humiliating experience of my life.”
He could tell she wanted to ask, wanted to know what he’d done to warrant such abuse. He wondered if she now thought less of him as a person. Did she believe he deserved such punishment?
“I’m so sorry, Reid. From everything the shifters who live in the coterie have said, Quentin Lyons was a horrible ruler who had no consideration for his fellow beings. Which, of course, as a lightbearer, I understand, since he was willing to kill us for our magic.”
His heart swelled with appreciation, possibly with something else, something far more important. Mindless of their location, he reached across the seat, cupped her head in his hand, and pulled her to him. Within moments, she was settled on his lap, her fingers tangled in his hair, his hands under her shirt, his lips locked onto hers. A knock on the window caused her to wrench her mouth away from him and give a little shriek.
A man stood outside the car, beaming at them as if he’d just unwrapped his favorite Christmas gift.
“Oh shit,” Reid muttered, as he helped Carley climb out of his lap and into the passenger seat. “I can’t believe my dad just caught us making out.”
*
“Your dad?”
Carley immediately grabbed the visor, pulled it down so she could look at herself in the tiny mirror. Her hair was a mess, her cheeks were flushed, her lips swollen. She looked as if she’d just been ravished. She quickly used her magic to set herself to rights, before turning, just as the passenger-side door opened. Reid had already climbed out of the car and walked around to help her out. She accepted his hand and allowed him to pull her from the car, as she willed her heart rate to slow and her voice not to crack, and she braced herself to meet his father.
His family.
It was so surreal, this entire trip, the concept that she had left the safety of her home with the humans in Chicago, to go to a shifter pack in Tennessee. While Reid had assured her they lived within a human community, in a small town just north of Nashville, Carley had still been nervous. Which was silly, really, because the likelihood of running into Miguel in Tennessee was even less than running into him in Chicago. The very reason she’d agreed to go with Reid was to avoid going back to the coterie.
It was the idea of meeting his family that was so frightening. It felt so…sincere. Important. She had no idea if Reid felt anything more for what they were doing than his obsession for her, which she assumed was a result of his attraction, and not a deeper, emotional connection. And truthfully, she wasn’t sure she wanted him to feel more for her than that. She was a mated woman—mated to another—so even if they developed feelings for one another, there was nothing they could do about it.
Eventually, she would have to admit the truth to Reid, and the longer she stayed with him, the more she became convinced he would not be happy to learn she belonged to another. She suspected he would see it as a betrayal—her betraying him—and he would very likely leave her. Forever.
Every time she thought about it, the idea caused her entire body to clench with fear.
“Hello there. George Hennigan.”
He clasped her right hand with his own, and covered both with his left hand, as they shook. Bright blue eyes sparkled and crinkled at the sides. His smile was wide and genuine. He was about the same height as Reid, although not quite as wide in the shoulders. His ginger hair was streaked with gray. The hair on his face was even more liberally gray. The resemblance between father and son was strong.
“C-Carley Santiago,” she stuttered. Reid’s hand pressed against her back, slid up to cup the back of her neck. She appreciated the gesture. His touch helped to tamp some of the nerves.
“Pleasure to meet you, Carley.” His gaze cut to his son. “So this is what you’ve been off doing, while cutting off your family for the past nine months?”
Before Reid could respond, Carley shook her head. “No. No, it isn’t like that at all, Mr. Hennigan. It hasn’t been that long. And I didn’t know. If I’d known sooner, I would have insisted…” Her voice trailed off when she realized they were both laughing.
“What?” she demanded, feeling confused.
Reid wrapped his arm around her shoulder and hugged her to him. “He’s giving me a hard time, Carley. It’s nothing to do with you. How did you figure out we were out here, anyway?” he asked his father.
