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“We already heard her story,” Natalie reminded me. Unlike Ryder, she wasn’t trying to be a smart-ass. She simply found it difficult to ignore the truth.
To my surprise, Rune was the one who turned to Lenny’s wife and prodded her for further details. “Do you want to tell us what you did with the woman you’re impersonating?”
“She’s dead,” the jowly fae started. Then, swatting away our leapt-to conclusions with a horrified hand wave: “I didn’t kill her. She died of natural causes the night I arrived in town. Lenny didn’t want to believe she was gone, so it didn’t take any glamour at all to slide into that gap.”
What came next was a sad sort of story. A husband’s yearning fed this fae her first bit of stolen magic. Then a human softness enfolded her, one she didn’t want to leave behind.
There were cookies in the story and adult children who wanted to believe they still had a mother. Townspeople who had never looked past a woman’s frumpiness so didn’t even realize when she’d been replaced.
“I deserve to be sent back,” the fae said at last. “I never should have drawn children into the struggle with my sister. There at the end, it turned into revenge rather than duty. If I’d realized sooner the beauty of this home....”
Her voice trailed off as she turned toward the house she’d soon be leaving. But after one glance, my gaze turned in the other direction while thinking something very similar.
Rune stood so tall and strong and distant. Why hadn’t I realized the beauty of what he was offering when he rejected the role of Consort? Why had I let my pack take precedence every time he’d tried to form a connection, pushing Rune back into his duty by closing the door between the two of us?
“My true name,” Lenny’s wife continued, “is Viola. If it makes any difference, I will swear on that name to never again use glamour. I swear here and now that all magic I have channeled on this earth, save the spell giving me a human face, is gone.”
Erskine was the one who pointed out the repercussions of such an oath. “Without glamour, you become just like any other mortal. Your body isn’t young. You might only have a decade or two left to live.”
“A decade here with a family I love is worth an eternity in Faery,” Viola answered without hesitation. She fell onto her knees, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Please. I beg of you....”
Ryder’s sword wavered. But it was Lupe—hard leader of the Samhain Shifters—who dropped down beside the crumpled fae and lifted her head. “There’s no need to beg. Viola, we accept your binding.”
The words had power. I felt them flowing out of the fae, curling around all of us just the way Rune’s persimmon curled around me. I could feel....
Erskine cleared his throat. Running one hand through hair that refused to release its tangles, he squeezed his eyes shut for a split second then opened them wide.
He’d come to a decision. “I’d also like to offer my true name as a promise of my own good behavior. I am—”
Rune spoke over him before yet another powerful name could be unleashed into this gathering. “Erskine is my brother. He doesn’t need to provide his true name. I vouch for him.”
Ryder punched Rune on the shoulder, harder than was really appropriate. “You have a brother?”
“Yes.” Rune didn’t tack on half the way he had when introducing Erskine to me. “A brother who recently proved that ‘fae’ can be short for ‘faithful.’ That no part of ourselves is dark unless we make it so.”
“Aw, dude, that’s sweet.” Ryder grinned so big his subsequent words lacked all sting. “Although, as your friend, you should’ve told me.”
For once, Rune responded in kind to his ribbing. “You’re saying, you wanted to be brought home to meet the family?”
“Well, I mean, maybe after a few more dates.”
“The point,” Lupe interrupted, sounding like herself again, “of the Samhain Shifters is that we aren’t friends and we aren’t a pack. And, as Butch told me this morning, he had already decided to step down from that role.”
“No!” Athena’s cry would have made me jealous if the woman’s arm hadn’t been wrapped around another man’s waist. She clung to the ugly shifter who’d threatened my pack the last time I returned from Faery, her grasp suggesting his presence was her anchor during the riptide of Rune’s leave-taking.
The ugly shifter, on the other hand, twisted his face until it appeared even uglier. “Good for you, Butch.”
Oh, that expression was a smile. He’d leapt to a conclusion I couldn’t quite wrap my brain around.
Only...maybe I was getting there. I lifted my chin and tried to act as brave as Kale had been during the last twenty-four hours. “Butch,” I said, hoping his eyes would find mine but scared they wouldn’t.
Persimmon was suddenly so strong I could have choked on it. Instead, the sweetness drew me forward as Rune replied. “Yes?”
“The Guardian is gone, so our bargain is gone along with her,” I said, working my way around to the point I was afraid to make but more afraid not to make. “So I don’t need a Consort. And I don’t need a Beta.”
“Doesn’t sound good for you, man,” Ryder said in the loudest possible stage whisper.
Rune ignored him. Instead, he lifted my hand to his lips. The faint brush of skin against skin made me shiver. “What do you need then?” he asked, his breath warming away my goosebumps.
I swallowed then told him. “I need you.”
***
THE BOND THAT EXPLODED into being between us had nothing of duty about it. It was all heat and persimmon and joy.
