by K. N. Banet
“Okay.”
Heath, you’re one of the most dominant werewolves in the world. Stop trying to play that off. Even my family knows it.
“Thank you for thinking of me. I’ll come by tomorrow, and we can—”
“Dad, I don’t want to hear you sweet-talk Jacky. It’s gross.”
“Then you can do your schoolwork in your room. I’m going to sweet-talk Jacky all I want. Consider it part of your grounding.”
“Ugh.”
I heard books slam closed and the shuffling of a girl collecting her things. She stomped loud enough on the stairs for those to come through as well.
“I distinctly remember her saying she was fine with us,” I said lightly.
“Fourteen-year-old girls don’t want to know their dads have sex,” he replied. “Especially not with a friend said teenager hangs out with.”
“Ew. Yeah, good point.” I was smiling, though. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then?”
“If you’ll have me,” he murmured, his voice going husky. “Since I suddenly have all this free time with Carey being home from school and can’t go to Dallas.”
“Oh, no, whatever are you to do?” I chuckled. “I’m sure I can spare a couple hours of my busy day.”
“A couple of hours is all I need. More is always nicer, though…”
“More has to wait until Saturday.” It was a firm rule we kept. Meeting during the week was riskier. Saturday meant he had cover when he was just at Kick Shot. Sometimes, he actually went into the bar just to make an appearance to keep up the act.
“I’ll see you at eleven then. We can say we were having a business lunch,” he said, plotting the entire thing.
“I like that,” I whispered, feeling like a teenager about to sneak my boyfriend in through the window while my parents were out of town. “See you then.”
“Love you,” he said with a small growl, underscoring the simple statement with a passion I knew was real. He made sure I knew it was real with every secret touch and whisper when no one was watching.
We both hung up, and my heart was doing a little racing it had no right to do. This wasn’t the first time Heath and I had planned a secret “business meeting.” It was hard being in a relationship that couldn’t go public. We couldn’t go on dates in the traditional sense. We both knew we wanted each other, and Heath said he loved me, so we made do with that.
I turned the phone over in my hand. I never said I loved him back, but he never bothered me about it. We were a year and a half in since that first time I had kissed him, and still, I hadn’t said it.
Saying it makes it too real. Real is dangerous. Real gets us killed.
We both knew the stakes. It was the only thing that made him braver than me. He was willing to say it, but I wasn’t there yet.
6
Chapter Six
I woke up the next day electrified, knowing I would get to see Heath. I just needed to check with Dirk that our security system was still secure, and I knew he would be in already. He said he would be, and Dirk was the type of person I could take at his word. It helped that I could feel Landon standing in the security building, making me insanely curious why the younger werewolf was around this early.
Dirk had gone to Dallas yesterday to hang out with him. I shouldn’t snoop, but…
I crept up, testing the range of my hearing and Landon’s ability to catch my scent. I got just close enough to pick up the conversation.
“Did you think you could hide it forever?” Dirk asked. “I can’t just…Damn it, Landon.”
“You weren’t supposed to find out like that.” There was the clear implication that Dirk was never supposed to find out. “I’m sorry. I should have just told you about me and how I felt. I didn’t think we’d run into another werewolf who…” Landon’s growl was loud enough to make me freeze. “If who I am is a problem…”
Oh. Oh, I should go.
“I don’t have a problem with you being gay or having feelings. Landon, I get it. I do have a problem that you didn’t tell me, and I was blindsided by werewolves I’ve never met. I damn near punched that guy. I would have if you didn’t get there to stop me. You know how bad that could have been for me? Or Jacky? Or your dad? Niko the Traitor raised me! I work for Jacky. I’m so tied up in werecats, just being near werewolves is risky if I breathe wrong. The last thing I need is secrets.” A breeze caught me, and I knew I needed to start leaving.
I’m going to take all of this to my grave.
“Hold on…” Landon snarled. I started walking quickly, heading back for the house. The door opened, and Landon’s growl made me freeze again. I could beat him in a fight, but Landon had a killer edge to him that put even my oldest brother on high alert. Landon was ready to fight at a moment’s notice, even when other people were relaxed, and there was no real reason for it.
“Hi,” I said softly, waving back at him. “I’ll just go so you two can talk…”
“How much did you hear?” he asked, his dark eyes pinning me where I was.
“Enough to know I don’t want to be in this conversation,” I answered. “And that I shouldn’t repeat it.”
Dirk came out next and groaned. “Sorry, Jacky. He came over and—”
“Don’t care. You two can finish up. I’ll be inside. I just wanted to ask about security because Heath is coming over today.”
“Of course,” Landon muttered. “Because this needs to be more complicated. I’m going to go.” He stormed off and disappeared from my sight.
I turned back to Dirk.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I felt him here and wanted to know what was going on. I didn’t realize it was a serious discussion, then I tried to leave. He caught my scent before I could get out of here.”
“It’s fine…I just wish he told me. I don’t like being surprised. I would have handled everything differently if he had just told me before he had the chance to be outed.” He didn’t tear his eyes away from the drive that Landon had just stomped down.
Then I caught it—a soft scent in the wind coming off Dirk, subtle as though something was hiding his scent from me but failing.
