Chapter 75 – Ryder
Seventy-Five
RYDER
“You sure about this?” Xander checks, giving Carina his back so the question remains between us. “What if he wants her to go with him?”
“Then he has himself a fight. Besides, the bite on her neck will supersede parentage.”
Our conversation ends when Carina approaches and takes my offered hand as we depart the caves to where she’s “dying”—to use her words—to know where we’re headed, a place I’ve been teasing her for the past few days, since getting it all sorted.
After stripping, I toss her my clothes to store in a bag that she slips over her shoulders, then shifts. She climbs onto my back and settles into place, preparing for the trip that’ll take a few hours.
She presses down against my back as I run us along the stretch from Banff to the British Columbia border, turning off near the village of Valemount and heading to the agreed upon location.
The sun has set in the hours of our trip, and the moon is bright above, leaving the air frost and crisp and the layers I ensured she dressed in feeling much less.
Only when we reach the base of the slope that’ll lead us up to the meeting place do I have her get off, shift, and redress before taking her hand. Full trusting eyes stare up at me, and fuck, if I hope she still looks at me like that after this.
“When Sloane mentioned the rumours of your birth father being from the BC pack, I suspected. Callum, Alpha of Hightooth, kept staring at you at the meeting, and the more I thought about it, the more similarities in your appearances I found. So I requested a meeting.”
I stop both talking and walking to search for any sign of discomfort, of wanting to return home. She exhales a harsh breath, staggering between acceptance, and peers up the slope.
“What did you tell him?”
“Only that I had something vital to show him. Callum’s honourable and is focused on peacekeeping, not fighting. I knew he’d come.” I tip her chin, stealing as much of her attention as I can before her past catches up. “But say the word and we’ll go home. You don’t have to do this.”
She pulls from my grip and angles herself up the path. “I think I want to.”
Keeping close and always one step ahead, I lead her to the highest point of the hill, to the small clearing that overlooks a vast landscape mostly consumed my pine trees.
A mountain covers the background, and the stretch of land below is filled with a glistening lake reflecting the low moon.
It ripples occasionally as the wind blows.
Callum stands at the very tip of the overlook, staring at the water, but turns with our approach. He briefly meets my gaze before his attention lands on the woman beside me. Carina remains close, and my hand cuffs her wrist in case this doesn’t go how I expect it to.
The clearing remains still, even the wind having died down, until a gasp takes him stumbling forward.
“I thought—I thought I was seeing a ghost that day. You look…” A sharp inhale.
“So much like her.” Callum swipes a hand down his face, lingering by his grey-speckled beard. “How…my fuck. You’re—what’s your name?”
“Carina.” She breaks from my hold, pacing halfway between me and Callum.
“Of course, she did. She always did adore it. How is…how’s your mother? Well, I hope?”
Oh. Carina shares a glance with me, confirming we’re both thinking the same. Callum’s subtle behaviours, the way he’s looking at Carina like she’s a ghost returned, in both pain and adoration, confirms something else.
He loved her birth mother. Loves—present tense—since he doesn’t know she’s gone.
“I’m so sorry… She died saving my life.”
Light fades as he stumbles backwards and turns for the cliff’s edge. Carina moves to go after him, but my hand to her shoulder stops her.
I couldn’t imagine—if never completing the bond—someone informing me Carina died. Even years down the road. It’d be a pain of what was and what could’ve been. Mourning a woman I released and feeling grief all the same.
Callum drops to his knees and screams a guttural noise that makes Carina flinch and my own wolf howl for him. Clawed hands scrape the ground as he shouts a variety of exclamations, most of them undecipherable beneath the weight of his pain.
Minutes pass before he lifts his head and stares up at the moon. This time, his words are clear. “You promised. You promised you’d keep her safe. You’re her fucking Goddess, and you failed.”
Carina glances back again, scrunching her face.
She squeezes my hand before heading for Callum’s side.
It only takes a single step before he turns towards her.
First, his head, and finally he positions one knee to get up.
“How’d it…” He swallows, staring into the forest above her head. “How’d it happen?”
“Another coven was targeting me, but I don’t know the precise details of the attack. She ran to Banff, to Highridge Coven, for help. Barely made it there before she died on the High Priestess’s doorstep. She saved me.”
Callum nods roughly, his tone scraping as he grinds, “When?”
“About twenty-four years ago.”
He chokes, his eyes drilling into face. “H-how old are you?”
“A few months older than twenty-five.”
