by T. S. Joyce
Chapter Seven
He was such an idiot. When Dalton pulled over the last crest of a snowy ridge, his headlights arched over Link’s cabin. The lights were on inside, which meant Chance was still awake.
Great.
He cut the engine, got out, and slammed the door. God, why was he like this now? He’d been normal once. Well, as normal as a werewolf could be. But now, every April, he turned into a volatile asshole. Oh, he’d read between the lines of Kate’s last words. She’d done it before and wanted more, AKA she deserved better. And yeah, he’d known that, but this was all he had to give right now. One minute he felt confident, like he couldn’t wait to see her, and then when he actually talked to her, he ducked and dodged any serious conversation that pulled her too close to his life. Too close to the real him.
And what had she done? She’d shared her mistakes with Miller. She’d shown him that damned wedding invite, which had probably caused her bone-deep pain, and he’d given her nothing in return.
What had he hoped for? That their conversations would stay shallow and never go past flirting?
Dalton paced in front of Link’s old cabin, wearing a trail in the snow.
He wanted something real.
But his biggest fear was getting something real, and ruining it.
Dalton squatted down and gripped his head as his wolf pushed to escape his skin. His inner animal was clawing and howling to go back to her.
Say sorry. Shelby loved when it you said sorry.
Shelby? Dalton retched in the snow at the pain in his middle. It should’ve been a woman like Kate holding his baby. He’d picked wrong, and now he was unfixable because of that decision. It had damaged something inside of him to mourn the loss of Amelia alone.
The door to the cabin opened, but Dalton couldn’t pull his gaze from the dead grass that poked up from the trail he’d stomped into the snow. He retched again as he tried desperately to keep his human skin.
Nicole’s scent hit his nose, and he swallowed hard, dragging his attention up to the top porch stair where she sat down, wrapped in a blanket with a sad look in her dark eyes.
“Dalton,” she whispered, sympathy tainting the sound.
“I missed dinner,” he said, feeling like shit.
“It’s okay.”
“No.” He settled in the snow, legs folded beneath him. “It’s not. Nothing is okay.”
Her eyes rimmed with tears. “Link told me about April First. I didn’t know.”
“I don’t like talking about it.”
“Dalton, I’ve been so hurt that you didn’t want to be around us. I was mad at you. Mad that you barely look at Fina. Mad that you won’t hold her and bond with her. I thought I was to blame somehow. Like you didn’t want to be in a pack with me, which now I know is stupid, and I shouldn’t have made it about myself. I just didn’t understand.”
Dalton stood and climbed the stairs, then sat shoulder to shoulder with her, watching the green northern lights in the distance.
Nicole leaned her head on his arm. “I’m sorry. I can’t imagine how painful it must be for you to lose your little girl and then have to be around a baby girl who survived.”
Dalton sighed a frozen breath. “I’m kind of messed up right now. The rest of the year, I’m okay. Or at least, I can put on the show, right? But you’re catching me when I screw up the most. I like to hide out during April. I hurt less people that way, you know? But now Chance, Link, you, and…”
Nicole eased off his shoulder and offered him a confused look. “And who?”
“And this girl I met. There is a hundred percent chance I will let everyone down right now. It’s like I can’t think straight. I make the wrong decisions. Everything is cloudy, and I don’t have much control over my animal or my moods. I should’ve done my hiding somewhere more remote, but this year, this place seemed…important.”
“This place or your pack?”
Dalton shrugged. “Maybe both. I don’t know. I’ve never been in a pack before. It’s always just been me and Chance, and we were never officially a pack, you know? And then Link came along and bound us, and now I don’t really know how to navigate anything.”
“Link and Chance love you.”
“Strongly like you when you aren’t being a twat,” Chance corrected from inside.
“And you’re very important to me, too,” Nicole said without missing a beat. “When you’re ready, you can lean on us. I don’t know how packs work either, but to me, you feel like family. Everything feels better when you and Chance visit. Link is happier. I’m happier. I don’t know how it is for you, but when you and Chance are close, it’s like my two brothers are in town.”
