The Alpha's Daughter (44 page)

"Yeah, I was invited to run and fool that I
was, I was thrilled to accept," he said bitterly.

"We met at the hospital. Angelica's mother
had decided her daughter should become a nurse and Angelica thought
nursing was romantic. She had visions of herself wiping fevered
brows and holding the hands of frightened patients."

"So she was a nurse when you met her."
Obviously not a tenth grade dropout.

"No, actually I met her the day she figured
out she wasn't meant to be one. She was in the hall crying her
heart out. Nursing wasn't at all what she expected. Blood made her
queasy. Any other fluid made her puke." He tugged on the hand he
held and pulled Jazz over to the edge of the outcropping of rock
where he sat and pulled her down beside him.

"She was ashamed and didn't know what to do.
She was miserable and so homesick she'd made herself ill, but she
couldn't go home and face her parents alone. She looked so pitiful
standing in that hallway. Angelica was adorable when she pouted."
Griz looked down at Jazz. "You just look mean."

"Thank you," she said, not meaning it at all.
She was getting tired of the comparisons to the angelic
Angelica.

"You're welcome." Griz told her, missing the
sarcasm.

"Did she know what you were?" Jazz asked. It
was sometimes hard to tell wolver from human.

"I didn't think so at the time, but I knew
what she was. It's hard not to when a woman is in estrus and the
moon is full. I foolishly thought the moon had brought us together,
that it was a sign we were fated to be. I realized later that it
was just hormones and my frustration at not being able to run. I
was on call," he added by way of explanation and then he shrugged
and laughed without humor.

"I was a bit of a romantic myself and the
thought of rescuing this damsel in distress added to her appeal. I
took her home to her parents, ready to defend her against their
disappointment. Turned out there was nothing to defend. They were
delighted by the wolver their only cub brought home. I was the son
they always wanted, but never had."

Well, that was something she and Angelica had
in common. Neither was the son their parents wished for.

"I thought Angelica was everything I wanted
in a mate. She was sweet and innocent and adoring. Her family led a
very different life from mine. We weren't poor by any means, but my
father liked a simple life. My mother liked it that way, too.

"Angelica's parents were the kind who dressed
for dinner and hosted cocktail parties, not frolics. They talked
about human politics and the possible implications for the wolver
world. They went to plays and concerts and art exhibits. They
welcomed me into their world and I felt like I was meant to be
there.

"My family loved me, but I never felt like I
fit. I wasn't good looking or charming. I wasn't good at the things
they enjoyed. I was just the middle son, a buffer between my more
capable and competitive brothers.

"That can't be true," Jazz protested. There
was no one more capable than her grizzly and what competition
compared to fighting death and disease. Griz didn't always win his
battles, but he was never defeated. He kept on fighting.

"I didn't say it was true. I said that's how
I felt. Angelica and her family offered me all the things I thought
would prove to my family and Rabbit Creek that I was good enough.
Better than good enough.

"I was a rising star in the medical world. By
mating Angelica, I now had money, power, and privilege, not to
mention a beautiful mate. What did it matter if we weren't
perfectly suited? I was determined to be happy with my choice."

"She was beautiful and gentle and graceful."
Jazz added this last because she knew someone like Angelica would
have to be. "She adored you. The woman sounds like every man's
dream. What man wouldn't be happy?"

"A man who wanted a woman and not a child,"
Griz told her with a melancholy smile. "Angelica's beauty was like
fancy wrapping paper on an empty box. She'd never had an original
thought. Her opinions were the repetitions of others and if I
disagreed, she immediately changed her opinion to mine. She had the
emotional development of a twelve year old. I would lose patience
with her and she would cry, but she was incapable of change.

"She wanted a pup, but wrinkled her nose at
how they were made. Still, she allowed me my rights as she put it,
probably at the urging of her mother. Our sex life was modest and
mechanical. She was afraid of being hurt and I was afraid of
hurting her. I began to spend more and more time away; at work,
attending conferences, and coming up here two weekends a month.
Gilead was a place Angelica didn't care to visit. The way I
described it, it was much too dirty. She stayed home to shop and
play tennis, the two things she did best.

