Page 29 of The Alpha's Arranged Bride

Agnar was unable to gather any of his warrior poise. He used to be able to stand like a statue for hours. To live his life that way.

“We love you,” Levi repeated again.

The boys stood there, Levi only a foot away, Blake with Prairie Rose, and his mate preternaturally still with moisture shimmering on her cheeks, but she didn’t make a sound and she didn’t wipe the tears away. They were outside,but all the oxygen sucked out of the world, leaving him gasping.

“Dad?” Blake finally broke away from Prairie Rose and tried to come to him, but he reacted like a wounded animal.

His guts hollowed out and burned into his throat and he turned and stalked back into the cabin. It was a mistake being here. He should have left the minute the remainder of his pack was safe. He was a grown man who had never lost control of himself, but he was losing it now.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually vomited, but his stomach heaved, and saliva flooded his mouth. He could feel the surge of it coming up.

He stripped the jacket off in a brutal movement and thrust his way into the bathroom. He slammed the door behind him. He knelt down in front of the toilet, his humiliation complete at last. He heard voices outside, Prairie Rose and someone else. His stomach clenched and rolled again, and he vomited loudly and forcefully. It was painful and made his skin slick with sweat. It kept coming and coming, until he felt like his guts were going to tear out.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand at last and flushed the toilet. He knelt there for just a minute, sweaty forehead pressed against the seat, panting.

Your peace was a failure. You’re responsible for all those deaths. All those bodies. The loss of your homeland. You failed. Failed in every way. It was a good thing you were taken from your parents and that your foster father died long ago. They wouldn’t have been able to stand looking at you. You’re not even a wolf any longer. You’re a disgusting thing, lower than the dirt that maggots crawl through. You’re worse than nothing. You are the monster. You will infect everyone around you.

All that was left was that sinister, hateful hiss inside his skull.

He opened the bathroom door and the fact that he didn’t see the woman standing off in the corner of the kitchen until she moved said just how far his warrior instincts were shot to shit. He stopped instantly. She looked like Prairie Rose, but her scent was all wrong, and then she lifted her head.

Her sister, Briar May. The woman who mated Castor on the same day, at the same time, in the same wild blizzard that felt like a lifetime ago. She was dressed in a bright pink puffer parka and purple leggings, with actual fur trimmed boots, but she was no princess. She looked pissed and scarier than any warrior three times her meager size.

That tiny little warmth in his chest started to burn again. This was his mate’s sister, but she was her best friend too. He was thankful she had someone on her side like this. Someone to go to, but also someone who would sneak into her house, ready to tell him exactly where to fucking go and how things would be when he got there.

“My sister took the boys to our parents’ house. They’ll head off to school from there. I came over to ask her to dinner at our cabin sometime this week, and I could tell something was wrong. She didn’t try to pretend it wasn’t and the boys certainly didn’t, but no one was going to tell me what it was. I watched them leave, then circled back around. Castor is watching the baby, so I only have a few minutes.” She crossed her arms and gave him a scalding look. “He says you’re a good man. Castor’s hurting too, like everyone else, but I don’t think you’ve noticed that the greatest pain is for you. I don’t like you, but for my sister’s sake and my pack’s sake, I’ve promised to support her and you both. The boys too. Especially the boys. I know you want to leave and spare them all, but you won’t. You will get your shit together. Grief is one thing, and what happened to you is unimaginable, but you still have life and a family. You have the opportunity to have everything. I know how much Castor treasures this life and he’s from the same place you were. His father turned him into a killer and then called him a traitor and nearly killed him when he wanted something more than that. If anyone deserves to be put in the ground, it’s Alexander. He hurt my mate, his own son. He turned his back on his own pack, betraying them and killing them, children included. That is the depraved act of a madman.”

He could say nothing. Briar May wasn’t finished anyway. He could see how Castor had fallen in love with this woman. She was delicate, but mighty. Soft, but she had a backbone of steel. She wasn’t afraid to speak her mind and she certainly wouldn’t be afraid to go to war for the people she loved, and that included her older sister.

“I fled from this place when Castor was sent back to Arizona. I was miserable. I went to my brother’s, the one who was banished. The same brother who started this all by killing Castor’s brother because he killed the woman he loved.”