Dalton looked down at Nicole. Her large birthmark, the color of red wine, was stark on her pale cheek. He understood her need for a makeshift family. Hers hadn’t been awesome, and her real dad had died the year before she found out he even existed. She’d come here searching for a place to belong, and instead of him being a positive part of her journey, he’d failed her. He’d failed everyone.
“I’ll try harder,” he promised.
Nicole sniffed and shook her head. “Do things in your own time, Dalton. I understand your reservations now. Link and I will hold. We’ll be here for whatever you want this pack to be.”
Dalton wiped off the snowy porch floorboard beside him in an effort to avoid her eyes when he asked nonchalantly, “When you found out what Link was, did you freak out?”
“I nearly shot him,” she said.
“What?” he asked.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, what?” Chance asked from where he suddenly shadowed the open doorway. The eavesdropper came to sit on Dalton’s other side.
“Yeah, I figured out what he was before he told me, and I came to this place, guns blazing. I thought he was the wolf who killed my father. Turns out Link was only trying to make up for his family’s shortcomings. Cole was actually the one who killed my dad.” She slid him a glance, then snuggled more deeply into her blanket. “Dalton, you’re allowed by shifter law to tell your mate what you are. Clayton can’t give a kill order for exposing the wolf to your woman.”
Chance snorted. “He couldn’t bring himself to tell the mother of his child. He’s not telling this one.”
There was challenge in his voice, and Dalton growled. He didn’t like being baited. “I haven’t known her long enough.”
“What do you feel?”
“I feel like she’s amazing, but complicated, and I can’t stop thinking about her.” Dalton leaned back on his locked arms and stretched his long legs down the stairs. “I also feel like her life would be exponentially better if I figured out a way to leave her alone.”
“Why?” Nicole asked.
“Because she’s Miller McCall’s ex-girlfriend. She’s been through enough without falling for another monster.”
“Oh, damn,” Chance said.
“Damn indeed.”
“Does she like you?” Nicole asked softly.
Dalton bit the side of his lip thoughtfully and dragged the heel of his boot over the snowy porch, creating an arc across the wood there. “She says I make her feel safe. She doesn’t sleep well, but with me…well…she did.”
“Wow,” Nicole murmured. She was quiet for a long time before she asked, “Do you want my advice?”
“No,” he teased.
She elbowed him as he chuckled. “Feeling safe with Link was a really big deal for me. I don’t think you should push her away because of what you think is good for her. I think you should let her make her own decision.” Nicole shrugged out of her blanket and stood. Carefully, she made her way down to her snow machine, but before she drove away through the snowy woods that stood between this cabin and the one she shared with Link, she turned around on the seat and said, “You’re no Miller McCall. You’re better.”
Chapter Eight
Kate shoved the covers off her legs, utterly frustrated with her inability to sleep. She’d even counted sheep in desperation, but as
she’d almost drifted off, she imagined a wolf chasing the sheep and got upset all over again. She’d spent an hour with her watercolors painting, but that hadn’t even settled her enough.
She’d never in her life had trouble sleeping until Miller McCall, and she was desperate to get back to that. She wanted it all—good dreams, that well-rested feeling in the morning, not dragging all day, and looking less exhausted. It had been two years since she’d seen Miller. Two years the man was dead, and she was still as pathetic as she was when he was around. She’d spent too many nights waiting for him to break into her place and hurt her, she supposed. Too many nights feeling like the world was suffocating her and she was alone with her fear, and now her body was trained to never rest.
Dalton had changed that for a moment, and now she was downright desperate to have more of that warm, well-rested feeling.
She almost wished she’d never met Dalton. One day of relief had made her insomnia unacceptable now.
A soft knock sounded on the door, and she jumped. Fear dumped adrenaline into her system. Slowly, quietly, she opened the drawer to the bedside table and pulled out a machete she kept there. She slid the long blade from its nylon sheath and padded over the cold tile floors toward the door.