The kiss that came afterward was a promise of everything I’d never dared dream about. I only realized I’d started climbing up Rune’s body in search of that everything when Ryder admonished us. “Get a room.”
I blinked, astonished to find drizzling rain and shifters and fae and children still there around us. Rune, on the other hand, smiled as warm as the sun coming out. “I think I will. Can I borrow your bike?”
This time, Ryder’s punch was joyous. “I thought you’d never ask.”
Accepting the keys from his friend, Rune pulled on gloves and kicked the engine into roaring life. I hopped up behind and grabbed hold as he asked: “Where to?”
“Pack central.”
The destination might have been the wrong one—my duty once again calling. But Rune didn’t protest. Instead, he nodded once, then wind whipped cold against my face.
The frigid slap lasted for only a second however. After that, I dipped my chin into the shadow of Rune’s back and was as warm as if I’d cuddled up to a furnace. And, for a time that felt as endless as a Faery summer, I drifted in that haze of connection and joy.
Then the bike screeched to a halt. We’d passed the unmanned gatehouse and reached our destination faster than I wanted. The vast hole in the earth where the Whelan mansion used to stand greeted us. That, plus a mass of shifters who approached with fear and relief on their faces.
“Alpha! You’re back.”
“Where did you...?”
“What should we do about...?”
I cut them off with a wave of my hand, removing my helmet and handing it to Rune as I dismounted. Because just as a man had to find that perfect middle ground between hardness and softness, so did an Alpha.
And I was still Alpha...for the moment, at least.
“Is everyone present and accounted for?” As I spoke, I let my gaze drift across the assembled faces. A few children played in the periphery, but everyone else was watching. Waiting. Ready for me to lay down the law.
So I did, just not in the way they expected. “For three generations,” I told the shifters I’d spent my life ruling without explanations, “our pack has been under the spell of the fae. The Guardian wasn’t a guardian. She was a parasite. And she turned the Alpha of this pack into a weapon to carry out her will.”
I only realized I was pacing when I ended up face to face with Willa. The older woman’s nostrils flared as she considered me. “That mistake has been corrected,” she pointed out. “It’s time for us to move on, Alpha.”
“Am I?” When her eyes reflected nothing but puzzlement, I elaborated, “Am I Alpha?”
“Of course you’re Alpha.” Willa reached out to grab my elbow, preparing to draw me away from the pack before she growled sense into me. But I shook her off while letting negation sway my head from side to side.
“It’s past time this pack started acting like a democracy,” I rebutted, voice loud enough for everyone to hear me. “We’ll vote, here and now, on our leader. I nominate Willa.”
“And I”—my father’s Beta stalked forward until we were toe to toe again—“nominate Tara.”
Rune, blast him, was chuckling behind me. Then the whole pack was laughing.
I swung around to face them. “What?”
Rather than answering, Rune waved his hand at my pack mates, my family. Every last one of them was shuffling quite clearly away from Willa so they could surround me. They were voting with their feet. They wanted me to remain leader.
And that final hole in my stomach filled up. Not with rubble, either. With sweetness, light, and love.
“Okay,” I told them. “I’ll be your Alpha, but things are going to change around here. You’ll call me Tara rather than using my title. There will be no Consort. No Heir. In fact, I don’t think I even want to have children.”
My teeth snapped together and I snuck a glance at Rune. Perhaps I shouldn’t have broached that particular topic so publicly....
“Your disinterest in babies,” Rune murmured, eyes smiling, “doesn’t come as a surprise to me. There are plenty of children to dote on in this pack.”
Speaking of which, I turned to face Caitlyn. “And you.”
The teenager swallowed, eyes wide. “Yes, Alpha. I mean Tara. Yes, Tara!”
Now I was the one fighting back a smile. Then I stopped fighting. Right. I was a different sort of Alpha now. I could smile if I darn well pleased.
“You’re moving in with your age mates, effective immediately.”
“But a Beta in training should be above and apart....”
My father’s words. Or, no, I had a feeling those had instead been the Guardian’s words.
The realization froze me for a split second, long enough for Caitlyn to draw an unintended conclusion. Her whole body stiffened then drooped as she fought against then accepted what she assumed was my decree. “Yes, Tara. I understand.”
I rolled my eyes. “No, you clearly don’t understand.”
Stepping forward, I enfolded Caitlyn in the hug I’d longed to give her for years now. “I want you to dream up silly pranks,” I murmured into her hair. “I want you to fall in love and out of love and maybe out of windows.”
Her body shook in my arms. A tremor of sadness or laughter. I couldn’t quite tell which.
So, just in case, I pushed her back until I could see her face and I elaborated. “What I’m saying,” I said, providing the direction I wished my father had given me as a teenager, “is that an Alpha in training needs to be part of her pack.”