That was it.
That was what he was meant to do. It wasn’t a matter of full on protecting her the way she didn’t want it, but at least backing her up, and making sure she made the best decisions while fighting for her cause. He wasn’t supposed to do everything in his power to keep her out of trouble; his duty was to make sure she made it home every night despite the trouble her movement got her into.
A good mate didn’t hinder his love from chasing her goals; he made them easier to achieve. It was so obvious to him now, he felt so foolish for not having understood the balance of it sooner.
As he caught her gaze once more, he looked into those shining blue eyes that he loved so much and vowed to do just that.
The blush that dusted her cheeks in response was merely a bonus.
Chapter Twelve
Emily watched as everyone discussed in small bubbles how to best the Northern Wind pack. She’d just finished her own conversation with Savannah, which had nothing to do with the impending war, but all the same, it made her eager to settle back down at the farm and work on her future with Adam.
Just recalling the tale that she’d regaled Savannah with only moments before, set her cheeks to burning as she remembered the pressure of Adam’s lips on hers. It wasn’t a feeling she’d soon forget, and she hoped she’d never have to.
As if her thoughts had conjured him from thin air, a light tap on Emily’s shoulder pulled her attention out of her deep thoughts and heady memories. She already knew it was he.
Turning with a smile, she took in his easy-going, lopsided grin, the one that always turned her stomach into quivering a mess. “Long time, no see,” she quipped, feigning nonchalance.
Adam laughed. “Far too long” he agreed. “Which is why I was wondering if you might want to step outside for a moment?” He swiveled his gaze toward the door briefly. “Now that this enemy pack is finally making their move, who kn0ws when the next time we’ll be able to talk so freely will be?” He turned to where his father, Nick, and Tom were all deep in what appeared to be a serious conversation. “I imagine things are about to start getting really busy,” he predicted.
Emily nodded. She couldn’t agree more.
Thinking back to what could have happened when they stood downwind spying on who was now known to be Dominic Winters—the bear with a habit of murdering humans—a shiver of emotion quaked across Emily’s body. It wasn’t entirely good and it wasn’t entirely bad; it was so much more complicated that Emily didn’t really know how to classify it. She just knew that afterwards, she’d been filled with such a renewed purpose to help out the humans and shifters of this town that there was no turning back. Something had changed in Adam’s eyes as well, and when she’d stolen glances with him during the meeting, she was sure that he’d come to a similar conclusion.
“Sure,” she finally answered. “I agree that Nick’s probably going to expect a whole bunch from all of us now that the threat has arrived.” She leaned in slowly, lowering her voice to a whisper. “Plus I think we both agree that we really need to exercise a bit more discipline when on the job,” she finished.
Adam nodded his head in total agreement. It appeared that they both had it settled; allowing their feelings to distract one another from the job was a bad idea.
"Well, I'll be outside when you're ready to talk," Adam restated, tossing Emily a final smile. “Step into the woods so it at least feels like we have some time alone.”
The stirrings of thrill tingled lightly in Emily's belly as she watched him go. The thought of him wanting her alone just one more time before they focused solely on the task at hand made her mind drum up all sorts of exciting possibilities. She couldn't wait to see what he had in store for her.
"Hey Em," Kelly called from across the room. "Did you make my brother cry again?"
Emily shook her head, not exactly sure how to continue the conversation with her. Her best friend wasn't exactly in on the fact that they had moved on to something more than friendship.
"Not exactly," Emily replied. "He just wanted to step outside of all the chatter so that we could discuss some patrol tactics and maybe get around to providing everyone with information faster than we did this morning." She nodded once too many times. "That's it," she added unnecessarily.
Kelly looked mildly confused but decided to let it go. "Oh, whatever," she waved it away, already moving on to something different. "I need your help."
"With what?" Emily asked without hesitation.
"I need you to convince my hardheaded dad that I need to get in on the fight," she said grumpily. "Despite the heat really starting to turn up, he still won't budge!"
Emily sighed inwardly, already knowing that this conversation wasn't going to go well. "If he won't listen to his own daughter, what makes you think he’ll listen to me?"
Kelly shrugged. "I don't know," she admitted. "Honestly, I think he just likes you more."
Emily chuckled. "That's hardly true, Kells."
Kelly scowled. "Then you're obviously not seeing what I see."
Emily gave her best friend an encouraging pat on the shoulder. "If it truly comes down to it, he'll come around. I guarantee it," Emily assured. "But you just have to give it time. In the meantime, you have to show David that you're capable of doing all of the things he won't let you do." She grinned. "It worked for me."
That familiar look of confusion crossed Kelly's face again. "Not exactly how it went down," Kelly recalled.
Emily cleared her throat slightly, realizing the mix up too late. "Oh, right. I didn't mean with David," she amended. "Adam and I have had a lot of time to talk on our patrols and he expressed a bit of worry about having me so close to the front lines." She shrugged, feigning indifference. "But now he understands that that's where I'm meant to be."
Kelly gave Emily the full brunt of her suspicious glare, and Emily had trouble not to squirm beneath it. The last thing she needed was for other people to start learning about their budding relationship so soon. "Adam's not really the over protective type," Kelly surmised. "That's more my dad's thing."
