Unable to resist the bone-deep need to see my mate, I rolled over to the second figure. Blood smeared the lower half of Isaac’s face and drenched his shirt, but his breathing was even and his pulse strong. The odds were good he would have woken in the next half hour if I hadn’t sat there jabbing him with my finger until his eyelids fluttered.
“Dell?”
“Hey, baby.” I trailed my fingertips down his cheek. “How are you feeling?”
“How much did I drink last night?” He blinked blearily around the storage room, his gaze landing on me and the outline of the borrowed wheelchair. He didn’t get it at first, and his forehead creased as he tried to sort out where he was and what had happened. I saw the moment it all clicked together. The horror rounding his eyes swallowed all the light in the room, and he fell off the table in his urgency to reach me. “Are you…?”
Without going wolf on me, he didn’t have the eyesight to cut through the blackness the way I did. I’d forgotten that until he started running his hands over my body. He counted each finger and each toe—twice—before working his way up to cup my cheeks.
“Abram saved me.” That wasn’t exactly right, so I backtracked. “You both saved me.”
A click announced the flood of harsh light that filled every nook in the room with stinging brightness.
“I flew four hours straight, and this is the thanks I get,” Theo drawled from the doorway.
Until he mentioned it, I had all but forgotten the giant crow and the spark of hope that had urged me to shift when deep down I’d known better than to push my luck.
“Thank you.” I held out my hand to him, and he hesitated like he wasn’t sure what I was offering. “I appreciate you helping to save my bacon.”
“I shouldn’t have tempted you.” A snail could have crossed the room faster than he did. “I saw it in your eyes when I shifted, and I should have shut it down then. I shouldn’t have let my curiosity get away with me.”
Gemini were an acquisitive breed when it came to collecting new aspects. The rarer the better, and it didn’t get harder to come by than genuine goddess blood.
“What happened wasn’t your fault.” Though everyone seemed eager to claim the blame. “No matter how you slice it, it was mine.” Owning that wouldn’t absolve anyone’s guilt but mine, though. “The bottom line is this. Wargs get weird when we’re cut off from our pack. The more dominant the wolf, the greater the struggle, and mine is beta for a reason.” Circumstance was as much to blame as anything or anyone, but I doubted the others had considered that fact. “Prison wrecked me. I couldn’t shift, I couldn’t touch the pack bonds, I couldn’t do anything but pace in that box for weeks on end. Being near Isaac soothed the wolf enough that I could manage in Faerie, but that visit stripped me raw in other ways.”
Drawing Isaac’s attention back to the last time I’d woken up in the clinic was never fun, but it needed doing.
“The time I spent here, recovering from the fall, did me a world of good, but I left again within weeks. Going without the pack bond while I was still recovering was tough, and I like to think we could have completed our mission without issue had the rift not imploded, but it did, and I was too weak to keep fighting against instinct. I’m sorry for that. I felt myself slipping, and I should have reached out, but I kept it quiet until it got away from me.”
Admitting my wolf was gnawing through my guts to get home wouldn’t have shocked them. It hadn’t surprised me either. I hadn’t realized until I got pretzeled, as Enzo so eloquently phrased it, that those had been warning signs of a much larger issue than mere homesickness. I had slipped into a self-destructive headspace where I could justify almost anything in the name of protecting my pack. Abram’s mutterings rang one hundred percent true.
The pack could have lasted the week it would have taken us to get back. There was no need to push myself to the breaking point. I wasn’t so important the others couldn’t function without me. That was the beauty of pack. Sure, we looked to our alphas for guidance, but we also drew comfort and strength from each other.
Lorimar had weathered being alphaless and then betaless and come through in one piece, stronger for the experience. I was the one who had crumbled under the pressure.
When Theo reached me, I lifted my arms, and he lowered himself for the hug I owed him.
“I get the hero complex.” He held me gently for the briefest of moments before retreating to his brother’s side. “We all suffer I can move mountains syndrome from time to time. It’s part of the job description.”
Isaac picked up where he left off, kneeling at my feet. “Taking care of you is our job too.” He gathered my hands in his. “I should have realized you were showing signs of pack sickness and taken you home and then gone after Theo.”
“Theo might not have lived that long.” I linked our fingers. “We made the right call to go after him first.”
“She’s right,” Theo admitted. “I wouldn’t have lasted another week.” He ducked his head. “I owe you both thanks for bailing me out when you did.”
“Can we all agree to blame circumstance instead of each other?” I glanced between the brothers, who wore identical expressions caught somewhere between acceptance that fate had been sucker-punching us for a while now and grief that we still hadn’t managed to save each other from every scrap of pain or fear. “None of us asked for this to happen. None of this ever should have happened, but it did, and all we can do is try to survive it.”
“Very inspirational, sis.” Theo propped his lips up in a smile. “I haven’t known you very long, but even I can tell you’re up to something. Why are you rallying the troops?”
“He’s right.” Isaac couldn’t help his indulgent sigh. “You might as well spit it out.”
In a rush, I outlined the plan that had been forming in my head since one of my first conversations with the Huntsman. When neither laughed at me or dismissed me outright, I knew I was onto something big.