"It was a workable solution and Angelica was
happy with it. She had the status of a mate. I had the power and
prestige." Griz's shoulders slumped and he added bleakly, "I'd made
my bed and now I had to lie in it and I tried to make it as
comfortable as possible for both of us. Angelica adored me in her
twelve-year-old way. She loved showing me off to her friends, and I
cared for her in my own way. I wanted to make it work."

"But it didn't," Jazz whispered.

"No, it didn't." Griz sighed and closed his
eyes. "Angelica's uncle, the Alpha whose own son had mated and left
the pack, decided I was the perfect heir. He was dying of
inoperable cancer. I'd done all I could, but my gift only delayed
the inevitable. He was running out of time. I was a little rough
around the social edges, but those edges were being polished and I
was an Alpha's son. I knew the business so to speak, having lived
it through my father. I was smart, physically capable of meeting
any Challenge, and ambitious."

"But how could you be the Alpha and still
be…"

"…mated to Angelica? The solution was simple.
Put her aside. Hell, her parents even agreed. It was best for the
family. It was best for the pack and, God forgive me, it was best
for me."

Jazz didn't want to know the end of this
story. She didn't want to hear that Griz wasn't the wolver she
thought him to be. She didn't want to see the man she slept beside
turn into the man her father was. She started to turn away, but
Griz's hand gripped her arm and held her in place.

"I considered it. I wanted it, but I couldn't
do it. The plan was good for everyone but Angelica. She loved me,
you see. In her little girl way, she loved me with all her heart.
She wasn't the perfect mate, but I'd made a commitment and I would
stand by it. I would make the best of what we had and it would be
enough."

"Then why are you here," Jazz whispered with
the breath she'd been holding, but he'd turned away from her
again.

"I was so busy with my needs, my wants, my
growing prestige and power, I never really looked at the pack. I
was so impressed with my adoptive family, I never looked at their
rivals. I never realized the family would lose so much of their
power if the Alpha came from another. I never saw that underneath
the veneer of civility and culture, they were no better than your
father. That's where you're smarter than me, Jazz. You would have
seen through the bullshit. You would have known what they were
capable of."

"Oh Griz. Oh God. You don't have to finish,
baby." she breathed. Jazz turned her body into him and wrapped her
hands about his waist, pressing her head against his chest. Griz
sank to his knees and she sank with him. She didn't need to hear
how this story ended. She knew.

"They were all very understanding. They
admired my loyalty," Griz continued, his breath hot against her
neck. "Shit, they even called me noble. They threw us a party when
Angelica announced she was pregnant. They cried when two weeks
later she lost the pup. The Alpha was growing weaker, but the
desperation to find his replacement was gone. Stupidly, I thought
he had come to terms with his mortality and lost interest in the
living. I was wrong on that count, too."

"Don't, Griz, don't do this to yourself,"
Jazz said desperately. "It wasn't your fault. You weren't raised
like I was. You were raised with wolvers who were good and honest
and believed in the Laws. There was no way you could know."

But once begun, Griz was compelled to
finish.

"I was invited to a conference in Europe. I
had a layover in D.C. and that's when I got the call. They said she
was despondent over the miscarriage. Everyone knew how emotional
she could be. There was an accident. She was driving too fast. They
to the pack she fell asleep. There were no skid marks. She hit the
bridge abutment at seventy miles per hour. She died on impact."

"It was suicide? Oh, Griz!" Jazz hoped he
couldn't hear the relief she felt. Suicide was horrible, but…

"It wasn't suicide."

Jazz couldn't give up hope. "Then it was an
accident. I can see how you'd be suspicious, but you can't know for
sure. It could have been a terrible, terrible coincidence."

Griz pushed away from her embrace. "I saw the
body," he said angrily. "I saw the fucking marks around her neck
and over her larynx. I know the fucking coroner they paid to verify
the cause of death and I know he fucking lied. Shit, Jazz, they
didn't even clean up the fucking brick dust from around the gas
pedal. They wanted me to know.

