Three’s a Clan (19 page)

Trevor had been the one to help Jake through his transition when his wolf woke up. He was supposed to be the control master. “Aren’t you the one who helps the new members adjust to Pack life?”

“Yes. I should be there. You are more important.”

Great. So it was my fault. “You didn’t have to come here for me.”

“Cut the crap, Shelly. You wouldn’t have come home if I didn’t come for you. You wanted us to chase you.” He spread his hands like I was supposed to be impressed. “Well, here you go. I chased you. If you run from here, I will keep chasing you.”

“Nothing says
I love you
like the promise to stalk a lady.”

Trevor turned and ripped down a branch the circumference of my arm. The landscaper would be pissed. It messed up the whole line of the tree. The miasma started to go through the list of landscapers we had used at the mansion and who was good with coniferous trees. I was wading through the information on where to buy a woodchipper when Trevor threw the branch down and stalked toward me.

His body was a live wire, and every synapse in my being turned on and tuned into what was coming for me. The miasma turned off as he touched me and I could just feel again. Tears leaked down my eyes and I wanted the miasma back for just a minute. Having control of my emotions was needed right then. This man could destroy everything I tried like hell to hide behind. That mark on my neck let him break my control now.

I’d never been more terrified than I was at that moment. I’m not a great person, but I could control the world around me. I was good at it. I wasn’t a mate. I was a leader. This man didn’t need a leader. So what did that leave me to offer him? Sex? Pshaw. Sex was a pastime, not enough to keep a mate.

He tried to wipe my tears, and for a moment I let him. “Shelly, I don’t want you to cry. This has been anything but ideal. I know these past few months have been insane. But finding you, realizing it was you that could handle what both Alpha and I needed to come together, this made it worth it. It’s all worth it if we have you.”

“You don’t get to decide that.” Those words left my mouth and I realized the problem. I let my feelings that I had pushed down for a long time take over. Call me an emotional ostrich. I buried my head in the sand and pushed the pain away. I buried it all. Losing my control with these men threatened to allow all those buried parts of my heart to rise from the grave.

“I’m not deciding anything. I am telling you that I love you.” He stopped wiping my tears and cupped my face. “I am telling you that you are my mate. You are where I belong, and although I want us all to be together back home right now, I have enough human lifetimes ahead of me that I am not afraid of pulling back to regroup.”

I pushed his hands away. “What you are telling me is that you don’t care about all the blood I have on my hands?”

“You did what needed to be done.” He grabbed for me again and I let him. “I don’t know how you had the strength to make the sacrifice you did. I respect you more for that. You chose what you knew was right. Now I am telling you that it is okay to choose what is right for you.” His arms were around me. I leaned in and listened to his heartbeat patter against my cheek. My arms were wrapped around my middle and he held me together in that moment.

“What if you had chosen what was right for you back when Lily was alive?”

He stiffened under my words. I could feel him force his body to relax.

“Lily gave her blessing for us. I told you that. She is my past, and I did love her, but she is gone. She wouldn’t want me to live a half-life when I have the opportunity to have everything I want with you. I would never have voluntarily changed her, and I wouldn’t have asked her to live this life.”

“But you tried to change her when you found her, just like you did Amber and Alpha didn’t you?” I pulled back to look at him, and gauge his response. “What if she had lived?”

“Shelly, don’t do this. The past is exactly that.
What ifs
have no place here. I have a future now. It’s you. All the secrets are gone. I can be exactly who I need to be and if you can accept me, I will have all I need.” He began to kiss me.

He kissed the part in my hair. My scalp sizzled. He kissed my temples. Zings of sensation raced down my body. He kissed my cheeks. He wiped the tears that still flowed and kissed my jawline. Then he got to my neck. There was fire along the left side, but on the right side I had never felt so cold. I pushed him away.

“What happens if I go back? You may be ready to forgive and forget and move on. What about him?” My hand pressed against the other matemark. There was pain there. I stepped back from him farther and felt my control return a fraction.

“We both need you. You’re the one who brought us together. It could only be you.” He held out his hand. Palm up, he was offering something amazing to me.

Instead of taking it, I tucked my hands in my pockets. I didn’t bother to wipe the tears away, but I built my walls up enough to stop them from flowing fresh. “I am leading this Family right now. You are Beta to Alpha Paulson’s Pack. It wouldn’t work. One of us would have to submit. The responsibility is too great. Love doesn’t solve problems, Trevor. It creates them. I’ve caused enough problems.”

