Burden (10 page)

“Have you asked them?”

“Who?”

“The
Betas. Ask them their take on your father and you when you were smaller. Give them permission to be truly honest. I bet they have the answers. And are there not clan activities? You said that Rev guy doesn’t participate, but what are they?”

We got our plates and my stomach growled at the scent of shrimp and chicken.

“What is this?”

“Gumbo, kinda like stew. Eat.”

I closed my eyes, overcome by the succulence of the dish as I put a spoonful in my mouth.

“It’s amazing. What?” Hawke wasn’t eating, instead staring at me.

“I love that look on your face.”

My cheeks burned hotter than the soup in the bowl, “Thank you.”

“The only clan things we do are mating ceremonies and Easter and Christmas things for the kids.”

“So no
clan dinners, no celebrations for babies, graduations, nothing?”

He put his spoon down and sat back, “No.”

He was upset. There was a disappointment in himself and where he’d come from brewing inside him.

“So start.”

“Where?”

“Your home.” Immediately I knew I’d fouled up again. “Our home.”

He came back to life, “Let’s have the whole clan over for dinner on Sunday afternoon,” he grinned ear to ear.

“Good, I’ll cook. I am a pro at cooking for the masses. You can get to know them and we can make sure they feel welcome.”

We finished eating in a comfortable silence. My brain was exhausted but I knew our day was only half over. But, minute by minute, I’d gotten more comfortable rising to my calling and my mate. I also recognized how well everything I’d gone through came into play. All of my experience and knowledge that I thought didn’t matter to anyone and would never be important, had become useful. We drove back home, and as we parked next to the house, I noticed that a man sat on the porch steps. His appearance was menacing, his statue and posture demanded his presence be known. Truth be told, he scared the ever living crap out of me.

“Tarrow has done my job. That is Rev.”

I’d never been
told why the male chose to stay distant. He’d never had a mate. He lived in a cabin on the outskirts of the clan and used no electricity. He ran his patrols every night without fail, sometimes taking over the others’ schedules if they couldn’t make their shift.

“Thank you for coming
, Rev,” Echo was trailing behind me.  I could feel her fear trembling through her.

“This is the already famous Coeur?”

“Yes, this is Echo. Echo, this is Rev.”

Sh
e smiled at him, “Hello, Rev. I’ve been told you have some skills on the computer.”

“I might.”

“Well, it is my opinion that someone, somehow, is siphoning money out of the clan account. But it would take a pretty skilled hacker to find out who, and then clean them dry.”

He squinted his eyes at my female not in defense but because in less than five minutes she’d bested him. “What’s in it for me?”

“A home cooked meal,” she bargained. “Anything you want me to cook. Make it good.”

“Deal,” he slapped the tops of his knees and followed behind us into the house.

“Here’s the problem,” she pointed at a single figure repeated over and over on the computer but not in the books.

“Spaghetti and meatballs, garlic bread, salad, and
lemon cake.”

“You got it big guy. Hawke, I don’t know where the grocery store is. Can you take me or point me in the right direction?”

“Of course,” we headed out towards the store and she made good time getting all of the ingredients for our hacker’s dinner. I took a silly sense of pride pushing the cart as she filled it. We got back, and Rev was hunched over the laptop, screens and logins popping up everywhere. He didn’t even register our presence. I helped chop up the lettuce, tomatoes and cucumbers for the salad while she prepared the rest of the meal.

“Rev, can I get you something to drink?”

He nodded but didn’t give her the response I thought she should but Echo stopped my fury, holding my hand.

“He’s trying to save all of our asses. Give him a break.
He’s in a zone.”

She fixed him a tall glass of lemonade and placed it next to hi
m—he downed it in one gulp and slammed the glass on the table, never blinking.

I watched her make the cake
, and she stuck her finger into the batter and tasted it, purposefully taking her time. She flickered her gaze up to mine and smiled the smile of a female who knew exactly the effect she had on me.

