Chapter 28 #2
The men from Alaska didn’t say a word until I was done.
There were more looks, followed by an overbearing silence that even Franklin and Ema seemed uncertain over. It was obvious from their body language. We were all being weird.
I rocked on my heels, hoping someone could just say something.
I waited and I waited and I?—
“Love,” Duncan told me.
His entire attention was focused on me. And I smiled so hard I felt it in my chest. Love you too , I mouthed to him.
Ilya noticed. “What did he say?”
I tugged my donut’s ear gently. “He told me he loved me.”
The two older men shared yet another look, and I had to tap into my inner Henri to keep from making a face, because that was getting annoying. Did they find what they were looking for in him? Was he whatever they thought he was?
Couldn’t they just tell me?
“Duncan, would you come here?” the winking older man asked, and I appreciated it because I was dang near certain he could’ve asked him telepathically instead.
If Duncan answered, it was only to him, but a moment later, my boy trotted over. With a lot more agility than I would have expected, both men kneeled to pet him, touching his ears, checking his teeth, even rubbing their fingers over his tail in a way that said they had no fear of his magical fire.
They smiled the entire time, and I didn’t imagine the wistfulness when one of them sighed and said, “We’ve thought for so long that we were the last of our kind.”
I swallowed hard at what that implied.
The other one tickled him beneath the chin, and Duncan wagged, earning an even wider grin from the man. “You’re a good-looking young man, little brother.”
That… that didn’t mean biologically that was the case… but… but could it be?
“We haven’t seen our mother in sixty years,” the winking man explained, his attention still on my donut. “We weren’t sure….”
The question was poised on my tongue, ready. Two of them actually.
“Is he?” Franklin was the one who asked, his voice slightly high.
Was he what?
“Without a doubt.” The winking man chuckled with delight when Duncan leaned his head into his hand. “He is utterly and completely a hellhound.”
My donut was a hellhound ?
The fact he’d answered just like that… it didn’t matter . It didn’t matter because he’d said hellhound , and my mouth had dropped open, and a part of me couldn’t believe it, but a bigger part of me could. That had been on my list of beings I’d thought were a possibility. But there hadn’t been enough information about them to know for sure, and this man had just said without a doubt.
Duncan was a hellhound .
From the little I had read about them, there were stories in which hellhounds were legends that guarded the underworld. I could have sworn I might have read that in other folklore, they were rumored to be protectors of women. But the one idea I could remember to be the most common myth about hellhounds, was that they were highly feared, epic beings.
But there wasn’t a single scary thing about my boy.
The closest thing to hell he knew was getting a bath.
I couldn’t believe it. My Duncan donut was a hellhound .
And said hellhound turned to me over his shoulder, and he winked. “Yes,” he told me.
I stared at him. “Did you know what you are?” I wanted to think I sounded calm, but there was probably zero chance that was the actual case. I might as well have sucked a helium balloon dry.
Those ridiculously cute eyelashes covered Dunky’s ruby eyes, his ears twitching. “Love” was the answer he decided to go with.
I laughed in freaking awe. “That’s not a yes or a no, Duncan.”
The tail that had gotten us into this new stage of our life swayed. “Yes.”
Yes!
Before I could ask anything else, or celebrate this absolute miracle of a discovery, three different phones went off at the same time, and Ema, Franklin, and Henri pulled theirs out. The three of them frowned at whatever was on the screen. I’d learned that they, along with the ranch’s security, all had access to the cameras at the gate, and they were notified when someone was there.
Franklin lifted his head first, his normally sneaky face formed into this super irritated one that he aimed at the Alaskan leader.
Ilya, the firebreather according to Henri, crossed his arms over his chest and raised a dark eyebrow. “Is he at the gate?” he asked Franklin in a flat, unamused tone.
My biological uncle glared. “You brought him with you?” he spat out so out of character that even Ema looked at him strangely.
