Chapter Twenty-Two
Marius helped Hayley into his truck. She was so substantial and forceful as a person, it was funny to him that she seemed so light as he gave her a hand up. She fought with the buckle for a moment before finally leaning back and allowing him to buckle her in.
“I love you,” she said.
Her words were only slightly slurred, but it made Marius smile. She smelled less like Red Vines and more like sangria—fruity, with an alcoholic bite. He kissed her nose and closed the door before coming around and getting in on his side of the truck.
“It’s true, you know,” she said.
He knew exactly what she was doing—this was the same thing he’d said to her, after telling her he loved her.
“I know,” he said.
“And I didn’t plan it this way, but it’s pretty convenient, you know? If we love each other, and we’re…you know. Mates. If we’re mates. Wow, that sounds so…heavy. Profound.”
“It is heavy and profound,” he agreed.
“I get why you don’t want to mark me,” she murmured.
There was nothing he wanted more. But like he’d told her in that alleyway, no way. Not for the Spokane Pride or their stupid fucking enforcer.
He drove carefully down Main Street, taking them back to her place where he figured she’d be more comfortable. Although his mind was full of Hayley, he couldn’t help but think of the conversation he’d had with his dad before leaving for The A-Hole.
The phone had been too-warm in Marius’s hand while he listened to his old man’s voice.
“I’m glad you called, Marius.”
He could picture his father. Old before his time. It had been four years since the war against the Dark Pines Pride, but after the battle was over that night, Marius’s father had shifted from his grizzly back into his human form, and Marius had been struck, all of a sudden, by how much his dad seemed to have aged.
And now his father was a self-proclaimed rogue, running a gas station in the middle of nowhere.
“I’ve got some questions,” Marius said.
“Figured you might, at some point.”
An emotion too close to sadness filled Marius’s throat. After all this, his dad had to know that what they’d done was wrong.
“Why’d you bring us to the Clausen Pride to begin with?” Marius asked. “Why couldn’t we just have stayed in Idaho and done our own thing?”
His dad didn’t say anything right away, and Marius could imagine him frowning out some window, looking at trees, maybe, or the little gas station where he worked. “It was a bad decision,” he finally said. “I know that now. If I could go back, change what I did, I’d do that in a quick second. But at the time, I thought you, a little shifter boy, should grow up with other shifters. I didn’t like the Clausens. Hell, no one did. But they were powerful enough that they’d take in loners without worrying about us shaking up their ways. I pledged us to their pride because we were two grizzlies without a clan, and we needed—I thought—a solid structure of protection and camaraderie. I know you don’t want to hear this, Marius, but I did it for you.”
“When Mom died—”
“When your mom died, it destroyed us both.”
“I know that now,” Marius said. “At the time, I thought you took us away because you were mad at me for crying all the time.”
The old man’s voice softened. “Hell no, Marius. Hell no. You remember when I would go out to patrol the woods around our cabin some nights?”
Marius nodded. “Yeah.”
“That was so I could go outside and bawl my eyes out without waking you up.”
Marius had picked at the edge of his coffee table, where a piece of laminate was peeling away from the particle board. “You could have cried with me.”
“I know that now.”
Tears threatened, so Marius closed his eyes. This old pain, it wasn’t giving him the answers he’d called for. But it was giving him the answers he needed. Still, he needed to know more about that war.
“Why’d we even fight alongside the Clausens?” Marius asked. “When you saw how hungry they were for territory that wasn’t theirs, why didn’t we leave?”
“With the Clausens, it was easy to join. Hard to leave. They’d have hunted us down as soon as they took out the Dark Pines Pride. I tried to get out at one point, long before the Dark Pines war. The old alpha told me we owed him our allegiance. If we’d been cougars or cats, he wouldn’t have cared—the Clausens had plenty of those. But because we’re grizzlies, he wanted us on his side. Fighting advantage, having different shifters.”
“I didn’t want to fight anyone,” Marius said.
“You didn’t.”
“But that mountain lion—I threw him into a tree. You stood right there and watched.” The mountain lion had died instantly. What if that lion had been Hayley’s dad? Marius squeezed his eyes tighter, and brushed away a hot tear.
“You’re not remembering everything, son. That lion was about to kill me. You saved my life.”
