Chapter 3 - Bryce
We were still hiding in the cellar, and I was once again thinking of taking my chances with Cassie if I could stack enough boxes to climb up on. The demon was still wreaking havoc upstairs, and I was sure that if my heart beat any louder, then it’d burst right out of my chest.
Cassie was clinging to me so hard that her fingers dug into my skin almost painfully, but I never once tugged her grip away. Not when she wouldn’t know anything that was going on. Hell, I didn’t.
“It’s okay, baby,” I whispered to her, kissing her temple. “Uncle Jackson’s on his way.”
Cassie stilled, a hopeful brightness on her face. “Uncle Jackson?”
“Yeah.” I mustered a smile at her. “He’s going to come and make everything all better. You’ll see.”
“Can I show him my birthday cake?”
My heart ached when I thought of Cassie’s cake on the dining table, uneaten. Had that been eaten up in the ifrit’s flames, too?
I nodded. “I’m sure he’ll love that, but let’s just focus on getting out safely first, okay?”
“Sure, Momma,” she said. “Knowing he’s coming for us makes me feel a bit less scared.” Her eyes were still wide, but she cuddled into my side, and although the tremors hadn’t quite left her, she breathed less labored.
“Momma,” Cassie whispered, minutes later. “Will I still have my room—”
She didn’t get to finish her full sentence because an ear-splitting roar cut her off, coming through the ceiling. The banging on the cellar door stopped, and I felt the energy retreat—only to be replaced by something else that sent skitters down my spine.
“Momma—”
“Stay here,” I whispered. “Don’t come out until I tell you.”
I crept up the cellar stairs and pressed myself to the wooden door so I could peer through the small window set into it, and my breath caught.
There was a wolf in the kitchen.
A black wolf that sent me reeling back to seven years ago.
The sight of it lunging for the ifrit, of claws and flame meeting in a disastrous clash.
The two creatures crashed around in my kitchen, and, stupidly, all I could think of—all perhaps my defense mechanisms let me think of—that is not Jackson.
I was frozen as I watched the wolf fight off the ifrit, dodging a ball of flames, before he pounced on the creature. I didn’t understand. Why would he come here with Jackson? Why would he come to my rescue?
Why was he fighting a demon to protect me?
I never thought I’d see him again—I had hoped not to see him again, even though when I dreamed of him, I woke up with a longing that was unbearable—yet there he was. Moments before his jaws clamped down on the ifrit’s neck, the ifrit disappeared through a scorch mark on the floor.
The wolf slowly turned to me, already knowing I was there.
And when he shifted, I got a glimpse of the man who had broken my heart for the first time in seven years.
Mason Warwick.
Cassie’s father.
He had no sooner shifted when more men piled into my house, and my entire body was rooted to the spot. Someone tossed the recently-shifted Mason clothes that he hurriedly put on, and I dared not even look away from his eyes as he dressed himself.
Time stopped as he walked towards the cellar door.
After all these years… he was there. He was moments away from opening the door to face me. To me, facing him.
And I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready to explain my escape from Honeycreek, Cassie, or my heartbreak. I wasn’t ready, I wasn’t ready, I wasn’t ready—
Mason opened the door, and how had I forgotten how tall he was? I barely came up to his chin, and he looked down at me, his expression unreadable. I couldn’t tell if he was angry at seeing me, coming to rescue me, or at the ifrit. But either way, that singular had anxiety curling through me.
Who’d ever love a girl like you, Bryce?
Who would?
It was something I’d asked myself a thousand times over, yet something told me that he had. Maybe not properly, and maybe only for one beautiful afternoon, but he had. And then he’d broken my heart.
I steeled myself.
“Mason.”
“Bryce.”
My voice didn’t shake as I feared it would, but the moment was quickly moved on when his eyes went past me to the little girl dusting herself off by the boxes.
“Momma, are we safe?” she asked, rushing up to me.
Everything in me stilled. Please don’t figure it out. Please don’t. I’m not ready to share her yet.
I’d have happily lived my life without Mason Warwick not finding out about his daughter, yet there he was, standing before us both, and the twisted version of a family stance hit me. He didn’t know it was her birthday, had made choices that meant he hadn’t been present in any of her life.
I swallowed.
If Mason suspected he was her father, he didn’t show it. He only looked uncomfortable, as if the thought of me having had a child with someone else didn’t sit right with him, as he reached out for us both. After a moment, he pulled back.
“Is your… husband in the house?” he asked. “We need to make sure nobody’s left behind.”
“I don’t have a husband,” I answered him tightly. Angrily, sure, it was just to find out more. “It’s just me.”
“And your daughter.”
He said the word as though it didn’t belong in his mouth.
“Just… come with me, Bryce. Don’t put up a fight. You need to get out of here.”
His eyes were so earnest for a moment, so softened from that hard glare he had often sported.
Immediately, Cassie went to him, and I wanted to pull her back, to protect her, to tell her truths about her father that she was too young to understand.
But I hated how her instincts would likely feel relaxed.
That part of her would know, subconsciously, that she was his.
It terrified me. It terrified me to see Mason reach out a hand to Cassie, pull her through the door, and wait for me.
When I hesitated, Mason’s eyes flashed.
“You want your daughter to wait for you in a burning house? “ he growled.
I couldn’t keep looking at him, and my anger won out as I went through the door without his help.
Yet, as I gathered Cassie back in my arms, I couldn’t ignore how she stared at Mason.
She knows, I thought. A part of her knows something.
