Chapter 20 #2
“You’re not his mother.” The word leaves me on a low growl. “You just gave birth to him. You don’t know the first thing about being a mother, Vanessa.”
An outraged cry leaves her mouth, and she lunges.
Coach’s voice fills the corridor.
“Enough.”
He steps past me into the space between us.
Vanessa has no choice but to stop, and he says calmly, “You will leave this arena now.” His voice holds no heat, and it doesn’t need any.
“Your alpha will hear from me this evening. You have struck a member of my pack inside my territory, and that’s a war crime under any reading of the Accord. ”
“She is not pack. She is human.”
“She is mine to defend.” Coach doesn’t blink. “She belongs to this pack. If you press it, I am within my rights to execute you where you stand. Your alpha won’t lift a finger to stop me. He can’t.”
Vanessa goes still. Her eyes flick to Coach, then to me, then around the half-circle of teammates behind us, every one of them ready and silent.
Her mouth tightens. She turns on her heel and walks down the corridor, the click of her steps shrinking until they disappear around the far corner.
The corridor exhales.
Brody is already at the bench with Miranda, one big hand under her elbow, his voice gone absurd and soft in his throat. Eric is shouting at someone to bring the medical kit. Samuel has crouched in front of Ethan and put himself at the boy’s eye level.
Miranda looks past all of them at me.
Questions are written on her face, plural, crowding one another for room. I know tonight she will ask them, and tonight I will have to answer.
I take half a step toward her, and then Coach’s hand lands on my arm.
“A word, Wolfe.”
I look at her and at Ethan curled into her side.
“Go,” she says quietly, her voice steadier than it has any right to be. “I’m not going anywhere.”
I let Coach steer me down the corridor.
He stops us at the bend, and his hand stays on my arm.
“There’s no hiding anything from Miranda now. No matter how much she’s tried to turn a blind eye, she’s now been injured by our kind.”
“There are humans who know,” I say carefully. “There are mates, Council-sanctioned humans who chose to enter our world. It isn’t unheard of.”
“It is rare,” Coach replies, his voice level. “And every one of them was approved before they were told.”
“I can marry her.” It comes out before I’ve fully thought it through. “Marriage gives her standing under pack law. She has no family, and Ethan does love her.”
Coach exhales through his nose. “Grayson, do you think I don’t know?”
My stomach drops.
“I raised you, boy,” he continues, his eyes never leaving mine. “I know what you look like when you have feelings for a woman.”
“Coach.”
He raises one hand. “I’ve been wondering for weeks.
I told myself I was reading too much into it.
Then I came around that corner and saw your wolf in your eyes over a woman who isn’t supposed to be anything to you.
That’s not a fake fiancée, Grayson. It’s something I should have caught earlier and didn’t because I wanted to be wrong. ”
“It’s not—”
“Even now your wolf is in your eyes. She’s your fated mate.”
I look at the wall behind his shoulder. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I was worried about Eth—”
He slaps me on the back of my head, and I stumble forward.
“Don’t insult me.”
There is something in his face I was not expecting. It isn’t the cold pack-alpha look. It’s something older, the look of the man who taught me how to hunt when I was fourteen, the man who picked Gabriel and me up from school the day our parents died.
I press my lips together and then say quietly, “Coach, I can’t live without her. I won’t. If you tell me to walk away, I won’t be able to do it.”
He looks at me for a long time, and then he sighs.
“Once this custody mess is resolved, we petition the Council.”
I go still. “No. No, I’m not going to risk her life.”
His brow lifts. “What?”
I look at the wall behind his shoulder, anywhere but at him, and my jaw works. “I’m not stupid, Coach. Annie was approved by the Council, and she’s dead. They had been vocal about human mates.”
Coach’s eyes narrow.
I made the mistake once of bringing this up at the grave a few months after the funerals. He told me I was a man drowning in grief who needed something to blame, and so I dropped it. The rest of it I’ve never said out loud to him.
His face changes slowly, like weather moving over the mountain, and I watch the recognition arrive in pieces.
“You think the Council had her killed.”
“I think the Accord exists because they don’t want humans in our world. Gabriel made them give him permission, and they gave it. Then they took it back the only way they could. I am not putting Miranda in front of those men,” I hiss.
