And that wasn’t to say he wasn’t strong in his own way, because he was.
I’d admit to being intrigued. His lack of brutishness was a definite check in the pro column, but it made me wonder how exactly this situation had come to pass.
Narrowing my eyes at him, I remarked, “Kingsley Rainford was an evil SOB. He was mean, cruel, and I’m pretty sure he was on some kind of steroids.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if he was.”
I nodded. “I understand why you challenged him—”
“You just don’t know how I survived?” Choi asked calmly.
In fact, everything about Choi was calm. In a way I wasn’t used to.
By nature, alphas were aggressive and quick to temper. It was only after years of forcing my wolf into submission, in caging it, in rarely letting the creature out, that I wasn’t the same way.
Kingsley had, not unlike me, shifted at a young age. But whereas I’d worked hard to contain my wolf, he’d let his reign free.
That was why his body would have been torn to shreds by the natural wolves on Choi’s land once the challenge was done, and why I still ruled over my pack.
Choi didn’t have the instincts of an alpha, but neither did he scent of beta or anything lower. He wasn’t a regular wolf, and that wasn’t something my own beast appreciated.
Packs worked by pigeon-holing people. It was the only way to bring order to our society. We all knew who someone was by scent alone. Maybe we didn’t know name and social security numbers, but we knew where someone was in the pecking order.
More than anything, that mattered to our beasts.
Choi? I couldn’t put him in order—not by scent alone.
But he presented no threat, so what was there to get riled up over? Why couldn’t I just be intrigued by a man like him, capable of the impossible?
When Elsa had come to me to tell me there was someone at the door, I’d invited her to let him in as was usually the way now with members of the pack who wished my counsel. She’d told me, ‘the gentleman insists on waiting outside, Alpha,’ and begrudgingly, I’d gotten off my ass and gone to see who this gentleman was.
Now I knew, and I could see the odd kind of honor in what Choi was doing, so I rumbled, “How did you do it?”
“Kingsley was egotistical. Prideful.”
“He was a fool,” I agreed simply.
“Yes. And all three combined makes for a man who’s easily bested.”
“Hardly,” I retorted, moving so that I could fold my arms across my chest. “He won many challenges.”
“But never against someone like me. I had righteous anger on my side too. He killed my father, I lost my mother, so he had to pay.”
“I won’t let you take Daniel,” I ground out, well aware that was the perfect moment for a segue.
“I’m not here for that. I’m here for her.”
“You’ve just forgotten about Daniel, have you?” I asked dryly.
“No.”
“But you know it’s not going to impress your mate if you rob a child of his home?” When his mouth tightened, and his eyes narrowed, I smiled at him. “The Mother works in mysterious ways, doesn’t She?”
“Apparently,” he grunted. “Now, would you let me in to speak with her?”
“She isn’t of this world, of this life,” I cautioned. “She knows very little of what we are, and her introduction to things wasn’t friendly.”
His shoulders bunched at that. “Someone attacked her?”
“Yes. But not how you think. She ran over a hyena, killed it.”
“A shifter?”
“Yes. A mated one.”
He hissed out a breath. “They came for her?”
I nodded—we all knew how insane hyenas were over their mates. Ironic considering they weren’t soul-bound like wolves were.
“Where was this?”
“Montana.”
His brow puckered at that. “Hyenas in Montana?”
“Yeah. I told the local pack, and they’re looking into things.” We both knew hyenas were more likely to be found in the southwestern states, where it was warmer.
“Is the hyena dead?”
“Yes. Or I have no doubt he’d be roaming my land like another unwelcome alpha.”
Choi grunted. “I’m here for my mate.”
“Wrong answer. Are you here to court her?”
“Yes.”
I arched a brow at him. “Are you sure about that?”
“Very.”
There was protocol for dealing with human mates, and that was a protocol I was excessively grateful I hadn’t had to follow with Sabina. Although, considering how she’d been transformed, I considered myself a selfish bastard for even thinking that.