Wanting. Longing. There were a dozen ways to describe it.
“How do you do it? How do you keep everything you feel a secret like Heath?”
“It’s magic.” He pulled up his shirt and revealed a tattoo on his hip. “Niko let me get it when I was old enough, and a witch did it. It doesn’t hold back everything I feel the way Heath can, it just makes it harder to detect. Most people are too busy with their lives to notice it’s even a thing.”
“Why?” I asked gently.
“Because I dealt with a lot of people who would abuse how I feel. Niko saw them trying to manipulate me to get to him. He taught me to control my breathing, to turn my thoughts away from things, but those are easy to mess up in difficult situations. So, we finally got me this. Now that you know about it, you’ll know what to look for. That’s one of the reasons I don’t announce that I have it.”
“I see. Well, if what I can smell is right, Dirk, this is your moment to chase the boy down like a romantic movie.” I waved towards the drive. “Go get him if you want him. Heath and I will protect you both if it’s what you want. And it smells like that’s what you want.”
The scent of longing grew a little stronger, touched by a hint of sadness and fear.
“I’ve never been with another guy,” Dirk admitted softly, shaking his head. “I don’t even know where to start. I didn’t know he liked me, and he…he never told me he might have picked it up from me. That tells me everything I need to know.” With that, he turned away from me and headed back into the security building, locking the door behind him, and his subtle scent disappeared in the wind quickly.
Well, damn.
I went back inside and sighed as I fell onto my couch. When Heath finally arrived, he quickly caught my mood.
“Landon was here earlier, and you’re not in the mood I was hoping to find you in,” he said as he sat
down beside me. “What did my son do?”
“Nothing,” I answered, leaning into him. “It’s a long week. He’ll need to tell you. Or Dirk. It’s probably not my place. Well…maybe. They ran into some other werewolves in Dallas yesterday.”
“Fuck,” Heath muttered, then groaned as he sank deeper into my couch. “It’s been a long week.”
“They’ve gone before and never had any trouble.”
“There was always a chance,” Heath countered. “How bad was it? Could it have come back on us?”
“Oh, yeah.” I quickly explained the most basic details of the situation, trying not to touch on the feelings. It was difficult to avoid, though. Sadly, it was something Heath needed to know. It was something I needed to know. It was an incident with two of our people with a foreign power.
“This is our lives,” he said, pushing a hand through his perfect hair.
“Teenage fights and bad romances. Yeah, sounds about right,” I agreed. “You know, I woke up on Tuesday in such a good mood.”
“I’m trying my best here,” he said, lifting his hands in defeat.
“It’s better than the alternative,” I said softly, looking out my large windows at the forest that surrounded me. “Good things take work sometimes. I’ll take the bad moments to keep this.”
“I’m glad,” he murmured, leaning to kiss my neck. “Speaking of Landon and Dirk, though…Landon was telling me last night, a few fae he knows weren’t at the Market. In fact, the Market seemed pretty empty.”
“Really?” I frowned. “There’s been some rumbles my family is watching. Something is going on with the fae. I don’t know much about it. My family is trying to watch for any trouble and stay out of it.”
“It’s for the best. Fae politics are sticky, deadly if you get caught supporting the wrong person with even a whisper. You think werecats and werewolves have family drama?”
I chuckled. “Well, I’ll let my family know what Landon saw at the Market. If you’re okay with it.”
“It’s fine. It’s not like he and I have any werewolves to tell.”
“Still getting the cold shoulder?” Every day, week, and month, it got worse. Heath was slowly and permanently being shoved out of werewolf society, and it was because of me.
“Yeah. None of the other Alphas have spoken to me since I went to Price’s funeral,” he said softly. “And most didn’t even look at me there.”
“I’m amazed you went.”
“Appearances. He was an Alpha. Callahan and Corissa kept it small for an Alpha funeral. They knew he had jeopardized their positions and caused more problems than he solved. He broke secrecy law, tried to kill a child of another Tribunal member, and succeeded with another. If they threw a big funeral…”
“Hasan would have been insulted. He’s never mentioned it to me, though, so it seems they made the right decision.”
“Exactly. Those three know how to deal with each other. As for you and me? Well, it seems everyone is just fine letting us live in this bubble for now, at least on the werewolf side.”
“But one day…one day, you’ll want to go back. You’re an Alpha, and you’ll want to have a pack again. Are they going to let you?”
Heath shrugged. “I’ll figure it out when the time comes,” he said, not really giving me an answer. “If I wanted to have a pack right now, I would have to leave your territory and fight for one. Or round up some rogues and try to whip them into shape, then ask for them to bring me back into the fold. It would take at least a decade. That’s the old way of getting a pack. I would have to move the hubs of my businesses to my new city if I could find one. I might have to be a rural pack. Landon would be my second, and he’d get bloody in the process. So would I.” He played with my hair. “Or you would have to allow me to make a pack here, but it would probably expose us.”
“Yeah.”
