Chapter 14 #2
I move to the other side of the bed and pull off my shirt. Her head whips up, shock in her eyes as she hisses, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?!”
I toss my shirt on a chair. “Going to sleep.”
Her eyes narrow at me. “Not here you’re not. I’m sleeping here.”
I give her a wry smile. “This is my bed, Miranda. Where else am I going to sleep?”
Her lips part, and I allow myself to enjoy the moment. I hadn’t planned on sleeping here at all. I was going to sleep in one of the numerous guest bedrooms. But my wolf had other ideas.
It’s been clawing since the kitchen, since she put her hand on my wrist and then took it away. The need to be close to her, to keep her within arm’s reach, is not something I can reason around tonight.
“Then I’ll leave.” She tries to get up, but I’m in front of her before she can so much as twitch.
“Get under the covers, Miranda.” My voice is firm, and she scowls.
“I’m not sleeping in the same bed as you.”
“Why?” I grab her jaw, squeezing it gently till her lips pucker. “You afraid I’ll bite?”
Normally her response to this would have been something nasty, and when she just looks up at me, a new hesitance in her eyes, my chest tightens.
Her attraction to me has always been obvious, but tonight it hurts.
I loosen my grip and caress her soft skin.
“I won’t do anything you don’t want me to.
So just sleep, okay? I’ll feel more comfortable if you’re where I can see you. ”
The words are torn from me, my voice hoarse, and I see the flicker of guilt in her eyes. Her lips part slightly as if she wants to say something, but she turns her head away, pressing them together into a thin line. Finally, she murmurs, “Do what you want.”
She crawls under the covers next to Ethan.
I get to the other side of the bed and climb in.
Ethan stirs, rolls toward the warmth of me by instinct, and then stops, caught between us. He makes a small sound, resettles, and goes still again with his head close to Miranda’s arm.
As a silence falls over the room, I look at Miranda, who has her eyes closed. “Don’t ever treat your life like it’s worthless again.”
She doesn’t answer immediately, and just when I think she must have fallen asleep, she whispers, “I didn’t mean to worry you like that.”
“You thought I wouldn’t care.”
A soft exhale from her. “I don’t know what I thought, but I wanted it to be over.”
I reach out and lace my fingers with hers, where they’re resting on top of Ethan. “You’re not alone, Miranda.”
Her eyes don’t open, but her grip on my fingers tightens.
She doesn’t say anything after that.
I lie still and watch her. I listen to her breathing change, that gradual loosening that means sleep is taking her.
It takes longer than it should. She lies rigid for a while, as if she’s not willing to allow it, and then her body decides the matter without her permission, and her breath goes even and deep.
Ethan has curved himself against her side.
Her arm has shifted in her sleep so it rests across his back.
I watch them.
The room is dark, and the house is quiet, and for a long moment, I just let myself look at the two of them, trying not to let this misery consume me.
She’ll leave.
I know that.
She’ll leave and build the life she should have had before any of this. A nursing job in some city far from here. Someone who doesn’t stand on the wrong side of every law that governs my world. She’ll be happy.
The idea of it makes my wolf bare its teeth, and I’m not far behind it.
I reach out slowly and move a strand of hair off her cheek with two fingers. She doesn’t stir. Her face in sleep is very still, the sharpness of her expression smoothed out, and she looks younger than she ever lets herself look when she’s awake.
I leave my hand near her face for a moment. Then I pull it back.
Sera’s voice comes back to me. The healing magic will mess with her head. Her survival instincts were numbed.
I want to believe that so desperately, but the part of me that knows this woman knows that it was more than that. She cracked. Under all that pressure and every door closing in her face, she cracked, and she didn’t have the strength to get back up anymore.
I look at her in the dark, Ethan’s face pressed close to her arm. Her chest rising and falling steady and slow. And it hits me.
This isn’t the fated mate bond. This is different.
This feeling stems from all our conversations and bickering and the way she dotes on my son.
