Mug of coffee in hand, Bracken stepped onto the back porch the next morning and glanced around. There was still no sign of his mate.
He’d woken alone, but her cat’s scent had been fresh enough for him to be sure that she hadn’t been gone long. His wolf had wanted to hunt her down, but Bracken had urged the beast to give the cat her space. If they made her feel smothered, she’d be less inclined to relax here. Plus, it was a good sign that she’d risen with the drive to explore the surrounding land.
Bracken had expected her to be back by the time he’d finished his coffee and bagel. She hadn’t. And despite not needing to worry, despite feeling through the mating bond that she wasn’t afraid or in pain, panic began to choke him nonetheless. He wondered if it would always be like that. If he’d always feel that knot of irrational fear in his stomach whenever he had no idea where she was. He hoped not, because it would drive her crazy over time.
He still had his episodes. Still woke sweating and totally disoriented, as if thrown from a nightmare. Still had that dull feeling in the pit of his stomach until he opened his eyes and saw her right there. True to her word, she hadn’t again gotten out of bed in the morning without waking him first. Not until this particular morning anyway. But then, they’d both been in their animal forms, so it hadn’t really been a problem. His wolf didn’t have that issue upon waking.
Bracken downed his second coffee of the morning, placed the mug on the porch swing, and followed his mate’s scent into the trees. He noticed that she’d left territorial marks on some of them. That made him smile. The cat had already claimed the land, even if she didn’t quite think of it as her home just yet.
Since contentment was pulsing down their bond, he expected to find her sleeping on a branch or relaxing on the rocks near the ravine. He didn’t. He found her in the hollow of an old log. Playing with a dead vole. One she’d probably killed herself.
Squatting in front of the log, Bracken tilted his head. “Morning,” he greeted lightly, feeling a rush of relief that he could see her with his own eyes . . . even if she didn’t look all that happy to be interrupted. In fact, the little cat gave him a look that dared him to try and snatch her prize. His mouth twitched into a smile. “I don’t want the vole,” he assured her. “I just want you.” He tapped the ground, coaxing softly, “Come on out here.”
Upper lip quivering, she gave a low gurgle. It sounded like a cross between a reprimand and a warning.
“Yeah, I know, I’m always disturbing you. But I want a little cuddle.”
There was that “Lord, give me strength” look again. He was guessing that Madisyn was communicating what he wanted the cat to do. Evidently, she found his wish for cuddles just a little pathetic.
Chuckling, he drummed his fingers on the ground. “Come on. Come to me.”
Finally, she reluctantly abandoned the vole and very slowly padded out of the log with a long, droning growl that made her displeasure clear.
Bracken shook his head. “I’m not buying that shit. I know you like it when I pet and cuddle you.” She was used to him handling her now, so she didn’t claw at him for lifting her and holding her against his chest. He dropped a kiss on her head and nuzzled her. “My kitty.” That earned him another lip quiver.
Murmuring sweet nothings to her, he stroked her thick, soft fur as he walked back to the lodge. She purred, relaxing into him, and there was something about that sound of absolute contentment that warmed him. So it was a real shame that the moment was ruined when they stepped out of the trees only to find the Alpha pair waiting on the front porch.
Snapping to full alertness, the cat went stiff as a board, a growl vibrating in her chest.
Shaya’s face went all soft when she spotted the feline. “Oh, Nick, look! She’s so—”
Nick grabbed his mate when she tried stepping off the porch. “Do you not like your face as it is? Do you not want to keep your eyelids? Give the cat her space.”
“But she’s—”
“Ready to rip you to shreds if you make a wrong move.”
Stopping a few feet away from the couple, Bracken said, “He’s right, Shaya. She’s no house cat. She lets me pet her—but never for long. And right now, she’s raring to spring.” She no doubt sensed the pair’s level of strength, knew they were Alphas, but she was far too crazy to let it hold her back from attacking if she felt the need to defend herself or Madisyn. He suspected that this vigorous need to protect stemmed from the fact that she’d been the only protection that Madisyn had had for a very long time. Well, now both woman and cat also had him.
Bracken gently scratched under the cat’s chin, hoping to relax her. “She doesn’t recognize you as her Alphas yet. To her, you’re just trespassers. If she didn’t know you, she’d be doing a lot more than letting out a warning growl.”
Shaya sighed. “I just wanted to give her a little stroke. And maybe even a snuggle.”
