Ellis: Emerson Wolves ― Paranormal Wolf Shifter Romance (16 page)

He stood up then and picked her up. Dawn felt his love for her and curled into his neck to smell his scent. Ellis held her this way for a while, and she finally told him what she was going to do. It would be easier this way.

“I want to open the box by myself. I don’t know what’s in it. Really, I can’t think what, after all these years, she’d have to say to me other than maybe the name of the man who sired me.” Ellis kissed her forehead. “I know that you need to go back to see your family tomorrow. If you don’t mind, I’d like to stay here.”

“No. First of all, my family will kill me if I don’t bring you home with me. And secondly, whatever is in the box, it affects us both. And I don’t want you finding things that might hurt you and I’m too far away to hold you. We can open it tonight if you want, or never, but I don’t want you to do it alone. I can’t help you if you send me away.”

She started to cry. Relief was profound. Dawn hadn’t even known that was what she wanted him to say until he did. Wrapping her arms around him, she held him while she cried and thanked him for being there for her when she was too stupid to know she needed him.

They were getting in the big truck when his phone went off an hour later. It was Mike. There was a problem at the pack house and it was bad. Ellis looked at her after he got off the phone.

“Don’t do anything stupid. Stay by my side and, please, let’s try not to kill anyone.” She grinned at him. “Dawn, I’m serious.”

“Oh, so am I. No one is fucking with my husband without a fight. And I promise you, when this is done, you and I are going to be the last men standing.” He just shook his head and climbed into his truck. “I’m thinking this will be just what I need.”

There were perhaps a dozen men standing around the pack house. Most of them were younger men, and all of them should have been at work. When they got out of the truck, Ellis warned her again to behave. But she knew just what to do. Addie had given her a little advice, too.

Take on the biggest. You’re stronger, meaner, and have the most to lose. If you kick his ass first, the rest of them will see you for what you really are. A woman in charge.

Ellis seemed to know that she was going to be in the middle of things and walked beside her and not in front. They were a team, but today, she had to put up a show of force. The man in charge was a punk-assed kid, and she walked right up to him and punched him in the face.

“You touch her and I will kill you.” Ellis was right beside her when he spoke. The man looked like he was going to attack but stopped to look at Ellis. “Now, you’ll listen, or in twenty-four hours I will have a pack here that will kill each and every one of you without a moment’s hesitation.”

“You’d kill this pack to let the little woman come in and take over.” Ellis growled at the man, and he growled back as he continued. Doors slammed behind her, and she was suddenly afraid. If there were more of them, this could be the end of her and Ellis. “What the hell is this?”

“I told you, my help.” Ellis put his hands on her shoulders as he spoke to her through their link.
Hunter and the others are here. I just heard from them when I told them what was going on. Apparently not only did Addie call you, but she called in some reinforcements as well.

Good.
Dawn felt better about what she needed to do. “What’s your name, you little piece of shit? I want to know because I want to notify your next of kin when I kill you for being stupid.”

Addie whispered in her mind what his name was just as he spoke. “Rocky, like my muscles. And you are nothing to me. I’m challenging your mate for this pack. I already run it anyways, and you ain’t big enough to stop me.”

“Well, Donnie Jackson, you think you can take me on instead? My mate, your alpha, will let you fight me if you think that you can win.” He snorted, and Ellis didn’t move. “That’s right, stand there and act like you have it all together. Have control. Do you? Let’s give it a try, shall we?”

She turned to the man standing beside him, an equally stupid looking kid that seemed to have more pimples on his face than he did hair on his head. Dawn had never used compulsion before, never really had a need, but she pointed her finger at the boy and told him to shift.

It was painful. Anyone standing next to him could hear just how much it had hurt him to be commanded to shift. When she turned to the kid on Donnie’s other side and told him to do the same, he went down on all fours screaming, his body shifting from human to a smallish wolf in seconds. When Dawn looked at him, Donnie looked at Ellis.

“She running the pack or are you?” Ellis laughed and told him they were both going to be in charge. When Donnie looked at her again, she could see the smirk on his face and wanted to smack it right off him.

But Ellis stepped in front of her. “This is mine. Shift.”

