~ Brendan ~
5.22 p.m.
Mumbling my thanks, I exited the local take-away and made the short trip down the pavement to the spot where I had parked my moss-green truck. My legs felt like dead weights. The anxiety of the last four days had finally crashed down on me, not to mention the exhaustion due to four restless nights. The last eighty-eight hours had to have been the most intense in my life. I’d been too frightened to leave Heather’s side in case she woke up. Too frightened to take my eyes off the steady rise and fall of her chest, as though by looking at her, I was keeping her breathing. Despite the slight movements she would make while she slept, despite the odd murmur or groan, despite the fact I could reach out and check her pulse, hear her heartbeat... None of it seemed to matter until she was awake. Awake meant she was really alive. Awake meant she was still here.
Opening the door to my truck, I climbed into the driver’s side, dumping the seven pizza boxes and six white carrier bags in a mound on the middle of the seat.
Carter sat in the passenger’s side, his mobile phone pressed to his ear. “Aye, I can imagine this will all take a while and won’t go smoothly.”
I shut the door behind me, fastened my seatbelt, and reached for the keys which I had left in the ignition. With a twist, the engine grumbled and my truck came to life. I manoeuvred the car out onto the road.
I hadn’t wanted to leave Heather in that basement on her own, and although I doubted Carter would have pulled rank if I had been adamant to stay...she had needed time to process. My gut tightened as her pain-stricken face filled my mind, betrayal burning in her blue watery eyes.
I had turned her against her will and then shoved her in a cage to await the next full moon. Any trust, any feelings she may have held for me, had been shattered the moment I told her I’d had to give her blood, and the look on her face—fuck, it was like I had killed her myself.
“As long as you’re free to come home. We need you all here...”
The comment pulled me from my whirlwind of thoughts. Owen and others were finally coming home.
Eve and Scott had managed to get a flight home the morning of Joseph’s birthday, kindly bringing our abandoned luggage with them. From what I could pick up from the phone call that Owen had made two days back, Maximo had wanted the couple to stay in Italy so that Eve could help with the other Loups, what with having gotten to know them and having been kidnapped herself.
Eve, being the kind soul she was, seemed to have been torn over the issue, especially after she had informed the Italian Alpha that the female Leech who had been in charge of the facility had straight-out mentioned that they were now after the daughter of Loups. A piece of news no one had been happy to hear, but that must be passed along to all Packs so they had been forewarned. A message Eve had wanted to give herself so that no other female would have to go through the horror their mothers had in the months they had been kept at Poveglia.
But Scott was adamant that Maximo be left to take care of that matter, adamant they return due to their son’s thirteenth birthday—an important milestone for all males born of Werewolves as it was the year in which pure-bloods’ first change occurred. Any full moon in those twelve months could bring on a boy’s first change. Maximo had had no choice but to let them come home. Owen, Solomon, and Dabria, however, had had to stay behind and be of any assistance they could, and with her Pack still in Italy, I could say with all honesty Eve knew that Owen would warn all other Packs of what might happen next.
Although the idea that this was far from over—and I personally knew it wasn’t when Eve had mentioned that they hadn’t found the female in charge, nor the documents that contained Heather’s DNA results—it proved too much to bear at this point in time. The idea that the Leeches had just moved on to another fucking facility to start over, even continue, had all our nerves frayed. Somehow, we had to put an end to all this, and the sooner, the better.
“I think Eve is just happy she didn’t miss Joey’s birthday, but aye, she’s fine... Phil, too... Flynn is still weak, but we’re doing all we can.” He lowered his voice. “She’s awake.”
I kept my focus on the road, trying hard to ignore my Alpha discussing myself and Heather with his son.
I had managed to call Carter as I had driven back to Maximo’s estate to meet Thomas, but other than telling him that Heather was badly wounded... I hadn’t been able to say out loud what I had done, especially with Phil still half-conscious in the back seat. And somehow telling Carter I had not only turned her, but bonded with her...it didn’t feel like the type of conversation you had over the phone with your Alpha. Especially as all Werewolves and their mates were supposed to gain permission off their Alpha first, and then there was the small issue of the bonding ceremony; a simplistic ritual, but one that was supposed to be conducted by the Alpha.
