WESLEY
I hastened to my truck as fast as I could. I needed to shift, but I couldn’t do that in town. It was necessary for me to get into the forest first. Then I could link Reid and ask him to come get my truck so I could leave it on the shoulder.
My emotions were all over the place. I didn’t know whether to scream or cry or laugh. The whole situation was too much for my lycan to handle. Or me, if I was honest.
As soon as I was far enough away from the town, I pulled over and called Reid, since I was still out of mindlinking range.
“What’s up?”
“I need you to come get my truck,” I grunted. “Okay,” he replied. “Where is it?”
“I’ll leave my phone in it so you can find it with the GPS tracker.” “Got it. You okay?”
“No,” I growled, and then I hung up.
I threw my phone onto the passenger seat and ripped my shirt over my head. Then I hopped out of the truck and ran into the trees before taking my pants off and leaving them on the ground as I shifted into my lycan. My claws dug into the dirt, and I had to hold back the howl threatening to break through my mouth.
It hurt that she thought I could hurt her. But even more than that, it hurt to see her hurting. And she was so sure. So firm in her belief that I would do something so horrible as abandon her when she needed me the most.
It gutted me. And I couldn’t even blame her. I’d be mad at me, too, if I was her.
And even though I knew all those years ago there was a chance she’d think I’d abandoned her, to see it come to fruition was something I could never have prepared for. We’d spent over a year trying to find her, to find out her name and where she’d moved to. My dad had hired private investigators and even tried using a witch, but it was all to no avail.
We should have tried harder. I’d always thought we hadn’t done enough, but now I knew for sure. I knew it hadn’t been enough.
Some friend I was.
No. I didn’t even deserve that title. I was just the boy who broke her.
I made it to our pack lands in record time and took a lap around the perimeter, staying under the cover of the trees. About halfway through, a light gray lycan and a rusty-furred wolf flanked me, running with me.
I acknowledged Sebastian and Nolan with a nod, then kept on my path. It was a normal loop for me, one I ran almost every morning before our mandatory training.
My friend and my brother ran with me in silence, not asking me questions or trying to talk to me. They both knew better. Seb might be an asshole, but
he was more intuitive than he let on. And Nolan—well, he was just returning the favor.
I finished my first lap and then started in on a second. But unlike that awful day almost twelve years ago, I didn’t try to outrun my companions. I stayed in stride with them, letting their presence calm my rage.
Even though it wasn’t the same as the way a mate could calm me, the bond between the four of us was strong, forged not just because of our parents’ friendship but because of all we’d gone through at each other’s side.
I led us back to my house, glad I had moved out of the family suite in the packhouse a few years ago. I did not want to see my mom or my dad right now.
I slammed my front door open, not even caring how hard it hit the wall in the entry as I stalked through my house, still in my lycan form.
I heard the other two following me and then ducking into one of the spare rooms where they knew I kept extra clothes for them. Their muttering voices as they shifted and changed echoed in the otherwise quiet house, but I tuned them out as I pulled on a pair of gray sweatpants and a black T-shirt. I exited my bedroom and stormed back out onto the porch. I threw myself onto the porch swing, where I crossed my arms and sat pouting like a toddler. Being outside was a must, though. I couldn’t stay cooped up in the
small spaces in my little bungalow.
“So, how did coffee with Haven go?” Sebastian asked as he leaned against the railing.
I growled out in response. Nolan sat down next to me, leaning his forearms on his knees.
“That well, huh?” Nolan said.
“She didn’t show up,” I grumbled. “Ouch.” Sebastian winced.
“She didn’t show up, and when I went to their apartment to find out why… She said she wrote to me. She said she gave me her new address, and when I never wrote back because I never got the letter…” I shook my head. “She thinks I abandoned her,” I said, my knee bouncing up and down.
“But you didn’t,” Sebastian said.
“Didn’t I though?” I asked. “I may as well have. I should have tried harder. I should have realized sooner something wasn’t right. Then maybe we’d have had enough time to get her before someone else did.”
“Wes, you didn’t give up on her. You went to our parents and told them something wasn’t right. You checked every day—no—every hour for an update on her.” I shrugged at Sebastian’s words. “Did you tell her that? Did you tell her Nolan’s parents tried to adopt her?”
“No,” I grunted. “It wouldn’t have mattered. She made her mind up. She thinks I’m a bastard, and she’s right.”
“Why do you care so much?” “What?” I asked.
“Why do you care so much?” Seb repeated. “What do you mean?”
“I mean—I mean you fucking SHIFTED when you found out someone else had adopted her and that you would not get to see her. That you wouldn’t be able to reach out to her unless she contacted you first. When you thought you’d failed her. Shifted. At twelve years old.”
“What’s your point?” I asked.
Seb threw his hands in the air, then gestured to Nolan as if to say, “You try.”
“What Seb is trying to say,” Nolan began, “is you’ve never cared this much about what a girl thought of you. No girl has ever affected you like this. Then Haven comes back into your life, and one comment, one negative opinion from her, has you tearing yourself apart. Why? What makes Haven so special?”
His question, combined with his words from the previous night, had my spiraling thoughts halting in their tracks. There it was. The answer was staring me right in the face, taking the form of a nine-year-old girl with blue eyes and messy red hair, morphing into the beautiful woman who took my breath away the night before.
All this time, I hadn’t even realized it. But the impossible, imaginary standard I subconsciously compared every other girl to wasn’t impossible or imaginary—it wasn’t even a standard at all. It was a person. Her. Haven. “I- I don’t know, but—”
“Do you think she’s your mate?” Nolan asked.
