by T. S. Joyce
“But what if I decide I don’t want children? Or what if I can’t breed after all and all the werewolves are eternally disappointed by my failure? Now there is all this pressure.” She turned a terrified gaze to him and the muscles in her clenched jaw twitched. “And now it is your job to protect me? Did you know about this? You knew I was some sort of…of…breeder?”
Sure, he’d kept it from her, but he’d been waiting for the right moment. “You just Changed back, Morgan. This is all a lot for you to deal with. I didn’t want to bring it up until you were feeling better.”
“No, it’s okay,” she said, standing. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” she chanted. “We don’t have to hurt anyone. We just have to think. Think.”
“Are you talking to your wolf?” Grey asked.
“Stay back!” she yelled, jamming a finger at him. He froze and she said, “I just need time to think.” She shook her head over and over, and a tear hit the floor boards. God what that little splat of water did to his insides. He was getting all twisted up. He wanted to comfort her; Wolf wanted to protect her. He wanted to get her out of here but she didn’t want him close to her.
“The way everyone looked at me tonight…will all the werewolves will have that reaction to me?” she asked in a thick voice.
“No. They won’t have the chance to. We’re going to keep you a secret.”
“A secret,” she repeated in a whisper.
“No one can find out you’re a Silver Wolf or you’ll be in danger, and Lana will be in danger because she has the same genetics. Wolves will want her Turned.”
“What?” she asked. “She is only a baby. She isn’t meant for this. Hell, I wasn’t meant for this. And now she could be hurt because I have stupid purple eyes and white fur? I didn’t sign up for this, Grey.”
“I’ll keep you safe,” he promised. “You haven’t been claimed, which puts you at risk, but we’ll get married and you’ll be mine. I can keep you safe. I was tethered to Wolf for a reason, and it has to be for this.” Fighting the panic that dumped adrenaline into his veins, he told her, “We were meant for each other, can’t you see it? I’m this way so I can keep you and Lana safe. I’m it. I’m your best chance at survival.” From the withering look on her face, none of this was coming out right, and the more he fumbled, the hotter Wolf seethed inside of him. You’re fucking it all up, Wolf growled in his head.
He wasn’t good with words like other people. Every sentence he spoke, she only looked more hurt, and the more he tried to fix it, the more uncomfortable she became. Dammit. Raking his hands through his hair, he closed his eyes against a building headache.
Her gaze dropped to the ring she was nervously twisting around her finger. “Is that why…”
“Is that why what?” he asked.
Morgan’s eyes were rimmed with tears as she lifted her face to his. “Is that why you proposed to me? So you can keep the Silver Wolf safe? Because it’s your job?”
Wolf pushed right out of his head and into his words. “Damn right I’m the one for the job, Morgan. I think we’ve both established I would give up my life for you without a thought. Who else is going to do that for you? For Lana? Call it what you want, but I’m it for you.” Wolf pressed, snarled, unfurled raging words that widened her eyes with each syllable. Grey couldn’t stop himself. “You’re a Silver Wolf because of me. I brought you here, exposed you to this, and the responsibility of protecting you from this curse destroying your life completely rests on me.”
Her lip trembled and she clenched and unclenched her fists at her sides. She slid the ring from her finger and set it on the railing of the porch. “This isn’t the love story I wanted,” she said softly. “I need some time.”
A pair of tears, shining like the gem she’d discarded, spilled down her cheeks, but he couldn’t do more than stand there with his arms outstretched. What had just happened? He needed to say something to change her mind, but nothing would come out. Now Wolf had nothing to say? His head was filled with churning black waters of dread.
“Morgan,” Rachel pleaded, following her inside. “He didn’t mean it like that. You’re taking it wrong. No one loves you more than—”
“Please just stop, Rachel.” Morgan’s voice was muffled, and the jangle of keys sounded as she lifted her purse to her shoulder inside. “I said I need time to think, and I can’t do that until I’m alone. I just want to fall apart alone. Please understand. Lana, come on, baby. We have to go.”
Slick anger twisted in his gut. Had she not heard anything he’d said? He stepped off the porch and gripped the bed of the truck. She wouldn’t leave until he explained away this obvious misunderstanding. He wouldn’t let her.
Pain slashed through him and he yelled at the sudden ripping burn. No, please, no, not now. Not when Morgan is about to leave.
The Change, fueled by his anger and loss, came on so fast he didn’t have time to do more than gasp and claw at the ground as if it would keep him in his own skin. He fought it, but his defiance only slowed his transition from human to wolf. He dragged his breaking body to the dark shadows near the house, where the others wouldn’t see him in between forms.
A deafening roar filled his ears as Morgan’s truck door creaked open. The jangle of Lana’s car-seat harness was eclipsed by Rachel’s pleading. The engine stuttered to life and Morgan pulled away. A series of pops filled the yard as his bones broke in the last seconds of transformation. He got up as soon as he could move and tore out after her. Panting against the pain, he pushed his body faster and faster until his paws barely felt the gravel road beneath him. Her taillights were still visible, but she was going too fast for him to catch up to. Even when it was no use, he kept running until he was to the front fence line.
