Chapter 4 - Rick
Rick was pacing in front of the fire, occasionally pausing to bare his teeth, his rage bubbling dangerously close to the surface, before he shook his head and carried on stalking.
It helped to keep his wolf at bay.
Just.
Truth be told, in the three days since he had returned from the Eastern Alliance meetings, he’d barely spent any time at all in his human skin.
He ran the forests, checked the perimeter line, hunted through the Grove, did anything he could think of to regain a modicum of control over his own damn life.
He had driven Dane close to distraction, he knew, but he couldn’t find it in himself to care. If Dane wanted to get testy and territorial about patrol duties, more power to him. Rick would run the line anyway. The others soon stopped interfering, likely at Felix’s behest.
For all of Dane's posturing, Nicolas’s panther-like viciousness, and Felix’s raw strength, Rick had always been the wildest of them.
Perhaps it had been the way he was raised. His family kept the European way of things; it was a way of life more attuned to their wolves, more in sync with nature. Civility, at least in the human sense, had no place in shifter life.
It did, however, have the downside that in the rare moments that Rick found his temper tested, he always found it difficult to maintain his grip over his consciousness.
The wolf was always ready to take over. It had happened with Eva’s mother; it had happened when those bounty hunters had captured him and put him in a cage.
And if it had fucking happened when John Heath had demanded his acquiescence to a marriage he had not wanted. When he had made clear his intent to try and control him.
A vicious snarl ripped free from his throat.
He was not some damn pup to be commanded. And yet this man, this sniveling, slimy, social-climbing nobody of a male, sought to bind him.
John Heath was damn lucky Felix had been there. He had been ready to tear out the throat of every smug bastard alpha in the room. Starting with John Heath.
He doubted Rosalia would have minded. She likely would have thanked him for doing so if her terror at her father’s announcement was any indication of her involvement in the whole sordid affair.
The girl was due to arrive any minute now. They were to be wed that very same day. John Heath had, apparently, insisted on it for the sake of his daughter’s virtue.
Rick bared his teeth. Talking about her virtue like she was some quaking medieval princess and not a wolf.
It would be a miracle if he got through the damn ceremony without gutting his bride’s father.
Damn Felix. Damn him. They could have defeated Red Teeth without the help of the Green Mountain pack fighters. They may have lost more wolves to the murderous bastard, but at least now they wouldn’t be in the thrall of some grasping climber desperate to rise above his pathetic station.
Rick struck the wall, pain radiating through his hand. He hardly registered it.
Better the stone than John’s face.
Nobody respected shifter law more than Rick. Nobody. And now, it was coming back to bite him in the ass. He would not refuse a boon granted under oath. He would not jeopardize his pack. He would go through with it.
And one day, one glorious day, he would find a way to make John pay.
Only one other person had ever been brave or foolish enough to try and trap him. And the only reason she was still breathing was because of their daughter.
There was a cautious knock at the door, a rap of tiny knuckles, and Rick halted. “Enter.”
Eva’s little face appeared in the gap as she pushed the door to his study open, glancing around with awe at the expanse of her father’s forbidden domain. Normally, she wasn’t allowed in here. There were far too many family heirlooms with sharp edges she could hurt herself on.
“Evangeline,” he greeted, nodding solemnly at his daughter, forcing his wolf away.
That was another reason he had taken to the woods. For all his rage, he hadn’t wanted to scare her.
“Papa,” she greeted, shuffling forwards, her chestnut curls bouncing. “When is Rosalia getting here?”
Rick sucked in a sharp breath. Predictably, his daughter had been overjoyed at the prospect of a stepmother.
Daisy, bless her kind heart, had helped him sit her down and explain that he was getting married.
They hadn’t gotten further than the word ‘wedding’ before her little face lit up and a thousand questions spilled out of her, each one more outlandish than the last.
When is she coming? When are you getting married? Can I be a flower girl? Can I meet her? Is she going to live here? Is she going to be my mama?
Rick had frozen at the last question, and Daisy had given him a worried look. No doubt Nicolas had gossiped all about the saga of Rick and Zara to her.
No, Eva. She is not going to be your mother.
“Any minute now,” he told his daughter now, resuming his pacing. “Have you finished your piano practice?”
“Yes!”
“And your homework?”