I’d give my left nut for her not to have been attacked by that bastard brother of hers, but that didn’t diminish my gratitude in being able to claim her swiftly.
Choi cleared his throat. “I wish only to speak with her. She needs to understand what she is to me.”
“The reason I knew you were here for Lara, is because Sabina already sensed what you are to her. I’m sure she’ll be explaining some things to her too.”
He pressed his lips together. “All of it bad, I presume?”
“You didn’t exactly make the best of first impressions when you tried to steal Daniel’s home out from under his feet, did you?” I said coldly.
“Like you wouldn’t have demanded the same—” His surge in temper might have aggravated another man, but not me.
“I wouldn’t, actually.”
“That’s because your father, while a prick, was nothing like Rainford. You have no idea, no possible means of even beginning to understand what it was like being under his thumb.”
Because he wasn’t wrong, and because I was happy to test Choi’s control to see where his strengths were, I replied, “Daniel isn’t Kingsley.”
“There’s nothing to stop that from happening, though, is there?”
“In a human foster home, no. Here? Around people who care for him? Yes.”
“One day, he’ll come and seek what he believes is his,” Choi rasped, but his tone shifted.
“Not if you treat him well now,” I told him firmly, needing him to listen.
Nothing was set in stone, not unless he began bricking Daniel into a corner.
“It’s been almost two years, and I still can’t gather a pack circle on a full moon night. Everyone’s too scared. Rainford’s memory casts a heavy weight,” Choi argued.
“Daniel isn’t his father. He was scared of him too,” I said, my tone softer than it might ordinarily have been.
I got the feeling this wasn’t Choi making the demands, more like he was a spokesperson for the pack.
That meant I could convince him.
I hoped that was what it meant, anyway.
When Choi didn’t reply, I rasped, “If Daniel could best you in a challenge, then he deserves to be alpha, Choi. But I’ll do everything in my power to help forge him into the kind of man you want as a leader. He’s a good boy. He was as oppressed as you. Scared of his own shadow for far too long. If you want to sow the seeds of bitterness into him, then make him hate the Rainford, soon-to-be Choi pack.”
I sensed the tension in him, and though it wasn’t my place, I knew I was asking a lot of him, so I reached forward, gripped his shoulder and gently shook him. “You avenged your parents’ deaths on the man who rightfully earned it. Don’t waste bitterness on a boy who still piddles on the floor every time he shifts.”
Choi cleared his throat, but I saw the whisper of amusement flash in his eyes, and it gave me hope. “I hated that phase.”
“Me too.”
He snorted. “As if the mighty Eli Highbanks did anything so—”
“I did. Father was so ashamed, I was held back from school for an extra two months until I managed to reign it in. Daniel’s different. He isn’t as secure. He still does it, and we’re trying to get him to stop. We both know it’s easie
r said than done.” Just like a human child might pee the bed until he was eleven, newly shifted pups might make a mess when they first turned.
Choi scrubbed a hand over his face. “My pack is scared of him.”
That confirmed my earlier supposition, so I advised, “Then maybe they should meet with him, and see they’re vilifying a child.”
He twisted away from me, stunned me by showing me his back as he stared out over the terrace and onto the forest in the distance, remarking, “I can feel your totem’s power all the way from over here.”
“Yes. It’s more powerful than ever since Sabina became the omega.”
“Why?”
“We nourish it.”
He cut me a look that told me I didn’t have to spell out how. “The old tales are true?”
I shrugged. “Yes.” Not that we’d been doing much nourishing since Knight’s birth.
Damn, I was looking forward to Sabina’s milk moon being over.
Choi scraped a hand over his jaw. “Rainford alphas let the path to the totems become overgrown. Trees and brush even entered the circle—”
That had my eyebrows soaring. “The circle has been sullied?”
“Yeah.” He blew out a breath. “I’ve no idea how to save it.”