Nick gave his mate a look of utter exasperation. “You don’t snuggle a pallas cat.”
“Yeah? He does.”
“Bracken’s her mate, so she’ll allow it. Just keep your distance.”
Shaya huffed. “Fine. Anyway, Bracken, we wanted to . . .” She trailed off as she noticed the claiming mark on his neck. “You’re mated? Oh my God, you’re mated!”
“No squealing,” said Bracken, tightening his hold on the cat, who tried to spring out of his arms and launch herself at the source of the high-pitched sound.
Shaya winced, still beaming at him. “Sorry, sorry, I’m just so happy for you both.” She looked close to bouncing on the spot with glee.
Nick pulled his mate back a step, watching the cat carefully. “Seriously, Brack, the crazed look in her eyes doesn’t freak you out at all?”
Bracken blinked. “Why would it?”
The Alpha just shook his head. “Forget it. I’m not gonna judge.”
“Considering your mate has chased you with a shotgun more than once and has a tendency to throw knives at you, I’m not sure you’re in a position to judge,” said Bracken.
Shaya laughed. “He has a point, Nick. You can’t deny that.”
The Alpha male just grunted.
Bracken raised a brow at him. “You gonna tell me why you and Shaya trekked all the way up here so early in the morning?”
“We wanted to talk to you,” said Nick. “Both of you.”
Figuring it was about Kathy, Bracken sighed. “Give us ten minutes, yeah?”
Shaya nodded. “Sure.”
“There’s coffee in the pot.” Bracken took the cat upstairs and into the bathroom. She shifted without much coaxing, thankfully. Pulling Madisyn into his arms, he kissed her. “Morning, baby.”
She hummed. “Morning.”
“My wolf was disappointed that your cat was gone when he woke up.”
“I tried to encourage her to stay with him, but she wanted to explore and mark the land.” Madisyn shrugged. “There’s really no getting her to do anything she doesn’t want to do.”
“Kind of like you.” He kissed her again, smiling when her stomach rumbled. “Let’s get showered so I can feed you, and we can see what Nick and Shaya want.” A short while later, he had his mate curled up on his lap on a porch rocker eating the Pop-Tart he’d made her. Shaya was lounging in the other rocker while Nick leaned against the wooden porch post.
“So what brings you here so early?” Bracken asked the pair.
“Two things,” said Shaya. “One, we wanted to check that you two were okay after the little confrontation with Kathy.”
No surprise there, thought Madisyn. It was really kind of sweet that they’d come first thing in the morning to check on her and Bracken. It showed that they considered him important, and she liked that a lot. “I’m fine,” she answered truthfully before taking another chunk out of her Pop-Tart.
Bracken nodded. “Same here. Never been better.”
Shaya’s mouth quirked. “I see that.”
“As for the second thing that we wanted to talk about,” began Nick, “we had a long conversation with my mother. My gut was right. There’s more to this whole thing than she told you. I managed to drag the truth out of her, and what she did now makes a lot more sense to me, though it was still stupid, uncalled for, and absolutely unacceptable. We had a long talk, and then she got upset because she realized how badly she’d messed up.”
“She’d like to talk to you both,” said Shaya. “She’d like to apologize. I’m hoping that, out of simple curiosity, if nothing else, you’ll both agree to hear her out and let her explain why she acted that way.”
Bracken shrugged carelessly. “Can’t say I really care why she said the things she did.”
Madisyn pursed her lips. “Yeah, me neither.”
Shaya’s shoulders sagged. “I was afraid you’d say that.”
Bracken lifted a brow. “Would you want to hear excuses from anyone who tried coming between you and Nick?”
“None at all,” replied Shaya. “Because there isn’t an excuse for anything like that. I’d have no inclination to give them the time of day, but I’m sort of mean that way. I wouldn’t ask this of you if it weren’t for the fact that Kathy is one of us. We have enough shit going on outside the pack. We don’t need shit going on inside it too.”
Madisyn turned to Bracken, who was busy rubbing the claiming mark on her neck as if it soothed him. “I’ll hear her out if you will, but I can’t tell you that I’m in any rush to forgive her.”
“No one expects you to forgive her,” said Nick. “She was totally out of line—something that Greta hypocritically felt necessary to communicate to her in front of pretty much everyone right before she left.”