A howl of despair ripped through his body and he closed his eyes against the night sky.
His family was gone. His pack was gone.
Everything that meant anything to him was in that truck, and all he could see now was the faint glow of taillights disappearing into the night.
****
Morgan could see the black wolf with the golden eyes running after her. She wiped her tears and pressed the gas pedal harder. He didn’t want her for the right reasons. He’d explained it with such little emotion, as if he’d accepted his duty. He cared about her; she didn’t doubt that. Their months together had filled her with a sense of safety, not just physically, but emotionally. But she wasn’t the same woman she’d been before the turn. God, she loved him so much it hurt with every passing inch she put between them, but he hadn’t proposed for the right reason. He and Dean had discussed her future without her, and Grey had accepted this huge responsibility for her and Lana’s welfare out of some twisted sense of duty. He was kind to do so, but she had watched her mother stay in a marriage of convenience and couldn’t do the same to Lana. To herself.
“Where’s Grey?” Lana asked from the back seat.
“He’s not coming with us, baby.” She gritted her teeth against the sob that clawed its way up her throat as she lost sight of Grey in the rearview.
She was no one’s obligation.
Chapter Two
The world already felt uglier.
Grey shook his head slowly in denial. Maybe Morgan would think about their conversation and realize she was mistaken. She would come back to him. A stifling panic built in his gut. How had the night gone so wrong? He’d been engaged to her only a few minutes ago. It made him fight for breath as if he had been punched in the stomach.
“Morgan needs space, but she’ll come around,” Rachel reassured him when he was close enough to the porch to hear her.
He lumbered up the stairs and paused in front of the railing with Morgan’s ring on it. The faces of the pack blurred and moved against the window panes and he gritted his teeth against the nausea that wracked his gut. He didn’t want anyone to see him like this.
Grey’s voice was small and weak when the wolf had his body, but he tried to make a plan. We need to Change back, and get in
my truck, and go after her. Make her see reason.
She doesn’t want to see reason right now. Don’t be weak like that. Just let go, Wolf said. I’ll dull the pain until you are strong enough to handle it.
How could he ignore such a tempting escape? Wolf would know what to do. He would be logical about the damage done tonight. He could be the drug that blurred the edges of the pain. All Grey had to do was disappear. Just give the beast his body. And suddenly, he couldn’t see any other solution. He would let Wolf have the reins until he could feel steady again.
He stumbled off the porch, unbalanced and uncertain, his claws clacking against the wooden boards. Dean followed him, and Grey let out a soft warning growl, but the alpha still stayed in step behind him.
“They still need protection, Grey. You can’t leave them alone. Not now.”
Spinning, he snapped, gnashing his teeth behind a feral snarl. “Don’t you get it?” The words sounded strange coming from an animal’s throat, in the deep tenor of Wolf’s snarl, but so what? What opinion could possibly matter after his reason for existence had been stripped away? “She doesn’t want me!” He took a menacing step toward Dean, and the alpha slowly backed up, his hands in the air in surrender.
Nothing sounded better than ripping apart someone strong; someone challenging. Anything to soothe the burn of his loss. But not like this. Not Dean. Dean was trying to help.
Grey relaxed his curled lips and sighed. Violence against his friend wouldn’t fix anything. It would just make him feel worse later. Even Wolf could see the logic in that, so he turned and ran. The land that would be his in two weeks’ time beckoned him like it already belonged to him. The wind rushed against his fur, urging him farther, faster. He didn’t stop running until he’d slid under the barbed-wire fence that separated Dean’s territory line from his.
Fuck.
He had no more family.
No more pack.
No more purpose.
It had felt so good thinking everything was falling into place for him. For once in his life he was head-above-water and seeing landfall. And then just as fast as he’d seen it, he was being dragged under again.
It wasn’t fuckin’ fair. He was trying to be good, trying to be what everyone needed him to be. Taking care of everything he could without asking for attention for it. Patience? That didn’t come to him naturally anymore, but he was trying.
He. Was. Trying.
And now this? It was too much right now.
The paperwork on this land would be signed in a couple weeks, his earnest deposit was down, and right now, all he wanted to do was bond with this land and leave everything else behind. Was he running from the hurt? Hell yeah. He didn’t want to drag himself through that shit. Morgan said she needed time and he was going to give it to her, but he couldn’t just sit around staring at his phone, waiting for a call she wasn’t even ready to make. He would go insane and make bad decisions and if he was honest with himself, he would snap on someone.
Everyone was safer if he stayed in the wild for a while.
Chapter Three
Morgan’s mom, Hannah, was watching Lana for a couple of days, and thank the Lord for small blessings. She wanted to be around the girl, but not for the right reasons. She would use Lana for a crutch. As a way to focus on taking care of the little girl’s needs and ignoring the shit storm that had consumed her life. She needed to cope. Yep, she was clear-headed enough to know she needed some quiet time with herself so she could learn to accept the new her.
And plus? Lana didn’t need to see her fall apart. The child had been through enough already.
Mom waved her down as she backed out of her driveway. Shit.
Morgan adjusted her sunglasses to better cover her eyes and rolled down the window. “Yeah?”
