by Lauren Esker
"Attacked you," Damon said, moving to his father's bedside. "We know."
Verne nodded slightly. His eyes slipped shut.
Gray rose. "His vitals look strong. I'm going to go get Aunt Lorna."
Damon caught his arm, stopping him. "Can we have a few minutes alone first, please? I need to talk to Dad."
Gray hesitated, then nodded. He slipped out of the room quietly, closing the door behind him.
Damon dragged a chair up to the side of the bed. "Dad, can you still hear me?"
Verne's head moved in a slight nod.
"Want a drink of water or something?"
Verne shook his head. Then his eyes snapped open, sunken and bruised-looking in his pale face, but blazing with anger at odds with his body's weakened condition. "You," he whispered. "What have you done?"
"Yeah, I guess I should've known you'd feel it as soon as you woke up," Damon said. "You're not alpha anymore. I am."
Verne stared at him, his chest rising and falling with shallow breaths. "While I recover, I suppose it makes sense," he said at last, his voice weak and rasping. "That asshole Renner certainly isn't going to. And then, when I'm strong enough to resume—"
"No. You aren't. Before the others come upstairs, I want to offer you a deal, Dad."
"You are in no position to make deals with me!"
The tattered shreds of his father's alpha aura scraped across the back of Damon's mind. Damon pushed it back.
"Actually, I'm the only person who can. And this is the best offer you're going to get. Seriously." Damon leaned forward. "Just let control pass peacefully between us. Don't fight me on it. Yield leadership, and let it pass on as if it was your idea all along."
Verne's eyes widened. "Why on earth should I do that?"
"Because if you don't, I will fight you for it, and I will win." As he spoke, Damon heard the ghost of Vanessa's expression of confidence in him, an echo in the back of his head.
"You?" Verne scoffed. "You couldn't defeat me—"
"When I was fourteen, no. But I'm much stronger now. Maybe I won't even be able to win the first time, but I'll keep trying until I do."
"Why?" Verne demanded again. "Did it gall you that much, to lose to me all those years ago?"
Damon shook his head. It surprised him how little his father's scorn mattered to him anymore. "It's not about me. Maybe it used to be. But everything that's happened with Renner made me realize the pack can't continue under your leadership. We'll fall apart, devolve into infighting and betrayal, and eventually we'll be taken over by some other pack. Like what almost happened here."
"That backstabbing bastard Renner—"
"It wasn't just Renner." Damon leaned in to make sure that no one could overhear, even if someone were listening outside the door. "Others in the pack were in on Renner's little coup."
"You—"
"No, not me, and I won't tell you who. It doesn't matter now—at least not to me. What matters, Dad, is that I have to do what's best for the pack, and what's best for the pack is having someone other than you in charge. Anyone else. I don't know if I'm the best alpha for the job. In fact, I think I'm probably not. But—" He was so close, now, that his face nearly touched his father's. "I'm a whole damn lot better than you."
There was a long silence. Verne stared at him, and Damon could feel his father once again trying to exert alpha dominance over him. The effort was stronger than before, but still much weaker than Verne's usual iron-willed strength. Damon steeled himself, letting it skate over him and fall away.
He tried to make it look as if it had cost him nothing. In fact, he found it difficult, and had to fight not to show the nervousness he felt. If his father healed up and then made a serious effort to regain leadership of the pack, Damon was not at all sure he could beat him.
Which meant he had to use every ounce of intelligence and cunning he possessed to make sure that never happened.
"Just listen, Dad. I haven't explained what you get out of it yet. This way, you save face."
"By losing to a weakling like you," Verne sneered.
"No, by retiring gracefully from pack leadership while you still have a lot of retirement years to look forward to. There's no shame in being injured and passing the alpha torch to someone else. Others have done it before. It's an out, Dad, and it's a good one. Take the opportunity to go travel the world with Mom, or grow a flower garden, or whatever you've always wanted to do. And leave the pack to me."
