Page 19 of Brandt's Rule

“Yeah, I am, but I’ll be honest. I’m also a little preoccupied looking for a friend of mine.”

“Maverik, right?”

“Right. Bailey said she thought y’all might actually be related to him. Or that at least Brandt might be,” Tempest said.

“Oh, you know Brandt?”

“Not personally. I saw him at the coffee shop the other day. He was going out, I was coming in.”

“What do you want with Maverik?”

“Just to talk to him. I met him once a long, long time ago. I’ve wondered all my life what happened to him. I just wanted to say hello, tell him what a difference his words meant to me through the years. They gave me something to hold onto.”

Brandt looked down at Maverik, then slid down the roof and dropped to where he stood.

Maverik’s eyes were squinted as he watched Remi and the female, and eavesdropped on their conversation courtesy of his heightened hearing.

“You know her?” Brandt asked Maverik as they watched the interactions between Remi and the female.

Remi spoke as they watched him with the female. “I’ll be honest with you, too. Our family is extremely private, for obvious reasons, just as I’m sure yours is. I can’t promise you’ll be speaking to him anytime soon. That would be up to him, if he happened to be around here,” Remi said to Tempest.

“No, I don’t…” Maverik answered Brandt as they listened, then stopped mid-sentence when the female nodded at Remi, then reached up, pulled her helmet off and shook out her long, thick, silver hair. “There’s no way,” Maverik practically whispered with a look of awe on his face, starting toward Remi and Tempest.

“No way what?” Brandt asked, as he watched Maverik heading straight toward Remi and the female. “Shit,” Brandt grumbled and set out behind Maverik.

“I understand,” Tempest said to Remi. “I was just hoping for a chance to say hello, thank him.” Her gaze left Remi’s face and focused on a point behind him.

Remi turned to see what she was looking at and found his Uncle Maverik coming straight for them. “Or maybe you’ll get the chance sooner than we both thought,” Remi said.

“Can I help you?” Maverik asked, his tone heavy with suspicion as he strode right up to Tempest.

Tempest stood her ground, her helmet in her hand, wearing a funny little smile. “It’s you,” she said simply.

Maverik’s eyes went all squinty again. “Who do you think I am? I don’t know you,” he said.

“Maverik. Wolf shifter. Passed through a tiny little town just out of the swamplands in coastal Louisiana a long, long time ago and took the time to help a little girl feel like being different was okay.”

Maverik now held his ground, looking her up and down. “Who are you?”

Tempest tilted her head slightly as she shielded her powers, then sent them out to just barely touch him so hesitantly that he didn’t even feel it. She immediately sensed his suspicion, his doubt. “I’m Tempest.”

Maverik’s eye twitched. He took in every nuance of the woman standing before him. “There’s no way. You’d be older by now. Hell, I’m older so I know you’d be older, too.”

“Not if my lineage ages more slowly than all the others.”

“I don’t know what your game is, or why you decided to focus on me, or why you’re pretending to be that little girl, but you’re wasting your time,” Maverik said.

Tempest smiled sadly and turned toward her bike. “I was out of hope, not much ahead of me, so I came looking for a new place to start. As long as you have a place to start, you’ll be just fine.”

Maverik opened his mouth to speak, but an echo of familiarity rang behind the words she’d spoken.

Tempest opened her saddlebag and reached inside. She lifted something out and turned to face the small group that had assembled. Her bright green eyes lifted to Maverik’s at the same time he recognized the doll in her hands and lifted his gaze to hers. “It is you,” he whispered.

“Told you it was me.”

Maverik stepped forward suddenly and yanked her into his arms, holding her tight and draining all her angst away with that one motion. “It’s you!” he exclaimed. “What are you doing here? How’d you find me?” he asked. “You just don’t know how many times I wondered about you and how you were!” he said, still hugging her to him as he rocked her to and fro like a mom does a fussy toddler.

“Me, too! That’s why I decided to start wherever you were.”

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