George pointed at the truck parked behind the rental car. “Your sister had a revelation that there was no wine in the house. Even though she’s only met a couple of lightbearers, she seems to be under the impression that they would expect to have wine with dinner. I drew the short straw, and was elected to go to the store. Although truthfully, I didn’t mind getting out of that house for a minute. I love my grandkids, but Austin and Bryan have enough energy for a damn army, and all little Julia does is cry, eat, shit, and sleep.”
“Julia?” Reid repeated.
His father nodded. “Yep. Felicia and Ben have a female pup now. She’s three months old, I think. Your sister—and your mother—finally got their little girl. Come on, let’s get up to the house. It’s just at the end of that cul-de-sac.” He pointed at the street on which their vehicles were parked.
Reid guided her back into the car, while George jumped into his truck and motored off. The drive to his sister’s house was brief, only a few minutes at most. During that short span of time, all Carley could think was, A little girl.
A babe. She hadn’t been around a babe since she lost her own, after Miguel pushed her over the cliff in the coterie. Her heart stuttered, her hand strayed to her abdomen, and she sucked in a breath, trying to keep her emotions under control.
As he pulled the car to the curb in front of a cozy brick ranch home, Reid gave her a sharp look. “What’s wrong?”
How did he know? She hadn’t said anything out loud. He knew nothing of the babe she’d lost. She hadn’t moved or changed her expression in any way.
She shook her head. “Nothing. Nerves. I’m fine.”
George opened the passenger-side door and pulled her from the car. He patted her hand and said, “Don’t be nervous. It’s hectic with all those people in the house right now, but we’re an easygoing bunch of shifters, I promise.”
“Is Finn here?” Reid asked with a glance at the house. Carley could hear the hopefulness in his voice. The eagerness to see the brother he had thought was dead had distracted him from her stress. Thank the lights.
“Yes. He brought a couple of lightbearers, too. His mate, and the guy who fixed up Felicia when she was having problems, toward the end of whelping little Julia. Name’s Dane. Kind of a pansy, but Finn seems to like him well enough.” He shrugged.
“Lightbearers?” Carley said, her voice sounding like a squeak. She took an impulsive step
away from Reid and his father. No, not lightbearers. She had expected to meet Reid’s family, spend time with shifters. Shifters who would not tell anyone who she was or that she’d visited. Suddenly, this entire thing seemed like a terrible idea.
Reid reached out, wrapped his arm around her shoulders, and pulled her back to his side, before speaking to his father. “He brought lightbearers? Why?”
George frowned and looked as if he didn’t quite understand his son’s question. “The one’s his mate, and she’s come with him every time he’s come to visit. They come every couple months. They were about due again anyway. The other one’s a healer. I told you, he helped Felicia when she was having some problems, toward the end of whelping Julia. Finn says he gets protective of those he’s healed. I guess he wanted to check up on Felicia, make sure everyone’s good.” He shrugged, as if a visit from not one but two lightbearers was really of little consequence.
But it was. To Carley, it was. Dane. And Cecilia. She wasn’t ready to face them. Not yet.
“Do we need to leave?”
Reid asked the question, and directed it to her. Giving her a choice. He would walk away, before even speaking to anyone else in his family, if she said the word.
Would she?
She so badly wanted to, but that wasn’t fair to him. He hadn’t seen his family in nine months, family he had once been so close to that he’d refused to leave a pack ruled by a pack master whose abuse had been so bad, Reid still carried both the physical and emotional scars. Until a few days ago, he’d thought his brother was dead.
Despite this, he would walk away, for her. She knew this; she could feel it. He would grab her hand, lead her back to the car he’d rented, and drive her back to Chicago. He wouldn’t question her, wouldn’t second-guess himself.
For me.
“Holy shit, you’re here.”
The decision—whichever one she meant to choose—was taken out of her hands by the loud, masculine shout from the porch of the house in front of which they’d parked. A moment later, Finn was striding across the lawn. He barely spared a glance for Carley or his father before he grabbed his brother in a bear hug, and the two spent a few moments trying to lift each other off the ground and laughing like long lost friends. Or brothers.