"You are in no place to make ultimatums to me—"
"As the pack alpha, it is my place. Otherwise, we'll fight until one of us is killed. And I'm going to make sure it isn't me. I have too much to live for."
Julie's support brushed, feather-light, against the corner of his mind where she had come to dwell. She might not know exactly what was going on, but she could tell he was upset and moved instinctively to comfort him.
Verne stared at him and said nothing. In the silence, someone tapped lightly at the door.
Damon stood up. His father's will reached out to try to make him sit back down, but this time, he didn't let it slide gently off a mental wall. Instead, he slapped it back as hard as he could. Verne jerked all over, his legs spasming under the blankets.
"Take the chance I'm offering you," Damon said. "After everything you've done to this family, it's a lot more than some people would have offered." Raising his voice, he called, "C'mon in."
The door opened to spill people into the room, Mrs. Wolfe foremost among them. She went to her mate's side, offering Damon a quick hug along the way. Then Julie ran to him and flung her arms around him.
"Hey," he murmured, burying his face in her hair. The sweet scent of her, clean as a summer field, filled his lungs and swept at least some of his pain away. "Nobody's taken a bite out of you yet, I see."
"They're all being very polite, after Grandma read them the riot act," she said into his shoulder. "Let's go outside and talk about it."
She led him down the stairs—her siblings and Vanessa looked up from the living room sofas, where they seemed to be talking—and out onto the porch. Here, at least, they could be something like alone. Julie sat on the porch glider and pulled Damon down with her.
"Are you all right?" she asked.
"I'm okay. I mean, I will be, I guess."
His hands were shaking. He hadn't realized the encounter with his father had thrown him off so badly until now. Julie took his hands in hers, warming them.
"Your face looks okay," she said, tilting her head to the side so she could see it better.
"It's bandaged. You can't see anything."
"I want to see it anyway."
Damon reluctantly turned his head. "Gray says Renner bit off part of my ear."
"Oh, ew."
"Yeah, that was my reaction."
Julie leaned into him, laying her head on his shoulder. "Do you think he'll stay gone?"
"I hope so. Wolves respect others' territories. If he comes back after being told to leave, we have a right to kill him, and none of the other packs will contest it."
Julie laughed, then realized he was serious. "That's ... uh. Would you?"
Damon's grip tightened on her hand. "To protect you, and any cubs we might have? In a heartbeat. But I really don't want to."
"Me neither." Julie rubbed her thumb across the back of his hand, slowly and rhythmically, in time with their gentle swaying on the glider. "Wow. Kids. Everything has happened so fast ... I guess that's a possibility, isn't it?"
"Hopefully more than a possibility. If you want to, of course," he corrected hastily.
"Oh, I do." She laughed softly against his shoulder. "Ava and I used to make lists of baby names in the corners of our school notebooks."
"What name did you like best?"
"You'll laugh," she said.
"Promise I won't."
"Persephone. For a girl, I mean. I didn't have any good boy ones picked out."
He didn't laugh, but he did smile. "Do I want to know why?"
>
"Why no boy names?"
"No, why Persephone."
"I don't know. I just liked the myth, how she went into the kingdom of her enemy even though her mother told her not to, and found a solution that didn't make her choose between her family and the man she loved."
Damon put his arm around her, and snugged her more securely against his side. "As romantic and unsubtly metaphorical as that version is, wasn't it more like Hades molested and kidnapped her?"
"Hush. That's one interpretation of the myth. I prefer to think that Persephone knew what she wanted and went for it. She didn't have to keep going back, after all. There were all kinds of loopholes in those old myths. She could've looked for a way out if she really wanted to."
"No she couldn't, because the whole point of the myth was to explain the seasons, and if Persephone stopped going down to the underworld, they would've had summer all the time."
Julie poked his arm. "Actually, Pedantic Lad, if you must go there, the rainy, fertile season in the Mediterranean is the winter, so Persephone was aboveground during the winter and went back to Hades' land in the summer. It would have rained all the time otherwise."
"I see you studied the classics, Miss Capshaw. I don't know if I hold with all this book-larnin' in a wife."
