Chapter 5 #3
She opens her mouth to argue, but Ethan rounds the corner, the wrapper now crumpled in his fist like a trophy. He takes one look at Miranda and immediately grabs her hand, pulling her away from me.
“What were you doing?” he asks, suspicious.
“Talking,” Miranda says quickly.
I raise my eyebrows at the possessive way my son tucks himself against her side, keeping her hand locked in both of his. He’s claiming her. Pack instinct, raw and unfiltered in a child too young to understand what he’s doing.
“Ethan,” I say sharply. “Miranda doesn’t belong to you.”
Miranda frowns at me. “Don’t scold him like that.”
I frown and wish I could explain that possessive bonding in young wolves needs to be guided early before it calcifies into something unhealthy. That I’m not being cruel, I’m being careful.
But I can’t say any of that without saying everything.
“I’m going to change,” I say instead, ruffling Ethan’s hair. “Then we can get something to eat. I’m starving.”
“Me too!” Ethan bounces on his toes.
“Are you always hungry?” Miranda asks him, and the warmth in her voice does something to my chest I don’t want to examine.
“Always,” Ethan confirms solemnly.
I head toward the locker room, leaving them in the corridor. The team has mostly filtered out, gear bags slung over shoulders, the sound of chatter fading as they head for the parking lot.
Coach is waiting by the entrance.
“A word,” he says.
“What’s up?”
“Miranda and you. What’s going on?” His jaw is tense.
“Nothing.” I make a face. “She’s just a nurse, and Ethan likes her.”
“It’s more than that.” He studies me. “Do you want to sleep with her?”
I splutter. “What? Even if I did, there’s no rule against it. The rest of the guys sleep with human women all the time.”
“She’s not just any human woman. She’s going to be involved in this pack’s inner workings.” He crosses his arms. “You know very well that the others don’t spend so much time with the human women they sleep with.”
His meaning isn’t lost on me, and I press my lips together before spitting out, “She’s not my fated mate. I’d know.”
“Are you certain?”
“Leon.” I keep my voice flat. “I know the law. I’ve always known the law. And she doesn’t trigger the bond. So back off.”
He holds my gaze for a long moment. “Keep it physical if you must,” he says. “The moment it becomes something else, you come to me. Understood?”
“Understood.”
“Good.” He rolls his shoulders. “There’s something else. Derek is coming back.”
The air leaves my lungs.
“Are you serious?” My voice comes out strangled. “It’s been four years.”
“He’s ready.” Coach’s dark eyes study me. “He reached out last week. Says he’s done roaming and wants to come home. Wants to rejoin the team.”
Derek Morrison. My brother’s best friend.
The man who disappeared after Gabriel’s death because the grief of losing their closest companion destroys some people from the inside out.
One day he was there and the next just gone, and neither I nor anyone else in the pack heard from him again.
Losing Derek on top of Gabriel was like burying two brothers at the same time.
“Are you okay?” Coach asks.
I nod. There are no words forming. Only a strange, numb static where emotions should be.
“I just wanted you to be prepared,” he says quietly before walking away.
The corridor is completely still around me except for the hum of the fluorescent lights overhead and the distant drip of a faucet, like someone turning the volume up on a world I’m not quite in anymore.
I drag myself to the locker room, which is empty now. Sitting down on the bench, I rest my elbows on my knees, staring at the floor.
Derek is coming back.
Four years of silence and now he wants to walk back into the pack, back onto this team, back into the space that Gabriel’s death hollowed out.
I should feel something. Relief, maybe. Or anger. Instead there is just this quiet, heavy numbness, like a bruise that’s been pressed too many times to hurt anymore.
My boy is out there waiting for me. I’d burn the world down for him if he asked. And now another ghost from the past wants to walk back into our lives.
I don’t know how long I sit there before finally peeling myself off the bench and heading for the showers. The hot water pounds against my shoulders, and I let it run until the tension bleeds out of my muscles, until my thoughts stop looping and settle into something manageable.
Wrapping a towel around my waist, I head back toward my locker, still running through what I want to say to Derek when I see him and whether any version of it doesn’t sound like an accusation.
Then I hear her voice.
“Grayson?”
Miranda. In the hallway. Getting closer.
“Grayson, Ethan wants to know how long you’ll be...”
I round the corner at the same moment she does.
We collide.
Her hands fly out instinctively, grabbing the nearest thing to steady herself.
The nearest thing is my towel.
Her fingers clench. Her feet tangle. And as Miranda Carver stumbles backward and hits the tile floor, she takes the towel with her, leaving me completely naked in front of her.