I considered his words. She was human. Human mates weren’t unheard of, but there would be no way to know for sure yet. The mate bond didn’t appear until both mates were twenty-one.
“It’s too early to know,” I said. “Her birthday is still a few weeks away.” And then the next words left my mouth before I even had a chance to think about them, as if they were the words that had been on the tip of my tongue, waiting to be said for eleven long years. “But even if the Goddess doesn’t give her to me, I’m going to make her mine.”
I declared my intent with a determination I hadn’t felt in a long time. I wanted her. Damn it, I wanted her. And not just because of her looks, although that was part of it, but because of who she was.
I had already fucked up once in my life and almost lost her, so I would not let her go this time. Not without a fight. I knew what kind of man I was. I knew I could be the type of man she needed. My lycan stretched in satisfaction at my words and my thoughts, and I didn’t miss the smirk Sebastian gave Nolan.
“I’ll only say this once, but you’re right,” I admitted to Sebastian, and his smirk morphed into a grin. “I’ve never felt this for anyone else, and I don’t want to let it go. Let her go. I want her.”
“And what are you going to do about it?” he asked.
I opened my mouth, closed it, and leaned back against the porch swing.
Shit. “I don’t know.”
“You should tell her,” Sebastian said.
“About what happened?” I asked. “About the adoption?” He nodded. “And everything else, too,” he added.
“She’s not ready for that,” I said. “And I doubt she’d believe me. She didn’t even believe me when I said I’d never gotten her letter.”
Seb sighed in exasperation, his eyes rolling so far back all I saw were the whites.
“Fine. Fine,” he said, lifting his hands in surrender. “Do it your way. See how it goes. I have a training to help run, so I’ll see you later.”
He turned on his heel and stalked off, his head shaking as he muttered to himself under his breath.
“You’re going to have to get her to like you first.”
Nolan and I both turned to find Maddie leaning against my open front door.
I glanced at him, then at her, and then around the front yard of my house. “When did you get here? How’d you get into my house? What are you even
doing here?”
“I was already here,” she said.
“No, I would have noticed you,” Nolan said. Maddie chortled. “You guys are so cute.” “How’d you get in?” I asked again.
“Honestly, Wes, you need to be more aware of your surroundings. If I was an attacker, you’d all be dead already.” She examined her nails casually. “Also, you need better snacks.”
“Tell me how you got into my house, or I’ll tell Dad about your belly button ring.”
She just shrugged. Fucking shrugged. Like she’s not afraid of our dad when he goes into full alpha mode. Although, come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him go into full alpha mode on her. He just turns into a puddle. Damn, is that how I’ll be if I have female pups?
“Why are you even here to begin with?”
“I hang out here every Saturday at this time. You’re usually at training or hiking or something, so no one is here.”
“I—what?”
“I do my homework here.”
I walked to the doorway, and she moved aside to let me look in. Sure enough, her textbooks were thrown around my living room, and her laptop was open on my coffee table. “Why?” I asked.
“I don’t need the other teens to know I actually like school,” she mumbled. Then she shrugged. “And I like the quiet,” she muttered, crossing her arms.
I stared at her for a moment. “I will… buy you some snacks—” “YES!”
“IF you tell me what you meant about getting Haven to like me again.” “Deal,” she said brightly.
I leaned against the frame of the door opposite of her. “Please, elaborate on this whole getting her to like me again thing.”
“That’s the thing, Wesley. Getting someone to fall in love with you— that’s easy. But getting someone to actually like you? It’s a completely different game.”
“But what’s the difference?”
“Oh Goddess, Wes, no wonder you’ve had terrible luck with females,” she groaned, pressing her fingers into her temples. “You can love someone and not like them,” she grumbled.
“You can?” I asked with a furrowed brow.
“Well, she’s pissed off, right? She’s hurt, and she thinks you did something to hurt her on purpose, yes?”
“Yeah,” I growled, warning her away from that topic.
“So she doesn’t like you right now. But she still feels SOMETHING for you. Otherwise, she just wouldn’t care at all.”
I thought about what she said, and she continued. “It’s the same for you, with your previous women. You didn’t really like them, so it was easy for you to say bye to them when you realized it.”
“Ok, oh wise one, how do I get her to like me again then?” “You grovel.”
“But I didn’t actually do anything wrong,” I replied. “You still have to grovel.” She shrugged.
“I should have known you were going to say something like that,” I muttered as I shoved off from the door frame, heading into my house to plan how to get Haven to like me.
Nolan stood from his spot and followed me.
“Wait!” Maddie shouted and ran to her school stuff. “Here!” she said as she handed me a piece of paper.
“What’s this?” “My snack list.”
I glanced over it. “Maddie, there are at least thirty things on this list!” “Selections, Wes! You have to have selections! Plus, I’m a growing she-
lycan. You wouldn’t want to deprive me, would you?” she added, giving me her signature wolf pup eyes, and I caved.
“Fine, I’ll have them by next weekend.”
Damn it. I was turning into a puddle like my dad. I hoped I never had girl pups, because if I did, they would own me.
An image of a tiny female pup with long red hair and big blue eyes running along the shore of the lake popped into my head, and I swear my lycan let out a small whimper.
“What was that?” Nolan asked.
“Nothing,” I grunted. “It was nothing.” I cleared my throat and headed towards my home office. “Let’s go figure out how I’m going to grovel.”