Marius let out a heavy breath. Here was the real answer he needed. “Do you know who it was?”
“It was one of the Spokane Pride. Don’t know his name.”
“So it wasn’t one of the Dark Pines?” Marius couldn’t keep the tightness from his voice.
“No, it wasn’t. By that point, the alpha and his wife had already been killed, and their allies were retreating. That Spokane lion, he jumped on me out of spite. A cowardly attack just before the retreat.”
Marius couldn’t speak. He wasn’t even sure he was breathing at this point. The mountain lion he’d killed while protecting his dad—that lion hadn’t been related to Hayley’s family.
He still had to atone for his part in the war, but he hadn’t killed her parents.
He and his dad had talked a little more after that, some about his dad’s occasional visits with the Rock Creek Clan alpha and his mate. Marius stopped himself before telling his dad anything about Hayley. He wanted to, but he and his dad weren’t quite ready for that yet.
Someday, though, he believed they would be. This one conversation was doing a lot to heal old wounds. It had been just what he needed before meeting Hayley at The A-Hole.
Now, in his truck with Hayley, he sneaked a glance at her while waiting at a stop sign. Her cat’s eyes reflected the headlights of a passing car before going dark again, and then she regarded him solemnly.
“I have to tell you something,” Marius said.
“Okay.”
“It’s about the war.”
She inhaled sharply, then exhaled. “Okay.”
“I checked with my dad, to be sure. I didn’t kill your parents. One shifter died at my hands, and it was someone from the Spokane Pride, my dad said. I threw the guy to protect my dad. He hit a tree, and died. But I hadn’t wanted to fight. I hadn’t wanted to be there at all.”
“And the only thing you did, you did to protect someone you love,” she whispered.
Marius relaxed his grip on the steering wheel. She sounded like she understood. “I’ve been mad at him for four years. But I called him tonight, to make sure…to make sure I hadn’t killed one of your parents. I know it doesn’t fix everything, but I had to know.”
She reached across the bench seat to take one of his hands and squeeze it in her own. “Thank you for asking him,” she said.
Overwhelmed with emotion, he choked out, “Least I could do.”
“My parents were very much in love,” she said, seemingly out of nowhere.
“Mine, too.”
“Yeah?” She leaned her head back. “I think that’s the best. When we traveled, we saw really weird things that other groups of shifters do. There was this one wolf pack that had the alpha deciding who would be together. All pairings were said to be for the good of the pack. Just seems wrong, you know?”
He nodded.
“Which is why I don’t get why my parents would have agreed to this thing with the Lockmans. I think—I think they were planning to get us out of it once the war was over. But how would we have done that?”
Marius didn’t know, and it sounded like a rhetorical question, anyway. They drove the rest of the way to Hayley’s place, and Marius pulled up the drive. They got out of the car and Hayley walked in a mostly straight line to the stairs up to her apartment. He admired her form, her graceful walk, her perfectly plump ass.
She stopped at the first step. “You coming, or what?”
He rushed forward in answer, then captured her in his arms. She squeaked when he threw her over his shoulder, caveman-style, and carried her up the steps.
She pounded his back. “I’m gonna throw up all over you,” she warned.
He could hear the lie. She hadn’t gotten quite as sloppy drunk as she’d hoped, because Ross had been a good bartender and cut her off.
“Keys,” he said, holding his hand behind him.
She gave a big sigh but a second later dropped her keys into his open palm. He opened her door and brought her inside, where he set her down on the bed. Finding a glass in one of the cupboards by her mini-kitchen, he poured her some water. He handed it to her, and she drank most of it.
He toed off his shoes, then knelt on the floor and helped get her boots off. As he set the second boot aside, he glanced up at her face. She was staring down at him, a look of tenderness in her pale blue eyes.
“It’s true,” she said.
He got up on his knees and crowded closer to her. She moved her legs so he could press up right against her bed. Taking her face in his hands, he whispered, “I know. I can hear it. I can feel it.”
When he kissed her, she moaned gently and clutched his shoulders. But he pulled away. He lifted her legs up onto the bed and crawled in behind her, spooning her back with his body. In moments, she was asleep, and he lay there, wide awake, at the mercy of all his thoughts. Thoughts about pride wars, and mate marks, and what if, what if, what if.