Page 109 of Scapegoat

And when she smiled at me, nothing else mattered. I wanted to store that bright expression away forever, despite the blood that stained her teeth. Shit, maybe because of it. Kai was always going to be the only woman I would love and that feeling would always endure, even more when she wore the blood of her enemies.

We didn’t get to leave right away. We were stuck at Mum’s house for a while.

That pissed me right off, until Mum snapped and asked when we were going, because she was getting sick of how I kept pacing the floor. But that’s because doctors were sent around to the house to check Kai over. And while blood tests were taken, and the drug her mother had given her was identified, there wasn’t much to do but wait. She was in heat. But not the kind that she was due for.

We held her tight, stroked her through the pangs that wracked her body, but we couldn’t do anything more. She rearranged the bedding twenty times a night, never quite satisfied, but when Jay suggested getting her off to help, she burst into tears. Holding her seemed to make a difference. That deep pressure got her settled for a while, long enough to snatch a little rest, before the sweat would prickle across her skin and she’d start thrashing.

I fucking hated her bitch of a mother, even in death.

Abigail’s body was disposed of and news of what happened circulated. Half the pack turned up at Mum’s doorstop with casseroles and quiches, but they were there mostly to catch sight of us. To confirm the stories they’d been told, to stare at the victims of such a tragedy. I made clear to Mum the moment anyone came near us we’d be gone, and so she palmed them off with some vague news about our current state.

She had her own news to share with the pack. The man she’d rejected as her mate had been murdered, and it hit her hard when she realised that he’d been Abigail’s victim as much as anyone had. But she had Dad to cling to, so we left them to it.

Then, one night Kai slept all the way through. Nightmares still made her twitch in our arms, but that sweet, heady scent that had kinda soured? It faded, leaving just the scent of Kai. I buried my nose in her neck and breathed that fainter rose scent in, before going back to sleep myself.

“You can’t go,” Mum said, some weeks later, as we sat around the dining room table. “What if you have babies, Kaia?”

“Kai,” we all corrected.

“What if you have babies, Kai?” she asked my mate, very deliberately. “You’ll be all on your own, god knows where, and—”

“And we’ll find a way.” Kai had been building her confidence in the time she’d spent away from us, but now it was rock solid. Especially when Mum might try and put pressure on her, but she wasn’t about to lock our girl in a cage and brutalise her, so my mate just met my mother’s stare. “It’s what every parent does, isn’t it?”

“Of course it is,” Dad said. “Love, can you pass me the mashed potatoes.”

I felt bad when Mum burst into tears on the day we left. We all gave her a quick hug, not wanting to delay things anymore with long goodbyes.

“You’ll come to visit us, right?” she said hopefully, but we made no promises.

“So, are we out of here?” Jamie asked, meeting us down the end of my parents’ driveway. Our car was about to be loaded up on the back of her massive truck.

“Are we?” I asked my mate.

“One last place,” she said with a grimace, making clear where we were about to go.

“Kai—” Her father breathed out her name, then stopped himself from adding the last syllable. “I didn’t expect to see you.”

“No,” she said, following him inside. “Hey, Anna.”

“Hey.”

By the look of the girl, you’d have thought she was the one terrorised by her mother, not Kai. Her eyes were red rimmed and her face blotchy and Anna made no attempt to mask her sad expression.

“I just came by to let you know we’re going,” Kai said.

“Forever?” There was both sadness and hope in her sister’s voice and when she got to her feet, Kai’s dad wrapped an arm around his step-daughter’s shoulders.

“Forever,” Kai replied. “So, you moved back in with Dad?”

Anna flushed as she looked at him, then back to Kai.

“I was mad after… you know, and I stormed out, but… Greg wasn’t my dad.” She looked past Kai to us, though not with the same acquisitive eye as before. “He was yours. Dad… Daryl is the only Dad I’ve known.”

“You can still call me Dad if you want to,” he told her. “In my heart, you’re still my daughter.”

But what about his actual blood daughter? I wanted to shout, my whole body tensing. What about Kai? The man seemed to sense that, flushing when he looked at her.

“And I wasn’t much of a father to you. I tried.” He let out a long sigh. “Your mother rejected the bond she and I had, before Anna was born, so she could…” His voice trailed away. “But I stuck around to try and keep you safe.” His brows creased and I watched his eyes get suspiciously shiny, right before he caught my frown. “I didn’t do a very good job of it, but I tried.”

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