“This is why I try not to think too far into the future. For a long time, I only focused on the future, plotting my next move and making sure my werewolves stayed strong for decades to come. I would analyze every situation, make sure every preparation was taken care of. Finally, I’ve run into a situation I can’t do that with. A werewolf Alpha doesn’t expect to fall in love with a werecat. I’m just trying to take it one day at a time.”
“Yeah, but Carey is getting older…and you said you wanted to leave once she was old enough.”
“That could be after she dies, Jacky. I don’t want to miss my daughter’s life anymore because I have three hundred people to manage all the time—any of it. You’re thinking about something that will probably be decades from now. Other things will happen before that does.”
“You’re right.” I played with a string coming off my shirt. “Was it really so hard being a dad and an Alpha?”
“Carey skinned her knee once when she was about eight. Richard was out of town. Instead of coming to Landon or me like she normally would, she went to her room and cried while she cleaned it up herself and put a band-aid on it. You see, we were in a meeting with another Alpha, Geoffrey Lewis.” He gave me a look. Alpha Lewis was a good werewolf. He wouldn’t have cared if an eight-year-old needed her dad for a moment.
“She didn’t want to embarrass me and make me seem weak in front of someone by needing to baby her. I only found out once the meeting was done when another kid told me she hurt herself and asked me if she was okay. She explained the rest when I found her.” He looked away from me, staring out my windows as I often did when I needed to think. “It hit me right then…I was going to miss all those moments with her. I couldn’t be a normal dad for a normal daughter. She was a human girl trying to live in a world of werewolves, and it wasn’t fair to her.”
“She’s a smart kid, Heath.”
“Geoffrey wouldn’t have cared. He would have been indulgent and loving, like an uncle. She knew him, should have known he would be okay with it,” he said softly. “Someone had to have told her it was a big deal. Someone would have had to tell her bad werewolves would target the weak members of a pack to hurt the Alpha.”
“Heath…”
“I told her that,” he said, looking down now. “I told her with werewolves, you could never appear weak. With Richard, I was able to raise him like a normal father. We learned how to be werewolves together, in a sense. With Landon, a born werewolf, I had to teach him young how to survive with our kind, and it worked for him. With Carey, I made the wrong decisions too young. She wasn’t a werewolf, and I wasn’t human.” Heath growled. “It was hard. It’s still hard, but I was tired of missing those little things. I wanted to be there for her, and I never could be. That was the first time she decided I couldn’t be there for her, but it wasn’t the first thing I had missed.
“So, I want to watch my daughter graduate high school and college. I want to celebrate her promotions, watch her get engaged, make it to her wedding. So, no, I won’t be going back to pack life for a very long time. Not unless lives depend on it, and they would have to be the right lives. Pack life would do its best to stop me from seeing those moments in her life. It’s like cutting off a limb to save the rest of me. I feel the loss sometimes, being an Alpha with nothing to show for it. Only one wolf under me to manage, and he’s my son, but it’s worth it. It’ll always be worth it. I have eternity. My daughter doesn’t.”
“You really wouldn’t Change her, would you?”
“She would need to ask someone else if she wanted to become a werewolf. Landon and I agreed a long time ago neither of us would ever do it. Richard was also part of that pact. And she knows it.” Heath’s face turned to stone. “It’s not uncommon for family to be unable to do it. There’s a reason the Alpha of the pack Changes others, and when an Alpha’s family wants to be Changed, they’re sent to another Alpha. Asking a parent or sibling to kill their own family…”
“It’s the opposite in the werecat world. Changing someone is making them family, a risk taken together. It’s honored that no one would Change someone else’s human. I would never Change
Dirk because he’s not a man I could see being my son. That’s Niko’s right and something he and Dirk need to work out.”
“Funny how we’re such similar species but view our curse so differently,” he said, leaning toward me with a spark in his eyes again. He liked knowledge, my werewolf. Then it faded. “I should head out.”
“We haven’t had lunch,” I said softly.
“I should check on Landon.”
“Ah, yeah. I’ll check on Dirk.” Leaning over, I closed the distance between us and kissed him softly. “This is our life.”
“It is. It’s a good one. We’ll just aim for an uneventful Saturday, huh?”
“Yeah, that might be the best option at this point. If this week gets any worse, I might just lock my doors and refuse to let anyone enter.”
He chuckled as he got up. I walked him to the door, not letting him leave until I got one more kiss from him. Once he was gone, I grabbed my set of keys, went back to the security building, and unlocked the door.
“Dirk?”
“Figured you would be busy with Heath for at least a couple of hours,” he mumbled as he stared at screens. “What do you need?” He turned in his chair, looking tired.
“Take the day off,” I ordered. “Go think about things.”
“Fine.” He got up and sighed. “You know, I really don’t like when people know my business.”
“No, I never got that impression.” I leaned on the doorframe as he collected his things. “I’m not going to pry.”
“Good, because I’m not going to talk about it.” He finished shoving his stuff in his bag and started toward me and the door. I stepped out of the way and watched him leave like a storm cloud, rumbling off to darken someone else’s day.
“Sometimes, I just can’t catch a break,” I mumbled as I closed up the security building and headed back inside my home.
7
Chapter Seven
Saturday finally came, and Heath walked up the steps to my front door with a bouquet of flowers.