Beside me, Henri tipped his phone to give me a view of it. On the screen, the camera angle showed a man in maybe his fifties, partially hanging out of a driver side door, jabbing at the intercom keypad over and over again. There was nothing that special about him; he looked like a normal man in a T-shirt, being obnoxious with the way he kept pressing the keypad aggressively, like he didn’t understand why it wasn’t working.
“Is that who I think it is?” Henri asked from above my head.
Who did….
No.
My head snapped up.
“He wasn’t invited,” Ilya was quick to explain with a sneer. “He was on the same flight and wouldn’t say a word about where he was going, like we couldn’t piece his plans together.”
My uncle let out a curse I was surprised he knew in the first place.
Ilya raised an eyebrow but basically shrugged with his eyes. “There’s not much I’m unwilling to do, but I’m not arguing with him. He’s gotten more stubborn every year.”
I blinked and met my favorite set of amber eyes.
Henri’s forehead was furrowed. “I’m getting real sick of people showing up without an invitation,” he growled. I pointed at myself, and his expression instantly changed. “Not you, Cricket.”
I smiled, then I wiped it off in a way that he’d be proud of. We had business to get to. “Is that your brother?” I straight-up asked Franklin.
The dream god had already stuffed his phone back into the little case at his hip, and based off the energy he was radiating, this was the angriest I’d ever seen him. “It is.” His eyes narrowed from behind his glasses. “I didn’t invite him, Nina.”
I believed him and said that.
“He’s seemed real melancholic since your visit, Franklin,” one of the hellhound men admitted, the one who didn’t wink. “He’s constantly pacing. It’s quite irritating.”
“He overheard me talking to my second about the daughter of a fertility goddess mating with the Great Wolf,” Ilya said casually in a way that didn’t come across as all that apologetic. Especially when he knew he was my DNA donor. Did he have to stir shit up?
“A truck is pulling in behind his. They’re getting out and talking…. I think it might be Dominic? He’s… he’s punching in the code to open the gate,” Ema told us, the only one still paying attention to the camera. “Who is this? Where are Ani and Randall? Why would Dominic allow a stranger in? He knows he doesn’t have that authority! Where is security?”
“Ani is in town, and Randall is off along the western fence right now. There’s no way he can get back in time.” Henri’s entire body, all Viking and warrior pedigree, turned to me. His face though, had Murder Henri written all over it. “I’ll deal with Dominic, but what do you want to do about our visitor, Nina?”
What did I want to do about it?
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly, wondering what in the world Dom was thinking letting a total stranger onto the ranch. It was one thing for Fluff to have allowed the bogeymen to come and go, but even I knew how important their hierarchy was around here. And you didn’t let a stranger in unless the right person said so. Buttttt I was going to let Henri handle it. Him dealing with that asshole seemed past due to me, honestly.
Plus, I had bigger fish to worry about. A box jellyfish to be specific. “I want to tell him to screw off,” I told him, “but at the same time, I don’t really want to put in the effort either.”
But I thought about what Ilya had mentioned. How he wasn’t willing to argue with him. I didn’t see the hellhound brothers lining up to do it either, not at their ages. Franklin probably would, but….
Maybe it wasn’t official yet, but the people here were my people. At least the kids and some of the adults. Since the incident at the river with Shiloh and Pascal, the parents at the nursery had totally changed their behavior. Phoebe and her husband had brought me little things every chance they could, like fresh loaves of bread, jelly that she’d made, and even though I’d only seen him in passing after school before he was herded back to Ema’s house with Pascal where they were busy being grounded, I’d been blessed with more thank-you cards from my favorite satyr.
Every one of Pascal’s family members had either gifted me something directly or they’d left it in the kitchen. A scarf, a beautiful pendant, a painting of the village, candy…. The parents of the rest of the kids had started inviting me to their houses, offered to take Duncan. It had only taken risking my life, but it was all right. I didn’t mind.
And it was them I thought of in that moment.
If it was up to anyone to deal with an aggravated death god, it was me.
