WESLEY
As my eyes opened back in the temple on Earth, I felt the shaking body of my mate next to me and smelled the salt of her tears as they fell from her eyes. She curled into me, her face burrowing into my chest and her arms clinging to my neck and shoulders.
Her conflicted emotions flooded me through the mate bond, and I wrapped myself around her more, pulling her naked body as close to mine as I could, protecting her from the rising sun and the cool early morning air. My hand reached for a fur blanket and pulled it over us to hide our nakedness, even though we were now alone in the temple.
My hand rubbed the back of her head in long, soothing strokes down through the ends of her curls. I could feel every bittersweet emotion from her, embedding into me like shards of a broken mirror, reminding me this was a pain I could not fix.
This was a pain she would carry our whole lives together. The pain of knowing her mother loved her and watched her for her whole life, but still
gave her up, still left her alone for so many years—for her whole life. And the pain of knowing it was just as hard for her mom to watch her grow up but never be there for her as it was for Haven to grow up without a family, feeling alone and abandoned and unwanted.
“It’s okay, Sugar Plum,” I whispered, my lips against her forehead. “Let it all out,” I told her.
She clutched at me, her body trying to get closer, even though she was already as close as she could be. It was as if she was trying to get under my skin, to fuse herself to me.
“She loved me,” she whimpered, her voice muffled by my chest. “She did,” I affirmed.
“All that time. All those years when I thought nobody was there, thought that nobody cared, she was watching me, and I never knew.” I nodded at her words, my hands moving to her back and rubbing circles into her soft, warm skin, letting the mate bond do its job to comfort and protect.
“Does it make me a bad person that even though I understand why, I’m still angry at her for leaving me on my own?” she asked, peering up at me with bloodshot eyes.
“I think it makes you human,” I reassured her. “I think it’s perfectly normal to be conflicted. To empathize and understand but still be hurt.” She blew out a shaky, relieved breath and pressed her face back into my chest, inhaling my scent. “But you won’t ever need to feel alone again, Haven. I promise you. I am all in. I am yours until the end, whenever that may be. And I will mark you during the next new moon. Everyone will know that you’re mine and that you always will be. Everyone will know how much I love you.”
She nodded, her face scrunching up and her lip quivering as a fresh wave of tears hit her.
“Don’t hold it in Haven,” I whispered. “It’s just me. You don’t have to hide it from me.”
Her keening sobs echoed off the marble floors and pillars and into the sky. I kept a firm hold on her, creating our own safe cocoon on the floor of the temple, our own space where she could mourn the life she never had. Water filled my eyes as well as I took some of her burden from her through the mate bond, so she didn’t have to bear or face it alone. Never alone. Never again.
I let her cry. I let her expel everything built up within her over her twenty- one years of life. She needed the catharsis. I knew she loathed crying in front of others, but I wasn’t just anyone. I was her Wesley. Her pal. Her mate.
As her cries quieted and her tears slowed, another sound filled my ears and jolted me to attention, putting my lycan on alert—the sounds of racing footsteps and shouting.
I tucked the fur tighter around my Sugar Plum, pulling her to sit up with me as my eyes zipped over to the entrance of the temple, where Nolan sprinted down the path, several oracles and acolytes following him, yelling at him.
“This is sacred ground!” Cassandra exclaimed as he stopped in the entrance. She was the only one to keep up with his pace. “We have not given you permission to be in the temple! You could—”
“I’m sorry, but this is important and urgent,” he said to her, his chest heaving as he caught his breath. “Wesley. Haven,” he said, his face
apologetic as he looked at us and took in our swollen, puffy, and tear- stained faces.
I growled at him when his eyes stayed on Haven longer than my lycan thought necessary, even though I knew it was from brotherly concern instead of any other reason.
“What?!” I snarled, pulling the blanket even higher around Haven’s bare shoulders.
“I just got a call from Sebastian,” he said, his eyes snapping back to mine. “They found the Wainwrights.”
 |
FOR THE THIRD TIME that week, I found myself in the cells, staring at someone through the one-way glass of the interrogation room. Two someones, this time.
It had taken us less than twenty-four hours to arrange our travel and return home to California. Even though our trip wasn’t for leisure, I had hoped to spend one more night there. The sand and the bright blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea called to me. I wanted to take Haven down to the beach, to relax on the shore with her in my arms, watch the sunset, and dip our toes into the water so I could show her not all oceans were as cold as the Pacific.
