Page 2 of Forsaken Fate

“You don’t have to explain anything to me. You know that. Grayson can still be a dickhead. I get it. But ... he is the one who really lost his mother today. You’re gonna have to talk to him.”

“Yep,” I said through clenched teeth. “He’s not even here yet. He’s the only real family she’s got left, I think. Everybody’s in there looking at me like I’m supposed to be in charge of this thing.”

“Yeah,” Doyle said after lighting up again. “A lot of ’em in there were more friends with your dad, maybe.”

I shook my head. I lost my father over ten years ago, though he’d only been dead for seven of them. In the years before that, madness had eaten away at his memory to the point he hadn’t known who I was. It didn’t have to get that bad. Diana insisted I upset him when I came. He knew he should know me but when he couldn’t remember, he got too agitated, she said. I had my suspicions. Had she cast a spell on him? Weakened him? I could never prove it. Back in those days, it was too dangerous for me to enter the city limits. Long ago, I’d been labeled a threat by the fae. A subversive. My very presence in Albany put my father at risk. Too many shifters in one place was considered an act of aggression. As governor of New York, Diana Dorran held all the cards.

Doyle stiffened when the next mourners came out of the building in front of us. One woman wore a flowing blue cape and pushed an ancient man in a wheelchair. The man was frail and gaunt with only a wisp of white hair at the crown of his head. But he had keen blue eyes that took in everything through his famously crooked glasses.

“Wow,” Doyle said when they’d crossed out of earshot. “Is that ...”

I handed the empty flask back to him as I nodded. “Former President Forsyth himself,” I answered. The man had been installed as a puppet president by the fae in the middle of the Supernatural War. He never held any real power. Just the title. I fought to keep my rage in check. How many shifter “subversives” had been rounded up and sent to camps under Forsyth’s reign?

My wolf rumbled beneath my skin. It would be so easy to kill him. Avenge the hundreds of innocent lives that had been lost for merely existing. As Forsyth left the building, a black stretch limo rounded the corner.

“Come on, Theo,” he said. “That’s gotta be Grayson. Leave it to him to be late to his own mother’s funeral.”

* * *

I walked back into the lobby of the funeral parlor just before Grayson got out of his car. “For fuck’s sake,” I murmured to Doyle behind me. Grayson actually made his driver come around and open the door for him.

“Cut him some slack,” Doyle whispered. “You can handle it for one day.”

I turned and shot Doyle a look, but he wouldn’t back down. Fine, I thought. One day. As soon as I talked to Doyle’s father, the last living member of my father’s old pack– I’d charter the next plane the hell out of New York.

Grayson.

He stepped out of his limo while smoothing down the front of his black three-piece suit. He looked slicker than the last time I saw him. More confident. I suppose women found Grayson attractive now. He was tall, lanky, with a thick mass of blond curls that he was currently brushing back with a manicured hand. But to me he’d always be a gawky, pimply teenager who followed behind me like an overgrown Labrador Retriever rather than the half-wolf shifter he was. We were nothing alike. Not physically, not in personality. Yet, I had to stand here again and let people call him my brother.

He saw me. His eyes narrowed for just an instant then widened as he rushed over opening his arms. I slapped him on the back and shook his hand. Cut him some slack. Just for one day.

“Sorry, Grayson. I really am,” I told him. I told him the same thing on the phone three days ago when he called to break the news of Diana’s untimely demise. She died in her sleep. A stroke or a heart attack. Never knew what hit her. Grayson had been calmer than I would have guessed. There’d been a hitch in his voice, but he had been way more unglued seven years ago when my father died.

“I’m really glad you came out,” he said. “I don’t even know where to start with half of this. If it weren’t for Mom’s staff, I would have been lost. I should introduce you to some of them.”

“Later, Grayson,” I said. “You need to get in there. People have been lined up looking for someone to console. Old President Forsyth was here but already had to leave.”

“Right,” he said. There was still something off about him and I chalked it up to the fact that he was about to walk into a room where he’d find his mother in a casket. Doyle was right. Cut him some slack. Grayson was thirty-six years old. I was just a kid when I had to look at my mother’s lifeless body. But she had died from violence. Diana had been the lucky one.

“Come on,” I said, slapping him on the back again, because I’m not a complete asshole. “We’ll go in together.”

We started to walk, and Grayson stopped up short when we heard a woman’s voice calling his name in a low but urgent tone. “Wait. Oh, hell, I’m sorry.”

I turned to place the source of the voice.

She was small. Couldn’t be more than five foot three. She was beautiful but stood with a fierceness – her back rod straight, her chin jutting up. Her thick black hair hung in a straight sheath around her shoulders. She had pale green eyes rimmed with dark lashes and soft, full lips painted in rose. She took a step forward and extended her hand toward mine.

“You must be Theo,” she said. Her voice was feminine, but deep, with a smoky quality I normally heard from women much older. I couldn’t place her age and I was usually very good at this. Twenty-five? Thirty-five?

“I must be,” I said, taking her offered hand. She shook mine with a firm grip and I couldn’t stop staring. She was working something out behind those almond-shaped eyes of hers. She darted them between Grayson and me and back again. She settled on Grayson and her luscious lips curved into a smile.

Fuck. My wolf stirred. It felt as if an electric current arced between us. My vision went pure white. I knew it meant she could see my silver wolf eyes flash.

“I’m Brynna,” she said, letting go of my hand; she gripped a small black clutch purse in front of her, her body hidden behind a long black trench coat. “Brynna Carrington.” Brynna, I thought, testing the sound of her name in my head. Brynna.

“Nice to meet you, Brynna,” I said. “Are you a friend of Grayson’s?” I jabbed an elbow into Grayson’s side, hoping to jar him out of whatever ill-mannered stupor had overcome him.

“She is,” he chimed in. “She’s mine.” He growled the last bit. His own wolf eyes flashed gold.

---