The boy did so. The pain was harsher than the other two because Ellis was that much stronger. When he ordered him to shift again, then twice more, the kid just lay there as a man and didn’t move. He was in pain and a great deal of it. And there was no healing from this unless his alpha allowed it. Ellis knelt down to his level and looked at him.

“I’m not going to kill you. Yet.” Donnie whimpered. “You have two choices. You can behave and get your act together, or I will kill you. Do you understand me?”

“Yes.”

“What did you say? I couldn’t hear you.”

“Yes, sir. I understand. I don’t want to die. You win.”

Ellis stood up, and just as he turned to Dawn, the kid leapt. Dawn let her cat take her this time, shifting almost in mid-jump toward the younger man. He was dead even before he touched either of them. Dawn stood over his body, his throat still bleeding on the cold earth, and snarled at the others. Three of them dropped to their knees. One of the wolves that she’d made shift whimpered and fell to the ground, his belly exposed to show he was giving in rather than die.

Ellis just stood there. His brothers, all of them, had shifted at some point, and their tattered clothing was all over the ground. Ellis was a lone man standing among the Emerson wolves.

“Are you hurt?” She shook her head. “I have things in the truck for you to change into. Can you…can you do that for me?”

He handed her the bag, but he didn’t touch her. She was afraid she’d done something wrong. And when she returned, dressed and human, he was addressing the pack. A great many of them had joined the group while she was gone.

“Yes, my wife is a shifter. And as you can see, well able to take care of herself and me.” He looked at her as if he were looking for an injury or something. Then he looked back at the crowd. “But you will know that to harm her or to cause her to bring harm to you will result in death. I will not take it lightly if she gets pissed again.”

Ellis took her hand then, curled his fingers through them, and brought them to his mouth. The look he gave her, the love in his eyes, made her realize that he’d not been mad at her, but terrified for her. And she’d been the same for him.

After the others dispersed, the pack,
their
pack, moved away. She wasn’t naive enough to think it was over, but this was a good start. Ellis held her in his arms until Hunter came up and patted him on the back.

“Scared the fucking shit out of me if you want to know the truth.” She told him she’d never even given anything but saving Ellis any consideration. “And that’s the way it should be. You did good work here today, both of you. Ellis, letting her do this…. Man, that was more powerful than anything I’ve ever seen. Dad would have busted a gut and then crowed about it like it had been his idea. I’m extremely proud of you both.”

Dawn decided right then and there that Ellis was never going to another meeting without her. Never would she want to hear about something like what just happened from someone else.

“Come on, love. Let’s go home.” And they did.

Chapter 16

Ellis watched her take each item out of the box. There were letters, all of them addressed to Dawn. Also a few pictures of her, but none of them any newer than Dawn at about six or so. And there was a smaller box; this one she’d yet to open. When the jewelry came out, she handed it to him, and he could see that it was cheap, handmade, more than likely something that had been made in a craft class. Each one of them had her name on them and a year. Ellis would bet they were birthday gifts. Then there was the thick envelope, another item that she laid aside.

“She didn’t have much.” Ellis just nodded. There was next to nothing in the box that showed the life of the woman that had saved it. “The man at the prison took pictures of her cell when she died. Said that it might come in handy sometime. It’s sad, really. Depressing.”

“Are you going to read the letters?” She told him she would, but not today. “I think that’s a good idea. You want to take this easy? Find out what you can first?”

She picked up the file and opened it. “It’s a will. I guess this was how they’d known to give me these things. I wonder why they’d even think she needed one.”

He took it and handed it to Luke. He’d been the only one who had stayed after the incident this morning. Luke was reading it as she moved to the small box. It was nothing more than a shoe box, he thought, that her mom had more than likely decorated, again in some class she’d taken. It was done well. There were cut outs of flowers, some crocheted ones as well. Dawn’s name was across the top of it and that, too, was done in a craft style.

“Dawn, your father’s name is Theodore Whitfield. And you were right, he is deceased. His death seems to have occurred about two months before you were born. And they were married. Your mom’s name is Stacy Dawn Combs Whitfield.” Luke kept reading to himself after that, but laughed and then looked at her. “You are your father’s heir. A very wealthy heir.”

