Chapter 1 #2
Still, with Faegan’s tight and silent circle, no hint of the truth escaped even as Faegan turned the country inside out, attempting to locate them.
Hamish finished washing up and then threw the bolt on his door to avoid further surprise visits. There wasn’t much he needed to take with him. What few belongings he wanted or required he could easily fit in a rucksack.
First, he sat down and ate some of the delicious food Frannie, Faegan’s cook and Donnel’s frequent lover, had sent with his brother.
The woman was a shifter, but her mother wasn’t.
And her family was poor, indebted to Faegan.
In Faegan’s world, that meant he wouldn’t let Donnel claim her as a mate and wife both because she wasn’t “pure” and because Faegan could keep her in reserve in case another shifter came looking for a bitch to mate, and then charge an exorbitant dowry for the privilege.
Faegan’s wife, Hyacinth, was a horrible cook. She wasn’t much of a mother, either, in Hamish’s opinion. But he supposed if he were married to Faegan, he might also acquiesce the way she had as a survival tactic.
Especially after the things she’d survived over the years that Faegan had subjected her to.
Hamish knew for a fact she drank to excess in a futile attempt to numb her emotional pain. From what tidbits Hamish gleaned over the years, he was certain Faegan had murdered the nonshifter man Hyacinth had loved and planned to marry against her family’s wishes.
And then there were her children, who hadn’t survived their father’s…attention.
At full dark, Hamish stoked the hearth, extinguished his lamps, and pulled the shutters closed.
Ironic that he’d just run all day today.
He’d felt the irresistible pull of it that morning, as if something inside him sensed well before he did that it would be his last turn around his beloved countryside.
Then he slipped out through a back window, just in case Faegan had someone watching the cottage, and headed across the dark countryside on foot with his rucksack and a basket with as much as he could carry of the food and drink Donnel had brought.
Early the next morning, before Faegan likely realized he was missing, Hamish boarded a train east to London.
His plan? To enlist in the British army, get himself shipped to Europe and, once there, fake his death. He had the letter explaining his departure—and telling Faegan to sod off—ready to post just before his deployment. By then, his older brother would already know Hamish had flown the coop.
Fuck you, brother.
He lay his head back against the seat and closed his eyes. Part of him wanted to watch the countryside roll past outside.
The rest of him—all the way to the depths of his soul—ached too much to bear it.
Nine Months Later
The battle was brutal and bloody. Hamish hadn’t felt right about deserting and leaving his comrades with so much on the line, so he stayed and fought.
Unfortunately, one of his best mates was killed in action at the Battle of the Somme.
Fortunately, the man had no family and sufficiently resembled Hamish closely enough—especially with his face shot off and Hamish having grown a scruffy beard and mustache that matched the other man’s—that it was easy to swap their dog tags and ID papers, stab himself with a dead German’s bayonet, and make his way back to the medics for transported out.
Two months later, one Earl P. Johnson stood on the stern of a freighter heading across the Atlantic, watching as the British coast disappeared behind him.
After “Earl” had posted a letter to Faegan, telling him about the heroic and untimely death of his friend, Hamish. Along with a copy of the official military death certificate.
Part of Hamish wanted to angrily rail against his older brother, secretly return to Wales, and put a bullet between the man’s eyes. They’d all be better off with him dead, especially Hyacinth.
The other part of him said it was best to leave the country, never look back, and start a new life across the ocean. People like Faegan lived for and thrived on conflict, their souls bottomless pits that no amount of bloodshed—or anything else—could fill.
All Hamish wanted was peace and freedom.
And, for the first time in his life, he would finally know it.
A man Hamish met and befriended in hospital after leaving the front lines, a fellow soldier from a different unit, had invited Hamish to join him in Boston, where the man planned to visit family for a while before heading to St. Louis to go into business there.
Hamish had told him he wished to escape the violently oppressive thumb of his brother, but nothing about the fact that he’d appropriated his new identity from a dead man.
Because, honestly, could the man’s identity be stolen if he were already alone in the world with no one to claim or miss him?
Maybe, one day, Hamish would return to Wales and kill Faegan.
For now, all he wanted was the ability to sleep without looking over his shoulder and without worrying about Faegan’s machinations.
A peaceful life, food in his belly, and a dry roof overhead. And, if he was lucky, extra coin in his pocket to keep him smiling.
I will finally have it.
Present - One Week Ago
All these years being careful, and this is how I die.
It’d been so long since Hamish had experienced deep, visceral terror that it nearly made him puke when the man’s hand clamped onto his shoulder about the same time he realized he was dealing with an alpha wolf.
A Prime Alpha wolf.
“Keep comin’ in,” the man whispered. “There’s a good lad. Quietly, if ye please. Just wanna chat with ye.”
Not that Hamish could have screamed if he’d tried, because the shifter’s Prime order kept him silent and compliant.
That terror intensified after the man sat Hamish behind his desk and then identified himself.
Terror that was quickly replaced by confusion, then grief and regret, as Badger Williams succinctly summarized the situation.