Emily nodded, responding with total honesty. "That's what I thought, too," she agreed. "Until all of this stuff happened with Forest Haven. Then he let on to some feelings that I hadn't ever noticed in him before." She flinched internally, noticing how eerily close she was to hinting their secret. She tried to keep a straight face as Kelly chewed on the inside of her cheek.
Finally, Kelly grinned wickedly. "Maybe he has a crush on you?"
Emily physically backpedaled with a dizzying expression populating her features. "What would make you say that?" she asked too quickly.
Thinking, Kelly shrugged again. "I don't know," she admitted, her nose wrinkling a bit. "Now that you mention it, it does feel kind of gross to say it out loud." She tossed Emily a rueful smile. "No offense."
Emily laughed to hide her nerves. "None taken."
Her face relaxed into the sympathetic lines. "Look, Kells. The point is, no matter how much I beg and plead your father, it won't help." Her voice was soft but encouraging as she spoke to Kelly, trying her best to ignore the way her best friend's face fell at the impending rejection. "He has to see that change in you. Until then, his answer toward you putting yourself in harm's way will always be no."
Kelly face contorted into a scowl. “That’s easy to say from your position!” she retorted bitterly. “Let me tell you, it's hard to make a difference when all you're doing is painting walls.”
Emily balked slightly at the mild outburst. “It was never my say to begin with, Kelly,” she said. “I'm only trying to help, like you asked.”
“Fat lot of good that's doing me right now,” Kelly replied. “Usually you'd be game to help me do anything, but now all of a sudden you’re siding with my dad?”
Emily shook her head. “I'm not siding with anyone. I'm just trying to do the best thing for everyone here.”
"Oh, great, so you think I need your protection too?" Kelly accused.
"No not my protection," Emily denied. "Just my guidance, which I always try to give you in the best possible way. That hasn't ever changed. You have talked to your father more than enough and he hasn't changed his mind. Me saying something won't change it either. Adam saying something won't change it. You doing something might."
"That's a load of bullshit and you know it," Kelly bit, a little too loudly.
"Kelly-Anne!" David chastised from across the room, shooting her a glare that garnered more attention than Emily thought the outburst warranted.
Kelly closed her eyes briefly with a solemn sigh. "Just... Just go outside Emily. Go to your little meeting with my brother." She shot Emily a look before turning away. "It's obvious the last thing you want to do is help me like old times." As she walked away, she called back, "Don’t worry, I'll be much too busy arguing with this old geezer yet again to beg for your help anymore."
Emily almost immediately felt the urge to call her back, to beg for some forgiveness for the way she'd dismissed Kelly's plight. What harm would there have been in just maybe mentioning it once to David? Looking at the way Kelly's shoulders slumped as she walked away, Emily knew she had missed her chance.
With a sad sigh of her own, Emily slipped out of the door without another word.
Mind drowning in worry, she made her way over to the forest's edge, tilting her nose slightly to try and find Adam's scent.
Finding none where she walked, she figured he must've exited on the opposite side of the structure. She decided to stay where she was, appreciating the moment to herself to gather all of the thoughts that were going through her head.
In a matter of moments she'd went from a promising stolen moment with Adam in the woods to having a serious falling out with her best friend. When had her relationships with her second family begun to change so drastically? What had caused it? Was it the change in herself, the willingness to help others that her pack’s support in the turf war had awakened within her? If it was, was that a bad thing? Was it too late to fix things for the better? Things with Adam were finally looking up, but looking back at their time so far in Woodhaven, Emily noticed that she'd slowly but surely been spending less time with Kelly the more time she spent stealing moments like this with Adam.
She'd opted to hide the budding relationship from her best friend, when normally her first reaction would be to tell Kelly everything the moment it happened. Why did that feel like it was such a hard thing to do now? Had they really grown that far apart in such a short time? The realization nearly broke her heart.
To make matters worse, she wasn't sure that she be able to fix this right that moment. She and Adam had already agreed to keep their distractions on the back burner until all the turf war nonsense had blown over, and she was going to abide by that to the best of her ability so that she wasn't a hindrance for the Forest Haven pack like she had been this morning.
Similarly, she felt like she couldn’t allow for her spat with Kelly to get in between her and her duty to the allied pack, either. She sighed; yet another obstruction. It would take some time before she could work on their friendship, but in the end she hoped that Kelly—her best friend—would understand.
With another sigh, Emily turned to make her way towards the forest that neared the other side of the shop, figuring that Adam was probably growing impatient by now. Her feet crunched heavily on the gravel of the shop's parking lot as she walked, the sharper bits of rock jabbing the soles of her feet through her shoes, but she couldn't bring herself to care. The pain almost felt warranted.
She'd hoped that maybe whatever Adam had planned for them would cheer her up a bit before crunch time; she wanted nothing less than a clear head as they prepared for the impending attack.
As she tilted her nose in search of Adam’s scent once more, the office door swung open with a bang.
“Kelly-Anne!” David shouted as Kelly fled out into the cool morning air.