“All done!”
“And have you tidied your room?”
Eva nodded, her face bright and hopeful. He grunted in affirmation, “Well done. Then you may come down with me to meet her. There’s some business we have to sort out first, however. You may play with Daisy and Cassie until we’ve finished.”
Eva’s eyes lit up at the mention of her unofficial aunts. “Is Thea coming? Danny? Logan? Baby Gracie and Max?”
Rick cast his eyes upwards. The last thing he needed today was a riot of children getting underfoot. If Felix and Nicolas had any sense, they would leave their offspring at home. “No. But you’ll see them later at the…at the wedding.”
Eva nodded again, chewing her lip as she always did when she had something to say but couldn’t quite get the words out.
“What is it?” he asked, folding his hands behind his back.
She scuffed her foot back and forth. “Will she…do you think she’ll like me?”
Rick almost laughed. Everybody who ever met his daughter adored her. It seemed the only person who didn’t realize that was Eva herself. He wished she would. She was a Reinhardt. Intelligent, talented, charming, and beautiful. To be loved, to be respected, was in her blood.
“Yes, Eva. I think she’ll like you.”
His daughter nodded, a small smile creeping over her face.
“Go on now,” he ushered her towards the door. “Let’s wait downstairs for her.”
She skipped ahead of him, barely able to contain her excitement. Rick followed behind, stalking the corridors of his ancestral home, the paintings of his ancestors staring down at him with rather more judgment than he was used to.
A Reinhardt allowed himself to be trapped into marriage. Pathetic.
He bared his teeth.
He would find some way to turn this to his advantage. He always did.
As he descended the wide mahogany staircase into the foyer, Molly leapt to her feet from an armchair, rushing over with several manila folders clutched to her chest.
“Mr. Reinhardt! Everything’s in order, sir. We just need both of you to sign, and it’ll all be official!”
Eva glanced between the frumpy woman and him with a curious expression. “What will be all official?”
“Don’t you worry about that,” he said. “Why don’t you go through and wait for Daisy and Cassie in the formal drawing room?”
Eva’s nose wrinkled, but she obeyed, trotting dutifully away down the corridor.
Molly sighed. “She truly is a lovely little girl.”
“Indeed,” Rick replied, holding out his hand. “May I have a look over the contract?”
Molly swallowed, rifling through her papers before handing one over with a slight flourish, “Everything’s in there, just as requested. The shifter bylaw inclusions are in Section Five. We have an excellent paralegal who’s an expert in such matters—”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” Rick said, ignoring Molly’s distraught expression.
Honestly, one would never know that she was a representative of the most popular shifter nanny agency in the country. He had half a mind to get in contact with the board and talk to them about the importance of presentation.
He knew the wording of the contract almost inside out. He had, after all, drafted most of it himself. But still, it soothed him somewhat to see the familiar words written out in front of him.
The undersigned agrees to unconditionally and irrevocably relinquish any and all current or future claims to guardianship, parenthood, custodial rights, or equivalent status with respect to the minor child, irrespective of any past, present, or future marriage to, biological or legal relation with, or domestic partnership involving the client, in accordance with Shifter By-Law 14. 6.2.
The sonorous echo of the cast-iron doorbell echoed through the hall, and he glanced up, jaw clenched.
They were here.
Molly smoothed her cardigan. “Right, let’s get to it, shall we?”
***
He had to hand it to her; Rosalia had accepted the contract gracefully, barely even blinking as Molly explained her position to her.
As his wife, Rosalia would be able to claim guardianship over Evangeline, in line with shifter law. And, by extension, John would have an open door to sink his claws into Rick’s daughter through the law of kinship. If anything happened to Rick, Felix would be powerless to stop John from taking Eva.
He’d sooner die than see his daughter in the clutches of a man like John Heath.
Luckily for him, he’d found a rather neat workaround. No employee of a shifter male, past or present, could automatically claim guardianship of the male’s children without his explicit consent in the event of marriage, or even relations, between them.
He had a disgraced shifter politician with a chip on his shoulder from the seventies to thank for this particular loophole.
It was a rather graceful solution, all things considered.
Rosalia would lose no rights beyond her inability to claim guardianship, and Felix and Nicolas would remain Eva’s legal guardians should something happen to him.