Wolf's Return (Black Hills Wolves Book 1) (3 page)

She. Would. Not. Cry.

“You want to see your father? Fine, follow me. The quicker I get you there, the faster you can be on your way to whatever hole you crawled out of.”

She’d never been so keenly aware of anyone walking behind her as she was then. Every step he took garnered her full attention. The crunch of the leaves beneath his feet, the way his body altered the flow of the wind. What would have happened if she hadn’t gone to see Gee right then? Would she have missed Drew all together? Damn it, why did she care? He’d abandoned her, thus ending their mating, something virtually impossible to do. Why hadn’t she been enough?

His gate had changed, and she would have to be deaf to not hear the way he limped a little bit on his left leg. She bit down on her lip. How and when had that happened?

She turned around, and he nearly collided into her. Too close. She didn’t want to be so surrounded by his aroma. Even though she knew it showed what a coward she became around him, she retreated a few inches. With a little more air between them, she could breathe.

“What happened to your leg?” The question escaped before she could stop it. Maybe it would turn out he got it run over while he robbed little old ladies of their retirement savings. Then she could hate him some more.

“It was a parting shot from my father. Literally. He had one of his men, Cam, I think, shoot me in the leg.”

“He shot you?” Her voice squeaked, and a bird flying above their heads squawked. Magnum was a real son of a bitch. She shouldn’t be surprised he’d do such a thing, and yet, shooting his own son fell into a nearly unbelievable category. “Why would he do that?”

“Because he’s a psychopath. Throwing me out of the pack wasn’t enough to satisfy him. He needed to see me do it limping and covered in blood. I would have died of blood loss if Gee hadn’t patched me up. I owe the Bear my life so many times over I’m not even sure I can ever pay him back.” He snorted. “Of course, then, I wished he would let me die.”

How had she not known this? She bit down on her fingernail and let herself have a good chew on it. The years of taking care of feminine niceties were well behind her. Life was cold, hard, and too dirty for pretty nails. Still, she tried not to chomp down on her hands on a regular basis. When she’d been a child, her mother would have slapped her hand if she saw her gnawing away.

But the habit helped her think when her mind wanted to spin away from where it needed to stay. Drew hadn’t left by choice, or at least so he said. Magnum had told her differently, but since the man was a liar, she’d questioned him half to death about it. Finally, she decided it not likely he’d lie about what happened with his own son. None of this changed the fact Drew had run off and not taken her with him or even bothered to let her know he was leaving.
Asshole
.

Of course, maybe he hadn’t been able to since he’d been shot.

Damn it. She didn’t want to rationalize his absence. No, he hadn’t earned that from her. Bad guys could always come up with a reason for why they did the things they did. Maybe they even had good intentions. Drew should have been Alpha. He should have taken care of their pack. And if he couldn’t, he should have, at least, been her mate, as he’d promised to be under the full moon.

The second thing she realized was Drew had actually answered her question in a dense manner. Much more effusive than she remembered. Maybe he just had a lot to say. But he used to be a man of very few words.

She turned around. “I’m sorry you got shot.” It seemed a much better idea to keep moving. A much, much better idea. “And I hope you’re taking good enough care of it. Even an old wound can use tending.”

“I always said you should be a healer, B.”

She swung around to point her finger in his face. “I don’t know how many times I can say it, so this will be the last time. I don’t want you to call me B. I have a name, use it.”

“By the moon, Betty, I have always called you B. I can’t stop now.”

With her finger still pointed in his face, she snarled. Perhaps she’d been hasty in her thought she couldn’t hurt him. “Then don’t talk to me at all. Don’t use my name. You don’t get to call me B. That was something a wolf I used to know referred to me as. But he doesn’t exist anymore. The nickname died with him.”

That seemed to shut him up. He opened and closed his mouth. Her point made, she nodded. Good. And she would simply ignore the pit of pain forming in her stomach. She shoved her hands in her pockets so he wouldn’t see, and if, spirits forbid, she actually needed to cry, then she’d shift into her wolf form until the need fled.

Ten years ago, she’d cried enough tears of Drew to last a lifetime. Not again.
Never again
.