Madisyn’s lips parted in surprise. “No way.”
“Oh yeah.” Shaya’s mouth curled. “When Kathy pointed out that Greta was worse than she could ever be, Greta gave her the most patronizing look you’ve ever seen and said, ‘That’s a little thing called displacement. Don’t shift your shame onto me.’ Taryn was almost crying with laughter. Jaime recorded the whole thing with her cell phone.”
Nick shook his head. “Allen remains as oblivious as ever. He’s convinced the woman is a saint.” Pushing off the post with a sigh, he asked, “So you will talk to my mother?”
“Not yet,” said Bracken. “I’m still too pissed at her to really hear anything she says, so there’d be no point in it.”
“I get it,” said Nick. “But don’t leave it too long. If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll admit that you’d rather get this sorted. The longer you leave stuff like this, the worse it can get.”
“Because you give it the time to fester,” mused Madisyn.
Nick nodded. “Exactly.”
Bracken rubbed his jaw. “We’ll speak with her tomorrow.”
Nick gave a short, satisfied nod. “I’ll let her know. Thanks for being prepared to hear her out.” He puffed out a breath. “Listen, hearing what Madisyn said to my mother about treating you like you were broken . . . it got me thinking. Aside from Madisyn, we were all guilty of doing that. Handling you with care. It must have felt to you that we were tiptoeing around you like we were walking in a minefield. We shouldn’t have acted that way, even though we meant well by it. No more of that shit,” he promised.
Before Bracken could even think to respond, Nick turned to his mate and pulled her to her feet—making it clear he was done with the conversation—and Bracken figured the male didn’t like speaking too much about his personal failures. It was an Alpha thing.
Keeping Shaya’s hand in his, Nick said, “We’ll get going. When will you announce to the pack that you’re now mated?”
Madisyn held up a hand, face scrunched up. “No official announcement. Just tell everyone about it. If they want to pass on their congrats, they can text us or something.”
Shaya grinned. “You’re as bad as Harley when it comes to dealing with that kind of thing. Any plans for the mating ceremony yet?”
“No, not yet,” said Bracken. “Me and Madisyn will talk about it and then get back to you.”
“Great.” Shaya gave a little wave. “You two enjoy the rest of your morning.”
Once the Alphas were out of hearing distance, Bracken put his mouth to his mate’s ear. “I have some ideas for just how we can enjoy the rest of our morning.”
Madisyn shot him an apologetic look. “You’ll need to put a pin in them. I have to be at the shelter soon.”
He tightened his arms around her, biting back the urge to ask her not to go. He didn’t want to be away from her. Didn’t want her out of his sight. But he also didn’t want to stifle her. So instead of trying to sneakily seduce her into bed and keep her with him all day, he said, “Sleep here again tonight.”
Madisyn smiled, sensing his struggle, and felt pleased that he’d fought the drive to push her. “Okay.”
He kissed her forehead. “Good girl.”
“But I have to go home first, so I can pick up some clothes.”
“Or you could pack a bag when I drop you off at your apartment this morning. You’ll need to go get your car, remember?”
“Shit, I forgot about that.”
He smoothed his hand up and down her thigh. “What time will you be done at the shelter today?”
“Five.”
“I’ll meet you there and then follow you here.”
Her brow creased. “You don’t need to do that. It won’t take long for me to get here.”
“I don’t care. I need to be sure you’re protected. Hence why I followed you to the shelter every morning last week before I headed home.”
“Yeah, but you weren’t driving back and forth then, were you? You were driving from my house to your territory.” She tilted her head. “Remember that conversation we had about how good I am at protecting myself?”
“Remember that I’m unlikely to care?”
She sighed, rubbing her nose against his. “I’ll be fine.”
“Yes, you will. Because I’ll be there to make sure that you’re fine.”
Annoyance pricked at her, but Madisyn forced the emotion down, understanding why he felt driven to act this way. It was something they needed to get past, though, because she couldn’t deal with being unable to go anywhere alone. But there was no way he’d easily back off, which meant she needed to come up with a compromise. Inspiration struck her, and she smiled. “How about this?”
“No.”
Her cat snarled, bristling at the overprotective behavior, feeling that her strength had been disregarded. Madisyn held his face between her hands. “I know why you worry. I do. But how hard was it for you to deal with the pack worrying and fretting over you like you weren’t capable of protecting yourself?”