Setting my shoulders, I looked up at Henri. “Let’s go with option A. Someone needs to tell him to fuck off.”
There were two, maybe three, distinct choking sounds. At least one of them was from one of the adult hellhounds, the second may have been from Ilya, and the third was definitely from my brand-new uncle. Ema slapped him on the back, he was choking so hard.
Henri ignored them and smiled his Teasing Henri smile. “I can do that.” Right in front of my eyes, Teasing Henri turned into Great Wolf Henri. “He and I are past due for a conversation too.”
I raised my eyebrows at Mr. Protective. “Sure, but not alone. We go together,” I clarified.
That smile got slightly bigger, but he nodded.
Duncan, who had been standing with the older men, turned to us, kicked one leg back, then the other, yawning so wide.
Had I just seen a little flash of red in his mouth? It was there and gone so fast, I might have imagined it.
“Yes,” my puppy said.
“You’re coming too, Dunky?” I asked, not exactly surprised.
“Yes,” he confirmed, trotting over, setting a paw on my foot.
Henri glanced back and forth between us and said, “Let’s go.” Everyone else got a “We’ll be back.”
Franklin hustled over, fidgeting with his belt. “I have a few words for him as well,” he claimed, still looking so aggravated over the situation.
I guess we were all going. I raised my eyebrows at Henri, who seemed just as surprised as I did.
The hellhound men were smiling, even more amused than we were, from the looks of it. But they knew him from their settlement. It was Ema who was frowning in confusion. She didn’t know anything about anything, and she wasn’t going to find out right then either.
“Take your time,” the winking hellhound said as the four of us hustled out of the room, Franklin leading the way, with Henri behind him, then me and Duncan.
We were going to confront my DNA dad—a very old being who had just pitched a fit trying to get into the ranch before one of ours had let him drive on in.
This wasn’t where I thought my life would take me, but… we were here.
“When I pictured having kids, I always wished for a son I could rely on,” Henri said over his shoulder when we were in the hallway.
I glanced at my sidekick, and he looked up at me. I blew him a kiss.
“And when I wanted a partner, I thought I’d want one I could rely on,” Fluffy added.
“Seems to me you got both,” I told his back.
“Seems to me, I did,” he agreed as we made it to the front door. “A strong mate and a strong son who would come with me to face two pains in my ass.” Henri made a soft sound. “I wish you could sense how lucky I feel right now.”
“Yeah, you are,” I cheered him on, my heart almost bursting. He had a point. Here I was with my mate, my boy, and my uncle. “Just like we’re lucky to have you charging ahead with us too. Right, Dunky?”
“Yes.”
Ahead of Henri, Franklin glanced over his shoulder, a pleased expression on his face.
I caught the silhouette of Henri’s smile as he held the door for us. Shades of black and gray and blue filled the night, shadowing everything in its path. A car door slammed shut in the near distance.
“He’s close,” Henri murmured beside me. “Still near the gate for some reason.”
“Too close,” Franklin agreed, a pissy expression back on his features.
Henri’s hand took mine as we reached the edge of the parking lot.
That’s when he slowed down and stared toward the rows of cars just as I sensed werewolf magic approaching from the same direction he was focused in. Henri didn’t look at me as he lifted my hand and pressed his lips to the back of it, murmuring, “Give me one minute to deal with this once and for all.”
“We’ll wait,” I promised as he released my fingers right as a blond man appeared, heading straight and fast in the direction of the clubhouse. Someone was in a rush.
But he knew we were there, and his attention turned to us even as he kept moving, calling out, “Just here to get my shit, I’m not going to talk to your precious princess, Henri.” Dom’s tone was sarcastic. “I’m only here to?—”
Henri moved like a lightning bolt.
He was beside me one moment, and in the next—faster than my eyes could follow—he was slamming up against Dominic’s chest, hand reaching for the other man’s throat, and Henri Blackrock lifted him up with a single hand so high, so fluidly, his booted feet dangled.
