Chapter thirteen
“Ice cream?” Lark asked, leaning in the open door of Mike’s bedroom, a bowl of chocolate creamy goodness topped with crumbled peanut butter cups in each hand. “I know you guys were downplaying everything that happened tonight for Kal’s benefit, and I wanted to make sure you’re really doing okay.”
Mike smiled as he looked up from the desk by the window where he was sitting, going through piles of old files on Roman. “I’m good, thanks. But that doesn’t mean I’ll turn my nose up at a bowl of ice cream.”
Lark laughed. She’d been hoping to get a chance to talk to Mike alone, but hadn’t been sure if he’d be willing. Especially after the night he and his pack mates had.
“Is Kal already in bed?” Mike asked when they were both seated on the foot of the bed with their ice cream.
She nodded. “He wanted to stay up until you got home, but after that, he was out like a light. Tuffie, too.”
Mike chuckled as he dipped his spoon in his bowl. “You remembered I like peanut butter cups on ice cream.”
“I remember everything about when we were together,” she said softly.
Their gazes met for a moment before Mike focused on his ice cream.
“Are you hoping to find the guys who attacked you tonight somewhere in that stack of photos?” she asked, gesturing to the large stack of mugshots on the desk with her spoon.
“Yeah. I was hoping at least one of them would be from Roman’s old crew. I still don’t know why they tried to kidnap Carter.”
“Maybe they thought they could use him to get you to turn over the flash drive, like they tried to use Kal.”
Earlier tonight, Lark had overheard Hale and Khaki talking to Mike on the phone.
She hadn’t meant to eavesdrop, but when you were a werewolf, and your hearing was so good you could hear a mouse sneeze from a hundred feet away, sometimes you couldn’t help it.
Regardless, she’d known there’d been a fight of some kind, and had assumed it was with Roman and his crew.
It wasn’t until Mike and his pack mates had returned looking bruised and battered that she’d gotten the whole story.
“No luck, I take it?” she asked, glancing at the pictures, not comfortable with the idea that these were the kind of scary men he’d been working with all those years ago when he was undercover.
“No,” Mike said with a sigh. “I’m hoping the department comes through with an ID on those guys based on descriptions.”
“Having that one guy’s fingerprints should help,” she said, thinking of the man Mike had been forced to kill. “From the way you described them, I have a hard time believing this is the first time they’ve done something like this. They probably all have police records.”
“I’m hoping that’s true. Wayne has put a rush on the request to AFIS, so we’re hoping to get something soon.
” Mike ate some more ice cream, his expression thoughtful.
“This is the flavor you always used to crave when you were pregnant with Kal. I remember running to the store for it quite a few times.”
Lark smiled at the memory. “I was kind of addicted to it during the last few months of the pregnancy, wasn’t I? You’ll be happy to know it’s Kal’s favorite flavor as well. He jokingly tells me he must have gotten a taste for it before he was even born.”
Mike let out a snort of laughter, then looked down at his bowl again, his face serious. “I’ve missed a lot of things when it comes to Kal.”
Lark couldn’t miss the pain in his voice. Her heart squeezed in sympathy, knowing it was all her fault. “There are things you’ve missed, but there’s no reason we can’t start making up for that now.”
He turned his head to look at her, his mouth curving into a smile. “I’d like that. I’d love to know more about our son. I know he’s already told me some stuff, but maybe you could tell me everything else.”
Lark couldn’t help laughing as she ate some more ice cream. Everything else was rather broad, but she’d do her best.
“Well, as you’ve probably already guessed, video games are Kal’s favorite thing to do in his free time,” she said, pleased when she found an especially large chunk of peanut butter cup in her ice cream.
“In fact, when he grows up, he wants to either become a game programmer or a professional gamer.”
“You can play video games as a profession?” Mike asked, baffled.
“If the posters on Kal’s bedroom walls are any indication, you can. Personally, I hope it’s a phase he’s going through. If not, I’m praying for the programmer career over the gamer one. But then again, maybe that’s just me being a mom and worrying about him having a paying job.”
Mike chuckled. “When I was a kid, I changed what I wanted to be when I grew up once a week. I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“You’re probably right,” Lark agreed. “Lately, all Kal seems to think about is his first shift.”
“Okay, I have so many questions when it comes to what that means for a ten-year-old to change into a werewolf. How does it work? Does it usually happen at a certain age?”
“When we start going through puberty, our bodies get ready for the shift,” she explained.
“It’s small things at first, like our hearing and vision get keener.
Then we start eating more. There are some mood swings, too.
He’ll go from being happy one moment to annoyed the next.
I don’t know if you noticed how much he ate when we had lunch, but I definitely think he’s getting close. ”
“It won’t hurt, will it?” Mike asked softly, worry etched on his face. “When Kal finally shifts the first time, I mean?”
“No, it won’t hurt,” she promised him. “It’s just a matter of relaxing and letting the change sweep over you.
One moment you’re on two feet, and the next you’re on four.
In fact, it can actually be harder to revert back to your human form that first time, simply because being a wolf feels so natural for us. ”
Beside her, Mike visibly relaxed.
“Was your first shift pretty bad?” Lark asked softly.
“I understand if you don’t want to talk about it, but I’d like to hear about what happened if you feel like telling me.