“You didn’t cause anything. And have you not noticed that because of Amber, the entire hierarchy of Pack and Family life is being rewritten? The rules aren’t solid right now. We can mold this life to what we want it to be. Unless what you want isn’t us?”

I pulled at the miasma. I wanted plans of what to do, how to adapt. Instead I got flashes of a werewolf Pack led by the men I loved. I got a picture of my little brother and his mate creating a new way of life for the baby inside her. I got a picture of the dream walk circle that I was somehow a part of.

I had been burning sage every night to protect my brain from being compromised. Supposedly, only witches could wield the power of herbs. Whether it was from drinking witch blood or having a witch in my bloodline, I was able to tap in as well. No one had invaded my brain since I left.

I couldn’t make a decision, so I was honest. “I want…to be in control again.”

Trevor’s jaw hardened. A muscle twitched where he ground his teeth together. He was stubborn, but there are ways to push a man away. My stomach turned as I realized what I would need to do to let him go. I wanted to go with him. I wanted to run with him. I wanted my rightful place between the men that in any other situation would belong to me for an eternity. But I had lived long enough to know that going with a man for love never worked. Hell, every case I had been witness to, aside from Amber and Mary, had just ended with death.

Everyone around the Paulson Pack and Hart Clan had a role in creating this new world and righting the wrongs that I had allowed to happen through my Family. I killed the man that led the harvesting ring, but that didn’t take away what I had allowed to happen there. “How many of the witches died?”

“What?”

“The harvesting ring.” I clarified. “How many did my Family drain dry?”

“Shelly, that’s…”

I wouldn’t let him avoid this one. “The past. But it’s a past I allowed. So again, can you live with all the blood on my hands?”

He just looked at me. Then his hands went to his own pockets and he mirrored my stance. “This has nothing to do with me. Your hands washed clean for me when you succumbed to my bite in those woods. You are the one who has to deal with all that happened. Until you do, there is nothing I can say.”

“I don’t want to deal with it. I want to fix it.”

“Shelly, some things can’t be fixed. Some things just have to be allowed to heal.” He shrugged his shoulders. “And some people have to be willing to let the wound close.”

I watched the man that was the perfect third of my whole walk away.

I didn’t try to stop him.

Chapter Thirty

Trevor

I walked back into the apartment building. I knew he wasn’t in. It was better that way. I had helped him gain control of himself once, I had to do it again. I had to make him see that this wasn’t over.

I felt the tug from Alpha. He knew I was here. We had a connection that began strong as members of the same Pack. That connection was strengthened as I became his Beta. Now that we had each marked Shelly, that cord was even thicker. His emotions filtered through. He was anxious. He must have been able to read me as well, because I felt him realize I was alone.

Then I felt him try and block me out. Those walls of his were no match for me now. This whole problem was because of walls. Shelly had walls between us both, and by not going after her together we had allowed her to build them back up. The only time I felt like I was close to breaking through, she asked about Rick and the progress I had made was for nothing.

We had seen Shelly open and raw. We had held her skin between our teeth, and her body between ours, and I had seen it. She was my mate. I needed Alpha by my side to carry her and her baggage home. I hoped he had this crap with the Pack settled. We needed to figure out how to go get her. I could be patient about most things, but I had lied to Shelly. I wasn’t waiting for her.

Oh, she might have come for us eventually, but I wasn’t willing to bend to her timeline anymore. The mating call was hitting her from the way she clawed at her neck in that small park. I stalked to the weight room and found Alpha taking out his frustration on the heavy bag. I’d give him a few more punches before I helped him redirect his frustration the right way this time.

Chapter Thirty-One

Shelly

He was out of his damn mind. Good thing I had the miasma. I was realizing that I had a lot to work on.

Brandon folded his arms. “No, you don’t understand. We are going.”

For a vampire who had spent less than thirty years with our Family, he seemed awfully damned sure of himself.

“We need to find a Family to join, or we need to start a new one.” I was trying to explain this to him in as many monosyllabic words as possible. “We can’t just go and hope that Amber and Jake will allow another Protector in their territory. Unless you are planning on leaving my protection for his.”

I suppose I couldn’t blame them, and I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it before.

Probably because at the base of it, the miasma held self-preservation above all else. The brilliant goo in my head would never put a thought to me that would result in the destruction of the Family I held together. It had taken Amber and Mary to make me realize what I had to do with our Matheo. Perhaps I needed Brandon to clue me in on what was best for these vampires.

“For someone with a superbrain, you are being very dense.”

