Over the course of the next seven months, Zach and Sarah became each other’s world. He moved into her room at the boarding house, and they shared the rent. They spent their days together making love, sharing their lives, and talking about their mutual longing for home. They worked together at the bar each evening. And on nights when the moon was full, they would venture into the Kentucky Ridge State Forest where they would shift into their wolf forms and hunt together. With their combined skills, they had become a formidable hunting team against the larger prey, and Sarah didn’t feel so alone and outcast during the hunt anymore. They were a happy bonded Moon Hunter pair, every bit as committed in their new relationship as any young married human couple just starting out.
For Zach, finding Sarah in the midst of his lonely exile had been like grabbing onto a life preserver when he was in danger of drowning. She had saved his life, and Zach had fallen completely in love with his new mate. Sarah made him feel like his world was all right again, and he had actually started to believe that he could survive this exile as long as he had her by his side. He believed that they could make a go of it, and Zach knew that he would cherish her forever. She was everything to him, and he was determined to do all he could to take care of them right. His first order of business was to get them out of the boarding house and into an apartment or a small rental house of their own.
“Hey, I circled a few places in the paper today. Thought we might go take a look at a couple of them tomorrow before work.” He smiled at her as he took a bite of the roast beef sandwiches they were having for dinner. “I also have a couple more job interviews lined up for next week. Once I get something with daytime hours and better pay, you can walk away from the bar for good.”
“I’m sorry, babe, what did you say?”
Zach took note of her distracted reply, and he felt a small sliver of anxiety run through him. He knew that the emotion was Sarah’s, not his own, and he frowned.
“Is everything all right, sugar?” he asked, feeling a surge of protectiveness. “You feel okay?”
“I feel fine,” Sarah said. Then she took a deep breath and set her sandwich down. She wasn’t sure why she felt so nervous all of a sudden, but she knew that she wanted to tell him what was on her mind. It was funny how he had become so important to her. He was the first person she wanted to share good news with, and the only person she wanted to be with when life got challenging.
“I got a phone call.” She looked into his eyes with an uncertain gaze as she tried to explain.
“A phone call?”
Sarah nodded her head. “A message on my phone this afternoon. From home.”
“What did it say?” Zach asked after a slight pause. An uneasy itch crept up his spine.
Sarah stood up and walked over to the bedside table to retrieve her cellphone. Then she put it on speaker so that he could hear the saved message.
“Sarah?” It was the voice of her mother, June. “Hi, honey, it’s Mom. Um … I don’t know if you’ll get this or not. I’m not even really sure if this is still your cell number, it’s been so long since you’ve called. But … if it is … I just wanted to tell you that I miss you, sweetheart. And that I love you. I would love to see you. That’s all.”
The voice sounded pained and full of so much sorrow, and Zach swallowed hard as the message ended. He looked up at Sarah feeling a sense of dread.
“Did you call her back?”
“No. I mean, I wanted to, but … well, there are a couple of things I just don’t want to say over the phone, you know?” Sarah met her mate’s gaze with timid eyes. She didn’t ever want him to think that she was ashamed of him, or embarrassed about being with him, because that wasn’t the case. She had come to terms with his exiled status a long time ago.
“So, what is it you’re trying to tell me?” Zach could feel her anxiety growing by the minute, and it wasn’t helping his uneasiness one bit. “How else are you going to tell her if not over the phone?”
“Well, I thought maybe I could tell her in person,” Sarah said, her voice sounding small and uncertain. And when Zach didn’t respond right away, she continued with a stream of nervous chatter. “I don’t know, I was just sort of thinking that maybe it’s a sign, you know? Like a sign that maybe it’s time for me to go back now.”
Zach felt gutted. Was she serious?
“I don’t believe this,” he mumbled when he finally found his voice. He stared at her, searching her eyes. “Now? After all this time, after all we’ve come to mean to each other. And the pup. You’re running away from me now?”
“No!” Sarah looked at him with wide eyes and a horrified expression. She reached out to grasp his hand in both of hers. “Zach, no. That is not what I meant! I am not leaving you. I love you! I am yours, and we belong together.”
He took an unsteady breath as he felt her conviction wash over him. She was saying all the right words, and he could feel that she meant them, but she was still talking about leaving.
