Page 27 of Brody
Protect, my inner wolf said through our mental connection.Guard our mate.Keep her safe from all threats.She is precious.Irreplaceable.
The territorial instinct was so strong it made my hands shake.I reached for the bottle, my left hand betraying me with a violent tremor that splashed BF Home-Brew across the counter.Cursing under my breath, I steadied the glass with my right hand and knocked it back in one desperate gulp, the burn doing nothing to still the growing chaos beneath my skin.
“Good thing Quinn assigned you as her security escort,” Jasper said, taking a massive bite of his sandwich.He swallowed and continued with pragmatic efficiency, “Proximity protection.I’ve already started setting up digital surveillance around her lab and the B&B.Motion sensors, video feeds routed to our secure server.No one’s getting to her without us knowing.”He shrugged as if it were the most natural thing in the world.“Figured you’d want the tech upgrade.”
“This shit is messy,” Emmett said.“Her grandmother is willing to sabotage and kidnap her granddaughter to protect her pharmaceutical legacy.”
“Speaking of messy,” Rhett said.“Ingrid came into the station today.Still wearing her tinfoil hat.Wanted to know how she could start a petition against the aliens causing pre-feral sickness.”
My shoulders dropped as Rhett spoke, a tension I hadn’t noticed suddenly uncoiling.The kitchen air seemed lighter somehow, the invisible weight pressing against my chest easing for the first time since I’d walked in.Emmett choked on his shot.
Mack started laughing so hard he dropped his sandwich fixings.
“Aliens?”I managed between my own laughter.
“Apparently, the electromagnetic frequencies from their ships are disrupting our defenses,” Rhett continued with perfect deadpan delivery.“She had charts.And graphs.Very analytical in a bizarre way.”
“More methodical than most pharmaceutical studies,” Jasper added dryly.
“There’s a rumor she’s hooking up with Chester the weasel,” Quinn said with a smirk.
“Talk about a match made in crazy,” Mack added, wiping tears from his eyes.“Two conspiracy theorists who love to complain and hear themselves talk.”
Our laughter bounced off the kitchen walls, echoing the countless nights we’d spent around this same counter before pre-feral symptoms and fated mates had complicated everything.For a moment, I could almost forget the tremor in my hand, the clock ticking down on my humanity.Like we were still the same pack of brothers who’d survived hell together instead of men watching one of their own slowly disintegrate.
But reality crashed back as Quinn’s expression sobered.
“Did you tell Rozi why you rejected her?”Quinn asked.
“Yes, but explaining doesn’t erase abandonment,” I replied, reaching for the bottle to pour another shot.“She’s hurt from the rejection, and frankly, I don’t blame her.”
“You were eighteen,” Emmett said, his voice softening with the compassion that made him the heart of our pack.“And terrified of the mate bond after what happened with your father.”He passed me a plate with a perfectly assembled sandwich that I hadn’t asked for but somehow needed.“Trauma doesn’t make the best relationship counselor.”
My chest constricted, each word piercing me like embedded shrapnel.The kitchen light suddenly seemed too bright, the air too thin.All of my carefully constructed defenses, and here I was bleeding out all over Quinn’s kitchen floor, the taste of copper flooding my mouth as I bit the inside of my cheek.
“You know what haunts me?”I stared into my glass, the amber liquid catching the light.“That day.Thirteen years old, standing on Una’s porch, watching my father’s taillights disappear down that mountain road.”My knuckles whitened around the glass.“He couldn’t even look me in the eye when he left.Just said, ‘You’ll understand someday,’ like that explained everything.”
Quinn’s expression darkened.“A mate bond gone wrong can destroy a man.”
“It doesn’t give him the right to destroy his kid in the process,” Emmett muttered.
Emmett’s words lanced through me, opening wounds I thought had scarred over decades ago.My throat closed, that familiar childhood helplessness washing over me, standing on Una’s porch, backpack clutched in white-knuckled fingers, watching the only parent I had left drive off without a backward glance.
“That’s why I walked away from her in Kenya,” I said, the confession scraping my throat raw.“I saw her standing there, and all I could think was, what if I become him?What if I claim her, and then something happens and I just…” I swallowed hard, the Home-Brew suddenly bitter on my tongue.“I couldn’t risk doing to her what he did to me.”
The kitchen went dead silent.Jasper’s lips, usually curved in that cocky grin that made him irresistible to the Ridge’s female population, had flattened into a thin line.His eyes, normally dancing with mischief, had gone dark and still as he stared into his glass.
“So I convinced myself I was protecting her.”My laugh held no humor, just decades of regret crystallized into sound.“That I was saving her from a man who carried my father’s weakness in his blood.That she deserved better than someone who might destroy her—or be destroyed by loving her.”
But we were wrong,my wolf said through our mental link.We are not our father.Our fear has cost us time with our mate.
“The worst part?”I said, meeting Quinn’s knowing gaze, seeing understanding there that cut like a knife.“I was a coward.I ran from the mate bond, convinced I was making a noble sacrifice, when really I was just terrified of becoming my father, of either hurting her or being destroyed by losing her.”
Suddenly, I was back in Kenya, the memory so vivid I could taste the dust in the air.
The hyena’s neck snapped with a sickening crack as I slammed into it mid-leap.My wolf’s satisfaction at the kill was immediate but short-lived as I turned toward the woman I’d just saved.
She stood with her back against an acacia tree, research notes scattered around her feet, her scent—sweet, spicy, uniquely female—hitting me like a physical blow.My wolf stilled completely for the first time in my life, recognition crashing into us both with the force of a lightning strike.