I glared at him. He knew that look meant for him to either get to the point or shut up.

“I am taking over. I have requested authority over this Family.” He puffed his chest, like I should be proud of him. “The others have agreed. I claim the power as the Meyers’ Matheo. If anyone wishes to dispute or challenge, let their voice be heard.”

The remaining Meyers Family voiced their agreement and I felt his power surge. I might have squeaked a bit. He had some hefty juju he was keeping under wraps. The bubble of power expanded. The skin of the bubble pushed against me until it popped. The Matheo’s reach spread and encompassed us all.

Crap.

“I never knew you had it in you, but I don’t object.” I rolled my shoulder and popped my neck. I wasn’t sure how I felt about this, but I’d roll with it. “It actually eases my pressure a bit. So what’s first, fearless leader?”

The grin that crossed his face was terrifying. His canines extended and his push against me held an air of compulsion.

“You know you can’t compel me, right?” I hoped I wasn’t lying.

“I can’t compel you. I can decide where to take my Family. I just got off the phone with a certain group of witches who are more than happy to share a very large home with us. So my first proclamation as Matheo…” His teeth lengthened as he took control and he looked directly at me as he said “…is that we go home.”

I stilled. He had to be joking.

“My second proclamation is that our Protector get laid.” Everyone around him cheered and the miasma helped me plan how to water down all their blood. “She is getting grouchy, and we need her in a much more sated state.”

“You realize I have already killed one Matheo.” I let the words hiss from my teeth. But it wasn’t anger that had my body stiff—it was fear. I had just pushed those men away. I had pushed away the one that came, anyway.

“I realize that you have sacrificed enough. We all have. Let’s get the pot of gold at the end of this crappy rainbow.”

Brandon’s eyes were sad. There was no mate waiting for him back home. He had lost everything and he was willing to lead instead of falling apart. He was willing to move in with the memories instead of running from them.

It wasn’t like I had a choice. “You have the strength to lead us. Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet. I also stole your sage.”

I might be able to kill again.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Rick

The heavy bag was not heavy enough. I pounded on that sack of sand until I finally felt the strength leave my body. Exercise was one of those things that many people can lose themselves in. The physical exertion allows emotions to fall away.

The problem was that I had far too much strength to expend. I punched at the fact that my teeth ached to bite my mate’s skin. I punched at the fact that my Beta was unable to bring her back to me. I punched at the fact that I had let her run away in the first place. I punched at the idiot I was. I’d allowed someone else to do the job that was meant for me. She was my job. Shelly was what I was meant for. I was meant to have her at my side. Who she was, the strength she had, and the sacrifices she had made for her Family let me know that I had to break through to her.

The bag split. It was unfortunate that the only way to break through her walls were to tear mine down. I watched the sand sift out.

“You are cleaning that up. I got the last one.” Trevor didn’t break rhythm with the speed bag. The incessant thump had gotten on my nerves over the last few days, but it had also let me know he was here. I didn’t look at him as I pulled down the bag and tossed it before picking up one of the other three he had placed at my side.

“I’ll get it later,” I said.

“You’re right. A shower first would be a good idea. You don’t smell pleasant.”

I just grunted. Why argue? I was ripe. Really, without my mate nearby at least I didn’t have the stink of mating pheromones on me. I was not one to worry about what others thought anymore.

From the rumors that had been filtering back to our little plot of land, I was now one of the most notorious Alphas in the United States. I had a smirk on my face as I remembered what one of the nomadic Packs had relayed.

There was word of a turned Alpha who had figured out how to wield power over both vampires and hybrids.

That was a laugh. I couldn’t even keep my mate in the same state. I should have Shelly beneath my body at my whim. Despite her vampiric stamina, I should have had her so sated she needed to be brought her little black bottle on a silver platter. Hell, between Doc and I, she should be comatose.

Instead, I was beating against heavy bags and masturbating in the shower. I guess it could be said that I had control over myself enough that I hadn’t strangled every happy couple around me. It was a good thing Amber was my daughter. Then there was Mary. She would never take the place of the daughter I’d lost, but her presence was comforting.

I thought back to the times when she had come over for a dinner with the Pack. She was blissfully ignorant and light at that point. Now…well, she had grown into her strength. Amber told the rest of my Pack the story of the exploding wolf heads a few too many times, and they lowered their eyes to her quicker than they did me some days.

I also knew that wishing didn’t accomplish anything. I hit the bag harder. If you want something, you had to get it yourself.