by Dena Christy
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Author’s Note
Also by Dena Christy
Having Faith
Dena Christy
Copyright © 2017 by Dena Christy
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover design by Melody Simmons
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Author’s Note
Also by Dena Christy
1
Faith Williams stirred the spaghetti sauce she was preparing for dinner as her eyes darted to the clock. Connor would be home soon, and for the hundredth time since he’d left to go to the park, she wondered if it had been a good idea to let him go. He was finally off his grounding, and there was no reason why she needed to keep him home.
She turned away from the stove and picked up the report card her son had brought home with him today. His marks had slipped this term and his teacher noted that he’d been aggressive toward the other children. Thank God the school year was over now. She could turn her attention to finding out what had made Connor go from a sweet little boy into an aggressive, snarling preteen.
The doorbell rang and a startled noise escaped her as she turned around. She wasn’t expecting anyone, and a tiny trickle of dread skated down her spine to settle in at the small of her back. She shook it off as she turned down the heat on the stove and wiped her hands on a kitchen towel. It was probably someone trying to raise money or selling something. They usually picked close to dinner time for that sort of thing.
She went toward the front door and glanced out the long, narrow window next to the door. Her heart thundered in her ears when she saw the police cruiser parked in her driveway.
Oh God, please let Connor be okay. The park was only a short distance down the street and this was a quiet neighborhood, nothing ever happened here. But she was sure that a lot of parents thought that until something happened to their child. She swayed for a second as her body went cold. Why had she let him go out today?
She yanked open the front door and relief poured through her when she saw her son standing beside the police officer. That relief was short lived when she saw the red mark on her son’s cheekbone and the way he wouldn’t look her in the eyes. He’d been away from the house for thirty minutes. He had just come off his grounding for fighting with one of the other boys at school. Now here he was, in the company of a police officer, after what had to have been another fight.
“Are you hurt?” That was the first thing that she needed to know. If he was hurt, she’d look after that before dealing with the crux of the problem. Connor shook his head, and she blew out a sigh. “Go to the bathroom and clean up for dinner while I talk to the policeman.”
Her son rushed by her and into the house. She looked at the officer and she could see some concern in his eyes as he tracked Connor’s movements into the house. He looked familiar, and although she didn’t know him by name, she was pretty sure that he had a child that went to Connor’s school. She was certain she’d seen him in passing at various school functions.
“Can I come in?” He raised his eyebrows and Faith shook herself. She couldn’t stand there staring at him while her thoughts raced in her head. She needed to know what had happened with her son.
“Of course.” Faith stepped aside and he came into the house. “Why don’t we go sit in the living room and you can tell me what he’s done now.”
She didn’t need him to tell her, since it looked like Connor had been fighting again. She wanted to grind her teeth in frustration. What was wrong with him and why couldn’t he behave himself for more than ten minutes at a time? Did all boys go through this or was there something wrong with her son?
“My daughter is in the same class as your son.” The officer reached out his hand and Faith took it. “I’ve seen you and Connor around the school and I wish I didn’t have to come here like this. Your son was involved in an altercation with a couple of older boys at the park.”
“Is he going to be charged with anything?”
Connor was getting to the age now where his aggressive behavior was going to start carrying legal consequences. Having a police officer bring him home was her worst nightmare. Well, one of them. The other was that he’d end up in the hospital. She held her breath while she waited for him to answer her.
“Not this time. I thought it best if I brought him home, and had a talk with you. Sometimes in cases like this all it takes is coming home with the police to scare a kid into straightening up. You don’t seem at all surprised that he’s been fighting. Does he have a history of aggression?”
Normally she would have said no. Connor wasn’t a perfect angel but he hadn’t been that much trouble for her. He’d been a happy kid since he was little. Now though, he was changing into someone she didn’t recognize. And she was afraid something worse than him coming home with the police was going to happen.
“Until about six months ago I’d have said no. But since he’s started puberty it’s like a switch has gone off inside him and he’s been a different person. This isn’t the first fight he’s gotten into. He was suspended from school for a couple of days for fighting, and he just got finished being grounded for another fight. I’ve taken him to see a counselor and he’s given him some coping strategies but nothing seems to help.”
And it killed her to think that she couldn’t help her son. She’d always been able to provide him with whatever he needed to be happy and healthy. Now she was starting to think that she wasn’t equipped to cope with this. She could feel her son slipping down a bad path and she was desperate for a way to save him.