“Why did he ban you?” It was like a disease. Why couldn’t she keep her mouth shut? Probably because she’d once known him completely. And he had brought her to levels of pleasure she’d not known existed.

He never got a chance to answer because they arrived at the “barn.” The unofficial meeting place for the Black Hills Wolves had become a red barn that had been used to store hay when she was growing up. Drew’s awful father waited inside. He was always there, surrounded by his cronies, slowly but surely destroying the pack, the one thing he had sworn to care for. But, then again, he’d not taken care of his own child, so why anyone would suppose he could give a shit about anything else was beyond her understanding.

Drew cleared his throat, and her insides melted. He made that sound at night, when he slept. She’d forgotten. The one noise, a little one really, almost floored her. Betty stopped moving and gripped the side of the barn.

“B, you okay?” So much for him listening to her earlier rant. He’d always done whatever he wanted anyway. Why should she be surprised he persisted in using her nickname? ?

It was too late to stop the memories flooding through her mind. The years they’d been together. Back when the Black Hills had been filled with the sounds of their wolf pack—appearing human to the outside world yet so much more—they’d met and fallen in love. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say they’d realized they were in love, they were mated. Right before her eighteenth birthday. They’d had to wait three months before they’d reached majority and mated.

Their first night together, she had finally understood what it meant to be mated. Before then, she’d always thought it was akin to being married. Sure, her sister and she had watched their parents gush over each other for years. They were truly in love. But the first time Drew had touched her sexually, she’d actually gotten it.

Not just the heat between them and what it had meant—at least to her—but what it meant to know with a single touch what another person thought, to have both sides of herself, her human and her wolf, connect with another soul completely that she’d never be alone again.

And then he’d left, taking all the heat, the pleasure, the rightness of life with him.

She never would have thought herself a violent person, but the need to punish him, to inflict some kind of pain on his person, overwhelmed her.

She shoved him up against the barn, pressing her body to his in order to hold him still. “I wish you had died. I wish you hadn’t come back, you son of a bitch.”

Drew sucked in his breath. “I know I have no right to say this, but life without you was akin to death.”

“Oh, poor Drew, he ran off, left his mate, and then had a hard time.” She snarled. Her temper had never been easy, and she didn’t feel like pulling it back in. Let him feel the full magnitude of her wrath.

She kissed him, hard on the mouth.
Fuck
. She hadn’t seen herself doing that. What was the matter with her she now couldn’t stop? His lips were soft and so hauntingly familiar she wasn’t sure she hadn’t dreamed this whole thing up. His heart beat on her hand, and she squeezed his shirt to stop herself from rubbing his chest. She had to get control, and the heat building in her core wasn’t helping.

Drew moaned, pulling her close.

No, this couldn’t happen. Sex with Drew would be wrong for so many reasons. So, why did he have to feel so right? Why did his heat make her feel warm for the first time in ten years? Why did he still have the ability to make her feel so complete?

She bit down on his lip, and he yelped, pulling away.
Good. Let him bleed
. Betty forced herself away from him. Air and space seemed to be key. She’d never survive this otherwise.

“You bit me.” Drew rubbed a smear of blood off his too-perfect lips. “I don’t remember you liking it rough, B.”

“I don’t like
you
at all.” She turned from him and pointed at the barn door. “Your father spends all his time in there. It’s become his personal lair.”

“The barn?” He stepped toward the door. His limp even more pronounced. Had she hurt him when she’d shoved him against the wall? How fragile had Drew become? Her heart turned over. “What happened to the house?”

“It’s coming down on the hinges. The pipes burst. Big mess. Maybe five years ago.” Watching his house decay over time had seemed appropriate, the worse it got the further away Drew felt.

“That’s a shame. I’ll have to fix it back up.” He nodded like he’d come to a conclusion.

She snorted. “For what? Your father to live in? You’re a banned wolf; they’ll kill you on sight.”

“They can certainly try, but that isn’t what’s going to happen.” He headed toward the door, and she grabbed his arm to stop him. The muscles beneath her hand were strong, tight. Drew hadn’t let himself go in the time he’d been gone. If anything, he felt bulkier. She tried to ignore the excitement the image started in her stomach. She wasn’t going to see him naked. Ever. So it didn’t matter.