Needless to say, I had been a wreck once we’d arrived back home. Dante, Carter, and Graham had been there to meet us as Thomas had landed on the field by his home in Wick, a scrap of land that belonged to him. One look at Heather and then at me and well, he had figured it out.
“Not so well, no... Aye, they both do... Hard to say at the moment.”
I thought Carter would have gone bat-shit. Not that it was in his nature, but anger and a scolding surely had to be in store, but he said nothing. Just blessed Heather with a couple drops of his blood, took two drops of hers, and silently welcomed her to the Pack. He just accepted it, but after what he had confessed to Heather in the basement before we left, I guessed he was just thankful he hadn’t lost another member of his family.
Shit. How could you not clue me in, Sofia?
“Aye, I will get someone to collect you from the airport. Let me know when you’re all on the plane and when your flight is due to arrive. Alright, son, I shall see you all soon.”
He disconnected the call. The energy in the van seemed to sigh with relief, and the weight that currently rested on my Alpha’s shoulders reduced itself by a half. “Owen, Sol, and Dabria will be getting a flight home this evening.”
“That’s good news.”
Both his children would be home, and all Pack would be present for both Joseph’s and Heather’s first moon. The combined energy of everyone would help Flynn heal, and make both Heather’s and Joseph’s first changes—that’s if Joseph was lucky to experience his first change on his first full moon—a little smoother, and although they wouldn’t be completely without pain, the Pack’s presence helped relieve some of it.
My stomach knotted again at the thought of Heather. She had briefly died four days ago, and in two nights’ time, her body and mind were going to be bent and broken in ways she couldn’t imagine.
“How is Maximo?” I asked, preferring any form of conversation to the thoughts currently in my head.
“Hasn’t asked any further about Heather or the others, just that he hopes they are all well. And he basically has his plate full. Some members of the other Packs have come to collect their taken Loups.”
Once Thomas had landed the plane and we had gotten everyone somewhere safe, once I had managed to tell Carter what had happened, what I’d had to do in order to save Heather, I had called Owen to let him know we were back. My second had told me that on arriving back at the island with Rocco, they had found some of the Loups were sick and weak. Apparently, on going to check on them, Eve and Scott had found the women with empty vials that stank of monkshood.
The container of vials Heather had left on the side in the lab we had trashed had flashed through my mind upon hearing the news. Heather had kindly left them on the side not wanting to smash them in case the poison affected me. I supposed we should have chucked them regardless, but I guess the females were desperate to flush their systems of whatever the hell the Leeches had put inside them, and as fucked up as it all seemed, I couldn’t say I blamed them for wanting to try.
“Needless to say, he is going to be wrapped up in all of this for a while.”
I picked up speed as we headed out onto the open back road leading to Eve and Scott’s house.
“He should have listened.”
Maximo had been warned that the Vampires were up to no good, that there was a chance they were experimenting on his own kind right next door to him. Hunch or not, crazy or not, he should have checked it out as soon as he was told.
“Even if he did, most of those poor Loups had already been there for months. So he would still be dealing with this matter regardless of his ignorance.” A sigh escaped him. “In all my years alive...I just can’t understand why the Vampires would want to combine our two species. Why go to such extremes to—to kill us?”
“What I have learnt the last few days, I would say it’s more to do with wanting to wipe their own race out.”
And the idea alone seemed fucking ridiculous.
“Marko’s First Bloodling wants his Master dead?”
“Apparently so.” And the creepy little bastard was going to some insane lengths to make it possible. “Neither of us could understand why until, well, until Heather met him. Shit, he is a teenager.” His frail body, his youthful persona... All a front, and yet, one he couldn’t be rid of. “I mean, can you imagine being a man trapped inside a boy’s body? Fuck, I don’t agree with what he has done, but that would drive you insane, take its toll on anyone.”
