Earp & Chandra: The Sundance Series Book 2.5

by C. P. Rider

  "And I will win."

  Chapter Eleven

  Earp had a feeling things weren't over.

  The Jessup pack had gone, but it had been Earp's experience that alpha leaders usually didn't leave without what they came for. And in the case of Alpha Jessup, she wanted that pup.

  "Isn't that the cutest name ever? ReAnne." Neely gazed down at Imogen and her healthy little girl. The baby was swaddled in a soft, white bath towel, and rested in her mother's arms. Alpha Blacke, Neely, Alpha Smith, Carter Reid, and Earp stood around the bed where Imogen had given birth a short while ago.

  After helping Imogen and the little one clean up, a very tired Maria Cortez had gone home, escorted by King Jones, who had shown up before Alpha Jessup but remained hidden a half mile outside the compound in case he was needed.

  "I like it. I've never heard it before," Alpha Blacke said.

  Imogen smiled tiredly. "We combined the names of our parents. My mother's name was Anne. Carter's father's name was Reece."

  "My dad raised me," Carter said as he smiled down at his wife and daughter. "I didn't even meet my mother until I was sixteen. It wasn't until Dad passed away that she reentered my life. The state tracked her down because I didn't have any other family. I didn't know her phone number—I didn't even know her maiden name." He shook his head. "That should have been my first clue that I had a messed-up family."

  Baby ReAnne made a grunty baby sound Earp couldn't decipher. She could be hungry, could need a new diaper, could be perfectly fine. Babies were confusing.

  "You have a new family now." Imogen's eyes shone as she gazed up at her husband. "One that loves you."

  "I had a family the second you stepped into my life, my beautiful mate. It's just a little bigger now." Carter smiled at Imogen with such love Earp had to look away.

  He stepped out of the room to collect himself and was followed by Smith. "Too much mushy stuff for you?"

  "Too many old memories." Earp’s honest response surprised him. He hadn't intended to say that out loud.

  They walked down the hallway together and out the front door to the porch. Smith sat down in one of the rattan chairs and Earp lowered himself into the one next to it, separated by a rattan-edged, glass-topped end table. The sun was considering poking up over the horizon—orange and pink rays of light bit into the darkened sky. Together, they stared at the wreckage of the truck that had tried to breach the Blacke compound.

  "They'll be back," Smith said.

  "I imagine so," Earp replied. "Alphas like that don't usually take no for an answer."

  After a few minutes of silence, he continued.

  "I told you I was married once."

  "The human woman. Melody."

  "Yes. She asked me for a divorce six months into the marriage."

  "Why?"

  "She couldn't get used to being in a group—well, back then I was in a lounge, not a group, but you get the idea. It was a typical situation, nothing like what we have here. I was, am, a beta shifter, and the alpha was a real piece of work. He liked to push around anyone weaker than he was, and I was the lowest of the low. At least, in his eyes.

  "Melody told me she hated him. She said if I didn't leave the lounge, she was going to leave me. That she couldn't stand to watch the others disrespect me. She wasn't wrong." Earp stared down at his hands. "I should have left, but, you know, fear is a real mean thing. It's the worst emotion, I think, because it's so many things wrapped up into one feeling. Worry is fear, paralysis is fear, anxiety is fear, all of it crammed into one of those trick canisters that you open and snakes fly out."

  Smith didn't respond, only nodded to show she was listening. Earp liked that about her. She was a powerful alpha and yet she never made him feel unimportant or small the way so many others had.

  "When I hemmed and hawed about it, she walked out. A week later she came back. No explanation. One morning I woke up and she was in the kitchen cooking bacon and eggs like nothing had happened. It suited me not to question her change of heart, so I didn't.

  "Shortly after that, she found out she was pregnant." He sat up in his chair, let out a deep breath. He'd never much talked about this, didn't like to talk at all, but for some reason it was easy to tell the story to Smith. Maybe because, on some level, she understood his pain.

  "Were you two happy?" she asked.

