Piercing Silence (4 page)

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.”

Chapter 5

J
en walked briskly out of the mansion. A quick retreat was
always best when attempting to pull the wool over a wolf’s eyes.
Jen was a little surprised that Fane had bought the BS she’d been
spewing about Jacque needing space. Granted, there were definitely
times when a girl needed some breathing room from the overbearing
men they were mated to. But, in this instance, Jen knew that was
not what was going on with her friend. Jacque was in too much
turmoil over what Fane was dealing with to want space from him. If
anything, she probably wanted to be by his side, curled up in the
safety of his embrace, just to have the reassurance that―despite
his ghosts―he was still willing to let her in. For Jacque to have
closed the bond after having Fane do that very thing only a few
months ago, instead of letting his mate be what he needed, meant
she was in some sort of deep defecation. Okay, so that was a
ridiculous way to put it, but she
was
trying to curb her foul tongue
to be a better example for Thia. “Oh, the things we do for our
little drool factories,” she muttered as she climbed into the black
SUV that she repeatedly told her mate was ridiculously cliché’ for
werewolves to drive. He didn’t really care what she thought was
ridiculous—his words. She couldn’t repeat what she’d said back
since she was trying to tame her tongue.

As she headed in the direction of the
Romanian pack mansion, Jen kept expecting Dec to contact her
through their bond. To her surprise, she pulled up into the
driveway without so much as a ‘get your cute butt home’. It might
have been smart of her to consider why her mate was acting out of
character, but she didn’t want to take the time. She knew it
wouldn’t be long before Fane came to the same conclusion she had
about Jacque shutting the bond, and then he would be a pissed off
Canis lupus who’d been duped by his mate’s friend—and it was not
for the first time.

As soon as she started up the front steps to
the Romanian pack mansion, Jen let her wolf’s senses take over and
picked up Jacque’s scent. Only it wasn’t headed into the building.
Jen turned and looked out at the forest that had caused her one too
many headaches.

“What are you up to, little Red?” she
muttered under her breath as she followed Jacque’s trail into the
forest. Jen realized, after twenty minutes of walking, that she
clearly hadn’t thought her plan through. “A coat would have been
smart,” she huffed at herself, “and earmuffs, gloves, a canteen of
hot chocolate. Bloody hell, Jennifer, you act like you’ve never
trekked through the cold mountains before.” She couldn’t help
laughing at her ironic statement considering in recent months the
forest and mountains had practically been home. Now, as she once
again trudged through the foliage, she wondered what could have
caused her best friend to return to the woods that was home to many
unseen supernatural beings.

Night was falling rapidly and the
temperature was dropping as she climbed higher into the mountains.
She’d considered phasing to her wolf, but she didn’t like the
vulnerability of being naked out here, even if it was only briefly
while she put her clothes back on. Not to mention, she’d have to
carry her clothes in her mouth.

“How is Jacque?”
Her mate’s voice flowed into her mind. She was
surprised at how long he’d gone without reaching out to her, though
he would have known in a heartbeat if something was wrong. Jen
considered his question. She had to play her cards carefully or he
and Fane would be ripping through the forest like obsessed mad
men.

“She’s good.”
Jen didn’t specify that the ‘she’s’ part was
meant to be short for ‘she
was’
and not ‘she
is’
. So she wasn’t technically
lying. The last time she’d seen Jacque she
was
good.

“Has she explained why she is closing the
bond between her and her mate?”

“Not in so many
words,”
she hedged.

“What has she said?”

Jen could tell he was
growing impatient with her, not that it was anything new.
“We haven’t really made it to that part of the
girl time. We’ve just been taking a stroll down memory lane. Again,
not a lie,”
she thought to herself. They
both had indeed strolled through the forest where tons of memories
remained. They just hadn’t been together while doing it.

“Do you think you could
please ask her to let Fane know she’s alright?”
Even in her head she could hear the bite in his
question.

“
I can ask her. That
doesn’t mean that she will do it.”
Jen
stopped to look around because she hadn’t been paying attention in
the least to where she was while she’d been answering Decebel’s
questions. She shivered when she saw her surroundings and realized
where she was. The large boulders protruding from the mountain and
deep crevices brought back not so happy memories. “Good times,” she
muttered as she remembered being pushed into one of those crevices
by Martha, the she-wolf who’d fallen in love with a human and only
wanted to be with him. Don’t ask Jen why the nut job thought
pushing her into the side of a mountain would make her dreams come
true. Apparently, when crazy people do crazy crap it totally makes
sense to them.