“What do you mean?” Luke laughed again and turned the computer he was working with toward them. Ellis read the name again and how the man’s family had been searching for Dawn for years. “He left everything to you and your mom, then her to you. I guess since there was no real paperwork as to where you were all this time, they had others looking. As to why they didn’t just ask your mom, that’s something we’ll have to ask them when we contact them, I guess. She would have been able to tell them. All you need to do is contact the lawyer who filed this with the state and they’ll take care of the rest. Congratulations.”

Ellis showed his brother out an hour later. Luke was going to contact the parties involved and get back to them. He told Dawn that he’d do it without giving them her address, which she had requested him to do. When he came back, Dawn was holding the letters in her hand. There was one in her hand that she’d been reading.

“It’s the last one she wrote. About a month before she died.” He sat down as she continued. “She’d given up on trying to get Basil to bring me in. He had told her that I was dead and that she was undeserving of me anyway, so it was just as well. Let me read you what she said.

“‘I shall never forget you. Never for all my life. Teddy and I were so much in love. And having you, it made him so happy. I wish now I had done what he asked me to do all those years ago and taken you to his family. But it’s too late now.

“‘Basil tells me that you’re dead. I, of course, don’t believe him. It would be like him in his cruelty to tell me such a lie. But a mother knows, and I know that you are suffering a great deal at his hands. Believe me when I tell you, I am so very sorry.

“‘Basil is not my brother as everyone thinks, but my captor. I don’t know my mother’s name, nor do I think it’s important after so long. I think her dead too. Not that Basil killed her, but it would not surprise me should you find out that he had. I, like other girls, was taken from my family at a young age and given to him as a playmate. But I never liked him and he hated me for that too.

“‘Finding Teddy when I did was the greatest joy of my life. Finding out that we were to have you made our love all the stronger, and so much more solid feeling to me after all the turmoil I had as a child. Running from them, Basil and his mother, was not easy, but I did it and that gave me you.

“‘Teddy was from an affluent family, he said. I think he said they were from upstate. I don’t know. I was to meet them at one point but he disappeared—died, I know now—just before I was to go with him to tell them we were having you. His death haunts me as much as what I did to you.’”

“She loved you very much.” Ellis watched her closely as she nodded. “Luke will talk to them. They might not know anything about you other than that you’re their granddaughter. Not finding you has not given them a lot to go on. I don’t think it will happen, but you should be prepared if they don’t want to get to know you.”

“I don’t care if they do or not.” He was glad to hear her say that. “If they do, I’ll be richer for it in terms of a family I didn’t know I had. But if they don’t, it will be their loss. I’m just as happy to stay here with you.”

She finished the letter from her mom. Stacy Whitfield had lived a hard and difficult life, made harder because of a man who had wanted someone to play with as a child. He was going to talk to Luke about that, too, see if they could find Dawn’s mother’s family and give them some peace as well.

“Do you suppose the house will be done soon?” He told her what Dan had told him this morning. “So in two weeks we can move into most of the house. I’m glad. And your brother Lee said he’d help me with setting up the building for production. I had no idea there was so much specialized equipment that I’d need.”

“Me neither. But he’s a good one to have come and help.” Lee had been so surprised when she’d asked him that he’d come to Ellis later and asked if he’d made her do it. He told Lee that he hadn’t even known she was thinking of asking him to help. “I’m guessing that he’s coming up next week when he returns from the trip over in the plant in Europe.”

Lee was setting up a large restaurant in one of the buildings that Sloan and Hunter owned. The building employed nearly six thousand people that made cheap beads for large functions. They had acquired it when the previous owners failed to make it work. Sloan was already showing a profit and the restaurant was going to make for happier workers, something the other owner had not seen fit to do.

Ellis looked over at her then. She’d grown so quiet that he thought she was crying. She’d been doing that a lot lately. But she’d fallen asleep, curled into the chair like it was the most comfortable thing in the world. Picking her up, he took her upstairs to their room and laid her down. She never stirred as he covered her up.

Ellis loved his wife. And was gladder every day that she’d come into his life.