Callum curses, turns to look away, but then immediately drops back to his knees at Carina’s feet. Grief barbwires around Carina’s emotions as she lowers beside him, and while instincts urge me to protect her, I do nothing more than take a single step to overhear their lowered whispers.
“You didn’t know.”
A tear-streaked face lifts to regard her, this time studying her not as only the child of the woman he loved, but his child.
“I didn’t know she was pregnant. I…I never knew,” he breathes, dragging a hand through his hair.
“Why didn’t she come to me? Why didn’t she tell me about you?
Why didn’t she—” He breaks off with a sob, falling onto his hands again.
Carina rests her hand on his shoulder. “I didn’t know either.
Up until recently, I believed the woman who raised me was my birth mother.
Then I was told otherwise. I was told about you even more recently.
” She pauses, sinking lower to his side.
“I know it hurts, but could you fill in the rest? No one even knows her name.”
“Lily Brooks.” Fondness rings in his tone, and his gaze shifts away, to the past. “She was beautiful and kind. We met by accident when she wandered too far away from Vancouver while on vacation with her family and ended up on our territory.”
Just like Carina found herself on my land. An accidental meeting driven by fate.
“We spent time together, and even after returning home, we visited each other frequently. I fell in love and wanted nothing more to provide for her. No matter what everyone else thought, I longed to make her my mate.” His attention falls to the bite mark on her neck, and then me, drawing his own conclusions with a hard set to his jaw.
“She told me she wanted that too, but with the least amount of bloodshed as possible, and went home to talk with her coven. I never saw her again. I didn’t know she was pregnant with my pup.
I…I assumed she gave up and moved on. I tried to see her, but she never returned to our meeting place.
This entire time”—his tone hardens—“she’s been dead. ”
Carina reaches for his hand. “I can’t speak for why she didn’t return right away, but apparently her coven was worried about my parentage and wanted me out.
In the midst of them kicking me out, another witch targeted her—and me.
Maybe she was trying to run to you, but something redirected her to Alberta instead. ”
He blows out a breath, and truthfully, I don’t think he even heard her.
Gone and into the past with her mother instead of listening to Carina recount the pain.
Silver flashes in his eyes while his hand lifts, to touch, but drops at the last second.
“Forgive me. I didn’t know. I would have—I swear, I would have—”
“I believe you.”
He nods once, more for himself, and wipes away leftover tears. “You’ve been living with another coven, then?”
“In Banff, yes. They’ve been good to me. She—Lily—Mom…she chose well. She chose the best people, I swear. The woman who raised me, Morgan, is great. She gave me love, life, and a coven. I have an aunt and uncle, and a cousin, Jasper. Banff is lovely to grow up in, though busy.”
His body tenses, wolf tendencies emerging. No shifter approves of others raising their pup, and it takes a few more inhales before he’s murmuring, “You had a good life?”
“A fantastic life.”
His attention falls onto her neck again before looking at me. “Like your mother in numerous ways.”
Carina’s cheeks redden, and I walk forward, resting my hand on her shoulder to make my own claim. Father or not, she’s been mine long before she was his. “She’s my mate.”
“His n?kak?stis,” Carina fills in, completely butchering the term, which only lifts a bit more of his grief with a smirk.
“Enough of a shifter to make the bond form. That’s very interesting. Any other features?”
“When Ryder was threatened, I grew claws and fangs, but I can’t do it on my own. Before then, there was no sign of it. I was told Lily locked my wolf side at my birth, to protect me—probably to appease her coven. Do you think I’ll ever completely shift?”
“You probably would have done so when he was threatened. If that was the moment that awoke that part of you, whatever you have comes out in full force.”
Admittingly, a small part of me hoped she’d one day join me for a run on four paws rather than my back, but I wouldn’t change her for anything. I fell in love with Carina as a witch, and I’ll love her in any form.
Callum gets to his feet and helps her up, keeping her close before jutting a hand in my direction.
“Thank you for this. Thank you both for telling me. Just…thank you. I’d love to get to know you, Carina, if you’d give me the chance to.
You’re both invited to my territory any time you wish.
I’ve missed twenty-four years of your life, but would appreciate learning all about it, about your family”—he chokes over the word—“about Morgan.”
A deep breath of peace floats down the bond. “I’d like that too.”
After a few final words, we leave him on the cliff where he can grieve the mate he wasn’t able to claim in time, and the child he was forced to be without.
Carina tucks into my side as we start down the slope and away. Once we’re a distance away, a storm of emotions crashes on her shoulders—and into my stomach—as she turns into my arms and sobs into my chest.
“Thank you.”
“Always.”