Page 7 of Riley Goes Home

They kept coming thick and fast, this shared past. Sometimes it felt like we were so focussed on the present we couldn’t see this anymore. Half the reason why it hurt so much leaving here was how good it was. Compared to the city, it was a quiet life, but it was also a peaceful one. Bordertown was a reasonable size being a regional hub, but that didn’t stop it from operating at a fairly sleepy pace.

It was a nice place to raise kids.

I blinked, almost able to hear Eloise’s scream at that thought, so I stuffed it right down.

“We’ve got to report to the alpha residence first.” Fen’s eyes held mine in the rear vision mirror when he pulled the car over. “The Williams pack took over when we stepped down.”

Academically that made sense, but in my mind, I saw the boys that had confronted the Vanguards that night and found it hard to imagine them ruling anything. Every visiting pack needed to touch base with the one that ruled a town as both a courtesy and to avoid conflict, but this was different. It wasn’t just us driving up to the big house that the boys had grown up in, that my dad had served in.

That had become my second home.

But when I stared up the big stone steps as we pulled up out front the alpha residence, it wasn’t my long dead-dad or the boys’ the stepped out. The Williams pack looked the same but different, as no doubt we did, but Cheryl…?

I saw teenage Riley again, this time sitting on the back seat of the bus, her leg pressed against Fen’s as Cheryl sauntered closer. She looked my ‘friend’ up and down like he was something delicious and she was dying for a taste. The omega was a little older, her expression a little harder, but that same look of glee was right there on her face. She stepped forward,her waist blissfully slender while mine was swollen, and put her hand on her hip.

“Fen Vanguard…” Her words were like a caress along my mate’s cheek, and that had my wolf throwing itself against the barrier between us. Fen had shoved her off his lap back then, but she wouldn’t get a chance to get that close this time. “You came back.”

For just a moment, I saw hope rise in her eyes, only for it to die the moment I stepped forward.

Cheryl had barely noticed me back then, but she saw me right now. The smile faded as she took me in. Not just my scent, my wolf, because by the flare of her nostrils, she picked up both. No, it was the swell of my belly that had her turning pale.

“We did.” Fen’s arm went around my waist. “Keith, alphas.” He nodded to the ruling pack to be polite. “Mum would’ve let you know we were coming to town for a visit.”

“You said you weren’t coming back here ever, Vanguard,” one of the Williams alphas growled.

“Not coming back until we’d found our fated mate,” Blake corrected, and I almost smiled as each of the Williams alphas blanched at his size. He crossed his arms, displaying the thick ropes of muscle there. “And we did. You remember Riley. We always knew she was the one for us and she accepted our bond.”

“You…?” Cheryl said that one word with all the venom most people saved for child abusers or murderers. “You’re Omega Vanguard?”

Chapter 5

Fen

I didn’t want to do this. Driving into Bordertown was nice at first, the memories Riley summoned all good ones, but just as quickly the happy feelings fled, because there was a worm at the centre of the glossy apple of our childhood, and coming to the alpha residence laid it bare. Just looking at the building set my fangs on edge. It had been my childhood home, and yet I couldn’t remember anything good happening there right now.

That was the wide veranda where I’d sat down with my dads and been given the talk. Not about how to be a good alpha and care for my mate, but to make clear that Riley could be nothing more than a friend. These pricks were there when my parents swept in, my dads talking us through our first shift, our mother whisking Riley away before I even got a chance to say goodbye. My grip on my mate’s waist tightened until she was forced to stare up at me.

Wondering why I was hurting her.

I forced my fingers to relax and then watched Cheryl stalk closer, her eyes shining as silver as the moon. My brothers saw her hands become claws, the flash of her fangs and moved asone, putting themselves in between our mate and the ruling omega. Omegas were notoriously territorial, prepared to scrap it out with any other that dared to get close to their mates, but Riley stood perfectly still. Only I felt the fine quiver of her muscles, every one tensed and ready.

But she’d never need lift a finger to defend herself from Cheryl.

“Omega Taylor,” I corrected. Haze stopped where he was, crossing his arms and shooting the lot of them a smile so insolent the Williams started rumbling in response. “Because we’re the Taylor pack now.”

Cheryl’s eyes met mine and I saw the same thing I did all the times before: hope and its slow death. She was the Williams pack’s true mate, but she refused to accept it, not while she believed she still had a chance. Vanguard trumped Williams in her mind, something she made clear every day after Riley left, but my parents had misunderstood something. They could’ve put Riley on a rocket ship to the moon to study the landscape there and I’d have waited for it to rise each night, just for a glimpse of her. So instead of paying these idiots any mind, I moved. Pressing my nose, my lips to the side of her neck and breathing her in, Riley’s scent was sweet and sour, the tang something I could almost taste. I left one sweet kiss there, trying to convey everything I thought, everything I felt, before turning to sort out this issue.

“It’s customary for a visiting pack to present themselves at the alpha house,” I said, putting myself in front of Riley only to feel her hand land on my shoulder. “We’ve done that. My mother would’ve informed you that we were coming, so this can’t have been a surprise. Me and mine are prepared to observe the old ways, to acknowledge the fact that you rule over this town.” I paused then, letting my words sink in and sure enough,the tension started to leach out of the Williams alphas. “We aren’t here to challenge anyone?—”

“Good,” one of the Williams alphas muttered. “Hate to put you on your arse in front of your mate.”

Haze snorted, looked up and then blinked, as if realising what he’d just done, but that cool blue gaze of his quickly made clear that was no accident. His wide grin had the Williams shifting forward, but Keith held up a hand.

“You have our permission to remain in our territory while visiting your parents, but anything more than that will be read as a challenge to our rule here.”

If only he knew how little I gave a fuck about that.

“You’re… pregnant?”

---