Up until that exact point, no one had told him who it was. If Castor knew, he’d kept it a close secret. All Kieran admitted was that it had happened, and it had been someone from their pack. Alexander had been so convinced his son was a traitor and that he was working against him. When he’d come back to Arizona as part of a peace gesture, Alexander had worked steadily for days, wearing Agnar down until he was half convinced that Alexander was right. He’d agreed to give Castor to him to guard until they could question him. He’d never imagined that Alexander would take him to a cave and torture him for days, trying to extract information that didn’t exist.

“Yes, it was my brother. He was banished from here as a result. He’s not a bad man. He reminds me a lot of you, actually. Alive, but half dead. In tremendous pain. The difference, though? He’s had to start over. He’s found a group of men who I hope can be friend enough and pack enough to help him heal his broken heart and wounded soul. He let me stay with him when I couldn’t bear it here, but he talked sense into me. He brought me back here, to my family. You have a whole pack here. A whole family just waiting to embrace you. You have your real family. Your two boys. You have the people you know from home. You can’t see the beauty in the world or feel the warmth of the sun or the people around you because you’re punishing yourself. You’re choosing that darkness. I know you, in a way, because I know Castor. He was taught exactly how to block it all out. But that’s impossible. It’s been hard for him to train that out of himself, but he’s learning how to feel and learning how to be okay with it. It’s a relief for him to be here and be seen as a person and not a warrior or a killer. No matter what’s happened, no matter where you came from or who you are, you’re a person too, Agnar Phaethon. For my sister’s sake, find your humanity and find it fast.”

“She deserves so much more than this,” he spat, irrational anger breaking through at this woman’s daring to judge him, to tell him she knew him, to think that she saw him. But she did. She fucking so easily and rightly did and he had no business feeling that prickle of hot rage that buzzed through his skull like a swarm of insects.

“That’s why you wanted to leave, I know, but stop thinking about that. Stop thinking about leaving, about martyring yourself, stop listening to the voices of the past, stop relying on your training. It’s unhealthy and it’s never going to get you through this. You were trained to fight real, external enemies. You weren’t trained how to fight with yourself or for yourself against something you can’t see.” She paused, giving that time to settle in with all the pleasantry of getting thrown through a glass window and making friends with the shards embedded in soft skin. “When my sister overheard Castor’s plan for a mating in the Phaethon Pack to ensure peace, she offered herself. She didn’t do it as a sacrifice or because she was bored here. She did it because something inside her told her it was right. Whether we believe in it or not, fate guides us all.”

Briar May’s lips thinned out and her nostrils flared in annoyance “This ghost business needs to stop. It’s not what happened that’s making you sick. It’s not what happened that’s killing you. You’re making yourself ill. You’re killing yourself. Slowly, if you can’t run off and get it done.” Briar May swept her long, pale hair over one shoulder and gave him a blistering look, but it had as much concern in it as it did righteous wrath. “You might not be the same man you were, and everything might have changed, but you’re still a father and you’re still my sister’s mate. That doesn’t make you no one, it makes you a hell of a lot of someone. They’ll never reject you.” She was sure he was listening, and she unleashed the last of her advice for him. “Focus on building that instead of tearing it down, burning it to the ground, and turning your back on it all.”

As unforgiving as her expression was, he knew it would change in an instant if he heeded her advice. She didn’t hate him. She was just defending and protecting her sister. If he wasn’t going to listen to Prairie Rose, then she’d made it her business for him to listen to her.

He knew she was right.

He knew it, and he fucking felt it.

“I told her I’d never be able to love her. I warned her.”

Briar May laughed with surprising warmth, but then she shook her head and stared at him like he was the most obtuse child who just refused to grasp even the simplest concept.

“If I know anything, it’s that my sister isn’t the patron saint of lost causes and that love isn’t something you can just decide or decide against, especially not before you even know someone.”

Chapter 13

Prairie Rose

Agnar was out again in the woods, and even though it was past midnight, and he hadn’t come back and hadn’t been home since she’d arrived back at the cabin after taking the boys to school, she told herself not to worry.

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