In a fit of irrationality, instead of meeting Kelly's gaze head on, Emily dipped around the corner of the building to hide herself from view. She couldn't see much from her position, but sensing the heaviness of Kelly's footfalls on the ground as she stomped away, Emily could tell that she was fuming.
Already locked into her eavesdropping predicament, Emily squatted low in the shadows as David stormed out behind his daughter in a rage that only an alpha could muster.
Chapter Thirteen
Emily felt herself blanch at the pure fury on David's face. It was very rare that she'd seen him angry in the five years that she'd been living with them, and though Kelly had a tendency to push his buttons he never seemed to let it get to him. Terrifyingly so, this was no longer the case, and for one fearful moment Emily truly wasn't sure what was going to happen next.
“Go away, dad!” Kelly shouted as she moved to the edge of the parking lot. “I don't want to talk to you anymore.”
“I won't tell you again, that's not your call to make,” David replied, strong set of his jaw making his words come out harsh.
“I'm an adult!” Kelly cried. “Why don’t you ever treat me like one?” She crossed her arms, hugging herself close as she turned to face her father. Emily could just make out the raw pain in her expression. Had she been the cause of at least some of that?
"You’ve treated Adam like an adult since he was still a kid," she continued. "You said it was because he was an alpha and a future leader and I accepted that then, but it's no longer enough." She shook her head for emphasis. "You’ve accepted Emily as an adult—you've proven that well enough by letting her make her own decisions while we're here—so why can't you do the same for me?"
"Because Emily is not my daughter!" David roared. "I think of her as one of my own, and I’d like to hope that she thinks of me as a father figure, but at the end of the day, those are simply the facts."
"Emily isn't my daughter," he repeated after a moment of silence. "You are."
“What difference does it make?” Kelly snapped back. “What does blood have to do with my lack of freedom?”
“As blood to the pack you are obligated to stay even when I am gone,” David explained. "As is Adam. But Emily is not. I would love for her to stay; I'm sure we all would, but the truth of the matter is that she can leave at any moment there would be nothing I could say, nothing I could do to stop her.
“Oh, please,” Kelly scoffed with a derisive snort. “Emily is not going anywhere and you know it, old man.”
“Are you so sure about that?” David asked, his voice dripping doubt. “I’m pretty sure I saw you throw a fit at her just earlier before coming over to pester me for a topic we've already discussed a million times, Kelly.”
“So what?” Kelly replied. “Friends fight all the time.”
“I know I'm just an old man to you these days, but I was once a kid, too,” David said. “I know friendships have their fair share of fights, but how many recover when one finds out that her friend is in love with her brother?”
Emily's heart lurched in her chest at the question. David knew? How?
Kelly shook her head automatically. “You don't know what you're talking about,” she said. “It's never been like that between them. If it was, I’d know.”
David let out a dry chuckle. “You keep telling me to treat you like an adult, but you really couldn’t be more naïve. Do you really think that Emily would come to you expressing her love for Adam with expectations for you to welcome her with open arms?”
Kelly nodded without hesitation. “Of course she would. We tell each other everything.”
David only shook his head in disappointment. “Hell, then maybe I'm wrong. Who knows? But you have to ask yourself; though they left the office before us, they’re nowhere to be found. Where could they be right now?” he challenged.
Kelly narrowed her eyes at him "They patrol together, dad. Don't tell me you're getting senile in your old age.” She tried to remain sure of her words but by now even Emily could hear the doubt creeping just behind them.
“Senile. Yeah, that's it,” David replied sarcastically. “Well, I'll just let you believe that it's my old age that keeps me from believing in your deluded truth, daughter. It makes little difference to me.”
Kelly snorted defiantly at her father in response.
Emily saw the surety of Kelly's beliefs on her face and it made guilt churn uncomfortably in her stomach. She thought back to when they were both inside of the office talking and how Kelly had joked that Adam was in love with her. Back then, Emily had been much too cautious to say anything, afraid that mentioning anything between her and Adam would cause a strain on the whole purpose that they were in Woodhaven to begin with. Now she was caught in a swirl of lies she had no idea how to escape; every word she spoke betraying the friendship between herself and Kelly. She didn't know how long she could let it last before their relationship became irreparable. Just the very thought of one day telling her the truth after openly denying it in front of her first twisted her heart with apprehension.
Emily had started this journey searching for herself, her true self. It was the self she’d kept hidden from everyone, so hidden that even she couldn’t find it at first. With a feeling of irony, Emily realized that it was none other than Kelly who'd prompted her to begin this journey of discovery the day that they stepped into the forest in Woodhaven. Within the darkness of the trees, Kelly had spoken of being free and being her own person, the type of person that her father would never allow her to be. In that moment—though Emily didn't know it then—she’d decided that she would find the person that she was always meant to be as well. But at what cost? At the cost of her friends? At the cost of the only family she had left?
She held out hope that in the end she might still have Adam but, would she even be able to stay with the Silent Meadows pack if things fell apart between her and Kelly? She wasn't sure. She knew herself to be a strong bear that would do whatever it took to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves, but she didn't think she had enough strength to see the heartbreak on her friend’s face whenever they crossed paths.
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