Chapter 4
Fane was attempting to focus on Decebel’s words but his wolf kept pulling his attention back to their mate. Sweat broke out across his forehead as feelings of sorrow, fear, and apprehension swept through him. He also felt a rush of adrenaline that had his hands twitching just a little, which meant it wasn’t his own adrenaline he was feeling―it was Jacquelyn’s. Fane reached for her again by mentally pushing against the wall between them, and―to his utter shock―he felt his mate making it stronger, putting all of her will into keeping him from getting through.
Something is wrong, his wolf growled to him.
“What was your first clue?” Fane snapped, not realizing he’d spoken out loud until Decebel questioned him. Fane looked up, his unfocused eyes clearing and seeing the Alpha’s concerned gaze roving over his face.
“Are you alright?” Decebel asked.
Fane nearly choked on a laugh. Was he alright? No, he wasn’t. He was as far from alright in that moment as he had been since the first time he’d let the memories break him. But now he knew it was not simply his own problems that were troubling him.
“Something is wrong with Jacquelyn,” he growled, unable to hide his frustration.
“Is she hurt? Is the baby okay?” The Alpha took a step toward him, his natural instinct to protect kicking in full force.
“She’s blocking me. I can’t feel her; I only know she is alive.”
Decebel’s frown grew even darker. “If she’s blocking you, then she’s up to something. Our mates are notorious for digging themselves into graves while making sure we remain ignorant to their exploits.”
Fane’s gut told him that Decebel was right. Whatever was causing the strong emotions in his mate, it was of her own making. That didn’t, in any way, reassure him that she was safe and okay.
“Why do the two of you look like you’ve sucked on a pound of lemon wedges?” Jen asked as she sauntered into the room with Thia on her hip. “Seriously dudes, the ‘I might have a grape in my butt I’m squeezing’ look just does nothing for you two no matter how hot you are.”
“Jacque is blocking Fane from her mind,” Decebel answered, sounding every bit as irritated as Fane felt. He didn't bother to respond to her snark.
“Oh dear,” Jen crooned. “What is my redheaded girl up to, I wonder?”
“Jennifer, if you know something it wouldn’t be smart to keep it from her mate.”
Jen eyed her mate and Fane knew it was a look that behooved Dec to shut his mouth. Fane had been on the receiving end of that look many times from his own mate. Too bad male werewolves were too hardheaded to learn.
Decebel blew a sharp breath as he pinched the bridge of his nose. “You know how protective we are of our females.”
“You say protective; I say bordering on unhealthy psychopathic codependency syndrome. But let’s not get technical or anything,” Jen bit out through clinched teeth.
To Fane and Jen’s surprise, Decebel didn’t take the bait. “Do you know anything?” he asked simply.
Jen stared at him for several seconds before responding. “You know it’s not any fun when you don’t react.”
“Perhaps, I’ve finally learned my lesson,” her mate countered.
Jen snorted. “You, a male Canis lupus, learning his lesson? That’s like saying it’s possible for penguins to tap dance out of your ass every time you fart.”
Had Fane not been so concerned about his mate, he would have given that point to Jen. He was sure one day her witty comebacks would make their way into a book for all of humanity to experience.
With Decebel left glaring at her, she turned to Fane. “She didn’t tell me anything. I asked her how you were doing, tried to give her some much needed bedroom advice, and talked about girl crap you guys aren’t privy to know about. That’s all. I didn’t get the ‘I’m up to something’ vibe from her at all.” Jen paused and tapped her lip. Thia was attempting to grab her finger, no doubt so she could shove it into her little mouth and gnaw on it. “That is a little disconcerting. Somebody look out the window and tell me if the sky is falling because that’s as likely as Red being able to keep something from me.”
“Maybe she wasn’t up to anything. Maybe she decided to do something after she left you,” Fane suggested, sounding calmer than he felt.
Jen shook her head. “I still should have sensed something. I’ve known her since she squeezed herself out of her mom’s girly bits.” She walked over to one of the loveseats in Decebel’s office and sat down putting Thia in her lap. The worry that was marring her mate’s and Fanes’ faces was now mirrored on her own.
Fane turned toward the door intending to leave and go sniff out his mate, literally, but Jen’s voice stopped him.
“Maybe I should go,” she said and stood and handed Thia to Decebel. “Sometimes a girl needs a little space. And if that’s what she’s doing, putting a little space between you two, then you tracking her down might not go over real well.”
Fane’s wolf was practically roaring at him to ignore the female and go after their mate. To his beast there was no such thing as space between them. And though Fane knew that Jen’s words could be true, he didn’t like to think that his mate needed space from him.
She is ours, no one else’s, his wolf snarled. But Fane knew that wasn’t true. Yes, Jacque was their mate, but she was also Jen’s best friend, Vasile and Alina’s daughter-in-law, and pack member to the Romanian pack. There were many who would claim a piece of her, and he knew that wasn’t a bad thing, but his wolf didn’t like to share―nordid Fane―but the man in him had learned to be more reasonable. She is ours to protect, Fane told him, but we are not all she needs and, perhaps, now Jen is right. He felt his wolf trying to take over, unwilling to accept the man’s decision, but Fane was able to maintain control.
“You will let Decebel know she is safe so he can tell me.” He had meant it to come out as a question but Fane knew that is not how it had sounded.
Jen quirked a brow up at him. “Because I know how hard it is for you males to relinquish control to another, I will ignore the fact that you just gave me an order.” She turned to her mate and rose up on her toes to press a quick kiss to his lips and then left without waiting for Decebel to agree to her actions.
“She has taken well to being an Alpha female,” Fane said as he took a seat and prepared to wait—something he was not good at—for news about his mate.
