by Aliya DalRae
Patrick had meant for it to be a quiet affair, just him and Butch and Poppy, David and Mitch and the fire department, but the Pack had other plans. By the time the first flames licked up the side of that odious building, the entire group had joined them, standing as close as the professionals would allow.
It was a subdued gathering. Few spoke, and when they did it was in whispers, but Patrick picked up on what was being said.
What will happen to us? Where will we go?
His recovery had taken too long, and then he had been focused on erasing every reminder of Devaris he could. He’d even had that stupid throne Devaris had sat on during meals brought here and set it in the middle of the now burning cabin. Nothing of that man was to remain in his Pack.
However, what he hadn’t done was talk to them, to the Pack, and three days was too long to leave them in limbo.
The burn took hours, yet no one left the site. They stood or sat, watching their past drift away on a billowing cloud of black smoke.
Once the fire was out and the humans had dispersed, Patrick turned to address the group. As he looked at them, he was struck by how much they had all come to mean to him.
There was Alice, a woman of a certain age who had been turned about twenty years ago. She was the person he went to for help with his domestic issues, missing buttons, laundry stains and cleaning advice.
And Charlie, who had been with the Pack just a few months, but had made himself invaluable repairing everyone’s cars and the gardening equipment.
Andy had a green thumb, could make anything grow, and his garden had been putting food on the table for decades. He was a gentle soul, slow to anger, but passionate about right and wrong.
And of course, Nadia. She was their medic, the closest thing to a doctor they had, and she treated everything from cuts and bruises to the rare broken bone. Plus, she was the reason most of them were still alive. Without her care after the initial attacks that had brought them here, they would not have lived long enough to even attempt that first change.
Patrick knew when he challenged Devaris that he was giving up any hopes of ever leaving the Pack. He knew what he was getting into, what would be expected of him. What he expected from himself. This was his family now. Not that he’d abandoned hopes of bringing Maggie and Jessica home to him, but this was different.
These were his people, and now they looked to him to guide them and protect them.
He cleared his throat, and the few murmurs that had passed through the small crowed grew silent.
“I’m glad you’re all here,” Patrick said. “I apologize for leaving you in suspense, but there were some things that needed doing before I could look you all in the eye.”
Someone shouted, “Hear, hear,” followed by a few muttered approvals, and Patrick smiled.
“I’m sure you’re all wondering where we go from here. I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and not just since I became your Alpha. The answer to that question is this: anywhere you want.”
The crowd broke out in anxious conversation, everyone speaking at once before someone in the back yelled, “Let him finish.”
“It’s okay,” Patrick said. “I’m sure that’s not a concept most of you understand anymore, but I’m not Devaris, and God help me I hope to never be like he was. Those of you who were part of the old Pack, who knew what it was like to belong to something you could be proud of, you know how good being Pack can be. The rest of us? This is all we know. The drugs and the fear, being forced to sacrifice everything we loved and basically turned into supernatural slaves for that ungrateful son of a bitch.
“But no more. We’re going back to the old ways. I’ve heard enough about them to know that it’s what I want our Pack to be again. I want us to be part of the community, to have jobs and families. To live and to love. I want us to have free will, to have lives outside of the Pack if we want to, but to always have a safe place to go if we need it. I want to give that to you, to all of you.”
“What if we don’t have a family to go home to?” Charlie asked, his eyes bright with unshed tears.
“Yeah,” someone else shouted. “What if this is all we got?”
Patrick held up his hand, to silence the panic that was building within the crowd. “You have us,” he said. “You have me, and with the Pack behind you, you will always have family.”
“Do we have to leave the camp?” Andy asked. “My garden is here. I don’t know what I’d do without it.”
“We’ll work it out,” Patrick assured him. “That’s the thing. If you want to stay here? That’s fine with me. It’s Pack property, so you don’t have to leave if you don’t want to. However, the days of obligatory meals together and forced living arrangements are in the past. As are the illegal business practices Devaris has been employing for far too long.”
This one caused a bit of an uproar. Most were uncomfortable with the way the Pack made their money, but they were smart enough to know that it was what kept them fed and clothed. Their shouted protests were proof enough that this transition was not going to be easy.
“How will we live?” someone shouted.
“You’ll get jobs,” Patrick said. “You’ll find a house or an apartment, you’ll make your own way in the world, just as you would have done had you never been brought here.”
“That’s not so easily done,” Andy spoke up again. “Most of us don’t exist, not in the human world, anyway.”
“We’ll work it out,” Patrick said. “We have enough contacts to be able to get forged identities for all of us, myself included. It’s not going to happen overnight. It’s going to take some time, and we’re going to have to work together. But I believe in all of you, and I know we can make this the best Pack the Werewolf world has ever seen.”
“What do you say, guys?” Nadia was on her feet, ever the cheerleader. “We hated living under Devaris’ rule, never sure if today was the day he picked one of us as his whipping boy. If we would live into the next week because we might have looked at him wrong? Patrick is offering us something we’ve only ever dreamed of. Don’t let fear of the unknown keep you from finding the happiness you’ve been missing. Our new Alpha is offering us whatever we want. Don’t we owe it to ourselves to reach out and grab that ring?”