“Is there a history of this sort of behavior in the family?”
“No. I’m an only child and I wasn’t like this.” She’d taken him to the doctor, to see if the cause of what was happening was physical. Her son was a healthy twelve year old with no physical problems to account for his behavior.
“What about on his father’s side?” The officer looked at her with a question in his eyes as he swept them over the room. If he was looking for evidence of Connor’s dad he wasn’t going to find it.
“I have no idea. He’s not involved with Connor.” His father had left before the sheets have even cooled that night. She’d always told herself that she didn't need him. The policeman must have read something into her stiff posture and the way she pressed her lips together.
“I don’t know what your history is with his father, and frankly it’s none of my business. I can tell you that your son is headed down a dangerous road. The boys he fought with were older and bigger than him, and yet it didn’t stop Connor f
rom picking a fight. It was fortunate for him that I was driving by, otherwise it could have gone a lot worse. If there is anyway that his father could be part of the solution in helping your son, my suggestion is that you make that happen. I’ve seen what can happen to young men whose aggression goes unchecked and they either end up in jail or the morgue. I’d hate to see something like that happen to Connor.”
Faith squeezed her hands together as she looked down at her lap. She took a deep breath and swallowed hard to keep the lump that was forming in her throat from getting any bigger. She was losing control of her son, and something was going to happen to him that she couldn’t stop. She looked up at the policeman and there was no judgment in his eyes. If he’d come in here and blamed her for her son’s behavior, she might have gotten her back up. A tear slipped down her cheek and she swiped it.
“I haven’t seen his father since before he was born, but I can try to find him if that’s what my son needs.” She stood up and turned away. The officer seemed to get the hint that she was finished talking and he put his hand on her arm. She looked up at him, and just wished that she hadn’t let Connor go to the park today. It was pure denial on her part. She couldn’t keep him locked up in the house. Something like this would happen again if he didn’t get help.
“I know this is hard. But your son needs help now while he’s young enough for it to do him some good. I’ll show myself out.” He turned to walk toward the front of the house and Faith sighed when she heard the front door shut behind him.
She pushed all thoughts of Connor’s father out of her head as she walked down the hall toward the bathroom. There had to be some other way to deal with this, something she hadn’t thought of yet.
She opened the bathroom door and Connor was pressing a cold cloth to his cheek. He turned to look at her, and in his eyes she saw the man who fathered him. Connor was a miniature copy of him and maybe that resemblance went deeper than just looks. Was there something in Logan that he’d passed on to his son? Something that was making Connor act out like this?
“Do you want to tell me what happened? The police officer said that you started the fight. Is that true?” One thing that hadn’t changed about her son was his inability to lie to her. She could always tell when he wasn’t being truthful, and her heart ached when his lower lip trembled. He nodded his head and then hung it down in front of him.
“Why, sweetie?” She pulled him to her and closed her eyes as she held him. He was growing bigger every day and even now he was almost as tall as her. But he seemed so small to her right now as he cried on her shoulder.
“I don’t know. I don’t want to fight, but it’s like there is another part of me that takes over. It’s like the littlest thing makes me mad and I can’t stop it from happening. What’s wrong with me, Mom?”
Faith closed her eyes as the tears she’d managed to hold back spilled out of her eyes. She didn’t know what to tell him. She’d always been able to fix any problem he’d brought to her. It had always been her and Connor against the world, but now she didn’t know what to tell him that would make this better.
“I don’t know honey, but there is someone who might.” As she held her crying son against her, she knew that she was going to have to find his father. It was the last thing she wanted to do, but if it helped her son it was worth stirring up the past she’d put behind her.
Logan Sawyer walked into his office at the back of his bar, Sawyer's Place, and slammed the door. Mason, his lieutenant, cousin and best friend, swiveled around in the chair behind the desk with his brows drawn together.
“I take it the meeting with the council didn’t go well?”
“Only a slight understatement.” Logan scrubbed his hand over the scruff of the three day old beard on his chin as he closed his eyes for a second. He wanted to go home, have a hot shower and a run, in that order. But he'd needed to come here first, to check in with Mason who’d been holding down the fort for the few days he’d been out of town.
“Is it what we thought?”
Logan lifted his head and looked his best friend dead in the eye. Getting called to meet with the wolf council was never high on anyone’s list of things they wanted to do. Logan had thought that since he’d only been alpha of the Cold Bay pack for six months, maybe the council had wanted to assess his fitness to lead. If only it had been that simple.