  "She wasn't. I was, though, so I ignored her pain. Not because it wasn't important to me, but because I didn't know how to fix it. You know me. There ain't much in this world I can't repair, but I sure couldn't figure out how to fix her."

  She nodded in a faraway fashion that told Earp she was thinking about her own relationship. "Yeah."

  "I got more assertive with the other shifters in the lounge. Aggressive, even. It's common when a mate or partner is breeding—with child, in human terms. Even that bastard alpha backed off." Earp took a long breath, let it flow out of his lungs. "For a while."

  "What happened?" Smith stared at the sky and the fingernail of bright yellow light visible at the horizon.

  Earp figured she was looking that way to keep from looking directly at him, to make him comfortable in sharing his story. It didn't work. The problem wasn't her looking at him; the problem was that it was a damned uncomfortable story.

  "Melody went into labor around noon on Christmas Eve, about twenty-six weeks into the pregnancy. I was scared to death. Back then, things like that were a lot more dangerous. Nowadays they have better medicine."

  Earp felt a stillness grip him, the same stillness that had taken him over the day he'd rushed Melody to the hospital. The same deep, unnatural stillness that gripped him two days later.

  "I'm sorry, Earp."

  A tear rolled down his cheek. "We named her Harmony." He wiped the tear away. "She was healthy and beautiful. It was a miracle."

  Now Smith did look at Earp. "She survived?"

  "Yeah."

  "Then what happened?"

  "Melody disappeared. She left the hospital with Harmony when I went home to pick up some things. She convinced her doctor that I was danger to her, and to the baby, and he moved her. When I showed up at the hospital, two human police officers were waiting for me. They questioned me for hours. By the time they realized I hadn't done anything, it was too late. She was gone. I never saw her or Harmony again."

  "Did she call? Send a letter? Anything?" Lines appeared between Smith's brows. "How did she just disappear?"

  "She had help," Earp said. "My alpha. See, he hadn't backed off because I'd gotten more assertive. That was me seeing what I wanted to see. He'd backed off because he and Melody had started an affair."

  "Was the child really yours?"

  "No. The dates didn't match up. It was much more likely that Melody had gone into labor on time, not early. Harmony was eight pounds, six ounces. Perfect size."

  "I hope to God the bastards didn't live happily ever after," Smith grumbled.

  Earp chuckled. He'd once felt the same way. "Not together, at least. Later on, I heard Melody left him and married some human. She used him, and when he was no good to her anymore, she dumped him too."

  "Melody sounds like a real asshole."

  "Maybe. Yeah. But she wasn't always like that. For a while, we were a family together." He shrugged. "Anyway, I think maybe I pushed her into it. Should have let her go when she wanted to leave. Shouldn't have taken her back when she returned. Should have measured twice, cut once, so to speak. But I was in my own version of a dream, and all I wanted was her. Didn't matter what she wanted. That was wrong of me."

  Smith threw up her hands. "I don't get it. She royally screwed you over and yet you still talk about her as if she were the love of your life."

  "I know."

  "She wasn't, Earp. She was a selfish, manipulative user who didn't know how good she had it. How loved she was. She didn't have a clue that you would have walked through fire to keep her from getting a paper cut, you loved her so—"

  She pressed her lips closed to keep from sa
ying anything else, to keep from giving herself away, but it was too late. Earp had already seen the diamond shine of tears in her eyes.

  "Much. Loved her so much." Earp hadn't intended to remind her of her ex-girlfriend, but he wasn't sorry he had. People who saw Chandra Smith from the outside tended to assume that because she had a tough exterior, she didn't get deeply hurt, didn't care much about anything.

  Earp knew that wasn't true. People like her put up shields for the opposite reason. Because they cared too much. All anybody had to do was take a look at how much of herself she had given to the Blacke group members to see what kind of a person she was.

  "Yeah," she said softly. "Like you said, she was your family."

  "But the thing was, no matter what I did, it wouldn't have changed anything. It wasn't that I didn't have enough to offer Melody. It was that no matter what I offered her, it would always be less than she wanted, because it wasn't about me. It was about her."