"Ha. I'd like to point out you knew exactly which myth I was talking about." They rocked in silence for a few minutes, then Julie said, "What do you plan to do now, anyway? Do you want to go to college? You're smart. You could."
"I don't know. I'll be pretty busy for awhile, with the alpha thing." He raised his head and looked down at her. "Assuming we don't have to go on the run or anything."
"What? ... Oh, no, I think our families are both coming around. Actually, since they haven't come out yet, I guess they're still talking things over in there. Peacefully, I hope."
"No sounds of snarling," he agreed.
"Or furious bleating."
The front door opened on this last part; Terry wandered out onto the porch, with Vanessa and Ava in his wake. "Yeah," Terry said, "it seems like Mom and Dad are feeling pretty sheepish right now."
Julie scowled at his unrepentant smirk. "Did you just ..."
"I think Mom and Dad will be okay, as long as no one tries to pull the wool over their eyes," Ava said.
Terry's grin broadened.
Face perfectly serious, but eyes dancing with mirth, Vanessa put in, "I think we can manage to keep the wolf from their door."
"Well, you have to admit I'm a good catch," Damon said. The others looked expectant, and he went on, "At least I'm not the black sheep of the family."
"You too? I'm betrayed. Betrayed." Julie hid her face in his shoulder. "Someone tell me when it's over so I can come out."
"You can trust me not to go crying wolf about it," Damon promised.
"I don't know," Terry told the girls. "He looks like a wolf in sheep's clothing to me."
In a muffled voice, Julie reported, "I hate you all."
15. Julie
"Here's the last of the lettuce, the early basil and ... whatever is in this bag, I can't tell," Julie said, bustling into the Primrose Farms booth with her arms laden.
"Catmint and lemonbalm," her mother said, sweeping her burdens away from her.
"Yum," Julie said. She leaned a hip against the side of the stall. "Want me to watch the till for awhile?"
"No need, honey. Your dad and Terry are coming down in a little while. I have all the help I can use today."
Julie frowned at her mother suspiciously. "You don't have another errand for me to run, or a delivery to take out, or a shipment of fertilizer to pick up ..."
"No," her mother said. "In fact, I think your ride's here."
At that point the mate bond, which Julie had come to conceptualize as a soft warmth centered just behind her ears, flared into the full-strength version that always came with physical contact with Damon—an instant before he swept her up from behind. Julie squeaked in surprise as she was lifted off the ground. Leather creaked; Damon was wearing his motorcycle jacket.
"I wasn't expecting to sneak up on you," he said into her ear. "I thought you'd know I was here."
"I wasn't paying attention." She squirmed until he put her down, but he kept her in the circle of his arms. Julie twisted around to kiss him. He smelled like leather and road dust. "Out riding?"
"Out picking you up, if the boss can spare you." He smiled at Mrs. Capshaw.
Her returning smile was a little strained, but warm enough. "Julie's free for the rest of the day. I'd say have her back before dark, but I guess that's not an issue anymore."
"No curfew?" Julie asked. "I'm shocked."
"Well, as a few people have pointed out to me lately, my own mother in particular ... you're not a little girl anymore."
They walked away from the Capshaw stall, hand in hand. The market was starting to feel familiar again, in a present-day way rather than a nostalgia sort of way. All its new twists and turns, the new booths replacing the old, were becoming part of her adult landscape. Julie waved to Mindy Nguyen, who looked from Julie to Damon in his motorcycle leathers and gave her a thumbs-up.
Out in the parking lot, the weather was gorgeous, with a cloud-flecked blue sky and a light breeze knocking the heat down. Damon sat sidesaddle on his motorcycle and handed Julie a helmet and a smaller jacket. "Want to learn to drive one of these things?"
"Not today," she said. "Today I think I'd like to ride."
"Rain check, then."
"Absolutely." She climbed on behind him, and snugged her arms around his waist. "Where are we going? Anyplace specific?"
"Actually, I do have a destination in mind, but it's a surprise."