“What do you plan to do in there?”

Drew shook his head. “What do you care, B? You want me dead, remember?”

She dropped her hand off him, and he sauntered toward the door and walked inside. She counted to ten before she followed. Drew had always been able to get her worked up, and she’d certainly given him a good look at her nasty side, which he deserved to see.

Still, she followed him inside. Drew faced off against his father. They stared at one another, and every wolf in the room watched silently, which said a lot considering the lot of them—the five imbeciles as she thought of them, also known as Cam, Tate, Greg, Poh, and Leo—were always making a ton of noise. Life seemed to be a great party to them.

But no one bothered her more than Magnum. Drew’s father. Her Alpha. He made her want to weep on a daily basis. The wolf part of her wanted to weep all the time. Why didn’t he love them as he should? What had they done to make him so hateful?

What had Drew done to be banished? She wanted to know, but she wouldn’t ask. Maybe not ever again, it seemed she’d been lied to the first time she had done so by Magnum himself. They shouldn’t be having getting-to-reknow-you conversations. He needed to back under whatever rock he’d crawled out of.

The barn itself looked exactly as it had for ten years. The men had converted it into a bunkhouse with cots, blow-up mattresses, and a round table where they endlessly played cards. The structure stunk of beer, body odor, and neglect. Magnum would probably blame Betty and the few females left in the pack. They were supposed to cook, clean, and keep the place running no matter the mess.

“Father. I heard you were nearly dead.”

Betty sucked in her breath. How had he known? Who had told him?

“Someone has been talking out of turn.” Magnum’s slight lisp sounded very profound. He must be feeling stressed; she’d noticed the correlation. The spirits knew Drew’s arrival had made her feel off-kilter. “Did you call and tell him, Elizabeth?”

Magnum had always been the only one to ever refer to her by her full name. Even her parents had called her Betty, and to Drew, she’d always been B. Even when she’d suggested to Drew he call her Elizabeth, she’d not thought he would. Betty was one thing; Elizabeth meant he didn’t know her at all.

In Magnum’s case, that didn’t happen to be true. He knew her quite well, had been ordering her around for ten years. He called her Elizabeth simply to show he could refer to her however he wanted.

“I haven’t talked to Drew since his sudden departure. I thought he left by choice, but I’m hearing you might have thrown him out. And shot him.”

Magnum laughed, leaning his neck back toward the ceiling when he did. The sound of his laughter reverberated throughout the barn. She winced at the sound.

“Oh, I’d forgotten how amusing it was to watch Drew limp away the way he had. I’d actually forgotten I had you shoot him, Cam. That was a good day.”

Magnum had obviously decided not to lie about his actions. Or, at least, to stop lying about them. For years, he’d been keeping up one big fabrication.

“Why?” She rushed forward, her hands clenched at her side. “Why would you lie to me all this time about it? What did Drew do to get sent away?”

“Quiet, B.” Drew hushed her, and she whirled on him.

“Excuse me?” How dare he think he could shush her?

“Please stop. The why doesn’t matter. Where we go from here is what we should be focusing on.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Magnum sneered and walked forward slowly. “I’m not sure I want to tell you. I think I like you not knowing. For a decade, it has amused me to watch you be wrong about everything.”

Magnum moved slowly, like the predator she knew him to be. He’d healed far more than she liked to see. Why couldn’t he be dead?

“If you actually get him to tell you the truth, it’s only going to cause you pain.” Drew’s eyes implored her to keep quiet. Good thing she’d gotten out of the habit of doing what he wanted.

Magnum laughed. “I do like causing pain.” He spoke the truth, unfortunately. “I think we can talk about what you did and why. We’ll see if it makes any difference. You see, for ten years, I’ve told this lovely girl—” Magnum touched the side of her face, and her skin crawled, but she wouldn’t turn away from the touch of her Alpha, not even a bad one like this—touch was integral to pack. “—you left her. Maybe it is time to hear what a big
hero
you were then. How you stood against me, how you turned on your Alpha, and how you were forced out because of it. You see, Elizabeth, I’ve never had any time for heroes.”