  "But all you wanted was a family." The way she said that, all quiet and sad, made Earp a little more misty.

  "That's true. But I've got one here, don't I? Maybe not the family I thought I'd have, but a good one all the same. You've got one here too, right?"

  After a moment of what appeared to be inner reflection, she nodded.

  "Somewhere along the way I realized I was better off without Melody, no matter how much I missed her. Once I got that through my thick skull, I could forgive her, and even be happy about the good times we had together." Earp rose, stretched his arms over his head. "I hope she's had a good life. She and Harmony. I hope she found what she wanted."

  "That's generous of you," she muttered.

  "Yeah. It is." Earp winked at Smith and gave her a sly grin. "I am the most generous of gentlemen."

  "That you are." She stood, surreptitiously wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and accompanied Earp to the fence, where the truck cab's wreckage was strewn over the dirt like broken shells scattered across a beach.

  "I'm going to poke through that mess," Earp said. "Might be something valuable I can take to King."

  "All right. I'm going back inside to meet with Alpha, Amir, and Dan. We need to get the Reids set up somewhere safe and prepare for the second attack, because it's coming. Soon."

  Chapter Twelve

  The last thing Earp said before Chandra went inside to meet with the Blacke security team was, "I agree. Alpha Bryce doesn't seem to be the type to let grass grow under her feet, does she?"

  Lucas stomped from one side of his office to the other. Ran a hand through his hair. "How long has Earp been gone?"

  "I saw him on the way in," Dan said. "That was about an hour ago. He couldn't have gone far. You aren't able to reach him through the group bonds?"

  "I can sense he's alive. He's not responding when I summon him. Did anyone check with King?" Alpha asked.

  "I did." Chandra tried to keep the worry out of her voice. "Earp called King, told him he'd be bringing over some engine parts he thought might be salvageable, but he never showed up."

  There was a soft knock at the door and Neely poked her head inside the office. "The witches haven't heard from him. Dottie's very worried. What should I tell her?"

  "Does she or Dolores know a spell that would allow them to remote-assassinate an alpha?" Chandra asked wryly.

  "God, I hope not," Lucas muttered.

  "If she did, she would have already cast it twice by now," Neely said. "Once for Saul Roso and once for Xavier Malcolm. So, I think it's safe to assume she does not."

  Lucas looked thoughtful. "What about a tracking spell?"

  "Now that she might be able to do. I'll call her back." Neely pulled the door shut.

  "If she and the witches can pull that off, it's still only half the problem," Dan said. "We still have to deal with Alpha Bryce."

  Chandra was certain she wasn't the only person to pick up on the disdain in Dan's voice when he referred to Neely. More and more, the coyote shifter rubbed her the wrong way. If he didn't find a way to work through his fear of Neely soon, he would be forced to leave. Chandra knew it would hurt Lucas to lose his third, but he would not allow this to continue for much longer. Lucas would never let Neely go. That was something Dan was going to have to accept.

  "Why don't we have her spike the alpha?" Dan asked. This time he put a little too much negative emphasis on the her, because Lucas growled low and deep in his throat.

  Dan dropped his chin to his chest. "Apologies for my tone, Alpha."

  Ignoring Dan's apology, Alpha Blacke headed for the door. "I'm going to go talk to the one person in this house who knows Jessup better than anyone. Her son." He stopped, cocked his head to one side. "I think the child has finally gone to sleep. She's no longer crying, and I can hear her breathing evenly."

  Chandra smiled a little. "Shifter hearing is better than any baby monitor."

  "Yep. And you're also a hundred percent less likely to hear a demon voice projecting from the nursery, too."

  Chandra followed him to the door. "I told you that demon wasn't real. He sounded like a surfer, for heaven's sake. It was a viral video and totally debunked. You have to stop posting about it on social media."

  "It was real," he said. "It sounded exactly like a demon I met once."