My instincts told me to move in front of her, to shield her from him.
He had never raised a finger to me, yet his words had hurt, his rejection, everything he had purposefully done to make me an outcast. Seven years or not, scars remained, and his was the deepest one of all.
“Bryce—”
“Just do what you came to do,” I snapped. “And do not speak to her.”
“I came to protect you. Your brother’s team is here to do damage control. My goal was solely you.”
The words struck me with too much honesty that I didn’t know how to handle.
My jaw clenched as I tried to ignore his confession.
It didn’t matter. He couldn’t just swoop in and play hero because he’d known I was in danger now.
He hadn’t given a shit seven years ago when he’d been the one putting me in harm’s way.
When he’d let a rejected, hurt eighteen-year-old walk away from her pack, forced to start over in a new town alone.
I didn’t know what to do with what he’d told me, and thankfully, I didn’t have to think hard, because my brother came over, and Cassie’s inspection of Mason broke in favor of running at her uncle.
“The fire’s under control,” he told me, hugging Cassie. “Hey, honey. How’re you? My God, you’ve grown, like, a foot since I last saw you.”
Cassie giggled, pulling back. “No, I haven’t!”
“No, seriously, has turning seven made you grow? You’re almost at the ceiling, Cass.”
He grinned at her before his gaze lifted to me, to Mason, and then back to me. If Mason was piecing together Cassie’s age, he didn’t show it, either. I purposefully didn’t look at him. I couldn’t bear to.
“Well, this isn’t awkward at all.” Jackson chuckled, looking between us both.
I only looked back at my brother. “You buzzed your hair off?”
“Yeah,” he snorted. “I mean, it’s not exactly the most pressing issue right now, but—”
“It looks good.”
I walked past them both, and although I hadn’t seen my brother since Christmas five months ago, I was marginally annoyed at him for allowing Mason to come with him.
The other part of me knew that Mason was stubborn enough that if he’d wanted to come, then he’d have found any sort of way.
He had always been headstrong like that.
“Come through,” Jackson said, guiding me through the kitchen.
The destruction around me had me feeling weak in the legs.
“These attacks are… well, some of the guys think they’re becoming increasingly common.
But you’re lucky by the other standards we’ve seen in Honeycreek.
The rooms are scorched, and the demon destroyed a good deal of furniture, but the house is intact. ”
It was—but everything was destroyed, and I couldn’t help but let out a pained, choked noise when I looked at it all.
The sofa where I had held Cassie the day I brought her back from the hospital was nothing but a frame with deep, burn holes in it.
The rug I’d found in the cellar, left by the previous tenant, was nothing but ash.
The walls were charred up and down, and the TV was smashed in. My heart ached at the devastation. Everything I had built for the last seven years—all of it was destroyed.
“Intact, but… gone,” I whispered.
“If the causes of the attacks are demons,” Mason said, startling me, “then you’re lucky to have what is left at all. They’re getting bolder.”
I wanted to whirl on him with anger, to tell him that I wouldn’t have had to move to this house, to try to build my life here only to now lose it, if it hadn’t been for him.
It’s not too bad, I tried to tell myself, if only to block out Mason’s voice. It’s not too bad. You’ll be fine. You can rebuild.
“This was no ordinary attack,” Jackson told me. “I know that’s not what you want to hear, but God knows we have enough experience with demons to know the signs.”
“Possible signs,” Mason cut in, and I was too far removed from their life to even understand whatever they had been fighting back in Honeycreek. “We don’t have concrete proof yet.”
“Is this not proof enough?” Jackson countered. “My sister’s house is destroyed. You fought the demon yourself.”
“I just don’t want to be picking enemy wars if it’s not warranted.
” There was a growl to Mason’s voice that shuddered through me.
I didn’t want to think about how seven years had changed him, or what changes he might be seeing in me.
“Not every member of my pack is experienced the way you and Theo are. I’m not risking them. Not without true evidence.”
“Regardless, Bryce, I’m not having you stay here unprotected.” My brother saying my name brought me back into their conversation. Cassie was looking around our home with wide, scared eyes. I pulled her to me. This was the only home she had ever known, and now it was gone.
“I can handle myself—”
My brother cut me off. “Absolutely not. No. Bryce, that’s out of the question. Come back to Honeycreek. Let me make sure you’re safe.”
“Are you serious?” I asked him, my voice rising. I looked between Jackson and Mason, appalled. “You want me to go back there—where he ruined everything for me? Where the town’s pack did everything it could to get me out? How can you think I’d be safe there, Jackson?”
“Because I’ll protect you,” Jackson swore. “The way you never let me do before.”
I knew it was for the best. After all, seven years was a long time. Could the pack that had ostracized me now protect me? Even led by Mason? I turned my gaze to him, my lips pressed tightly together. Then I looked back at my brother.
“No,” I said. “I can’t, Jackson.”
“You want to risk your little girl’s life like that?” Mason snarled, stepping closer to me.
“What’s our safety to you?” I countered.
“Mason’s right,” Jackson said. “I can’t leave here if I think my sister and niece are without protection.”
The pride I had built over these years in White Bay swelled, and I wanted to protest that I had protected myself just fine. But that had been before a demon attack.
And I thought of Cassie’s eyes, fearful, and her trembling body as she’d pressed herself to me in the cellar, trying to be brave. I hated to admit it, but they were right. I couldn’t risk her life like that for the sake of my own personal feelings regarding Honeycreek’s pack and their alpha.
But how could I return to that town and unearth everything I’d buried when I left?