“Yes,” Butch stepped forward, joining Nadia where she stood. Poppy hobbled over as well, and soon Mitch and David were there, adding their support.
“Why are we moping around here?” Nadia cried. “We should be celebrating. Devaris is dead, and our entire lives are ahead of us. The world is our oyster, baby, and it’s about damn time!”
Cheers broke out in the crowd, hesitant at first, but Nadia’s enthusiasm was contagious. Soon everyone was chattering excitedly about what the future held for them.
Someone dragged out a grill, someone else raided the commissary, and soon the air was full of the smells of broiling meat. Hot dogs, hamburgers and some hellacious steaks that Devaris had probably been hoarding for himself were sizzling away as the excitement grew. Some of the ladies, and a couple of the men, disappeared, only to reappear with arms full of side dishes suitable for an all-night picnic. Andy found a couple of melons in the walk-in fridge, and someone even brought out an old crank ice cream maker. Soon people were standing in line waiting for a chance to turn the handle in anticipation of all that creamy goodness.
Patrick stood by a tree, away from what had turned into a joyous occasion, and took it all in.
“You did this,” Butch said from behind him, giving Patrick a start. For a big guy, he sure was light on his feet.
Patrick shrugged. In the year he’d been here, there had never been a party like this at the camp, and as happy as he was to see the Pack enjoying themselves, his mind was on other things.
As usual, Butch knew exactly where his thoughts had gone.
“This is just the first step,” he said, giving Patrick’s shoulder a squeeze. “We’ll start work on the old cabin immediately, and then you can bring them home.”
<
br /> Home. To Patrick, that word had only one definition. It was wherever Maggie and Jessica were, and wherever they were? That’s where his heart lived.
He had survived an entire year without his heart, and even though he was now in charge of this ragtag crew, this was no place for his family. Not yet.
He’d waited this long, surely he could be patient just a little while more. Then he would go to them, wrap his arms around them and carry them into this new world he was creating.
He only hoped it wasn’t too late.
Bitter
Loss
Chapter One
Day One
W hat was taking so long?
Maggie O’Connell sat on the threadbare sofa in the apartment she shared with her husband, Patrick, and their daughter, Jessica. She was still basking in the afterglow of her and Patrick’s lovemaking, but he’d been gone an awfully long time and she was beginning to worry.
She was being foolish, of course. Patrick had simply gone out for a pack of cigarettes, and it wasn’t uncommon for him to become distracted and lose track of time. He was forever offering to lend a hand if he thought he could be of use. There wasn’t a person in the neighborhood, degenerate as it was, who didn’t know they could rely on Patrick O’Connell if they needed help moving a sofa or wiring their television for cable TV.
It was also true that a lot of the people he helped out didn’t have a telephone, but that didn’t mean she would forgive him for making her worry. At least not right away.
And then there was Jessica’s comment from earlier in the day, which did nothing at all to calm Maggie’s nerves. Their child had an uncanny knack of predicting the future. Not really, but she said a lot of things that coincidentally came to pass, which, from a four-year-old could be a bit, well, unnerving.
Her most recent declaration was that Daddy was going to leave them. Patrick had laughed, of course, when Maggie told him about it, assuring her just a few hours ago that he was going nowhere but to the corner store to pick up a pack of those awful smelling Marlboros he favored. It was a disgusting habit, and she begged him daily to quit, but as with everything else, he simply made a joke of it and did as he pleased. Life was a lark to Patrick, every day a new adventure and he relished each and every experience.
It was a point of pride to Maggie that he claimed her and Jessica as the most wonderful experience of his life, and he never failed to tell her how much he cherished them. He would never leave them, not by choice.
Which was why she was so worried now.
Scolding herself for being a fool, Maggie picked up the remote control and flipped through the channels, looking for something that would take her mind off of her errant husband. She’d warned him time and again that his good deeds would one day be the death of him. If he didn’t come home soon, it would be by her hand.
When she found a movie that she thought might distract her, Maggie dropped the clicker on the coffee table and curled up on the couch, prepared to wait there until Patrick decided to show his infuriatingly gorgeous face.
She’d had such a long day, though, slinging hash at the diner in the middle of Dayton, and the movie wasn’t holding her attention as she’d hoped it would. Maggie’s eyelids began to droop. In spite of her desire to remain awake and indignant for when Patrick decided to walk through the door, she drifted off to sleep.
~~~~~
Screams from Jessica’s room woke Maggie with a start. She was on her feet, running to aid her daughter before she was properly awake. When she flung the door open, Jessica ran to her, threw her arms around Maggie’s legs and sobbed.
After several long moments, the child loosened her grip, allowing Maggie to bend to her level and gather her up. She carried her to the bed and sat with her back against the Jenny Lind headboard, rocking Jessica in an effort to soothe her.
A half an hour passed before Maggie was able to calm the girl enough to learn what had frightened her.
Jessica wrapped her tiny hand into a tangle of Maggie’s long, red hair and held it in her fist. She pulled as she sobbed, and Maggie withstood the irksome pain because it seemed to be giving her daughter some level of comfort.
