Primal Bonds (19 page)

“I wasn’t planning to. I’ll be my intimidating best, don’t you be worrying.”

Liam’s look turned serious. “And if any of those bastards know who put Ely in the hospital, beat it out of them. The shooter’s going to pay for that.”

“Consider it done,” Sean said, and he departed.

G
lory watched Sean and Andrea ride off in her car she’d agreed they could borrow at the same time Dylan’s pickup pulled to a stop in front of her house. She hadn’t seen him since yesterday afternoon at Liam’s, which had only made this decision easier.

Still, her stomach churned acid as Dylan left the truck and mounted the porch stairs, his stride measured, his head down, thinking about something. Glory was willing to bet that the something wasn’t her.

Glory’s first floor was one large square, the kitchen and dinette open to the living room. She came around the counter as Dylan closed the door, slid off his jacket, and laid it on the sofa. His eyes flickered when he saw her, as though he had to force himself back from wherever he’d been to the here and now. Or
her
and now.

He didn’t reach for her; Dylan rarely did so right away. Glory sensed that he was troubled about something and didn’t necessarily want to talk, but she made herself look him straight in the eye. If Andrea could do it, so could she.

“Dylan,” she said calmly. “Get out.”

Dylan blinked in surprise for one second, then he pinned her with eyes of hot blue, the dominant focusing on the immediate problem.

Glory swallowed but stood her ground. “Did you hear me? I said, get out of my house.”

“Why?” The word was quiet, unworried.

Her temper splintered. “Why the hell do you think? You always assume I’ll be here, waiting for you, whenever you’re finished with whatever Shiftertown business you have. Glory will be here, available to soothe your troubles. Did it ever occur to you that I get tired of waiting for you to decide to come around?”

“No, it didn’t.”

The honest answer hit her like a stinging slap. “That’s why I want you out,” Glory said, throat tight. “You remember me when it’s convenient. Other than that, I don’t matter to you. I don’t need you, Dylan. There are plenty of other fish in the sea. Or Felines, Lupines, Ursines, and humans.”

Dylan kept staring at her. The alpha stare, the dominant in him telling her to look away, back down, admit she had no right to tell him what to do.

“This is my house, Dylan,” she made herself say. “Please leave it.”

He continued looking at her with his hard assessment. “You really want that?”

“No.” Glory’s throat worked, almost choking her words. “What I want is for you to tell me that you love me, that you want us to be mated, that you want to stay forever. That’s what I want. But I’ve finally made myself realize it’s not what I’m going to get. So I’d rather you go, instead of having my heart torn out every time I look at you.”

“Glory.”

Damn him, he couldn’t stop being the alpha. He wouldn’t look upset or uneasy, couldn’t show any sign of conceding.

“What?” she snapped.

“Things are difficult for me at the moment. My whole world has changed, and I don’t know where I fit into it anymore.”

His words tugged at Glory’s heart, but he wasn’t getting off that easy. “What has that to do with choosing a mate?”

“I chose a mate once upon a time. She died.”

“I know that. I’m sorry. Really, I am. I lost my mate too, you know I did.”

That had been a hundred years ago. Glory’s pack and her mate’s had lived rough in the heart of the Rockies, but they’d been happy. Glory was robust even for a Shifter female, but fecundity had been low in both packs, and she’d never conceived. Within a year of her mate blessing, her mate’s pack had been attacked by ferals, and they’d been wiped out, down to the last wolf. Her mate had hidden her beforehand so that she’d be safe, a decision Glory had fought like fury, but she realized now that if she hadn’t obeyed him, she’d be dead too. The ferals would have taken her, used her, and let her die.

Her parents’ pack had found her days later, lying in shock among the dead. The Guardian had sent the souls of the entire pack to the afterlife, and Glory had been taken back to her family. She’d never wanted to mate again.

That is, until her pack had been relocated to this Shiftertown twenty years ago, and she’d moved in next door to Dylan. Life went on, she’d learned, even after horror.

