6. Dom
6
DOM
G alen is in the kitchen, talking with Sierra as I stalk through it on my way to the back door. I’d hesitated about following Kira when she’d hurried out of breakfast after mumbling an excuse that sounded like a lie.
She had been thinking of leaving. I’d seen her hands on the steering wheel as she sat in her car, and caught the determination flickering across her pretty blue gaze.
I’d seen it and I’d stepped out with no clue what the fuck I was going to say to stop my mate from leaving me.
“Dom, I need to talk to you about…” Galen’s voice trails off as I keep walking through the kitchen, past the dining table filled with my packmates finishing their breakfast.
The door slams shut behind me as I jog down the back porch and head into the forest, the main selling points for us settling in Wylder.
He hurt her.
I thought leaving Kira with her husband was the right thing to do. That I was giving her what she needed and what she wanted. That she was happy .
Instead, I walked away, leaving her with her abuser.
For years .
My wolf is snarling in my head and I’m fighting the itch to shed my clothes, then my human skin and run this fury out of me when a hand grips my shoulder and turns me around.
I drive my fist into them.
Galen slams into the ground.
He stares up at me and lifts his hand to swipe at the blood on his lip, then sits up. “If it was anyone else, they’d be six feet under by now. But since it’s you, and I happen to like you—a little more five minutes ago than now—I’ll give you one opportunity to explain yourself.”
His eyes glitter with feral intelligence, and his growled order is more wolf than man. His muscles bunch under his check shirt, like he’s fighting a battle with himself to stay human. He probably is.
“I left her to suffer.” My voice is quiet. “I failed my mate.”
For one long moment Galen doesn’t say a word, then he springs to his feet in a move that isn’t the least bit human. When he swipes the last of the blood away, his cut lip has healed and the wolf in his eyes is giving way to the man.
Because he isn’t just my alpha, he is also my friend.
“She’s your mate ?” His eyes are shocked as he approaches, and they would be. Shifter's mate with other shifters. For one to have a human mate isn’t the usual way things go. All shifters learn one important lesson in childhood, necessary for the survival of themselves, their pack, and all other packs.
Never let any human get close enough to learn you are not the same as they are.
Hard to do with someone you sleep with, live with, and potentially have children with.
I nod.
“And you knew this…”
“Back when I first met her and her husband in Missouri. I was struggling to control my wolf before I joined the Marines. But after? I couldn’t stay in the same town as her husband.”
He stares a little longer. “No wonder you were determined to drink Boston dry. You keep every single fucking card close to your chest, don’t you?” He grabs my arm and shakes me. “Why the fuck didn’t you ever say anything before?”
“What would I have said? What would I have done?”
There was nothing to say.
Kira’s brother died, and I came home, but I couldn’t stay with Kira. How could I live in the same town with my mate and her husband? I fought hard to stay distant when I was around her, to always leave at the first opportunity so she would never know how desperately I wanted her. Every night I had a cold shower when I thought of her. Even in my dreams she haunted me.
There was no way I could have lasted long without killing the husband and biting her. She’d have hated me, and I’d have lost her.
So I left, headed for Boston, and I was drunk, pissing in an alley when I met Galen and some guys tried to mug us. As first meetings go, learning you fight well together seemed like a good start to building a pack together.
“Does she know?” Galen immediately shakes his head, answering his own question. “Of course she doesn’t know. How could she?”
She smells like mine. Wolf and man are certain of it. Kira is human. Fully human. She doesn’t have the same way of knowing it too. And even if I changed her, if such a thing didn’t turn her feral as it can to humans, then what?
She’s here. But not because she wants me. Because she had nowhere to go to escape him .
And I need her to want me as badly as I want her.
“So what are you going to do?” he asks, frowning.
I look at him and tell him something I’ve never said before. “I don’t know.”
His expression is blank, and then slowly amusement filters across his gaze. “This isn’t a laughing situation, but I never thought I’d see the day you would be the frazzled out of control one. Mr. Check the weather on five channels so as not to be surprised and have our football game rained off.”
His words provoke a smile that I didn’t think I had in me. “You were waiting to throw that in my face all this time, weren’t you?”
“If only you knew how long.” His amusement fades. “We’ll rally around Kira, look out for her, and if that prick thinks he can grab her, he has another thing coming.”
“You think that was the husband who sent the fax trying to get her back?” I’d thought the same. Her husband was a deputy sheriff back when I was still living in Missouri. Aaron, Kira’s brother, said he took after his father in that regard. It’s been years, which means Bryce is probably the sheriff, so he has the potential to be dangerous to Kira and to us if he ever learned we were shifters.
“I do.” He tilts his head, his gaze speculative. “What do you make of Shawn’s lie?”
Kira’s fear had almost distracted me from all the attention Shawn was paying Chloe, whose cheeks were suspiciously pink. “Not sure.”
I think if Shawn didn’t feel a certain way toward Chloe, I’m not so sure how eager he would be to fight our—and Kira’s—corner.
Galen stares at me.
I shake my head. I’ve been getting a feeling for a while now that something was growing between Chloe and Shawn. A union like that, between a female shifter and a human sheriff, is a problem. Not so much the human/shifter aspect, than the fact he’s a cop, and if there’s one thing we shifters know, it’s avoid law officials and government types.
Normal humans would discount if they saw us heal a little quicker than normal or run a little fast. But someone in power with the ability to have us locked away and dissected?