It stems from the flashes of rare vulnerability she sometimes allows me to see, her sheer strength as she carries the burdens the world has forced on her shoulders.
I love her.
She’s everything I never knew I wanted and now can’t stop craving.
Somewhere along the way, I fell in love with this beautiful, impossible woman, and now…
Now I have no idea how to let her go.
The howl pulls me out of sleep.
I don’t place it at first. It registers somewhere at the back of my skull as I surface through the dark, and for a moment, I’m just aware of weight and warmth. Ethan tucked against my side. The slow rise and fall of breathing close by. My hand resting on Miranda’s waist.
Then the second howl comes.
One note, long, cut off, and clean.
I’m out of the bed before it fades.
That’s the alpha’s call.
Ethan stirs and resettles. I check him first, pulling the blanket up over his shoulder. Then I look at Miranda. She hasn’t moved. Hair across her cheek, breathing deep and even, still folded into the same position she fell asleep in.
It’s seven in the morning. I grab my phone from the nightstand.
The screen lights up, and I go still. Fourteen missed calls. Eleven from Coach Ramirez. Three from a familiar name. It’s the law firm that handled my divorce from Vanessa. The timestamps start at four in the morning.
I pull the door shut behind me and bound down the steps, pulling on my shirt.
As soon as I enter the kitchen, I see Alpha Ramirez on the porch, shirtless, the remnants of a shift still visible in the tension across his shoulders.
He’s not alone. Next to him is another shifter, Sterling Blaine, my divorce attorney.
He’s dressed in a suit, not a hair out of place, his hands in his pockets.
My stomach twists at the sight of him. This cannot be good.
I unlock the door, and as I slide it open, Leon hits me on the back of the head before I can get a single word out.
“Eleven calls,” he growls. “What were you? Dead?”
I wince, rubbing the spot. “I was asleep.”
“You were asleep.” He says it like I’ve just told him I was on the moon.
“It was a long day, Coach!” I glare at him. “What are you doing here so early in the morning?” My gaze settles on Sterling. “I was hoping to never see you again. What’s happened?”
Sterling gives me a wry smile. “I wasn’t planning to come here in person, but since you weren’t answering your phone, I contacted Alpha Ramirez. We have a situation.”
“What kind of situation?” I ask slowly.
“Have you seen the news this morning?” Coach demands.
“I just woke up,” I grumble. “I only saw your missed calls and came down here.”
“Then you need to look at this.” Sterling holds out his phone.
It’s a news article with my name in the headline. Below it is a photograph.
I recognize it instantly. Not the photograph but when it was taken. The day I ran into Miranda at the park. I’m holding Ethan in my arms, the baseball cap over his head. Miranda is standing next to us. Ethan’s face is visible, as is mine, but Miranda has her back to the camera.
My body tightens like a bowstring.
Somebody photographed my child. My son who is supposed to be invisible to this world for six more years.
“How did this happen?” I demand harshly. “I don’t take him anywhere with foot traffic. I’ve been careful ever since you told me to expose him to the human world, Coach. No crowded spaces. Even the park was easy to be invisible in since there were so many kids.”
My alpha grimaces. “Vanessa.”
I go completely still.
“There are more photographs. She has been having you followed for a while now. There’s no doubt about it. She fed the photos to three separate news outlets last night. Our contact at the news desk confirmed this morning that it came from her.”
I stare at him, trying to process all this.
I had just been drafted for the pack’s hockey team when Vanessa began pursuing me.
We were married for two years before Ethan came along and she decided I wasn’t good enough for her.
She hasn’t contacted me since the divorce, not even to ask after our son, although that part doesn’t surprise me.
She wasn’t exactly the most doting mother even though she was good at presenting herself as such.
After all this time…Why would she do this?
He reaches into his jacket pocket and retrieves an envelope. I snatch it from him and tear it open.
The documents inside are thick, several pages folded back at the header. My eyes find the top line and stop.
Petition for Custody of Minor Child. Ethan Wolfe.