“I know,” Dylan said. Glory had told him the entire story, which he would have heard anyway from Wade, her pack leader, even if she hadn’t. No one kept secrets from Dylan.

Glory drew a breath. “I’m not trying to tell you to get over Niamh. I’m saying I want more than an on-again, off-again affair with you. There is happiness in the world, Dylan, in spite of everything, and I want it. If you can’t give it to me, then I don’t want you here.” She wet her lips. “I don’t want you tearing me apart.”

Dylan moved to Glory slowly, as he might toward a hurt cub. His hands on her shoulders nearly undid her. “You are so strong.” He caressed her skin below her Collar. “So strong that I never knew you were hurting.”

“I guess I hide it well.”

“You do, that.” Dylan leaned closer and nuzzled her. “I’m sorry, my girl,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry I can’t be what you want.”

The tears slid out before Glory could blink them back. “Then you understand why I need you to leave?”

Dylan nodded. He nuzzled her again, and his lips grazed her cheek. When he backed away, she thought she would die of grief.

Not the same, her common sense told her. He’s not dying; he’s just leaving. But right now, her heart couldn’t tell the difference. Gone was gone.

“You’ll want your things,” she said in a strangled voice. Not that he’d brought much into her house; the entirety would fit into an overnight bag.

“Throw them away. Or leave them outside the door and I’ll have Liam fetch them later. Your choice.”

Possessions meant so little to a Shifter, especially this Shifter. “What will you do?” she asked.

Dylan shrugged, gave her a little smile. “Who knows? But I’m good at taking care of myself. Didn’t I have to raise three sons on my own?”

Glory nodded, unable to speak anymore. Dylan wiped a tear from her cheek and pressed a gentle kiss to her lips. “Be well, love.”

And then he left her, walking out the door and back down the porch steps in the same even stride he’d used to mount them. Without stopping, looking back, or even glancing at his own house, he got into his pickup, started it, and pulled smoothly away.

Glory waited until the sound of the truck had faded into the distance, then she walked upstairs, entered her bedroom that still smelled of him, and pulled down the shades. Only then did she let herself fall across the bed and weep until she had no tears left.

“
S
o what did you think of my dad?” Andrea asked as Sean drove rapidly down Thirty-Fifth. “My stepdad, I mean.”

Sean glanced at her, his eyes still holding the fires they had last night and this morning, and again when he came to tell her that Liam wanted them to go back to the bar in north Austin. The throbbing of the bond hadn’t gone away. She felt it wrapping around her heart, squeezing tight.

“I liked him,” Sean was saying. “You said he was a good man, and he is, I could see that.”

“I miss him.” Andrea sighed.

“I can try to have him transferred here, if you want. And if he’d be wanting that. It would mean leaving his pack.”

“You can do that? The humans told him he couldn’t come with me, and then a pack here would have to let him in ...”

“You let me and Liam worry about that.”

He had such power and spoke about it so casually, hands resting lightly on the wheel. His generosity touched her.

She grinned at him. “If you’re this nice to all the girls you get into your bed, I’m surprised you don’t have a line at your door. Maybe stretching all the way down the street.”

Sean glanced at her, fire dancing between them. “Only ones I want for my mate, love.”

“So the rest of them must just be after your fine ass.”

“No woman’s ever bought me underwear for my ass, that’s for certain. But what can I do? Lupines like to play. You throw a stick, they race after it. Cats wouldn’t dream of doing that.”

Andrea drew her finger across her lip, wetting it. “But you give cats a little ... nip and they go insane.”

Sean stared at her a moment longer before traffic on the curving road dragged his attention back to it. He moved in the seat, as though something in his pants had tightened. “And now, it’s the tease.”

“I don’t have much else to do. Teasing you fills the time.”

Another sideways glance, the sparkle in his eyes stoking the fire high. “Would you be willing to fill it with something else?”

“Not right now,” Andrea said. “You’re driving, and we’re on a mission.”