“You need an omega,” I told him flatly. “I never spoke to Sabina about nourishing the circle, she just knew to do it.”
“Lara might not be an omega. Why would she be? I’m no alpha.”
“Your pack says otherwise,” I told him calmly. “Were you granted a mate at your covenant?”
His eyes shifted away from mine. “No. I didn’t have one. The totem circle was sullied, remember?”
I pursed my lips. “Well, I had a covenant and I wasn’t granted a mate so I know how that goes.”
“Lara is more of a blessing than she even knows,” he agreed softly. “I truly come here with no harm in mind. I just wish to speak with her. Make sure she is aware of who I am and what I am to her. In words that come from my lips,” he tacked on. “Not your mate’s.”
Stepping out from the doorway, I headed for the veranda railing and murmured, “I understand, so long as you understand my position on Daniel.”
He sucked in a sharp breath. “Another alpha might tear out your heart for trying to put roadblocks between him and his mate.”
“We’ve already ascertained you’re not a regular alpha,” I murmured. “And I mean no offense when I say that. To your pack, you lead. But you’re definitely unusual.”
“Unusual—a word I’ve been hearing all my life.”
“I know how that goes too,” I muttered gruffly.
“Right,” was his flat answer. Then, when he cut me a look, his brow puckered and he muttered, “They said you shifted when you were eight. Is that true?”
“Yes.”
He cleared his throat, turned back to look at the forest, and murmured, “Then maybe you do know what it means.”
Eleven
Lara
“Be patient. He’s telling your body what he needs.”
Sabina’s entire face puckered at that as Knight tugged on her nipple like she was a jug of OJ he’d drunk dry. “He’s going to start bawling soon when he doesn’t get it.”
“He’s agitating the milk ducts,” I informed her calmly. “How do they know to carry on producing milk if he isn’t sucking on them? Won’t they come to a halt if his demand decreases? Only logical, isn’t it?”
She bit her lip. “I guess. I just don’t like it when he’s hungry.”
There was a lifetime of psychosis in that statement, but who was I to judge? I was weird about food too, thanks to our childhood. We’d often gone hungry when we were younger.
Though the memories were best left in the past, I asked, “Do you dream of the chest?”
“Dream?” She scowled at me. “Nightmares more like. Not often. Not anymore. The accident stopped them.”
She’d already told me about what Cyrilo had done, and to be honest, it came as no surprise. Our brother wasn’t a good man. He was weak too. Always doing father’s bidding. I was just surprised about the lack of crowing father had done in the face of her death.
It was a horrible thing to say, but I thanked Kali Sara every night for giving him Alzheimer’s. When a man couldn’t remember he had a daughter, that was the best thing for that daughter, when her father was Draga Krasowski.
Shocking, I knew. Shameful to admit, but true nonetheless. Despite all the things he’d done to us, I’d never wished ill on him. Sometimes, I recognized, Kali Sara offered us things we didn’t even ask for…
“I dream of it often.”
She cast me a look, her hand unconsciously moving to Knight’s head, where she cupped his small skull as if trying to protect him from my words. “If you didn’t, I’d say that was stranger. We spent too much time in that damn box.” Her mouth tightened into a thin line. “The bastard was evil for what he did to us.”
I couldn’t argue with that, so I didn’t bother, merely sank back into an uncomfortable armchair and watched her as she fed Knight on an equally uncomfortable sofa.
Unable to stop myself, I pointed out, “This place isn’t somewhere I’d have imagined you living.”
“You’re shrewd as ever. It’s how it was before I became omega. I’ve just never bothered with it. There’s been too much to do.”
“Mothers nest in the final phase of pregnancy.”
“I nested plenty in our bedroom,” she disregarded. “I don’t think of the lower levels of the house as ours anyway. Not with how the pack comes to us at all hours.”
“That must grow wearisome.”