“It’s about ten times worse than we thought.” He searched his mind to find a way to tell the man in front of him what had happened. Parts of it Mason would accept, but it was the part that he wouldn’t that Logan was hesitant to tell him. However, if he kept something like this from his second in command, it would drive a wedge between them.
“Don’t tell me that they won’t accept you as alpha? You won the challenge. Everything was above board, plus you have alpha blood in your veins. What more do they want?” Mason stood with a scowl drawing his brows together and the chair rolled back and hit the book shelf behind it.
“Don’t worry, I’m still alpha, at least for the moment. The council will support my position within the pack, only problem is that there might not be a pack for much longer.” Logan shrugged his broad shoulders back and rolled his neck. The look on Mason’s face told him that the his reaction was about the same as Logan’s had been when he first heard the news.
“What? No longer be a pack? What the hell are they suggesting is going to happen to it?”
“The party line of this new council is that it’s better to have fewer, larger wolf packs. They’ve been working at consolidation. It hasn’t been a problem for packs to the south, since they have more numbers anyway. But for us, since we are up north and our territory is larger with fewer members on it, we don’t have enough to stand on our own. At least according to the council.”
Logan thought that the council needed to pull their heads out of their asses and look at packs individually. Instead they focused on numbers on a spreadsheet. As far as he was concerned they were a bunch of wolves who had forgotten what it was like to be a wolf.
“What are they suggesting?”
“We have two choices. We can be absorbed by the Batesburg pack.” That was the worst choice of the two and Logan would fight every council member to the death if he had to to keep that from happening. Batesburg was a large pack to the south. They’d already swallowed up smaller packs and their new members hadn’t done well out of the deal. There were rumors that the alpha was corrupt and that drugs ran through that pack like wild fire. For some reason the council was turning a blind eye to Batesburg’s problems. Part of the reason could be that two members of the council were from that pack.
It didn't matter to Logan what the reason was. There was no way in hell he would allow his pack to be chewed up and spit out by the larger pack. Not if there was something he could do about it.
“No way. You might as well take our members out and kill them all. What’s the other option?”
Logan wasn’t particularly happy about that solution either. It wasn’t for the same reason that it would piss Mason off though.
“The head of the council suggested to me privately that we merge with East Brook. Their territory butts up against ours, their numbers are small but they would be enough to boost us up. I’d be alpha since they currently don’t have one.” That wasn’t all of it, but it should be enough to it should satisfy Mason. At least Logan hoped so. The last thing he needed in the pack was division between him and his lieutenant.
“Does East Brook know about this? And do you think they’re just going to roll over and merge with their biggest rival?” The muscle in Mason’s jaw worked at the mention of the other pack, and Logan ignored it. “It would be like merging the Hatfield and McCoy families. They’ll never agree to it.”
When it was first proposed, Logan thought the same thing. He had no idea what had started the feud between the two packs. It was something that was always there. But regardless of the bad blood, everyone would have to accept that the world had changed. Just as Logan had bee
n forced to accept it. His pack came first, before what he wanted as a man, before his best friend, before anything else in his life. He had to save his pack from destruction and nothing was more important than that.
“Not yet, but they will. The council head is calling them and I have no reason to expect that they will turn the proposed merger down. They are in the same boat we are, and it’s better to play with the devil you know.”
Logan moved around the back of the desk and pulled the chair back in front of it and sat down. Jesus, he was bone tired and as soon as he got this meeting over with he was going home. He would need to call the pack together, to let them know what was going on, but he had some time. Good thing, because he hadn’t quite wrapped his head around how he was going to do what he needed to. Especially when it would piss off the man standing in front of him as soon as he found out.
“What’s the catch? It can’t be that easy, just decide to merge and the crisis is averted.”
Logan sighed and looked up at Mason. He should have known that he wouldn’t let it go, especially when it had to do with East Brook. He could order him to keep his nose out of it, and Mason would obey but Logan thought it best just to get this over with.
“I have to mate with someone in their pack, to join the alpha bloodlines of the two packs. That way there can be no dispute in the future that the packs are joined.” It was a good thing he hadn’t mated with anyone yet. He'd known the female in question for years and while binding to her wouldn’t be a passionate union, he liked and respected her.
“Who?” Mason’s voice came out in a growl as the muscle worked in his jaw. Logan knew by the look on his face that he already had his suspicions about who it was, he only needed confirmation.