“Honey, you just seem so off. And I know you’re grown, and you can do whatever you want, but I know you. Did you and Grey have a fight? Are y’all okay?”
“Everything is going to be okay,” Morgan said, plastering a smile to her face.
She growled.
Mortified, she reached over and turned up the radio dial to level twelve, and waved cheerily to her as she backed away.
“You made a weird noise! Morgan, stop that truck right this instant! Did you just growl at me? Growl? At me?” she yelled, trotting down the driveway after her.
“See you in two days! Don’t feed Lana too much sugar before bedtime. Love you!”
“I love you more than life itself, child, but get your butt back here!”
Nope. Morgan wasn’t tackling the I’m-a-freaking-werewolf-now talk with her mom now, or ever if she could avoid it. Mom was a southern belle who believed whole-heartedly in southern manners. She wouldn’t react well to Morgan biting people now.
And above all of that, she didn’t want to have a conversation about Grey right now.
She had a plan, and that plan was to fall apart for a while, like normal girls did after a break-up, and drink wine on the shower floor while crying and listening to a break-up playlist she was already putting together in her phone.
His job? Geez, she would never get that out of her head as long as she lived.
That’s not the proposal anyone wanted—one out of obligation.
She could do this one her own. Probably.
A sob was firmly lodged in her throat by the time she parked in front of her house. The two pit bulls next door were lunging at the fence and making all kinds of racket when she got out.
“It’s me,” she snapped. “The one who always gives you treats?” She took off her sunglasses and they went insane, snapping and barking, pupils blown like they were crazy.
It hurt. “I’m still me!” she screamed.
The dogs stopped barking and whined, cowered, tucked their tails and slunk to under the porch, where they slept at nights.
Morgan flipped them off and movement caught her eye. The owner of those pit bulls, her neighbor, Sanderson, was sitting in an old rocking chair on the porch. “Girl, what have you done to piss my dogs off?”
“I exist,” she snapped. “Apparently I offend everyone.”
Feeling like her neighbor-of-the-year trophy was out the window, she stomped up her stairs and let herself inside, kicked the door closed dramatically, and sank against it, releasing that sob that had been sitting in her throat the whole drive home.
She was so up and down. So emotional. So raw. This wasn’t like her. She was Morgan—happy, driven, steady, always-there-when-someone-needed-her, Morgan. But with the wolf inside of her, she went from happy, to angry, to sad, to scared, to happy again on a constant loop.
She’d always taken for granted the ability to feel steady. This was an awful way to live, not knowing what emotion would overwhelm her from one minute to the next.
She missed Grey.
Tears slid down her cheeks.
She really missed him. It had been one day, and she was still in utter shock, but he was the one she’d learned to tell everything to.
But she couldn’t go be in a relationship with a bodyguard. She wanted love. She wanted devotion because a man wanted to be there, not because he felt guilt for her being turned into a werewolf and knew he could protect her.
Her whole freaking life she’d struggled to feel love. There. There it was. Her dad didn’t stick around, and no matter how much she and Marianna had excelled in school and sports and life, they couldn’t get him to come back, or to pay attention to them. Morgan couldn’t get her dad to love her. And Lord knows she tried. And her mom Hannah had to go to work, because she didn’t have any financial help from Morgan’s dad, and was raising two daughters on her own. Her mom tried her best, but Morgan basically raised Marianna herself, and was alone so much. And as a person gets older, damage gets bigger. It’s natural. Friends betrayed her, friends left, boyfriends cheated, boyfriends left, Marianna…well she left too, even if it wasn’t on purpose.
She’d always, always struggled with that feeling that she wasn’t enough.
And now? For a little while, she’d worn the ring of a man who had proposed out of duty. That’s not the life she wanted.
She deserved better than this. Better than what had been done to her.
She’d paid her dues, led a tough life and still remained kind and caring, when it would’ve been easier to get bitter and angry. She’d made the hard decisions to get stubborn and keep all the good things she liked about herself, even when other people hurt her. She deserved for a man to love her, and all of her faults, and all of the good things she’d nurtured in herself. She wanted someone who accepted all of it and put a ring on her finger because she was Morgan. Not because she was this…this…Silver Wolf.
The animal inside of her let off a long, low growl, and there she sat…anger in her middle, tears of anguish on her cheeks, and this sensation that she would never feel like herself again.
And still…above all else…
She missed Grey.
Chapter Four
A relentless pulsating ache woke Grey. It had started a few days ago, but had been dull, building in intensity until he couldn’t ignore it anymore. The burn was throbbing through every bone, every muscle fiber, and it landed right behind his eyes in a massive headache. It was hard to get up, and when a back-cracking stretch didn’t help, even Wolf conceded it was time to change back. As much as the beast inside dominated his life, he still wasn’t meant to be in one form for too long. He limped slowly back to the edge of Dean’s property. Took a couple hours because he had to take rests every twenty yards or so. Barbed wire cut his back as he slunk under a dig mark in the fence line. Not even the sting of the metal barbs claiming a chunk of skin could take his mind off the pain behind his eyes.
He felt like he’d been caught on a train track and run right-the-fuck over.