Forever seen as a child, never taken seriously. He probably couldn’t get into bars or nightclubs, if that was something he had ever been interested in, and shit, to be on the cusp of puberty... Not that I imagined he had ever actually experienced puberty, but to have physical wants and needs, to have the wants and desires of a man, to have the mind of a man, but to be unable to do anything about it because there was no fucking chance any woman would ever go near him, Vampire or not. How could you look past his outer shell? To the world, he was a child. And teenage girls—shit, I hoped he had never tried anything with young girls, but with the mind of a hundred-plus-year-old man...he probably wouldn’t be interested, anyway. All the good parts of life had been taken from him. Fuck, I think I would kill someone if they took the chance to experience everything life had to offer away from me.
“There might be more to it.”
“There probably is, but it makes the most sense. The only thing that didn’t click into place until it was too late was how Heather was the right person to kill Marko.” Guilt burned in my chest. “But then, I guess I fixed that problem, didn’t I?”
“Don’t continue blaming yourself for that, lad.”
“I gave her the Were-gene.” My jaw tightened. A fresh batch of tears formed in my eyes. “I fucking turned her against her will.”
“No.” That one word held the weight of lead. “You saved her life and my God, it may not seem like it right now, but there is a difference. If she was conscious, it would have been her decision and it would have been completely out of your hands, but she wasn’t.”
“But did I make the right choice?”
“I don’t know. Did you? Only you know the answer to that.”
My throat constricted as I fought the need to break down again, and shit, hadn’t I done that to epic proportions earlier. I’d left the basement, headed up the stairs, hid amongst the ruins of Carter’s home, and wept like a fucking girl. But she had looked at me as though I’d...fuck, shattered her heart, smashed it to fucking pieces and on purpose. I’d broken her trust, violated her, betrayed her in the worse possible way, and the thing was, I wasn’t sorry for it. I wasn’t sorry for ruining her, because all that mattered to me was that she was still alive.
“The hardest part of caring for someone is knowing that you might not always make the right decisions. The hardest choice a man might ever have to make is knowing when to let that special person go.”
“I wasn’t ready to let her go.” The words were strained as they left my lips. I coughed, clearing the grief lodged at the base of my throat. “But that doesn’t mean I was right.”
“No man wants to see his mate die.” His tone was soft, understanding, an echo of regret and pain ringing in the words.
“Mate.” I laughed, brief and rough. “That little bastard threw that at me at the last minute, spinning all this bullshit about how I was meant to be a Werewolf to be in her world, because we were supposed to be together—”
“You don’t believe in Fate, lad?”
I opened my mouth, only to close it. My gaze glued to the tarmac, to the two stretches cast in white light due to my headlights which shone through the darkness on the country roads.
“I don’t know what I believe anymore, but if Fate is real, then she is a heartless bitch.”
“Not everything in life can be good and painless, but all things happen for a reason, and although I disagree with the way Sofia has manipulated people... I can’t fully bring myself to believe it was out of cruelty or selfishness. They were not traits that she owned.”
And fuck, that was saying something after everything Sofia had put him through, everything she had put her own family and Pack through. The fact that he was able to say that... He really must have cared about her, if he could forgive her so easily.
That’s what people do when they care. They forgive, my Wolf replied softly.
He had been quiet since we got home. Quiet through the four days of silence, of waiting. Quiet during the verbal slaughtering Heather had given us. Quiet, as if he knew she would be okay in the long run. At peace with the decision we had made regardless of all the consequences. He was at peace. I could feel it like a warm blanket that I wanted to wrap around myself, but knew I didn’t deserve for what we had done, for what I had done. The pain I felt, the regret, the sorrow—I deserved to feel torn for the rest of my life for what I had done to Heather.
“Sofia was your sister.” I said the words out loud more for my own ears. ”Which makes Heather your—”
“Great-niece.” The words rolled so easily off his tongue, as if they were well-known. “She’s family.”
