Territory - Prequel (5 page)

Chloe had begged Donnie to let her go, get a divorce, but Donnie refused. 
As a result of all the
drama,
his
work
began to suffer
and the foreman had threatened to let him go.  Finally it all came to a head and Donnie drove out to the Blackbird compound and confronted Mace only to discover Beverly there.  Donnie and Mace fought and Donnie had been injured.  Donnie spent the night in the hospital, Mace spent the night in jail and Beverly spent the night downing sleeping pills and a bottle of vodka. 

When Chloe drove Donnie home from the hospital late the next night they found Beverly’s body
.  She was lying in their bed holding her wedding ring in her hand.  She’d been dead for hours, but it didn’t keep Donnie from trying to resuscitate her. 

Chloe remembered thinking then and there that nothing in the world could ever be more painful than watching your loved ones suffer.  She’d been wrong.
  Losing a loved one after they’d been made to suffer was more heart wrenching than she could have ever possibly imagined.

Beverly’s body wasn’t even carried from the house before Donnie was gone, hunting down Mace. 
No one knew exactly what happened, but the bodies of both men were found the next day.  The county Sheriff believed Donnie had shot Mace and then had been attacked by wolves.  It all sounded too crazy.  There were whispers that the shape shifting Blackbird pack had discovered Mace dead and had torn Donnie apart.  The coroner must have heard the
r
umors
as well, for he assured Chloe and her mother that Donnie had died from
wounds sustained
from
a lone
wolf
, not a pack
.  ‘A lucky shot’ he’d called it, ‘
the one bite
ripped through
Donnie’s
jugular’.

“Lucky for
who
?
” 
Chloe had snarled in anguish.

Thunder again rattled the sky.  The great boom shaking the windows on the house, and Chloe cried all the harder because she knew no one would hear, no one would
comfort
, and no one would ever know that her heart had been ripped free of her soul.
 

She now knew how Donnie
had
felt
staring at the lifeless body of his beloved wife
.  She too wanted revenge.  She wanted one of them to hurt like she hurt, hate
as she now
hate
d
, suffer as she suffered.  She’d lost her sister-in-law and her brother.  They’d only lost one. 

It’s not fair!
  She pounded a fist on the table as thunder cracked again.
  It felt so good to hit something.  She pounded her fist on the table harder and then kept on pounding until she couldn’t pound anymore.

Chapter
4

At the Blackbird compound, Dell was having an equally restless night as the new Alpha. 
He’d given his pack the last five days to come to terms with the loss of their Alpha.  He knew their sorrow and anger needed time
, but he knew now that he needed to act to prevent any of them from seeking revenge. 
He’d summoned his pack and given direct orders that no member of the Lott family was to be harmed or treated with animosity. 
The pack was
to stay away from the Lotts at all cost. 
The pack
hadn’t taken
it well.  The
y
missed Mace and they wanted closure
for their
former
Alpha’s sake
.
  Little did they know that not only was Dell keeping the Lott family safe, but his pack as well.  Until he figured out the cause of his attack on Chloe’s doorstep, he didn’t want his pack getting too close to the woman
or her mother
.

Dell heaved a great sigh and rolled to his side
to stare out the
window
and into the dreary night. 
It was late, but sleep refused to claim him. 
Hell, he missed Mace more than any of them ever would. 

He’d been the quintessential little brother. 
One corner of his
mouth
lifted.  He’d hounded Mace for years until Briggs came into his own and followed suit with Dell.  After seeing how annoying pesky little brothers could be, Dell had reined it in, but he hadn’t been so lucky with Briggs.  Briggs was the baby after all and was therefore never afforded the opportunity to be harassed incessantly by a younger sibling, so he saw no problem with annoying Dell at every possible opportunity.

He’d sensed at the meeting that Briggs had taken umbrage with Dell’s directive, but his little brother would do as he was told
for it was his job to lead by example when it came to showing respect and submission to the new Alpha’s orders
.

Cindy
, on the other hand,
had snuck
out before the meeting was
over;
leaving
Dell unable to question her about the information she was obviously keeping from him.  When the meeting concluded and he’d explained himself more thorough
ly to a few of the more
emotional
pack members, he’d opted to let Cindy have this one.  He’d get the information she was harboring from her in the morning.  He was Alpha now, and as a member of his pack, Cindy was obligated to conform to his wishes, which included supplying him with any and all information he sought.  He could have just contacted her telepathically, or—as he’d recently discovered—gotten access to her thoughts without her permission, but he wanted to be a fair leader, a just Alpha
, and that meant giving her the opportunity to do the right thing
.

He rubbed a hand over his f
irm abdomen
, grateful that the queasiness had finally subsided.  It was an effort even now, to keep from thinking about
Chloe
Lott and whatever it was that she had done to him.  He prayed for her sake that it wasn’t some form of medicine, or that it wasn’t intentionally done.  He could literally scent her pain from a mile away and he knew from personal experience that pain that great often led to extremely foolish decisions.

Chloe.
  His gut spasmed
at the mere thought of her
. 
Growling against the pain, he allowed
himself
to
remember.  He had forgotten about her.  Forgotten he’d been
interested
in her. 