” She absently stirred her now soft ice cream around in the bowl.
“In some ways, I can’t help feeling like it’s my fault it happened in the first place. ”
“That’s not true,” Mike said. “At least, not in the way you mean. Everything that happened after you left, after I thought you and Kal had died, was complicated.”
Lark winced at that, but didn’t say anything.
“When I thought you and Kal had died, I didn’t handle it very well,” Mike said softly, his gaze a little distant, like he was replaying the events in his mind. “I guess you could say I pretty much fell apart.”
Lark reached out to take his hand, regret and anguish flooding through her yet again. “Oh, Mike. I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he said, his gaze soft. “You did what you had to do to save our son. How I spiraled after you left is on me, not you. I own that.”
Lark wanted to argue, to tell Mike he wouldn’t have spiraled at all if it weren’t for her, but he spoke before she could.
“After witnessing the explosion I thought killed you and Kal, I should have been on desk duty, but since I never told anyone you and Kal were in my life, except my parents, my boss had no reason to think I had a problem with going back to work since my house was supposedly empty when that bomb went off. I didn’t bother to tell them any different.
So, I went undercover again, this time to collect intelligence on an up-and-coming drug gang based out of LA that was moving into Dallas. ”
Lark felt her heart constrict. Even though Mike had been undercover the whole time they’d been together, she still didn’t know much about the process. Even so, she couldn’t imagine him trying to do that kind of work while dealing with the trauma of watching his family die.
“I’m almost afraid to ask what happened,” she said.
“This gang was trying to beat out a local one for prime territory south of here near Waco,” Mike told her, his expression distant again. “They were brutal, going after anyone they thought stood in their way.”
Lark wanted to ask what he meant by that, but ultimately refrained, letting him tell the story at his own pace.
“When you’re undercover, you’re told to look the other way when it comes to things that aren’t related to the bigger picture of taking down the target. Or to put it another way, to ignore what happens to the little fish so we can catch the bigger ones.”
“That makes sense, I suppose,” Lark murmured. “But isn’t it also incredibly cold-blooded? How do you compartmentalize like that?”
“You’re right about it making sense,” Mike agreed. “But it gets a lot harder to do when you realize those little fish are innocent people getting hurt. After watching what I thought happened to you and Kal, I didn’t care about the bigger picture anymore.”
“You had to save someone, didn’t you?” Lark asked hesitantly, instinctively already knowing where this was going.
Mike nodded. “There was this kid in the neighborhood, sort of a local sports star. For whatever reason, the gang decided they wanted this kid to work for them, but he said no. So, they grabbed his mother and his baby brother for leverage.”
Lark swallowed hard. In some ways, it was like fate had tortured him all over again with the image of a mother and child in danger.
“Anyway, I lost it,” Mike muttered. “Any thought of maintaining my cover disappeared, and I went after every drug dealer in there. To this day, I don’t remember exactly what I did. I just grabbed an automatic weapon and started shooting.”
“Did you save the woman and her son?” Lark asked.
“Yeah, I got them out of there,” Mike said, his expression flat. “Unfortunately, whoever was left in the gang caught me before I could get away. They jumped to the obvious conclusion that I was a cop, and then things got really ugly.”
“What did they do to you?” she asked, even though she didn’t really want to know.
He worked his jaw before answering. “They wanted to know if there were other cops undercover in the gang, and thought that cutting me up with a machete would be the best way to get me to talk. It didn’t work, but they kept trying until I started sliding in and out of consciousness.
That’s when they drove me out to an empty field, shot me three times, and left me for dead. ”
Tears welled in her eyes, but before she could tell him she didn’t want to hear any more, he continued.
“I woke up four days later in the hospital, surrounded by doctors who couldn’t explain how I was still alive. I’d survived wounds that should have killed me several times over.”
“That’s what triggered your change?” Lark said softly, wanting to make sure she understood what Mike was saying, still a little confused by all of this. “Getting shot?”
He nodded. “The pain and trauma flipped the switch and turned me into a werewolf. Of course, I didn’t know what I was until Gage got me out of the undercover division and recruited me to be on his SWAT Team.”
Lark sat there in silence, replaying Mike’s confession, her stomach twisting itself into knots at the horrible experience he’d been through. An experience she was at least partly to blame for, even if he didn’t think so.
“On the bright side—if there was any—becoming a werewolf led to Gage, which in turn led to my pack. Having a team composed of other alphas helped me get my head back on straight.”
Lark set her empty bowl on the floor, then took his bowl and stacked it on top before turning a little on the bed to look at him.
“Nothing that happened to you could ever be described as good, but beyond the fact that you somehow made it through all of that, fate brought us back together again to give me a chance to fix the biggest mistake in my life. If you’re interested, I mean. ”
She held her breath, afraid Mike would tell her that while he wanted to be in Kal’s life, he didn’t want anything to do with her. But instead, he mirrored her earlier move, turning a little so that he was looking at her.
“I’d be very interested in that,” he said softly.
Lark had no idea who kissed who first, but one moment, she was blissfully inhaling his intoxicating scent, and the next, his lips were on hers. And if there was a moan of pleasure involved, she refused to regret it.
For the first time in nearly a decade, she was kissing the only man she’d ever loved, and it was as perfect and delicious as she remembered.