I’d been a little hurt that I hadn’t been confided in. That after everything I had done and been through with Heather, I had been as clueless as everyone else to how all the pieces of this puzzle were supposed to fit together. Why I was helping some random girl of a friend of Carter’s? Knowing they were family...it seemed stupid not to realize it before, but fuck... they are family. All the times she nearly died, all the moments I could have lost her... lost my Alpha’s niece, lost my best friend’s second cousin.
“And the idea that she might be my mate?”
I’d said the words before I could stop myself.
Thinking about it seriously now, are we? My Wolf grinned to himself.
“It doesn’t matter what I think.” A smile rang in his tone.
“See, I thought it did, with you being my Alpha.”
“All I know is what I sense.”
My gut tightened. I glanced at him. “And what do you sense?”
A grin tugged at his lips. He angled a look at me.
“That you and she have an awful lot to figure out regardless of anyone else’s opinions.” He clasped my shoulder. “And that, I can say with all honesty that it doesn’t surprise me at all, Bren, nor do I mind, but you have to go with what you feel. What you both feel.”
I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.
“I feel she will never forgive me,” I confessed, turning right onto the next road.
“I’m sure she would have done the same if the tables were turned. I don’t think she would have let you die if there was a way she could save you.” His hand dropped to his lap. “Would you forgive her, if she were in your shoes?”
If I were in her shoes, yeah, I would have reacted the same, but I’m also not one to hold on to grudges...unless someone I cared about got murdered, then that was a different kettle of fish. “Yeah.”
“Then forgive yourself and give her some time.”
I scrubbed my left hand across my face. “How can I forgive myself when I’m not entirely sure what I have done to her?”
I had given her the Were-gene. Logically, she should turn into a Werewolf if everything went well the night after tomorrow, but she had the Vampire’s virus inside her and even though it was merged with her genetic make-up, I still didn’t know how much effect it would have on the changes the Were-gene would cause in her body.
“Well, that is the confusing part.”
I turned left. Eve and Scott’s white-washed cottage came into view, orange lights burning in the downstairs window.
“How will she be something more than us, different from any other turned Werewolf, when logically, the greatest part of her DNA will now be made up of our gene?”
I snorted. Bitterness leaked into my tone. “Maybe Sofia’s letter will reveal all.”
“Christ, I had almost forgotten. I hope whatever the hell is in there—”
An upbeat melody filled the car. Carter retrieved his mobile from his coat pocket. The screen was lit up light blue. He took one look at the name. Irritation spiked in his energy and with a muffled curse, he tucked the device back inside his pocket and proceeded to ignore the chipper ringtone.
“Something wrong?” I pulled up outside his daughter’s house.
“No. Just someone I haven’t got the energy to be dealing with at the moment.”
“Anything I can help with?” Not that my brain was working at maximum capacity to be of any help, but shit, any distraction from the way I felt, I would take it.
“No, she can wait until after the full moon.” He opened the car door and slide out.
She? My curiosity peaked, but Carter wasn’t one to share details unless he found it necessary, or believed we needed to know.
Leaning over, I glanced inside the carrier bags, picking out the ones full of the food the others had requested. I put them on the passenger seat where he could easily reach.
“Listen, Heather has had her world flipped upside multiple times in the space of two months, and—”
“She’s just found out its about to flip again.” I handed five of the pizza boxes to him.
“She needs to process everything at her own speed. She needs to grieve. She needs a little space.”
“I’m not leaving her on her own down there.” Or at all.
“I wouldn’t expect or ask you to, but make sure you leave her be for at least a few hours tomorrow.” He took the boxes from me and grabbed the bags. “Let it all sink in and let her figure it out for herself, because in two nights’ time...” He sighed and shook his head. “You two are bonded now and believe me, things aren’t going to get any easier.”
Things never had been easy between me and Heather. Not really.
“Give her time. One day, she will understand.”
“Yeah, well hopefully, I’ll still be alive when that day comes.”
A smile touched his lips. “Go on. Get back to her and make sure you both eat something. And for God’s sake, make sure you get some bleedin’ sleep. You’re going to need all your energy for what’s to come, lad.”