“Not nice, Coeur.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Mmmhmm
m, we forgot to look at the van.”

She
scoffed, “I’m going to have to start making lists. There are so many things to do. It feels good to do work for the good of the clan,” she scrubbed her neck, “especially without the collar. I can still feel it sometimes.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t get to you before I did.”

“You got to me just in time, Alpha mine.”

I pulled her against me, so damned sexy wearing a pink apron. “You snuck that in on me today while Tarrow was here. That was a dirty trick.”

She kissed me quickly, “It just slipped out. It’s so natural to call you that.” We both clenched the other tight as a chill crept up both of our spines. So caught up in our new claim, we’d forgotten the clan mate in the room. She looked over to him and blushed, “I’m sorry, Rev.”

“I’m glad,” the gruff voiced male stated.
“It’s about time this clan turned around.”

She
nailed me with a shocked expression.

“Care to explain?”

“Things have been snowballing in this clan for some time. The best place to start over is with a newly mated Alpha pair—one where the male doesn’t treat his female like shit.”

I rushed him and he stood before me
, unfazed by my aggression. We were equal in height but neither of us relented our ground even though he should’ve submitted.

“I mean no disrespect, Alpha.
And dishonesty is the greatest form of disrespect for another person, especially the Alpha. But we all know your father didn’t treat your mother as the Coeur of the clan should’ve been treated.”

Pulling at the roots of my hair, I took a step back, acknowledging the validity of his statement.

“So much was hidden from me. But it seems you are the only one around here who will stand up and tell me the damned truth. You will tell me everything you know.”

“I’d love to. My family has been keeping journals for a hundred years.”

“The Scribes? I was told they weren’t necessary—they’d gone away—stopped keeping up.”

“That right there,” he put his hands on my shoulders as a father would do to his s
on. “is why we are necessary. We were told to stop taking records. But history has told us when we are commanded to stop keeping the histories is the exact time we should double our efforts.”

“You will help me.”

“Us,” my mate reminded me from across the kitchen.

“Of course. I will be over first thing in the morning with the written words. We were denied technology but we are sneaky.
We have ways to get computers. They may be older, but they work.”

I nodded at him and took my place next to my female who had dinner ready.

She made us sit down and served us regardless of my defiance. Rev ate like a maniac. And after almost every morsel was eaten, he sat back and began to tell us the depths of the deceit he’d only scratched the surface of.

“That money is going to a bogus company. The addresses and accounts are dead ends, all tunneling into a single account. They all
go back to a pseudo name. I’ve never heard of any bear with such a simple name. But I will check the records when I get home. But they were stupid. They left a trail a mile wide, and spotlighted. As we speak, that money is being filtered out of their account slowly, back into the clan’s account. I’ve already recovered fifty grand and there’s plenty more.”

“How much did they take and over how long?”

He scrubbed the top of his close shaven head, “Over a million dollars in the span of twenty three years. The way I set it up, in a few hours, we will have all of our money back. And then I will close all trails. By the time they find out we’ve stolen our money back, it will be too late.”

I leaned down, shoving my eye sockets into the heels of my palms.
“He should’ve paid attention. How could he let this happen?”

“
There are many things you should know about your father. I must be going home. These things weigh heavy on my soul. I will be back in the morning. Anyway, our Coeur looks like she needs time with you. Goodnight.” He got up abruptly and then spoke over his shoulder before leaving, “I will help you in whatever I can to make sure you don’t repeat the mistakes of your father. But it will not always be easy to listen to me—and it most certainly will not be without grief. I will, however, always tell you the truth.”

And then he was gone.

I didn’t know what to think, my mind was muddied with things I’d never wanted to face. I sat at the table for an hour while Echo cleaned around me. I felt weak. I felt useless. I felt like quitting.