But a romantic getaway such as that would have to wait.
“Tell me again how you found them?” I frowned, turning to look at Sarina and her friend—Riven, I think it was—where they stood with Sebastian, Levi, and Reid.
Haven was at my side, holding my hand, and Nolan stood at her other side. She had been understandably quiet and withdrawn since we left the
temple, although thankfully, she hadn’t wanted to leave my side. She’d been touching me in some way the entire journey home, using the mate bond to soothe herself and me.
“I told you, we saw them trying to sneak across your borders. It was clear from how they talked and the way they moved that they weren’t from your pack. It was obvious they were plotting something,” she said, telling me word for word what she’d told me when I asked her the first time and what Seb had told me on the phone when I’d called him back while we were still in Greece.
I glowered at her, pushing my aura out. I couldn’t command her since she wasn’t part of my pack, but I could make her and her friend feel uncomfortable under my aura, and maybe that would be enough to get her to admit if she was lying. She was a smaller she-wolf, and in the week or so since we’d found her and her group of nomads, I had yet to see her shift.
“It seems oddly convenient that you just happened across them,” I snarled.
Everyone in the room flinched under my aura except Haven and Seb. Haven, because she was my mate, and my aura and alpha command would never work on her, and Seb, because we were of equal rank since I hadn’t taken over the pack yet.
Sarina lowered her head but kept eye contact with me. She was a fearless thing. I’d give her that.
“I’m telling the truth,” she gritted out.
I gave her a low growl as I turned to look back at the Wainwrights, at the unassuming blonde woman and brunette man who had made my mate’s life less than perfect. Who I suspected had kept us apart after they adopted her.
I would find that out for sure. Why they didn’t send her letters. Why they lied to her and told her I didn’t care about her, told her I wasn’t really her friend. Why they felt the need to manipulate a scared, emotionally scarred nine-year-old girl like that.
“Wes, lighten up. I told you I trust her,” Sebastian mindlinked me.
“That’s something someone who has been getting some from a certain sexy, busty, roguish she-wolf would say,” Reid pointed out.
“I’m not-I’m not getting some. I just trust her. I believe her.” Seb sighed, clenching his fists.
“Just because you do doesn’t mean I have to,” I replied. “It’s too convenient. Too obvious.”
“Wes has a point,” Nolan said, agreeing with me. “Your dad couldn’t find them. Even the council was looking into them further after they spoke with Haven. And some little rogue and her band of merry misfits just happen to see them trying to cross your borders? They just let themselves be caught by her ragtag group and walked nicely onto the pack grounds?”
“I mean, yeah, that is sort of what happened,” Sebastian mumbled. “Look, I know it all seems too easy and too convenient, and like it could be a setup, like Sarina and her friends may be working with them or for them or whatever, but I’ve always trusted my intuition, and my intuition has never failed me.”
“Wesley. Haven.”
My dad’s deep, commanding voice pulled me out of my mindlink conversation with my brother and my friends. We all turned to look at him as he descended the stairs, his steps hurried and his face displaying urgency. “I’m sorry.” He sighed. “I know you want to question the Wainwrights, want to get to the bottom of this, but the king is here, and he wants to speak
with you now.”
“Right now?” I asked in exasperation.
“Yes, right now.” He looked around the room, and his eyes landed on Sarina and her friend. “You too,” he added, pointing at her.
She shrugged, and I sighed but followed my dad out of the cells, hand in hand with my mate, everyone following along behind us.
“Are you all right?” I asked Haven as we walked to the packhouse. “Mostly,” she replied, squeezing my hand. “What will we tell the king?”
she asked, looking up at me with her gorgeous blue eyes.
I swallowed and glanced back towards the others behind us, checking how close Sarina and Riven were. “I still think what I said before. That we shouldn’t tell anyone beyond those who need to know. It’s the easiest way for me to keep you safe.”
She nodded. “I agree, but can’t the king alpha command it out of you? Didn’t you say his command was the most powerful and could override the command of a pack alpha?”
I clenched my jaw, a nerve twinging at how tightly I held it closed. “Let’s just hope he doesn’t,” I gritted out, dropping her hand and wrapping my arm around her shoulder, pulling her into my side as we walked.