“Look, I just thought … I don’t know … that maybe Gabe might be receptive to allowing you back into Lunar Falls now. It’s been over a year and a half. It just feels like this is some kind of sign, Zach, like maybe the goddess Moon is trying to tell us something. I mean, before we go taking steps to put down permanent roots here in Kentucky I just think we owe it to ourselves to find out. Don’t you? I know that you want to go home as much as I do. We talk about it all the time!”
“Yes, we talk about it all the time. But that’s mostly because you keep bringing it up, Sarah!” His voice sounded harsher than he meant for it to, and he could see that he had hurt her feelings. He let out a heavy sigh and scooted his chair closer to hers. Then he reached out and caressed her face. “I’m sorry, sugar, I didn’t mean to yell at you. But you have to know how this makes me feel. I know how badly you want to go back home, Sarah. You can’t help but talk about how much you miss it. And I wish to God that things were different, but they’re not. Not for me. And I know that I am the only thing keeping you here. But I want you to stay with me. Build a life with me here.”
“I want to be wherever you are, Zach.” Sarah’s voice was full of unshed tears, but she meant every word of what she was saying. “If it has to be here, then this is where I’ll be. Please don’t doubt that. I just want to go back to Lunar Falls to visit mom and Seth. To tell them that they don’t need to worry about me because I’m not alone anymore, and that we’ve started our own little pack. But I just thought, while I’m there … it couldn’t hurt to feel Gabe out, that’s all.”
Zach was quiet for a long while as he stared into her eyes and wiped the spilled tears from her pretty cheeks. He would do anything in this world to make her happy, even if it meant facing the man who had run him out of town and threatened to kill him on sight. He knew that Sarah loved him. Their connection made it possible for him to experience the depth of her feelings for him. But it also made it possible for him to know the deep sadness inside her — the longing to see her family again, to run with the pack beneath the goddess Moon during the hunt. She wanted to be home. And he wanted to make things right for her.
“All right. We’ll go together,” he said.
Sarah was slightly stunned at his response and more than a little scared. “What? No! Zach, you can’t go with me. Gabe will try to kill you if you enter Ohio without prior permission, and there’s no way he won’t find out. Just let me go and talk to him first.”
“I’m not letting you go back to Lunar Falls alone, Sarah.”
“But, Zach, I wasn’t banished from Lunar Falls,” she said, trying to get him to see reason. “I left on my own. Gabe will welcome me back home; I’ll be all right!”
“There is no way in hell that I am letting my pregnant mate travel back into Moon Hunter territory alone, and that is final!”
He stood up and began to pace the room like a caged animal. In his heart, he knew that Gabe was a reasonable man and that he would never hurt Sarah. But the overprotective male werewolf inside him wouldn’t give in. He would not send his pregnant mate out into the world alone — especially not to plead his case to the GrandAlpha. Sure, she said she just wanted to visit her mom and her brother, and Zach believed that was true. He knew how much she missed them. But he also knew that this mission to talk to Gabe was her real agenda, and it made him feel like shit — the thought that his mate would be throwing herself at her cousin’s feet and begging for leniency for him.
He couldn’t let her do that. Besides, there was no way it would work. He knew there was no way Gabe would ever forgive him, and he believed that Gabe wouldn’t hesitate to make good on the promise to kill him if he ever saw him again. But as he paced around the tiny room they shared in the boarding house, Zach suddenly understood that going home was exactly what they needed to do. Sarah needed to be back home with her family. She should never have left Lunar Falls in the first place. Being exiled was his punishment, his fate. And he loved her too much to allow it to become her fate as well.
Yes. Taking Sarah home was what made sense. It was the best way he could think of to ensure that she and their pup would always be safe — in the bosom of her family and their pack. It was what she needed.
“We’ll be less conspicuous if we travel by car,” he said, thinking about the pack Enforcers and how they operated. He used to be one of them, after all. He still knew their protocols for patrolling the territories, and he knew they would spot him and Sarah the instant they entered Ohio in their wolf forms. Traveling by car would give them at least a few hours under the radar. Enough time to make sure his mate was safely reunited with her family before he faced his death.
“Zach, please, just let me go alone. It will be safer for you that way.” Sarah stood up and crossed the room to him, practically placing herself in his arms.
“We should be okay as long as I avoid any pack lands,” he said, refusing to let her go it alone. His mind was made up. This was the best thing for his mate. “We’ll get a hotel room on the outskirts of Clemmons, and I’ll wait for you there while you go into Lunar Falls and do what you’ve got to do.”