  "There's no such thing as a surfer dude demon," Chandra insisted. "It was a prank."

  "Shows how much you know. Demons come in all shapes, sizes, and vernaculars." Lucas swung open the door to find Neely standing there with a bundled-up ReAnne in her arms. The spiker-telepath's entire demeanor changed the second she caught his gaze—her smile widened, her brown eyes sparkled like polished topaz.

  "Lucas, look at her. She likes me. She wouldn't go to sleep until Carter and Imogen let me hold her. Isn't that the sweetest thing?"

  Alpha's breathing quickened at the sight of the spiker; his pulse doubled. Chandra had known Lucas Blacke for several years now—had been his closest friend for most of that time—and she'd never seen him respond to anyone the way he responded to Neely Costa MacLeod. He was in love with her. Deeply and irrevocably. She wondered if he truly understood that yet.

  Knowing how clueless he was when it came to love, probably not. Something they had in common.

  For the briefest of moments, Chandra was back in Cynthia's arms. The way they were in the beginning, when everything was shiny and new. Curiously, the memory warmed her instead of enraging her the way it usually did. She guessed Earp's story about Melody had gone far deeper into her subconscious than she had realized.

  Damn it, lizard. Where the hell are you?

  "Earp could have just gone off into the mountains," Dan whispered in deference to the sleeping child. "We all know he's prone to mood swings."

  Chandra kept her voice low. "He wouldn't leave right now. He knows we need him."

  "The witches are working on a tracking spell," Neely whispered. "It's going to take a lot of wine and chanting, according to Dolores and—don't you roll your eyes, Lucas Blacke."

  He grinned, and reached down to stroke a finger over the baby's tiny hand. "She's so small."

  "I know, huh? It's a little scary, how little she is. I just want to hold her tight and protect her."

  "You ever think about being a parent?" he asked. The way he said it made Chandra believe he might be thinking about it, which surprised her.

  "Sometimes, " Neely said. "But it's not a driving need or anything. I really like the idea of being an aunt. That way I can do all the fun stuff and then give them back to mom or dad to handle the hard stuff, like dirty diapers and geometry homework."

  The front door swung open and Amir, in hybrid form, half-walked, half-flew inside. "I found him."

  Everyone turned at once. "Shh."

  "Oh, sorry. Yeesh. Jump all over me, why don't you?" Amir lowered his voice as he shifted all the way back to human. "He's with the Jessup Pack in a clearing two miles west of town. The location is not well-cloaked. They want to be found."

  Lucas purred at ReAnne,
then turned and gave the group his most vicious smile. The one with too many teeth. The one that told Chandra things were about to get fun.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Earp realized he was in trouble when he bent over to pick up the second tire.

  The rear tires looked new, and he figured King could get some use out of them, so he'd opened the gate and gone out for a closer inspection. The front end of the truck looked like the last of the potato chips at the bottom of the bag. Crushed and not at all useable, except for scrap metal.

  Shame, he thought. It had been a solid truck before it went to war with Alpha Blacke's fence. Now all that remained was a junked pile of metal and the two tires.

  He'd just set his hands on the rubber of an all-terrain radial when claws bit into the back of his neck, and a wolf growl that meant business raised every hair on his head.

  His first thought was for the others: Thank God I remembered to shut the gate.

  His second thought was for himself: Damn it. Anyone who can help me is on the other side of the gate.

  Being a beta shifter didn't mean Earp was weak, and it didn't mean he couldn't fight back against an alpha and win, but it did give the alpha an edge, and this was not an alpha that needed an advantage.

  "Move."

  One word, spoken in a low, female voice infused with undertones of impatience, fury, and rage.

  And power.

  So Earp moved.

  They took him to a small clearing on the outskirts of town. On the plus side, he got to ride in the Mustang and evaluate it. Earp was good with car repair in the same way he was good at fixing most things, but he wasn't an artist like King. Still, he recognized the signs of a pretty car with a garbage engine. It idled rough enough to chip his teeth out of his head. King had been right about that.