That’s a big problem. Not just for Chloe or our pack, but for all shifters everywhere.
I’ve given Chloe a subtle warning, but if Galen knew how serious it was getting, as alpha, he would have to do something about it.
Something like ordering Chloe to stamp whatever it is in the bud. Chloe is an alpha in her own right, though not as dominant as Galen, but she would have to listen or she would have to leave. When an alpha gives an order, he expects that order to be followed.
“She asked if anyone is hiring in town,” I say, hoping to distract Galen from a conversation I’m in no state of mind to have now.
Galen looks confused. “What?”
“Kira.” I cross my arms and lean against the nearest tree. “I think she’s out of money. She was wearing the same clothes as yesterday and has taken nothing out of her car. No phone. No clothes. Nothing. Makes me think she has nothing with her.”
We’re all casual here, usually everyone’s in sweats for easy shifting, or jeans and sweaters when the weather cools down. The pack has enough money for everyone to have what they need, but everyone must have noticed how little Kira has. And that is not acceptable.
What happened in Missouri that she would take off just like that without stopping to grab even a sweater or a jacket?
“Obviously, we’ll give her whatever she needs.” He frowns, concerned. “What did you tell her about the job?”
“That I’d look into it for her.”
He stares at me for a beat, then sighs. “I’d say she could help out around here if she wants to earn her keep and I’d pay her, but?—”
“She’s liable to ask questions and maybe figure out we’re not human,” I quietly interrupt.
“Yeah. Exactly.”
Right now, I need to focus on helping Kira, not be out in the forest running for hours. As much as my wolf could do with the exercise, and I could do with the thinking time, when I suggest we return to the house, Galen agrees.
I’m a couple steps ahead of Galen as I lead the way through the narrow, well-trodden path through the forest and to the back of the house.
Sierra pushes the door open, frowning as she peers around the backyard. “Have you seen?—”
I point over my shoulder. “Kira?”
“She said she was beat and was going to have a nap.” Sierra’s gaze turns speculative. “I got the impression that she wanted to be left alone.”
Ah. So much for my plan to see if she wanted to go for a walk.
“How was she?”
“A little tense, but in a better state than you. Maybe you should go for a run?”
“Any reason why you think I should?”
Her gaze dips. “Maybe because you have blood on your knuckles, my mate has blood on his cheek, and I’d say that maybe it had something to do with Kira being the reason you sat on the porch night after night.”
“You’re observant.”
Her smile is faint, but bitter. “Those who weren’t observant never lived long in the Stone Pack.”
From what Galen told me, the Stone Pack sounded like a pack of hyenas who liked to play with their victims, making them suffer before they put them out of their misery. They’d driven Galen’s mate to her death and nearly killed Sierra. She and Galen had killed most of the pack and set fire to their buildings before they’d left.
I hadn’t thought it was a good idea for Galen to wander into a pack like that alone, but if Galen is one thing, it’s stubborn. Some packs need to die out or be wiped out, and they are—or were—one of them.
Kira is up in her room—not leaving, in other words. Punching Galen in the face is not my usual behavior, so running off some of this energy wouldn’t be a bad idea. “If she needs me…”
“We’ll let her know you’ll be around soon,” Galen’s voice comes from over my right shoulder. “Come here, little wolf, I could do with a kiss after my beta beat me up.”
Sierra is smiling as she passes me, giving my arm a sympathetic squeeze as she goes.
“You’re going to be milking it for the next couple of days, aren’t you?” I ask, dryly.
“ Days ? After the way you laid me out?” He widens his eyes. “ Weeks , my friend. And I’m going to need my beautiful mate to kiss it better.”
“Your beautiful mate is liable to kick it worse if you don’t quit laying it on so thick,” Sierra mutters as Galen wraps an arm around her shoulder and kisses the top of her head.
He blows out a heavy sigh. “You see what you have to look forward to?”
Sierra looks confused. She wouldn’t have heard that Kira is my mate, but Galen will soon tell her. Mates don’t keep secrets from each other. I could have asked him not to say anything, but I’m not ashamed of Kira being my mate, and it’s not like it wouldn’t have come out anyway.
“And Dom?”
I pause, angling my head back.
Galen has his arm wrapped around Sierra’s shoulders, and his amusement has faded. “We’ll figure this out together.”
I nod. Turning away from the house, I head deeper into the forest, wanting to peer up at my bedroom window in case Kira is standing in it like she did before. I’d scared her, and I have no intention of doing it again, even accidentally.
I’d shifted, but my wolf hadn’t wanted to leave her, so I’d been watching the window when she’d opened the drapes and caught me staring up at her as I fought the urge to go to her.
It’s early, but Pack Hunt sits on six acres of land. All private, on the edge of town, and so remote that I’m not in danger of bumping into any locals. But I wander a little further than I ordinarily would, just in case Kira ventures out for a walk, she won’t trip over my clothes and wonder what happened to the man.
It takes seconds to strip out of my clothes, the sun warming my bare skin on this bright, blue skied late morning. Then I drop to my knees and my wolf, never far from the surface, especially since Kira arrived, bursts out of me.
It takes everything to run away from the house and not to it where my mate is in my room, maybe curled up in my bed, smelling of me…
She is here, and I cannot touch her like I want to, or be with her like I need to. But I take comfort that she’s here at all, and that I have the opportunity to give her every single reason to stay.