Bracken winced. They’d made him feel many things. Incapable. Broken. Weak. Fragile. That he couldn’t be trusted with his own safety—or the safety of others, for that matter. “I don’t ever want to make you feel that way.”
“I don’t feel that way right now. But if you make it a pattern to follow me everywhere I go, that’s exactly how I’ll begin to feel.” And that would eat at her. She’d either end up playing down her dominance just to keep the peace, or she’d become ten times more defiant than ever just to make a point. Either road would make them both very unhappy. “What I was going to say was that Makenna finishes work at the same time I do today. How about I ask her to take a different route to Phoenix Pack territory and pass here on the way?”
He frowned. “You’re okay with Makenna following you here, but not me?”
“Makenna won’t want to follow behind me. She won’t be doing it out of overprotectiveness. She’ll be doing it to give me a break from your overprotectiveness, so I won’t feel the need to bristle at it. And it means you’ll get what you want, which is for me not to be alone on the journey here.”
He let out a heavy breath. “I really, really don’t like this idea. Not at all.” But he positively loathed doing anything to make her feel inept and weak. He wanted to be someone who made her feel exactly what she was—strong, confident, and beautiful. “Fine. But if she can’t follow you home for some reason—”
“I’ll call you.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
He grunted. “Good. Now get inside, strip off your jeans, sit on the couch, and spread your legs. If I’m going to spend the day without you, I can at least spend it with your taste in my mouth.”
Madisyn stood with a mock, long-suffering sigh. “The sacrifices I make for you . . .”
He just snorted.
Later that day, the black metal gate creaked as Bracken pushed it open and stepped into the pack’s graveyard. Because their pack was relatively new, they hadn’t needed one until recently. Knowing Bracken wanted to bury his family on his territory, the pack had sectioned off a portion of land to be used as a graveyard, surrounding it with a wrought iron fence.
It wasn’t like a regular cemetery. There was no chapel, no religious statues or mausoleums. It was just a section of land that featured six smooth black marble headstones. The bursts of color that came from the flower beds didn’t make the sight any less sober. What made it even sadder were the blue teddies on Hayden’s grave; both soft toys were wrapped in a thin plastic sheet tied with ribbon to protect them from the weather. While he appreciated the kind sentiment, the sight made his chest tighten painfully.
Reaching the headstones, Bracken stared down at them. He hadn’t brought flowers, as he hadn’t planned to come. In fact, he’d been on his way to the parking lot, since Madisyn would arrive shortly—she’d already called to say she was on her way here. Coming to the graveyard had been a spur-of-the-moment idea brought on mostly by curiosity. Was the peace he felt real? Could he now, for the first time since the funeral, visit the graves without a bottle of vodka in his hand?
Apparently, the answer to both was yes. For the first time ever, he could stand there, look at those graves, and feel glad that he wasn’t in one himself.
Out of respect, he took a moment to remove the decaying flowers and brush away the dead leaves that had gotten caught in the plants. Done, he sat on the wooden bench opposite the headstones, hands clasped, and read each of the carvings, even though he knew them word for word.
He didn’t remember much about the funeral. He’d been far too numb to really feel the impact of it. As if his emotions had shut down to protect him from the grief and rage.
Each time he’d visited the graves since then, he’d felt weighed down by guilt. The heavy feeling still lingered, but it was no longer a dark cloud hovering over him. It no longer dampened his life or stopped him from living it. Madisyn gave him a reason to live.
His entire world had shifted when he first got a psychic taste of the mating bond. Bracken had metaphorically grabbed it with both hands, had held on to Madisyn like she was a lifeline—which she was. Maybe that was selfish of him, considering he’d be no easy mate, but he could never have walked away from her. Never.
He was glad that he hadn’t, because he wouldn’t have found this peace without her. It wasn’t that all the sadness, grief, guilt, and anger had now left him. No, it was that the emotions no longer crushed him. No longer dictated his moods, muddied his thoughts, or held him back. He could accept what Jesse had been telling him—they were senseless but part of the grieving process. He could still enjoy this peace he’d found with Madisyn. Still live and laugh and find pleasure in things.
His cell began to ring, and he pulled it out of his pocket to see Derren’s name flashing on the screen. Feeling strangely uneasy, Bracken answered, “What is it?”
“You have to get to Madisyn,” Derren insisted. “And you have to get to her now.”