Decebel sat across from him with Thia cradled in his large arms. His amber eyes met Fane’s, revealing the tight control the Alpha himself struggled to maintain. Fane looked away out of respect for him.
“She has,” Decebel agreed though his voice was tight. “She is the mother of my child, light to my darkness, and other half of my soul, but that doesn’t change the fact that she is also a pain in my—” He paused looking down at his daughter. Decebel rarely cursed and especially not in front of Thia, regardless of the fact that she couldn’t yet understand him. “Well, you get my point.” He sighed, leaning back on the couch that his large form dwarfed.
Fane understood to an extent what he was saying. Jacque wasn’t as bold and outspoken as Jen, but then few were. But his redheaded mate had a temper, and she definitely didn’t let him dictate to her, which most of the time was more of a turn-on than an annoyance. No male of his species wanted their female to be compliant all of the time; just as none of their females wanted a male that would cower from her outbursts or lay down stupidly while she ran off into danger. The friction that existed between them was, ironically, tied directly to the passion they felt for each other. So even though he was sitting there worrying about her, frustrated with her actions and ready to tear through the forest to go after her, he wouldn’t change a thing about her.
“Yes,” Fane finally spoke. “I definitely get your point. I’ve asked you before, 'Would you have it any other way?' Now I ask you again after the time you’ve been mated and the things you’ve been through together. Would you have it any other way, Alpha?”
A sly smile took the place of his scowl. “And be bored out of my mind with a female that catered to my every whim? No way. I’ll take worry, fighting, fear, frustration, and all the other emotions that come with being mated to a feisty female over boredom any day.”
They both sat in contemplative silence, though Fane was barely holding himself still. It felt so unnatural not to be the one checking on his mate and the one fixing whatever it was that she needed fixed.
“Since we’re here and we’ve got nothing but time,” Decebel said breaking the quiet, “why don’t you tell me what it is that has you thinking you are incapable?”
Fane’s eyes snapped up. “Why is that the conclusion you’ve come to regarding my battles?”
“Because I was young once upon a time. I remember what it was like to have the confidence that is innate in a dominate wolf and to then have it ripped from your grasp because of something that was out of your control.”
Fane knew the Alpha was speaking about his sister’s death.
“I did not handle what happened to Cosmina with great poise,” he continued. “I broke under the weight of the guilt I felt for being unable to save her.” Decebel narrowed his eyes on him, not in a stern manner but a calculating one. “What each of us endured in the In-Between left us wounded in some way. Some of those wounds run deeper than others. Instead of just grazing the skin, the wound has pierced muscle, tendons, and, in some cases, even broken bones. A shallow wound will not heal at the same rate as a deeper wound, and sometimes when a wound has begun to heal it endures more trauma and is reopened. Something has reopened your wound that was just beginning to scar, and the scar had not had the time to harden.”
Fane closed his eyes, remembering the peace he had felt when he finally let it go. Why had he picked it back up again? He kept coming back to the same questions. What had caused him to begin having the dreams again, which in turn renewed the flames of the memories he thought he’d doused?
“I have this timeline mapped out in my mind, and I keep going over it and over it trying to figure out at what point I picked up the burden that I thought I’d let go of,” Fane told him as he leaned forward with his elbows resting on his knees and his hands laced together clenching and unclenching.
“Have you come to any conclusion?”
Fane shook his head. “There hasn’t been anything, no so-called trauma, that has happened since getting the females back. Things have been so calm.”
Decebel glanced down at his sleeping daughter as he responded. “Does the trauma always have to come from a negative source?”
Fane wanted to growl at he continued metaphors but bit it back because he knew Decebel was just trying to help him. “What do you mean?”
“Sometimes wounds are reopened during a time of celebration or fun. I’ve had many battle wounds open up while sparring with other wolves, and the sparring was all in good nature with no animosity between us, and yet that something good was still traumatic to the wound.”
“Are you deliberately dragging this out in order to distract me?”
Decebel chuckled. “Okay, perhaps, my age is showing through my council. What I’m trying to say is you have recently had something that is worthy of great celebration happen to you. But regardless of how good it is, it is also going to change your life in a very big way. Maybe you should consider the upcoming birth of your first child as the possible trauma to your wound.”
“I’m not unhappy about Jacquelyn being pregnant,” Fane said as he shot to his feet and began to pace. “I know that we are both young and didn’t really plan for this to happen so soon, but neither of us regrets it.”
“I’m not implying that you do,” Decebel parried. “I’m simply saying that maybe the stress, because there is stress when having a baby whether you are happy about it or not, has caused some of those worries and doubts to resurface.”
Fane continued to pace back and forth across the room. His mind was replaying Decebel’s words over and over again as he considered the truth that was in the Alpha’s suggestion. It was true that Fane was over the moon about their baby, but it was also true that he and Jacquelyn both had worries over being young parents. They would be foolish to think that they knew exactly what they were in for. Fane considered the things that he had thought about in regards to being a father, things he had pushed back because of the other worries rearing their ugly heads once again. He made a sharp turn heading back in the opposite direction and then his feet froze as the truth came crashing down on him like a bucket of ice water.
His head slowly turned to look down at Decebel. “I understand,” he breathed out. The weight was still there, but he finally understood what the weight was from. “Before, when I couldn’t get past it, it was because at first I couldn’t let go of the things I’d seen. And once I moved on from that, it was because I felt as though I had failed my mate.”
Decebel nodded his understanding but said nothing.
“And after I finally accepted that what had happened was beyond my control, I was able to let go of the burden. But now there is another who will fall under the cloak of my protection. Someone small, vulnerable, and completely dependent on me and Jacquelyn.” His voice shook as he bowed his head in surrender. “And it scares me to death.”