by Amy Green
“I’m not,” Heath said in a low voice.
Brody looked at him. “You vote to kill him?”
Heath’s gray eyes were fixed on his half brother, his alpha, without wavering. “Say the word,” he said, sending a chill up Tessa’s spine.
Brody nodded. “I vote we keep him alive and put him in the jail.” He turned to Ian. “You’re the deciding vote, brother. What do you say?”
Ian opened his mouth, but he never got a chance to answer, because a voice said, “I don’t recommend you kill him.”
They turned. A man stood at the top of the stairs. He was in his late forties, tall, elegantly handsome, wearing a simple but expensive dress shirt, open at the throat, and dark dress pants. His hair was a distinctive light blond color that Tessa knew very well, because she saw it in the mirror every morning.
Leaning against the man, his arm slung over the man’s shoulder, was Devon Donovan, his body sagging, his head drooping. Tessa couldn’t see his face. Blood pooled on the floor by Devon’s feet. Despite Devon’s size, his huge bulk, and the heavy way he leaned on the older man, the blond man held him up with barely an effort.
He unwrapped Devon’s arm from his shoulders and let Devon fall. Devon crumpled to the ground, his eyes closed, his chest heaving shallowly.
“Here’s your foolish wolf,” Christian Martell said. “This is what the Silverman does when he hunts. And if you don’t give me my son back, I’ll have him kill the rest of you.”
25
Tessa had done it. She’d actually done it. She’d walked right into the theater, faced down Xander Martell and his crew, and kept them arguing and distracted long enough for the cops to surround the building and the three of them to get inside.
She’d almost been assaulted, killed. That was Martell’s work, disregarding the most basic rule of shifter life and putting his hands on another wolf’s mate.
It made Heath very, very angry.
Almost as angry as he felt looking at Christian Martell, standing at the top of the stairs with Devon at his feet.
Devon was alive. Heath knew that much. He could see his half brother breathing, and besides, if Devon were to die, Heath’s senses would pick it up. It was what happened to wolves when someone of their blood died. The night Charlie died in his bed, Heath had woken in his own bed three floors away.
So Devon was alive. But for how long?
Heath pressed on Xander’s neck and gave it a hint of a twist. “Give me one reason I shouldn’t snap his neck right now,” he said to Christian, trying to keep the red hot fury from his voice.
Martell looked at him for a long moment. His gaze was assessing, and in an instant Heath knew he was dealing with a powerful alpha, a man with a thousand times the strength and smarts of his son, a man who made decisions and took lives without a second thought. It was this man’s blood that was in his Tessa’s veins.
“If you kill him,” Martell said clearly, “I will kill Devon here. Perhaps all of you will then kill me; it’s likely you’ll do your best to try. If that happens, the Silverman has instructions to hunt the three of you down and kill you, no matter how long it takes.” He paused. “I don’t need to add that the Silverman is hoping for that outcome. He’s already come close to killing you, Heath Donovan. He takes it as a challenge to finish the job. And with you dead, where will my daughter be?”
Heath felt Xander twitch in his grip. He was silent. He actually felt a twinge of sympathy for Xander, growing up under a father like this. For a second, he could actually see why Xander wanted to get away.
“So, you decide,” Christian Martell said calmly. “How much death and bloodshed do you want?”
Heath looked at Tessa. Her back was still pressed against the door of the projection room. Her gaze was fixed on her father, but when she sensed Heath looking at her, she turned to him. He looked straight into her eyes.
He was furious. His wolf was furious. He’d heard Xander’s words: Now that you’re Donovan’s piece, I’m going to keep you alive long enough to teach him a lesson not to fuck with me. He’d never heard words in his life that made him this angry. Xander had touched her. But this wasn’t his decision to make.
“You want me to kill him?” he asked Tessa.
She didn’t even flinch, but held his gaze. “It isn’t worth it,” she said. “So no.”
Heath gritted his teeth and loosened his grip on Xander. Then he turned to Brody. “Well, alpha?”