She’d caught his eye in high school, and it wasn’t her beauty that attracted him.  And God had she been beautiful.  His abdomen squeezed tighter. 
She still is.
 
No, he’d been drawn to her character.  She was new to the school
.
Where
most teenage girls to a new area would have been doing their damnedest to get in with the ‘it crowd’
, Chloe hadn’t
.
She seemed disinterested in the social sects of the high school and even less concerned with anyone else’s opinion of her.  His lips curled despite the pain in his belly.  He remembered the day she’d arrived
.

He was late for
algebra and was racing
for his
homeroom
when he saw her scanning a class assignment card at the end of the hall.  She was eyeing the
numbers at the top of each door,
clearly lost.  He intended on stopping to point her in the right direction when her shout had his feet skidding to a halt.

“Hey!  Leave him alone!”

She was frowning down a hallway and when she disappeared down it, Dell raced to see what was happening.  He was more than a little shocked to find her standing in the hall, hands on slender hips, scowling up at a senior football player
that towered at least three feet taller
. 
At her feet, a wiry under
classma
n with broken glasses was picking up a pile of books.

“You’re so tough
?  Why don’t you try picking on someone your own size?”

The football player snorted and took a challenging step closer to her.  “Would that be you?”

Watching, Dell expected Chloe to back down but she
didn
’t.  Instead
,
she stepped closer to the boy.  Whatever her retort would have been Dell never found out.

“No, that’d be me,
” He’d answered as he strode toward the trio. 

Dell
didn’t know
the football player, but he apparently knew Dell because he instantly threw up his hands and backed down the hall, “Look I don’t want any trouble.  It was an accident.”  The boy kept walking backward until he reached the end of the hall then he turned and disappeared down the corridor.

He didn’t like bullies; despised them actually.
W
hile part of him wanted to chase the kid down and pound him into the
ground,
he opted instead to stay and offer the nerdy under
classma
n a hand.

He turned to find Chloe already on her knees helping to collect the books that were strewn about the hall.

“You alright?” she asked the kid.

“F-fine.  Thanks for your help.  No one’s ever stuck up for me like that before.”

He watched as Chloe rose and placed the few books she had on the kid’s
towering pile.  Dell remembered wondering how the kid’s pale boney arms were even able to endure the weight.

“My name is Chloe Lott.”

The nerdy kid simply nodded, “I’m Jerry.  Thanks for your help.”

“Anytime,” Chloe smiled, “and thank you.”  She’d turned to
smile at
Dell.

“Sure,” he supplied lamely before a teacher had shouted from down the hall for the trio to
“Get to class!”

He didn’t want to go, but then Chloe stepped to a door,
double-checked
her class assignment card and entered it leaving him alone in the hall with the nerd.

“You need help with th
at,” he’d asked the underclassma
n. 

When the kid confirmed that he could handle his load, Dell double-timed it to class and spent the remainder of the day thinking about the new girl who wasn’t afraid to challenge the bully. 
 

After that day he’d watched her
incessantly,
wondering if her temporary lapse in sanity was a fluke.  It wasn’t.  She defended the ‘little guy’ at every opportunity that presented itself
and it was more than
a little
intriguing.

He watched her constantly, even shifting to follow her home under the cover of the woods.  Hell, her brother had even caught him
ogling
her ass a time or two.
  When he’d finally built up the nerve to finally ask her out, it had been too late. 

The change that affects all shifters had come upon him suddenly and it hit him hard.  So hard in fact that Mama was forced to pull him from school.  He’d been forced to
finish his senior year
in
the confines of the Blackbird compound.  Convinced he’d fallen ill with some mysterious ailment, the school official
s
were more than willing to cooperate.  Cindy spread the word that he’d gr
aduated early and that was that.  H
igh school was over. 

The change in him had taken so much time, energy, and patience that he’d soon given up on ever seeing Chloe again.  By the time he’d mastered his abilities, it was too late.  She’d a
lready graduated and moved on.  Even if she hadn’t, he wouldn’t have pursued her.  He’d had a difficult enough time coming to terms with what he
was;
he’d have been unable to
explain it to anyone else. 

Chloe wasn’t the only thing he’d missed out on.  He’d been a national wrestling champion, but was forced to quit the team and
refuse
all thirteen of the scholarships that he’d been offered.

“You’re different son,” Mama had told him, “our destiny is not that of the average man.  You have responsibilities.”

He’d always known that they were different, that they were shifters, but it wasn’t until he came into his own abilities that he’d
realized just how different they were.  While his brothers and sister dated, he’d shied away from it.  He didn’t want to drag anyone into his life, especially someone he cared for.  Those first years of coming to
terms with what he was had him questioning his own existence, and while things got better with time his life was
still certainly something he wouldn’t
wish on any child or non-shifter mate of his own.
 

Mate
of his own
. 
Chloe.
 
God, why couldn’t Mace have
mated another
woman,
any other woman.
  No, he’d gone after the only possible option that was destined to draw Chloe back into his life in the most deplorable manner possible. 
It’s hopeless.