“We need Tiberius,” I said in summation. “We need someone sane on Faerie’s throne.”
“The current king isn’t?” Theo made it sound like a joke. “Is that what you’re implying?”
“I’m implying if this works—” and that was one hell of a big if, “—I don’t think he’ll want to be king anymore. Not if it means leaving his sister behind for good.”
We all let that idea settle around us for a minute, but we didn’t have time to worry about his future when our own hung in the balance.
“The first step is convincing Abram to let me help.” I wiggled my toes against the cool metal of the footrest. “Tibs is hurting. He and I aren’t what I’d call friends, but I like to think we bonded on the road. I can try to make him see reason.”
“What if you can’t?” Isaac asked the question I hadn’t wanted to linger on. “What if he’s past saving?”
Loss plunged even the purest hearts into darkness, and his soul fell in a gray area created by the juxtaposition of being born into wealth and privilege while also loving a woman far beneath him with a ferocity that dared anyone to question whether she was his equal.
“Losing a mate is enough of a sacrifice,” I decided. “We can’t ask him for more than he has left to give.”
Tibs might not be the next King Arthur, but the potential for goodness was there. I’d seen that much with my own eyes, not only in the way he loved her, but in the way he cared for the children she had taken under her wing. But without Leandra acting as his moral compass, he might no longer qualify as the best man for the job.
The only way to know for sure which was the lesser of three evils, counting Rilla and Rook, was to locate and evaluate him before thrusting our support behind him.
But first, I had to convince Abram I was the right woman for the job.
Chapter 13
“No,” Abram said with misplaced cheer as he restocked an emergency med kit. “Not gonna happen.”
I tried again. “Abram—”
“Can you hand me that rol
l of gauze?” He didn’t look up from his work. “I’ve got thirteen more of these first-aid stations to stock before I can get back to the work that matters.”
“I could help,” I offered, eager to worm my way inside his defenses. “Tell me where the other kits are, and I’ll get them topped off so you don’t have to fool with them.”
“You’re not leaving this building until you can do it on your own two legs,” he huffed. “If you think I’m going to permit you to go rolling through a war zone just to save me a few steps, you’re out of your mind.”
Frustration at landing myself right back on light duty bubbled over, and the thin leash on my temper snapped. “Why does it matter so much to you?”
“Do you hear yourself?” he demanded. “That’s why it matters. You don’t value yourself, so some-damn-body’s got to do it for you.”
“There’s more to it than that,” I pressed, desperate to learn why my misadventures cut him so deeply. “Help me understand.”
Abram blasted out a sigh that usually would have signaled retreat, but he only went to the door of the clinic and nudged it closed with the toe of his boot. “Cord put you up to this, didn’t he?”
“He might have implied there was more to the story, yes.”
The healer sat on a box of antiseptic and toyed with the fraying edge of a tape strip. “I had a daughter a long time ago.”
An ice block formed in my chest, encasing my heart, and I wished he hadn’t shut that door, that I had somewhere to run, because this wasn’t going to end well. “Had?”
“Her mother was my soul mate,” he rasped. “She was this long-legged, redheaded goddess of a woman, but she was broken when we met, and me being a doctor didn’t make a damn bit of difference. I couldn’t fix her.”
“I didn’t know you had a mate.” I should have, though. A conversation we’d had months ago tripped through my mind, and it all should have been so much clearer.
“I think all of us have a perfect other half, I just believe that because of our heightened senses or perhaps our animalistic natures, we recognize them faster.”
“And when they don’t recognize us?” I asked, a sharp edge to my voice. “What then?”
His expression grew distant. “Then we give them time and space and pray that one day they might feel the same pull as we do.”
“You’re saying you don’t think it goes away.”
“For wargs?” He shook his head. “No. I don’t think it does.”
He’d all but told me his story, and I’d been too lost in heartache to hear what he was trying to confide.
“We weren’t mates, not in any way she recognized. She was a latent warg, and that was the root of her depression. Her pack was more accepting of the children who were born unable to shift, so she was raised by her parents. That made it worse, seeing what she couldn’t have.”
I hung my head in shared grief, because in so many ways it was a mercy for latent children to be raised human. They might always crave the outdoors or learn to hunt with bow or bullet instead of tooth and claw, but they would also never understand the lack that curled in their guts, and that would keep them sane.
“She got pregnant fast,” he continued. “I was so proud. I knew she didn’t feel the mate bond. I wasn’t sure she would ever acknowledge that one small, wild part of herself. I offered to marry her instead.”
When he got quiet, I shifted in my seat and wished I could cover his hand with mine.
“She ran. Vanished. I thought…” He set his jaw. “Nine months later, a rogue arrived at my clinic, carrying an infant in a car seat. I didn’t have to ask if she was mine. She had her mother’s bright red hair and my eyes.”
“What was her name?” It felt important that someone else should know.
“Mia,” he breathed. “I joined the Chandler pack to keep her safe, to offer her protection, but when she hit puberty and proved to be as latent as her mother, I couldn’t stop her spiral.” He finally dragged his gaze to mine. “Bessemer wouldn’t turn her out. He needed me too much for that. Mia was the only latent of her age allowed to stay, and the others, the ones who had lost sisters and brothers and cousins to the old ways, hated her for being an exception.”