“Mmm, I’m thinking some Shifters are going to be damn sorry they’re pulling me away from the mating frenzy.”

“Maybe it’s why Liam wanted you to do this instead of him.”

“Could be. If they take too much time messing with me, I might tear them up for interrupting us.”

“Don’t get too carried away. Your Collar will go off, and they’ll just laugh at you.”

“Don’t worry about that, love. I’ll time it just right.”

Andrea wasn’t certain what he meant by that, and by the way he stopped talking, he didn’t want her to ask. Andrea shrugged to herself and looked out the window as they turned and wound northward through town.

Bronco’s, the bar where she’d found Glory yesterday, sat back from the road in a littered parking lot. Behind it, an old wooden fence separated the property from a creek, and beyond that lay suburban houses. To either side of the bar were one-story shops. A vacuum repair store occupied one of the buildings; the other held an antique store and a tobacconist. All closed for the day, Sunday.

The bar was also closed, but a few vehicles were parked around it. From the age of the cars and trucks plus the fact that they’d been kept well, Andrea could tell that they belonged to Shifters.

Sean smiled in anticipation. “Let’s see what they’re up to in there, shall we, love?” The sun gleamed off the sword on his back, and Sean’s smile added to the deadly picture he made. No wonder Liam had sent him as liaison.

The door to the bar was locked. No grate had been pulled across the door, and it was fastened with a simple dead bolt. Sean wrapped his fingers around the door handle, let his hand become his powerful lion’s paw, and yanked. The lock splintered, and the door opened.

“Nice trick,” Andrea said. “Wish I was a big, bad Feline.”

“I’ll teach you someday, if you’re good.”

“Mmm, I’ll never learn it, then.”

Sean’s answering grin stoked the heat already burning in her, and then she fell in behind him as he strode inside.

“Hey, we’re closed,” someone yelled.

Sean didn’t stop. The bar was thick with cigarette smoke, which meant humans. Shifters didn’t smoke. A knot of people sat around a table in the back, and a human worked behind the bar, likely prepping to open the place later that afternoon. The bartender had been the one who’d yelled.

From the scent beneath the gagging smoke, three of the men at the table were human. They wore jeans and biker vests, their guns in shoulder or belt holsters evident. But it wasn’t just their scent that betrayed them as the ones who’d been responsible for all the shootings. One human rose as Sean came in and pointed a black pistol at him.

Sean drew his sword, the silver glittering, the blade ringing as it swept out of its sheath. The human laughed, but one of the Shifters knocked the gun from his hand with the swipe of a claw.

“He’s a Guardian,” the Shifter snarled.

The human opened his mouth to jeer, looked at the Shifter faces gone hard and cold, and sat back down. He retrieved his pistol from where it had landed on the other side of the table and shoved it into a shoulder holster.

Sean brought the sword around and rested the point of it on the table, the hilt rising like a cross. He scanned the faces that turned to him, Sean quiet and unafraid, the Shifters tense and worried. Sean’s gaze stopped as he picked out a Shifter to address, and that Shifter shrank back in his chair, looking like he wanted to wet himself.

“So tell me, Ben O’Callaghan, of me own clan,” Sean said to him. “What exactly have you been up to?”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

S
ean smelled Ben’s fear even before the man spoke. “You should leave, Sean.”

Sean rested his hands on his sword hilt, driving the point a little way into the table. “Now, why would I be wanting to do that? We had some humans shooting at Shifters, and then I walk in here and find humans with pistols sitting at this very table. A suspicious man might make a connection.”

Ben’s blue eyes clouded with worry. “You really need to go. Pretend you never walked in.”

“I’m not good at playing pretend, me.” Sean caressed the hilt while he scanned the faces of the other Shifters. “Why don’t I join you, and we’ll have a nice little chat?”

“No one’s talking about anything,” another Shifter said. He was a Feline Sean recognized, but he wasn’t from Sean’s clan, and he wasn’t from Austin. “Especially not with you,” the Feline finished.