We all filed into my dad’s office, where King Malachi Goodrich stood near the window with Frederick. He was a tall and imposing lycan, dressed in a business suit, but I knew from our few visits to the palace as a child that underneath those clothes was an intimidating and powerful male with bulky muscles covered in tattoos.
“Alpha King Malachi,” I greeted him, nodding my head in a low bow as he turned to look at us. “You wished to see us?”
“Wesley,” he said, giving me a curt nod. “The last time I saw you, you had just had your first shift,” he reminisced, looking me over. “And you must be Haven, his future luna?” he said, turning to my mate.
She nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“The ballerina in Peter’s company?” he asked. “You know Peter?” she queried.
“Everyone knows Peter.” He laughed.
“More like Peter knows everyone,” Frederick corrected. “That’s what happens when you’re an ancient, very wealthy vampire. You make connections.”
“Anyway, congratulations,” King Malachi told her with a smile. “To both of you,” he added, looking back at me.
“Thank you, Your Majesty,” I replied.
“Enough small talk,” he said, turning serious, the twinkle in his eyes disappearing in under a second. “I understand you have Haven’s adoptive parents in your custody and that they are unregistered wolves, or perhaps wolves using fake names?” he said. “And there are some concerns regarding the nomads near your borders, the nomads who brought them into your territory?”
“That is correct, yes,” my dad said. “Most of us feel it is too convenient that they just happened to find our future luna’s adoptive parents on our borders when we and you could not find them, try as we might,” he added, emphasizing the word “most.”
Sebastian fidgeted but didn’t shy away from my dad’s sharp glare.
“I see,” King Malachi said, his serious eyes turning to Sarina. “Step forward, please, young lady,” he commanded, his powerful aura leaking out, making everyone in the room lower their heads in submission.
Everyone except Haven.
I hadn’t even thought about that. That maybe she wouldn’t be affected by an aura because she was Selene’s daughter and technically ranked above us. All of us, even the king.
I squeezed her hand and glanced around at everyone after she met my eyes, emphasizing my submission to the king to her. Her eyes widened, and she lowered her head too, and thankfully, the king didn’t notice.
“What is your name?” he asked Sarina. “Sarina Cisneros,” she replied.
“And what pack are you from?”
“None. We are nomads. We travel around and do jobs here and there, helping those who need it.”
“And how did you come to have a transport stone?” he asked. “My councilman here tells me you have one. They are very rare since the witches don’t like to share their secrets with other species, so how do you have one?”
“I got it from my parents.” She shrugged. “They helped out a witch, and in return, she gave them the transport stone and taught them how to calibrate it.”
“And where are your parents?”
“They are in another state, doing their own work, currently. We will meet up again at some point when all of us are finished with our work.”
“And are you working for or with the Wainwrights or Lennox’s family?” he asked her, pushing out the full extent of his aura and alpha command.
“No,” Sarina said, shaking her head. “I’d never collaborate or work with people like that. They are the worst type of people, looking out only for themselves.”
“Then who are you working for?”
“We work for the little people,” she said. “Those who have no voice and cannot stand up for themselves. But we have no ‘boss.’ We’re our own bosses.”
The king nodded and smiled, then turned to my dad and me. “Well, I believe that settles that concern?” he said.
I frowned but nodded. There was no denying the truth in the answers Sarina gave. Not when she was under an alpha command like that. We had to believe her.
“Thank you, King Malachi,” I said. “I’m sorry we didn’t believe you, Sarina,” I added, looking at her.
“I told you she proved herself trustworthy,” Sebastian gloated.
“Yeah, I’m sure she did,” Reid muttered, his eyes flicking to her butt.
A growl spilled into the room, Sarina’s eyes flashing in warning as she sneered at Reid, her lip curling.
“Not. Your. Type,” she snarled, enunciating each word harshly. “You don’t know unless you try.” Reid winked.
“Not interested,” she said.
I gave an exasperated sigh, shaking my head at my best friend. He really needed to learn how to read a room.
The king held back a laugh, amusement shining in his eyes as he observed Sarina and Reid’s interaction.
“Would you like my help questioning the Wainwrights?” he asked, looking at me. “I could override any potential commands on them since it seems Lennox’s dad is an alpha and may have ordered them to keep certain details secret?” I nodded. “All right,” he said. “Lead the way.”