“We don’t kill him,” Brody said. His jaw was set, his expression grim. He turned to Christian. “We never looked for war,” he said, “so you get your worthless son back. But you take him back to California, and you fix this shit. If we ever see him in our territory again, all bets are off.”
Christian smiled, but he was watching Brody closely. “Ah, the new Donovan alpha,” he teased. “A boy in his father’s shoes. Are you negotiating with me?”
“Shut up,” Brody said. “And call off your Silverman. That’s part of the deal.”
The other man shrugged. “I can call off this particular hunt,” he said, “and offer to take him back on my payroll. But in the end, the Silverman answers to no one. If he decides to kill you on his own, that isn’t on me.”
“Then kill him,” Brody said.
Martell laughed softly. “I have no intention of trying such a suicide mission. But you can attempt it if you like.”
“These men,” Brody said, looking at the men Xander had brought with him, not rising to Martell’s bait. “If they want to stay, they stay. No retribution.”
“If you’re so desperate you’ll take my disloyal charity cases, then you’re welcome to them,” Martell said. “Are we done?”
Brody looked the other alpha in the eye for a long time, and something passed between the two shifters, alpha to alpha. Heath felt his shoulders tense.
“One final thing,” Brody said at last. “Tessa isn’t yours. She’s ours.”
Martell shook his head. “She’s my blood, Donovan.”
“She’s one of our pack. Heath’s blood. Our blood.”
“She’s my heir.”
Heath had heard enough. He hauled Xander Martell to his feet and pushed him forward, shoving him at his father. “This is your heir,” he said. “Take him and get the fuck out of here.”
“Dad,” Xander said.
“Shut up,” Christian said to his son. He grabbed Xander’s arm and jerked him close. Then he glared at Heath, his eyes cold with a hate that gave even Heath pause. “Did you enjoy putting your hands on my daughter, Donovan?”
“Funny,” Heath said, motioning to Xander. “You didn’t want your daughter until this shitbag tried to kill her. Whereas I’ve wanted her a long time.”
“She is not yours,” Christian said. “She’s alpha blood, not the mate of a worthless waste of time like you. You think you can give her what she wants? What she deserves? You?”
“You’re too late,” Heath said, swallowing the sting of those words. “It’s already done. She’s mine now. She hasn’t been yours since the day you decided to abandon her.”
“Hey.” Tessa’s voice cut through the tension in the air. She walked up between the two men. “I’m right here, you know.” She turned and looked at her father. “What is it you want from me? Just lay it out.”
Martell looked at her with those cold eyes, but she didn’t flinch away. She looked right back. Finally he said, “Come back to California with me.”
There was a second of silence. And another. And then another.
And Heath realized something that terrified him. Tessa had a choice.
All of their planning, their scheming, was for nothing. She could walk away, go to California, learn how to run her father’s pack. Become his heir. Maybe, someday, become the first female alpha the shifter world had ever seen. It was unheard of for a human to become the alpha of a wolf pack, but if anyone could do it, Heath was starting to believe that Tessa could.
She could have all of that. Martell’s pack had territory
, real estate, a lot of money. Prestige. She could be a leader. She’d have to make hard decisions that would make her tough and cold and lifeless like her father, but she was his blood. She could do that if she wanted. It didn’t matter that she’d mated with him. She could still walk away, and he’d never see her again.
He’d also never have another woman. He wouldn’t want one.
She could walk away and destroy him, as cleanly as if she’d dismantled his blood and bones. If she did it, he’d be done.
In those seconds of silence, Heath saw all of that, and he knew that nothing he could do would change her decision. He’d already given her everything he had to give—his body, his fidelity, his devotion, his promise to build her a life. He’d taken the bag of money that was all that was left of his home and his business and laid it at her feet. As far as material things went, that was all he had to give her—a borrowed house and a grocery bag of money. He had a pack that was trying to stitch itself together and a town that still had a strip club and a porn theater. A couple of grumpy wolves as his half-brothers who were trying to keep some semblance of order. A flawed legacy from their shit father, who might have been murdered. Heath was damaged and weighed down by a lifetime of mistakes, and their mating had been an act of strategy. That was what he had to offer her.