My childhood hadn’t been all kittens and rainbows, but Mia’s wasn’t sounding like a fairy tale either.
“She tried to prove herself.” His voice broke. “Every hunt, every mission, every danger that cropped up, she flung herself at it with open arms. So convinced that this time, it would make a difference. This time, her sacrifice would matter. This time, they would accept her as an equal.”
Unable to leave him alone and hurting, I rolled closer until I could rest my head on his shoulder. “What happened?”
“A rogue was picking off babies. You know how crazy sick, old wolves can get.” He abandoned the tape and held on to me for dear life. “Mia hunted him down. She was a damn fine tracker. He’d taken a kid the day before, and she didn’t realize—because Bessemer hadn’t made it common knowledge—that the rogue was picking off the children with latent genes. Kids unlikely to shift at puberty and become full pack members.”
Bessemer was lucky I couldn’t reach him all the way in Villanow, Georgia, or I would have wrapped my hands around his neck and squeezed until his head popped off. “He wasn’t trying to stop the rogue, was he?”
“No.” A single shake of his head. “The pack was discontent over Mia, and he must have figured the rogue would save him the headache of dealing with parents of the next generation who didn’t want to exile their kids.”
“He let it happen.” I didn’t need confirmation. Saying it felt right. “Knowing Bessemer, there’s a good chance he bribed a crazy wolf with easy snacks.”
The thing about crazies is they fixate. Usually it’s an individualized obsession, but the lure of fresh meat and validation from a powerful alpha might have switched his tendencies just fine.
“When Mia cornered him, she put it all together. She was so pissed, so full of righteous indignation, that she didn’t see the trap before it sprung, and neither did I.”
A fresh surge of blessed numbness swept through my limbs. “Bessemer set her up.”
“He knew what buttons to push, and that rogue was jumping up and down on them. He might not have issued a kill order for my daughter in order to quell a minor rebellion, but he damn sure knew that would be the end result.” A shudder moved through him. “Cord was the one who found her. He killed the rogue and brought her back to me, but it was too late. All I got to tell my baby girl was that I loved her, and then she was gone.”
And me with my red hair and impulsive nature had been tormenting him ever since.
Floating in and out of the Chandler pack the way I had, I hadn’t heard this story. It wasn’t exactly the kind of thing wargs discussed. Plenty of latents vanished in the night, and to spare their family, those names were never mentioned out loud again. Fewer might know the truth than he expected. Mia’s loss explained a lot about why Abram had left the Chandler pack behind and joined with Lorimar. The only thing it didn’t explain was why he hadn’t ripped out Bessemer’s throat on his way out the door.
“I didn’t know” was the lamest sentiment I could express, so of course that was what popped out.
“Not many choose to remember her, and I prefer it that way. They didn’t value her in life, and they have no right to her memory in death.” He straightened and wiped his eyes dry. “It’s not your fault I look at you and see her. You both have the same big heart, that same drive to protect others at any cost, and the same self-destructive tendencies.”
“You forgot the red hair,” I teased when I couldn’t figure out anything else to say.
His shoulder shook on a laugh so quiet I didn’t hear it so much as see it, and that somehow made it worse.
“I want better for you,” he said after a minute. “You have nothing to prove. You are enough. You’ve earned your place here, you’ve earned the loyalty of your pack, the respect of your alph
as, and the love of your mate.”
“Thank you for saying that.” For always saying it, even when I hadn’t wanted to hear.
“You’re not responsible for your mother’s actions. She chose her own path, and when that wasn’t enough punishment, she chased you down the same road.” Tears spiked his lashes. “What I’ve done isn’t any better, saddling you with my baggage. You’re not Mia. I know that.” He tapped his head. “Up here at least.” He placed his hand over his heart. “It’s this guy that gives me fits.”
“I understand.” Momma’s shadow stretched long over all aspects of my life, and the deepest ones I’d begun to suspect might never be banished. “I needed to hear this. Every time you’ve warned me to be more careful, I needed to hear it.”
Slowly, his elegant fingers curled into fists at his sides. “I won’t stop you if you want to go looking for the prince.”
Instead of the rush I expected to feel over an argument won, this victory over a father’s broken heart rang hollow.
“I won’t go alone,” I promised, even knowing it wasn’t enough. “I’ll be smart about it too.” I leaned over and kissed his cheek. “I’ll run my plan past the alphas first, okay?”
“Okay.” He wiped his cheeks with the backs of his hands. “I’ll keep a med kit on standby.”
I had never had a father, and I wouldn’t wreck Abram by making the comparison. Not tonight. Maybe not ever. But I thought that maybe, just maybe, this was what having one must feel like.
I was shoveling in my third helping of beef stroganoff when the door leading into Cord’s office swung open, and Zed claimed the chair across from me. The skin under his eye twitched, but he didn’t snap at me. He sat there, staring, his gaze cataloging every inch of me until his shoulders eased a fraction, and he found his voice.
Over the Moon (Gemini Book 6) Page 12