"Ooh, I love surprises." She snuggled against his back. "If they're good surprises."
"I think it is." He sounded oddly hesitant. "I hope you like it."
"I'm sure I will," she said, and backed it up through the mate bond.
She hadn't seen much of Damon in the past couple of weeks. He now had carte blanche to come over to the Capshaw farm, but despite their driving desire to be together, Julie was pretty sure both of them had had the same thought about not moving too quickly and letting their families adjust to the new status quo before they went galloping forward with the relationship.
With fast shifter healing, the bandage was already off the side of his head. There was a twisting scar along his cheek and, as he'd warned, a notch taken out of his ear. Julie thought it was a good badge of victory and had told him so.
Now, as they pulled out of the parking lot under the cornflower sky, she couldn't imagine how she could possibly be happier, or anywhere else she'd rather be. The motorcycle throbbed between her legs, and Damon's muscular torso shifted in her grasp as he steered the powerful machine.
With their bodies pressed together, the mate bond was as open as it had been in the first hours of their union. She felt his exhilaration and delight, indistinguishable from her own, and the subtle movements of his body as he guided the bike were hers as well.
They took a circuitous route down several county roads before looping back into town from a different direction. Damon pulled up the bike in front of a little house on a street of little houses, and killed the engine.
Julie took off the helmet and finger-combed her hair back into place. "That was great."
"I hoped you'd like it." Damon's grin was brilliant as the sun. "I really just had to go across town, but I figured I'd give you a longer ride."
"I appreciate it." She swung her leg over the bike seat and hopped down to the gravel driveway. "What are we doing here? I don't think I know anyone who lives here."
"Actually ... you do." Damon took her hand.
He was fighting to suppress something through the mate bond. She could tell that he was, but not what it was. So, hand in hand with him, she walked around the lone car in the driveway—a Toyota that looked suspiciously like Ava's—and up to the door of the house.
It was the kind of small house on a rela
tively large plot of land that tend to be scattered on the outskirts of farming towns. Trees screened it from the neighbors on both sides, and she could see just enough of the backyard to tell that it was long and had a garden at the far end.
The house itself was of relatively recent construction—not an old farmhouse, but a tiny little town house with beige vinyl siding. It was small enough that it was probably only one bedroom, two at the most. The lawn in both the front and back yards had been freshly mowed—it looked as if it had been somewhat overgrown beforehand—and there were a few lonely, bloomed-out tulips in an otherwise weedy flowerbed along the front side of the house.
As Julie was opening her mouth to ask, again, why they were here, the screen door slammed open and Ava came marching out. "Well!" she said, planting her hands on her hips. Her sleeves were rolled up and she had a kerchief tied around her fine blond hair. "It's about time! What did you do, go by way of Syracuse?"
"Hello to you too," Damon said. "Where's Vanessa?"
"Up on a ladder in the backyard, picking baby trees out of the gutter. Baby trees! Exactly how much of a maintenance nightmare is this house going to be, my dear soon-to-be brother-in-law?"
"Not much of one, I hope," Damon said. To Julie, he added, "This is an income property that one of my mom's cousins owns. There used to be tenants here, but it's been vacant for a few months. She didn't have any problem renting it out to someone new, especially someone she didn't have to do a background check on."
"Renting it to who?" Julie asked. She felt a little slow. There were undercurrents going on around her that she seemed to be missing.
"What do you mean, to who?" Ava said. She frowned at Damon. "Did you seriously not tell her?"
"I wanted it to be a surprise," Damon said plaintively. "Julie, uh ... this is our house. The rental agreement is in my name right now, but I'll have you put on it as soon as possible."
"It's ... ours?" Julie asked. She felt blank.
Damon got down on one knee, as if he was proposing, and took her hand.
"Julie, I told you when all of this started that I wanted to offer you a house and a home, instead of stolen moments in a hayloft or our parents' houses." He looked up at her, his eyes soft and sincere. "And ... here it is. I know it's not much—and you may not even like it .... Julie, please say something."