Now Hamish—who for decades had been known as Earl to the rest of the world—stared at Badger’s phone.
The pictures on it.
A daughter, born from a one-night stand to a woman he’d hoped would stay around for the long term.
A woman he didn’t realize would walk out of his life without even revealing her real name.
An hour later, the men were standing in Hamish’s living room as he struggled to think of anything else he’d need on this whirlwind, last-minute trip. Both his large suitcases lay open and nearly full on his couch as he ran his hands through his now unruly hair and…stared.
Badger laid a hand—without the Prime powers this time—on Hamish’s shoulder. “Take a deep breath, lad,” he gently said. “We’ve got three hours before our flight.”
“But…” Hamish sucked in a breath. “I have a…daughter.”
“Ye have a lot of family now,” he said. “Blood and bound, both.”
The other thing making Hamish’s mind whirl was the information Badger revealed to him about Faegan and the evil fuckery he’d been up to in the years since Hamish vanished.
Hamish now regretted not returning to Wales years ago to blow Faegan’s brains out. It sounded like a lot of people would have been better off—and still alive—if he hadn’t been a coward.
If he hadn’t chosen the easy, safer, self-centered path every time he confronted a fork in the road.
“Don’t fash yerself,” Badger added. “Not a single person blames ye for leavin’ the way ye did. Who’s to say ye’d even still be alive if ye’d stayed? At the very least ye’d be painted with the same damned brush.”
“And no one knows where Donnel is? Or if he’s even still alive?”
“No,” Badger said. “And that’s after several Primes interrogated Hyacinth and others. If he’s still alive, she doesn’t know his whereabouts. Faegan never told her what happened to him. Apparently, she developed a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ survival policy to not make waves.”
“Faegan always was an arrogant gobshite,” Hamish said.
“Even back when we were lads. I think he fancied himself wanting to run with the wolves. The truth was he was the worst kind of coward when all was said and done. Sending everyone else out to do his dirty work and be his human shields while he kept his paws relatively clean.”
“Guess he grew more quarrelsome over the past several decades and started taking matters into his own paws,” Badger said. “He killed his own son’s mate, and then his son, when he tried to defend her.”
“Perhaps Donnel finally left because he grew tired of being drawn into Faegan’s follies,” Hamish said.
“Although I admit murder is more than a folly.” It was odd how Hamish realized he’d reverted to his old Welsh accent while in the company of the other shifter, even though he’d long ago perfected his Midwest American accent to blend in.
“I suspect so,” Badger said.
They finally made it to the airport and checked in for their flight to Atlanta.
As always, Hamish felt a twinge of fear when forced to fly and present his ID.
He’d had the foresight decades earlier to bribe a doctor to create a birth certificate for a fictitious son, and then again not too long ago, for his own “grandson.”
Amazing what a new car could buy in this country. That would be the last birth certificate Hamish would be able to obtain from him, because the man was retiring. But now with the Targhee Pack’s resources, he could obtain a new one when the time was right.
And the paperwork always held up when starting from scratch like that.
Still, it didn’t assuage his fear, the familiar, pinching pining and aching that echoed his last view of the UK disappearing in the freighter’s wake.
He’d never returned, not even to the continent. He’d limited himself to North and Central America, and a few cruises through the Caribbean.
He’d always felt the safest place would be with at least one ocean separating him from his older brother.
Until now.
As they sat at the gate while awaiting the call to board, Badger gently elbowed him. “Try to stay in the moment, lad,” he said.
“When can I meet Imani?” he asked. “I have to meet her.”
“Eh, we’ll handle that soon enough, but we need to be delicate about it.
Prime powers or not, it’ll be a helluva shock to her.
And even though she doesn’t know it, she’s pack, meaning we will be as gentle as possible.
I love her as family, and I won’t just drop her into the vat to sink or swim without cushioning the blow. ”
“I need to meet her,” he said. “I need to be part of her life. She’s my daughter.”
“Ye will meet her, lad. Just be patient. Plus, if she doesn’t want ye in her life, ye have to respect that. I know ye want to make up for lost time wi’ her, but right now that energy will be better expended supporting Tamsin and her babe. And Ken.”
Hamish nodded.
A nephew and a niece.
Grandchildren. Great-grandchildren.
“Thank you for not holding my brother’s misdeeds against me,” Hamish said.
“Well, we can’t usually choose our blood but ye got a ready-made pack waitin’ to welcome ye.”
“I won’t let any of you down. I swear.”
“That’s all we ask, lad.”
Still, Hamish’s mind spun, reeled.
Among that tangled mass of emotions he also felt anger—no, rage. It seeped deep into every crevice of his soul.
He would gladly rip his brother’s head clean off his neck with his own bare hands if given the opportunity.
So much pain, so much grief, all because of one man’s inflated ego.
Hamish knew one thing—whatever he had to do, whatever was asked of him by the Targhees, he would gladly do it or die trying.
And he wouldn’t rest until Faegan was dead.