That was all.
He looked at Tessa, facing down her father. They had the same hair, almost the same profile. Christian was a killer, but she showed not a flicker of fear.
Don’t, he thought. Tessa, don’t.
But she wasn’t asking his opinion.
The silence stretched out for another second, and another. Then Tessa blinked, and her lip curled in a familiar way Heath had seen a thousand times, when someone at the Black Wolf said something asinine. “Are you nuts?” she said to the alpha of the California Martell pack. “I’m not going anywhere with you. I’m Heath’s mate, you idiot.”
Heath felt something warm rush up the back of his neck. His hands tingled. He couldn’t move.
“Tessa,” Martell said.
“I was a piece of garbage to be thrown away,” Tessa said, “until your son disappointed you. Now I’m supposed to be happy just because you’ve decided I’m better than nothing?”
“And you think your mating with Donovan was a love match?” Martell shot back. “That it wasn’t just a cold-blooded move in the chess game? You’re deluding yourself.”
One of her eyebrows went up, that sass that hit him right in the gut. “Oh, my God. Are you serious? Were you there? Oh, wait—no, you weren’t. How about you just fuck right off?”
From the corner of his eye, Heath saw one of the other shifters’ jaw drop in shock.
But Martell didn’t drop his gaze. “You could be more, Tessa,” he said.
“I don’t want to be you,” Tessa returned. “News flash. No one wants to be you.” She lifted her chin. “Brody is right. Take him”—she gestured at Xander in disgust—“and go back to California. Leave your other guys. And the Silverman can go fuck himself. I’m staying. We’re done.”
Heath had to tear his gaze away to keep from smiling.
He’d worked with Tessa for nine months. No one messed with her. Not him, not anyone. And after everything that had happened, it had come down to his pack and his beautiful, blonde, unbreakable, utterly fearless mate.
And they’d won.
26
Two months later
The climb was steep, and it was still so early the sky had barely lightened with dawn. Tessa hefted the bag slung over her shoulder and made her way through the near-darkness, through a path in the woods she’d taken before.
As she climbed, she could see through the trees the quiet lights of Shifter Falls behind her. This time of morning, when the town was still asleep and the light was soft, the place was almost beautiful. The purple mountains surrounding it, covered in thick trees beneath the summer sky, were the most gorgeous thing Tessa had ever seen. She never tired of the scenery here, which was part of why she never wanted to leave.
The other part was going to be meeting her in the clearing up ahead.
Her mate had been out on night patrol. It was part of his job, and he rotated it with his brothers and the other members of his pack, but it still meant that once a week he turned into his wolf and roamed the woods surrounding the Falls all night, leaving her to sleep alone. It was by far her least favorite part of being mated to him. She worried about him all night every time he went. And she hated sleeping alone.
Funny that she should hate it so much after so many years alone. Until Heath, she’d assumed there was no other way to sleep. But without his big, warm, muscled body curled up next to hers, she never slept right anymore.
Her sandals made soft footfalls on the forest floor, which was thick with old pine needles. It was August, a hot, beautiful summer, and even before dawn the air was sweet, with the promise of warmth. Tessa inhaled deeply, pushing harder into the climbing path. She was wearing a jersey dress, the breeze light on her legs.
Amazingly, they’d had two months of peace in the Falls. Christian Martell had been as good as his word—so far—and taken Xander back to California. The six other members of the Martell pack had stayed, and they’d been an unexpected benefit to the Donovan pack. One was an engineer; another had worked farms all over Northern California and knew a lot about growing crops. Tyler had joined Ian’s program for young shifters, and Andrew, the bearded guy, wanted to help with the running of the pack. They were ambitious and smart, and had been given no place in Christian Martell’s pack, promised no future except as pack soldiers. Given work and opportunity, they all seemed content to make new lives in Colorado.