“Who is it?” she asked.
“It’s Dalton.”
Kate lifted one of the blinds on the door window with the tip of the curved blade. “It’s late.”
“I know.”
“If this is some kind of booty call, I’m not interested.”
Dalton locked his arms on the doorframe and frowned at the wall beside him. “I’m not here for that. I came to apologize.”
“At four in the morning?”
“Were you asleep?”
Irritated, she sighed, flipped on the light, and opened the door. “No.”
Dalton straightened up. “If I met you a month from now, things would be different. I would be different. Better. Easier. Not so…fucked up.”
“Everyone is effed up, Dalton. At some point, you just have to find someone to share the baggage with.”
He chuckled and scratched the side of his lip with his thumbnail, attention on the machete in her hands. “You would get along well with Nicole.”
Jealousy snaked through her like a poisonous green fog. “Is she your ex?”
His nostrils flared softly, and a smile stretched his lips. “Possessive,” he accused. “Two days with me and already—”
“Stop it. Don’t joke right now. I was hurt tonight. Pushed aside. Pushed away. You kissed me and took me out and then kept me at a distance.”
The smile faded from his face. “I know.”
“Come inside so I can lay into you properly without letting all the heat out.”
Dalton inhaled deeply and strode past her like he was headed for the chopping block. Dutifully, he sat on the couch, rested his elbows on his knees, clasped his hands, and waited.
Kate tossed the machete onto the table, and it clattered over the stack of sketches and paintings she’d been working on. “I like you. A lot.”
Dalton’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “This isn’t how I thought this would go.”
“Shhh. I thought about you today to the point of distraction. I don’t know why. You look half out the door already, ready to run away at any moment. I know you don’t feel the same about me, but still, my stupid heart latched on.”
“Is this the part where you tell me you hate me?” he asked, looking utterly baffled.
“What? No. I would never say that. I’m trying to explain how much I disliked you bolting for your truck when we dipped into a serious conversation. Who said they hated you?”
“Well…” He frowned. “My ex.”
“Well, your ex sounds like a bit—” Kate stopped herself, swallowed the curse down, and sat in the chair across the coffee table from him. “She sounds like a bit of a handful.”
Dalton canted his head like a curious animal. “Elyse is a friend, and Miller’s death wasn’t exactly handled by the police, if you catch my drift. You figured out where that scar on her face came from surprisingly easy, and it scared me.” He dipped his voice lower. “You scare me.”
She scared him? That was laughable. She was a buck-thirty of submissive human and he was a danged werewolf whose eyes had lightened to the color of caramel just now. She knew what kind of power he hid. Miller had been able to lift her off the ground by her throat like she weighed no more than air. “The feeling is mutual.”
He watched her for so long she fidgeted and dropped her gaze. The air felt heavy around him now, making it hard to breath.
“Kate, I…” He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple dipping to the neck of his white sweater.
She waited for what seemed like hours as he struggled to say something. He scrubbed his hand down his dark stubble and sank back into the couch cushions. He was breathing too hard, looked panicked, so she stood, moved across the room, and sat next to him.
She searched his stunning eyes for a few seconds before she relaxed against his side and slid her arms around his waist. Let me in.