“What is it baby? Tell Mama where it hurts.”
“Daaaa-ddyyy,” she sobbed, and Maggie’s heart skipped a beat.
“Daddy just went to the store. He’ll be back soon.”
“No,” Jessica hiccoughed, “they took him. They took him.” She started to scream again, clear, now, to Maggie that she was calling for her father.
“Nobody has your daddy,” Maggie shushed. “He’ll be home soon.”
“No, he won’t,” Jessica sobbed. “The monsters took him and he’s never coming home!”
Chapter Two
Day 2
F or the second time in just a few hours, Maggie started awake.
She was in Jessica’s bed, her arms wrapped protectively around her little girl as the child slept in fits and turns.
Maggie glanced at the clock on the dresser, the one that provided a reassuring light for the child who was so afraid of the dark. It was nearly six.
Patrick.
Careful not to disturb Jessica’s sleep, Maggie unfolded herself and crept from the room, rushing to the master bedroom in search of her husband. He would have let her sleep, wouldn’t have wanted to disturb them, and she was certain she would find him sprawled out on their full-sized bed, taking advantage of the extra space.
As she burst into the bedroom, the door banged against the wall, and she cringed at the loud noise, knowing it would startle him awake. She waited for him to swear, to say, “What the hell, Mags?” but was met with an oppressive silence.
She reached over to flip on the light, and a pale yellow glow filled the room, revealing a perfectly-made bed and no sign of Patrick.
She ran to the living room. Had he slept on the couch? But no, he wasn’t there either.
Maggie collapsed into a rickety dining room chair, her heart threatening to burst from her chest as she struggled to make sense of Patrick’s absence.
She reached for the phone on the wall above her head, ready to call everyone they knew to find out if he’d been seen. It was the clock on the microwave that stopped her. Six-fifteen. Nobody would be awake at six-fifteen on a Saturday. She would have to wait.
To stay busy, Maggie pulled out the furniture polish and attacked every wooden surface they had crammed into the tiny apartment. When the wood was completely dust-free, she went for the glass cleaner, spraying streaks of blue liquid on any shiny surface she could find.
After that it was the hardwood floor. It was scraped and scarred, but Patrick had simply fallen in love with it, calling it rustic and insisting that it gave the place panache. It was a pain in the ass to keep clean, but he had maintained that it gave them a step up on those lowly folks who were still walking around on ancient shag carpet.
She was on the floor with a bucket of water and a scrub brush, digging the bristles into every crack, every nook and cranny, when Jessica walked into the room.
“Mama?”
Maggie jumped a mile, then turned to her daughter. The girl’s chestnut hair lay in sleep-tousled curls around her shoulders and her eyes were puffy from sleep and late-night tears.
“Baby, what are you doing up?” Maggie glanced at the microwave to find it was now nine o’clock. Jessica had actually slept in. “Are you hungry?” she asked when the child didn’t respond.
“Daddy’s gone.” Two simple words that struck Maggie’s heart like a dagger, slicing it into tiny pieces as she stared into the eyes of a little girl who knew way more than she should.
“Daddy is not gone,” Maggie insisted, her words unconvincing to her own ears.
Jessica blinked, and when she opened her eyes again, her clear, ice blue irises had gone completely white.
“Jessica?” Maggie cried and ran to her daughter. “Jessica, honey?” but she didn’t respond. “Jessica, look at me baby. Jessica?”
Jessica blinked
again, then looked up into her mother’s eyes, the white clearing as her daughter spoke, making Maggie doubt what she had seen. “The monsters took him,” Jessica whispered, her face expressionless. “Daddy’s hurt and he’s not coming home. We’ll miss you Daddy.”
Maggie barley heard the last four words. It was as though her head was full of bees, buzzing in her ears, blocking out the world as she fought for equilibrium.
To steady herself, Maggie pulled Jessica into her arms and cried as she held onto the tiny bit of family she had left.
Jessica patted her on the back, then pulled away. As though nothing had happened, she walked to the television, picked up the remote and began searching for her favorite Saturday morning cartoons.
When she found what she was looking for, Jessica sat on the floor in front of the TV, glanced over her shoulder and said, “Can I have Lucky Charms today?”
Chapter Three
Day 3
M aggie was seated in an uncomfortable chair, staring with disbelief at the detective across the desk from her.
Three hours had passed since she first walked into the police station, Jessica on her hip, to report her missing husband. Three hours, she had been told to wait, that the officers were very busy, that someone would be with her as soon as they could.
Three hours of trying to entertain her restless child and calm her own breaking heart. Patrick was out there somewhere, frightened and injured, and these people were treating her like a twentieth century version of the boy who cried wolf.
She wasn’t proud of the way she had exploded at that poor officer at the desk. She realized he was just doing his job, but she’d had enough. She really did try to refrain from using that kind of language in front of Jessica, but she’d reached the end of her patience.
And it had worked—sort of.
She finally had the attention of someone who could help her. If only he seemed the slightest bit inclined to do so.