Finally, Tessa reached the clearing. It was a small, open space in a circle of trees, the sky’s dark velvet visible overhead. There was no one around for miles, no sound but the call of a bird and the wind in the trees. This was the compromise she’d won in return for agreeing to Heath’s nighttime work: she met him here, at dawn, alone, when his watch was over. It was better than sitting at home, waiting for him to appear. It wasn’t like she was sleeping anyway.
She dropped her bag in the soft grass and kicked off her sandals. She rifled through the bag, pulling out a bottle of water. When she’d had a drink she pulled out a blanket and unrolled it. Crickets sang softly as she worked.
Heath’s shifts had been more frequent because Devon had been unable to patrol. When the dust had settled and Christian Martell had left the Sky Hi Theater, it was found that Devon had been shot three times in the left leg, one of the silver bullets lodging nearly in his hip. Bones were broken, and like with Heath, the healing had been slow. Devon had clung to life, his powerful werewolf body healing as fast as it could, but the silver bullets had done permanent damage.
Devon had been crippled for a time. It had sent him into a black depression he had only recently begun to crawl out of. Now he had started patrolling again—slowly, tentatively, but he insisted on it—and he was returning to normal. But he was thinner than he had been, his mood even darker, and he walked with a limp in his left leg that would never entirely go away. He would never be the same Devon Donovan again.
For as much as they argued, the other three Donovans had been relentless in their care for their brother. Brody had taken Devon in to his house, assigning pack members to nurse and check on him every day. Ian and Anna had spent hours with him, taking God knew how much abuse as Devon reluctantly healed and came to terms with his injuries. Tessa had cooked him food, and even Heath had spent time with him, helping him out of bed when he first started to walk.
Heath had also searched for the Silverman. He’d claimed, even to Tessa, that it was for the purpose of settling his own score with the mysterious hunter, but Tessa knew better. Heath was looking for the Silverman to avenge his brother. But the trail was cold. There was no sign of the Silverman in Colorado, nor any sign that he’d gone back to California. Tessa had even swallowed her disgust and contacted her father, but he’d replied t
hat he had no idea where the Silverman was. Whether Christian Martell was lying, she had no idea, but her gut told her that just this once he wasn’t.
And so, with revenge impossible and a period of uninterrupted peace, Heath had turned his attention to building Tessa another bar.
Tessa had picked out a bar, four blocks down Howell Street, that the owner wanted to sell. While the burned building that had housed the Black Wolf was demolished, Heath had taken his bag of money and bought the place. This one, he said, was Tessa’s. Her days of being his employee were over. She was the boss now.
It was the best gift anyone had ever given her. Ever.
She’d had the place cleaned and remodeled, making it look just like she wanted. She redid the bar menu and got the modest kitchen up and running, serving a limited menu of inexpensive snacks. She’d named it the Burned Wolf, in honor of the bar where she had first met her mate. The night before the place opened, she’d brought Heath and showed him everything she’d done. He’d said it was incredible. Then they’d christened the bar in proper style. There was a spot on the polished wood, right next to the whiskey bottles, where he’d given her an orgasm that had nearly made her scream. There were very good reasons she was crazy about her lover wolf.
The Burned Wolf had been open for a week, and business had been good from day one. The shifters had come, of course. But there had even been some human customers, brought in by curiosity. It helped that Heath spent a lot of time behind the bar, talking to customers and being gorgeous and running his network as he had done before.
Since he was no longer the boss, he just worked the bar, pulling drinks like Tessa once had, unconcerned about his demotion to bartender. It was not lost on Tessa that most of her human customers so far were women, gawking at her handsome wolf, pouring drinks in his well-worn jeans and sexy t-shirts, his usual bracelets and rings on his hands, telling stories in his easy, charming drawl, smiling from his dark-lashed gray eyes. He was the best eye candy in town. But since he was merely friendly to his women customers and no longer a flirt, Tessa would reluctantly put up with it if it meant higher profits.