“Actually, it doesn’t.” When she moved her hand away from Knight’s head, I knew I’d calmed her enough to make her forget my earlier words. I had no desire to hurt her. No desire to rake up a past that was far darker than I would have wanted for her.
She hadn’t had an easy life.
Not like I’d imagined.
When I was little, after she left, I’d felt abandoned. I’d felt sure she’d go to a neighborhood, like one of those subdivisions you saw on the TV. All cookie-cutter houses with garages that opened onto neat driveways. Not trailers that were grubby on the outside and spotlessly clean on the inside.
I’d seen her morphing into a gadji, and I could admit now that I’d been jealous. Not just hurt that she’d left us, but envious over how her life had changed. I’d wanted to wake up in a bedroom that looked onto another house, to go downstairs and enter a kitchen with one of those breakfast counters, where I’d sit and grumble about having to get up early for school, before I’d eat, then head out to catch a bus.
Normalcy.
Nothing about our childhood had been that.
Then, she’d died. And my hopes for her had faded away.
The reminder had me asking about her new normal, which was pretty damn abnormal to me. “Why doesn’t it get tedious? Having strangers walk around your home all the time? Coming to you and Eli at all hours of the day?” I badgered.
Her frown was aimed at me—not the question. Me. “No, Lara. Their problems are my problems. I can feel them, whether they come to me or not. So, when they do, it’s always a relief. Plus, it’s actually rare for them to come outside of polite hours.” She shrugged. “They’re considerate. And they appreciate us because we rule in a completely different way than Eli’s parents.
“We’re at their service. We serve them when they need us. And outside of an emergency, they respect us for what we do for them and give us as much freedom as any leader can hope to have.”
I tipped my head to the side. “A different way than Daniel’s father too, no?”
She cast me a look. “Yes. He lost a challenge. Challenges happen rarely, and only with alphas who are terrible to their pack. Who mistreat them or are cruel.”
I thought about that as I stared at a console table where an arrangement of dried flowers was gathered. “We’re fortunate, aren’t we?”
“Wh
at makes you say that?” she replied, her tone shocked. Not because she thought we weren’t lucky, but because of how my brain was totally going bibbidi-bobbidi-boo with how I was leaping from topic to topic.
“Because if Choi wanted the sins of the fathers to be borne by the son, we’d be screwed, wouldn’t we?”
Her lips twisted at that. “Screwed isn’t the word.”
“It’s wrong what he wants to do. Daniel’s home is here now,” I informed her, glancing at her to see what she thought of my words.
I trusted Sabina. She was my sister. She’d been my lifeline back when I was young. But she was new to me, and I was still learning this newer version. The one who smiled more freely, who held onto her son as if he could disappear in the blink of an eye—completely understandable after what had happened to Joshua. Who could kiss one man then another and then another, dancing between them as she sought and gave affection to her mates with a freedom that touched me.
So new, different, but still somehow the same.
A breath escaped her. “I’m glad you think that way.”
“Why?”
“Because you’ll hold great influence over Choi.”
“Why will I?” I queried, nonplussed by her words. “We were strangers.”
She snorted. “You’re many things, Lara, but strangers aren’t it.”
Squinting at her, I asked, “You sensed the attraction between us?” An attraction I didn’t trust.
Nor did I trust him.
Seeing wasn’t always believing.
Her eyes bugged. “Are you being serious?”
“When have you known me not to be serious?” was all I had to say to that.
“No wonder I’m well adept at handling Ethan and Eli,” she muttered with a slight grin. “That was more than just attraction, Lara. Surely you know that? And anyway, now we’re on the topic of last night, what did you do?”
“With the wolf thing?”
“Yes,” she said dryly. “With the wolf thing.”
“I don’t actually know. It was an experiment.”
“Some experiment. I always knew you were foolish where it came to acting on your instincts, but this isn’t the same world you’re used to. This has more danger than you know—”
Moon Child: A PNR Shifter Romance (The Year of the Wolf Book 2) Page 16