"After the burial, before that poor girl was
cold in the ground, her goddamned father put his arm around my
shoulders, called me son and said there was no longer any
impediment to my taking the mantle." His face was a picture of
misery. His voice cracked with pain. "He called his only child a
fucking impediment!" He rose to his feet, turned his back on Jazz
and walked away.

"Did you kill him?" Jazz called after him as
she clambered to her feet.

"He should have been brought to judgment
before the Alpha and his Council," Griz answered without saying the
words.

"Who were part of the conspiracy. I'm
familiar with the process. Did you kill him?" she demanded, hands
on hips.

Griz whirled on her. "Yes, I killed him. I
killed him without formal Challenge on the next full moon. I tore
out his throat and left him to rot on the park-like grounds where
the ladies ran. Another Pack Law broken. I killed him for revenge."
He spat the words in disgust for himself and what he had done. "How
can I be the Alpha of Gilead when I've broken every Primal Law we
have?"

No! Her Griz was good and just and honest. Jazz couldn't
think of him in any other way. Leonard saw it. Miz Mary saw it. She
had to make Griz see it, too.

She wanted to cry for his torment, but he'd
turned away from all sympathy. Jazz let her anger fly.

"You killed him for justice," she spat back
as she marched forward. "You broke no Law." She punched his chest.
"You acted with honor when you refused the mantle in favor of your
mate. What value has a pack that's ruled by a dishonorable Alpha?
You defended your mate even after her death. You had every right.
You broke no Law." She punched his chest again.

"I let my wolf rule my human."

"Would your human have acted any
differently?" She didn't punch him this time, but shoved him with
both hands. "You weren't born to be a perfect fucking saint, Griz.
You were born to be an Alpha. You're not the first wolver to hook
up with the wrong mate. Half the women in my father's pack can
testify to that. The rest was not your doing. That poor chick was
fucked the day you bumped into her in the hall."

"No!"

Griz tried to turn away again, but by
exerting every ounce of strength she had, Jazz wouldn't let him

"Yes!" she shouted at him. "You couldn't save
her. If you'd known, what could you have done? Taken her away?
Delicate flowers like Angelica don't take well to transplanting.
You already saw that. Tell her the truth? She wouldn't have
believed you. Dear, sweet Mommy and Daddy plotting her murder?
Silly wolver," she mimicked in a little girl's voice and slapped
his chest with a delicate pat.

She knew she was being cruel, but he had to
see the truth. That family was a cancer he couldn't cure, a
miscarriage he couldn't prevent.

"You could have set her aside and taken away
the one accomplishment she had to be proud of; mating someone like
you. And what would it have done to her when they found their new
Alpha a Mate? And they would have found you one, Griz, hand-picked
to be as ruthless as them. You wouldn't have been able to say no.
You would have already sold them your soul. Picture Angelica's face
every time that Mate walked in the room. Could you live with that?
Could she?"

"There had to be something I could have
done," he said miserably.

"Yeah, you could have killed every last
fucking one of them, but that would have made you just like them."
Her hand went to his chest, more kindly this time and her voice
softened with the feel of his heart beating beneath her fingers.
"No matter what way you turned, you would have had to sell your
soul, Papa Bear, and where would the rest of us be if you had done
that."

Griz wrapped his arms around her so tightly
Jazz thought her ribs would break, but she offered no protest. What
were a few ribs when it came to saving a drowning man?

"I swore on her grave that I'd never seek
another mate. That's what I was apologizing for. I thought, hiding
away up here, I could keep that promise. Then I found you," he said
against her hair.

"Are you sorry you found me?" Jazz asked
quietly, all anger gone. "Do you regret it?"

"God no, Jazz. I wanted to, but I can't. I
love you more than life itself and yet I betrayed you, too. I made
and broke my promises to you both. I took the mantle, Jazz."

"No Griz, you honored those promises. You
didn't seek a mate. One showed up on your doorstep. And you didn't
seek the mantle. It sought you. Angelica would understand that. I
think she'd be proud to know how big a role she played in creating
the wolver you were meant to be."