“I want to be a dad,” he whispered, his body rigid as an ice sculpture beside her. “I always did. I lost—” Dalton inhaled sharply as though he couldn’t breathe, so she loosened her embrace and rested her cheek on his chest. “I lost a baby. A girl. There’s something wrong…with me. I can’t make children right. The girls get sick. And I knew that going into the pregnancy with my ex. We got pregnant accidentally, but I was so fucking happy when she told me. She was scared, and I wasn’t scared enough. I was convinced it was a boy. That I couldn’t have a loss like that. Not me. I’d been a good person. I thought that was it, the family I always wanted. I wasn’t ready at all, didn’t even want an ultrasound to determine the sex because I was just that confident it was a boy. I was cocky. Or maybe deep down I was too scared to find out, I don’t know.” Dalton wrapped his arms around her, too tight, but she kept quiet. “The day she was born, I felt like someone had hit me in the middle with a hammer. We’d packed baby clothes to bring her home, but the second the doctor said it was a girl, my entire world burned. I knew we wouldn’t be taking her home. And my ex wasn’t bonding with her. She wasn’t looking at her. Wasn’t looking at me, like she knew I’d failed her and ruined our family. Or at least, that’s what I thought at the time because I blamed myself completely, so it made sense that she did, too. I held her…” Dalton dragged in a long breath, so Kate held him closer. “I held her all night, listened to every breath because I knew what was coming. And I loved her so much. I wanted her to live. I prayed that I could die instead. I got one day with her. It was quick. Shelby didn’t cry. She was in shock maybe, I don’t know. She held her little body afterward because the doctors said it was good for her to do that for closure, but she didn’t seem interested, and I couldn’t hold her anymore. Just couldn’t. I didn’t want to feel her cold.” Dalton let out a shaky breath. “Shelby broke it off with me then.”
“April first?”
“Yeah.”
“What was her name?”
Dalton rested his cheek against the top of her head and whispered, “Amelia.”
“Beautiful name.”
“For a beautiful girl. She was perfect. Dark hair, dark eyes. She looked Ute, like me.”
“Ute? I thought you were Alaska Native.”
“Nah, I’m Native American. I look like the first Ute in my lineage, Ukiah Dawson. I have pictures of him. My cousin got none of the Ute looks. He looks like a blond Viking and Shelby was blond, too, so I thought I would have a fair-haired baby. I like that Amelia got my traits.”
“You marked her up good,” Kate murmured.
He let off a soft chuckle. “Yeah.”
Carefully, she straddled his lap, then tucked her arms underneath her and snuggled against his chest. Dalton hugged her close, and little by little, his heartbeat settled into a steady, thrumming rhythm under her.
“Thank you,” she said.
“
For what?”
“For telling me about Amelia.”
“Yeah, well, someone once told me I have to find someone to share my baggage with.”
“Whoever told you that sounds like a genius.”
Dalton snorted, then stood lithely with her in his arms. “Time to sleep, insomniac.” He walked past the coffee table, but froze, then settled her on her feet slowly. “What’s this?”
Horror seized her as he bent over and picked up one of the half-buried watercolor papers she’d painted. She hadn’t hidden that one well enough because she’d never thought she would see Dalton again.
“Nothing,” she rushed, pushing a stack of blank paper over the dark ink rendering of a red, black, and violet phoenix.
“Oooh, you have a big crush on me,” Dalton said, pulling it from under the pile of paper shields she’d created.
She yelped and plucked the damning painting from his fingertips, just to have him yank it back and hold it too high for her to reach.
“This is badass,” he said, studying it.
“I was inspired by your tattoo and was looking for something to paint, and this was a fun idea. I like phoenixes.”
“A phoenix that looks just like my tattoo?” he asked, one eyebrow arched down at her.
“I don’t like people seeing these. I’m not an artist. It’s just something that helps me sleep. Sometimes.”
Dalton folded the painting and shoved it in his pocket. “I’m keeping this.”
“No, you’re not!” She scrabbled for his pocket, but he angled away from her with a teasing grin.
“Too slow, tiny human.”
Kate jolted to a stop, and Dalton’s face shut down completely. He backed away a few steps.
“You should be more careful.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Dalton said. A growl rattled his throat, but he shook his head hard, and the noise cut off.
He was giving her Amelia, but he was keeping the wolf.
Kate swallowed down bile at what she was considering. He wasn’t telling her, and he had his reasons. Reasons she couldn’t comprehend. But he was hinting. Baby girls dying? That must be a werewolf thing. Calling her tiny human? Growling? Allowing her to see his blazing eyes now? He was telling her without telling her.