Coach doesn’t answer. His hand comes off my arm, and for a moment, he looks at the floor between us before his face closes over again.
“That’s not how the Council works.”
I meet his gaze. “I can live with Miranda without the mark. You just have to give us permission to get married. I won’t mark her.”
“That’s not possible, son.” Coach sighs. “You need the Council’s approval, Grayson. They had nothing to do with Annie’s death. It was an accident.”
“Coach, you can’t expect me to—”
“Once this is resolved, we will talk.” His voice is calm.
“But make sure your wolf is in control when you’re with Miranda.
You need healers to help her when you mark her.
She’s human. She will transform into a hybrid wolf.
She will need healers by her side, Grayson.
And for that, you need the Council’s approval. ”
I look away. “Can I go now?”
He just sighs and walks away.
Movement at the far end of the hallway catches my eye.
It’s Derek, leaning one shoulder against the wall by the family entrance with his hands in his coat pockets. When my eyes find him, he lifts a hand in a half-wave.
I close the distance in eight strides.
“What did I miss?”
“Vanessa happened.” It is all I can manage.
“Everything okay?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know. I have to get back. I’ll talk to you later.”
He senses that I don’t want him here and nods. “Don’t worry. Message me when you want to see me. I’ve got the same number.”
I watch him leave and try not to feel guilty. But there’s too much happening, and I can’t deal with him on top of everything.
I roll my shoulders and walk back toward Miranda.
Brody has the first aid kit open across his knees, and Samuel is holding her wrist steady while Brody runs the suture. Eric has Ethan on his hip, walking him in a slow circle.
Brody looks up at me. “There are three across the forearm. Two are deep. I closed all of them with the field kit, but she’s going to want a real stitch-up tonight or she’s going to scar.”
“I’ve got it from here.”
Ethan is out of Eric’s arms before Eric has time to set him down, and the boy hits my legs at a run. I scoop him up. He buries his face in my neck, and his small body is still shaking.
“I’ve got you, buddy.” My mouth presses to his hair. “I’ve got you now.”
His fist in my collar tightens.
I look at Miranda. She is pale, but her eyes when they lift to mine are clear.
“I want to go home.”
Her choice of word makes me swallow. She didn’t say “your place.” She said “home.” After everything today, she called it home.
I help her to her feet and take her and Ethan to the car. As she gets in, I say firmly, “We’re going to the hospital first.”
“No.” Miranda shakes her head.
I put Ethan in the backseat and buckle him before coming to stand beside her door. “Those cuts are deep. If they get infected, this could get bad fast.”
“I am a nurse, Grayson. I can stitch my own arm if I have to.”
“You’re not stitching your own arm.”
“Then someone else will, but not at a hospital.”
She holds my gaze, and her decision is clear enough that I don’t push it.
“All right.” I straighten up. “Let’s get you out of here.”
Three minutes of silence pass after I pull out of the lot.
I take the highway entrance and start to ease into the lane that loops toward Silverpeak General.
“Grayson, no.”
“I just want them to look at it.”
“I said no.”
She reaches across the console and closes her fingers around my wrist, her cold hand on my warm skin.
“If I walk into that ER with a claw wound, they will ask questions I cannot answer. Some doctor will write ‘animal attack’ on a chart that ends up in a system, and within hours, a bored intern is asking why an animal attack happened inside an arena.”
My knuckles tighten on the wheel.
I turn my head to look at her with my jaw set, and she murmurs, “Take me home, Grayson.”
I take the next exit instead of the one to the hospital. She lets go of my wrist.
In the back seat, Ethan is silent. He hasn’t said a word since I picked him up. Miranda turns in her seat. Her hand reaches back between the seats and finds his.
“Hey, buddy. We’ll get ice cream when we get home, okay? Vanilla, two scoops each.”
He nods at her, though there’s no smile from him.
Children are resilient, but seeing someone they love get hurt leaves a mark. It takes me hours to get him asleep. For the first time, he seems to want me instead of Miranda. It is full dark by the time I come back downstairs after putting him to bed.
The kitchen is empty. Miranda’s tea mug is in the sink with the bag still in it, and she didn’t finish drinking it.