Duncan plopped down between my feet, and I didn’t need to see his face to know we were both gaping at the sheer unbelievable strength of the newest member of our family.
I’d known he was strong. Visually, it was obvious. And I’d seen him use a log as a javelin, and Dom had to be somewhere in the two-hundred-pound range, but Henri was holding him up like he was a stuffed animal.
His head was tipped up, Dom was that high off the ground, and Henri let out a snarl louder and more intimidating than anything I could have ever imagined.
Franklin whistled beside me.
“I forgave you for giving up Agnes. I tried to brush off you choosing to fight me over taking control of the ranch. I tried to forget about you trying to take something else that was mine.” Fluff’s voice was deep. “I might have been able to forgive you for being rude to her and your daughter. I would’ve eventually gotten over you leaving your responsibilities without a goddamn warning,” Henri sneered, lifting him up another inch or two higher as Dom finally started sputtering, like it had taken his body a second to realize what was going on. His fingers went to the ones wrapped around his throat, like he was trying to peel them off.
He gasped.
But Henri wasn’t even close to being done as his upper arm flexed, and I would’ve sworn he was squeezing his throat tighter. “But you just violated the one rule I can’t brush off. You put us at harm and let a stranger onto our land?—”
“He’s… Ni… Nina…,” Dom gasped, still trying to pry Henri’s fingers off.
“I don’t give a shit who he is!” Henri roared. “You know the rules! And you’re lucky I have other things to deal with right now or I’d make you regret every bullshit word that’s ever come out of your mouth.”
“Hen… Henri!” the blond gasped even more faintly, slapping now, his eyes watering.
And Franklin, Dunky, and I stood there and watched.
Henri though, shook his hand like my boy shook his stuffed toys in his mouth, and said, “You think you could fight me ? You think you would live afterward?” Henri didn’t laugh, but there was something dark in his voice…
Something I liked a lot.
But I was too busy watching this and regretting not having popcorn while I did it.
That hand holding up Dom, a six-foot-tall-plus man, went up another inch or two higher. “I let you hit me,” Henri told him. “That wasn’t a sucker punch, you piece of shit. I let you strike me. I let you say every word you wanted to because I’ve got nothing to fucking prove to you, but that shit is over now. Your time here is done. Every connection to the ranch is severed. We don’t exist to you from this moment forward, and you will never think, speak, or write about anyone here ever again, or I will find you.”
Dom’s face was so red, and his eyes so bulging and shiny, I wasn’t sure if it was because of the position he was in or because he was literally being excommunicated right then and there.
Taking his time, and showing off that insane strength again, Henri lowered him to the ground, but he kept his fingers where they were, wrapped around his throat.
I’d swear I saw him squeeze them before the Great Wolf 2.0—Murder Henri lurking in there, strongly—pulled Dominic toward him until their faces were inches apart. “You breathe because I let you breathe,” Henri informed him through clenched teeth. “You live because I let you live. Do you understand?”
I didn’t know if Dominic did, but my entire reproductive system understood.
Dom sucked in a breath so ragged, his eyes tearing up even more, I almost didn’t understand his “Yes.” But he repeated himself, the hostility, his arrogance, extinguished. Those blue eyes just like Agnes’s didn’t even swing around the second Henri’s finger must have loosened. Dom looked at Henri, and I meant really looked at him. Like he had ripped a veil off his existence and showed him that everything he’d ever known was a lie.
And I didn’t even waste my time following Dom when he took off the way he’d come.
Franklin didn’t either, because out of my peripheral vision, we both just stared at Henri.
And then my biological uncle let out the most amused sound I’d ever heard leave his body, and he jerked so hard, it was like that surprised him too. “Well, I was wondering when you would finally put him in his place. That went on for too long, Henri.”
“I was hoping he’d learn,” the man I was set to mate soon grumbled, before meeting my eyes and being very unapologetic about everything.
I beamed at him as Franklin huffed. “People like that never learn on their own. I know from experience.”