I looked back on my childhood and for the first time, realized it for what it truly was. It was a saga of preparing me for nothing. He hadn’t prepared me for anything but some cushy life, telling others what to do and how to do it. He never trained me to be an Alpha—he simply trained me to be the ignorant son of a pompous and faulted father. I’d have to learn the hard way.

“Come on, Hawke,” she pulled me up and led me upstairs and repeated my efforts from nights before. I was in shock, the hole my father had left me to crawl out of had finally caved in on me.

“Undress, I’m gonna run the water. You have to relax.”

You hurt—she hurts
—my bear called to me, knotted in a nest of worry. But I did her bidding, undressing down to my boxers, sitting on a chair next to the tub.

“He’s right. I never saw my father show my mother affection. Not even a handshake. I swore that if I ever found a mate, I would treat her as she should be treated.”

“And you do,” she knelt before me and rested her head on my knees. “I think that’s why I’m here. All of this stuff would’ve come to light anyway and you needed me to be here to go through it with you. It’s nice to be needed.”

“I do. I need you so badly,” But I was no longer talking about her role as the Alpha female. I spoke to her now as a male speaks to his mate.

She looked up at me and then surprised me, “Tomorrow, mate. Tomorrow. That way we will be as strong as we can. I have a feeling we’re gonna need it.”

I waited until she left before peeling my shorts from my body and sunk myself in the tub. The sooner I calmed, the sooner she would. I thought about how our
clan had struggled to make ends meet. How some of the things we needed had been neglected because of lack of money. And one of the reasons so many children were missing school, was because the mothers of our clan weren’t home anymore to see to it that they attended—because they were working. I slunk down further in the hot water and let the realization roll over me that my legacy, the only thing my father had left me—was broken and battered, much like my female when I’d found her. And now I had to rebuild it.

Like starting from scratch.

The bastard.

Hours later
, she opened the door and put two towels on the chair next to the tub.

“You’ve got to be
getting cold. Those are warm from the dryer. Hurry up.”

I dried off and wrapped the towel around my hips. I opened the door and I could feel her in my room, flipping channels. I chuckled
, remembering what she’d said about not watching TV. I walked in and watched her, watching TV, for a few minutes. She was on her knees and with every change of channel she’d shove the remote in the direction of the screen as if the motion helped the TV change the channels. Her hair was so long, it brushed her toes, curled up underneath her.

What did I do before she came into my life?

I couldn’t even remember.

“This is absurd. Who watches this? There was this lady on there and she was pregnant and in jail and she was complaining because her twelve year old daughter was pregnant at the same time. They said it was reality television. But there’s no way that crap can be real. Where is that real? Wherever it is, we are not ever visiting.”

She turned her head and saw me laughing, which was obviously her plan, so she continued.

“And one channel had
a little chubby girl who was a pageant queen or something and I swear, I couldn’t understand one word out of her mouth. And it’s not just me. There were freakin’ words on the bottom of the screen telling me what she was saying because apparently no one knows. And she had a pacifier in her mouth. She had to be at least nine years old. I’m kinda grateful no one ever let me watch TV.”

She went on and on and b
y the time she finished, I was laughing so hard I had to lean against the door for fear of falling over.

“I didn’t know you were so funny, mate of mine.”

“I’m not funny. It’s these crazy people.”

“I’m not sure. That’ chili
comment earlier today was hilarious.”

I grabbed a pair of boxers and some black pajama pants from the dresser and shut myself in the bathroom to change.

“Find anything decent,” I asked her, walking back into the bedroom.

“No, I found worse.”

She pointed to the TV and on it was a man and a woman naked, trying to start a fire.

“I hope that’s not the way you intend to teach Evan and Elliot to make a fire.”

“Ha ha ha.”

I took the remote from her and turned the TV off. I put it on the side table and turned around to see her watching me. I waggled my eyebrows, “Picking a spot?”

“Maybe.” She retorted.

“Make it good—i
t’s forever.”

“I know.
I can’t believe I get to keep you forever.”