“You’re heading back to Whiterose territory, aren’t you? At least let me watch your back.”
“Not tonight.”
I try to swing the door shut, but Cal braces a hand against it and halts the momentum. I lock eyes with him, bearing down on him with the full weight of my alpha influence until he flinches slightly and lets go. The door remains hanging open, however, as a trickle of guilt arises.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him. “There’s something-I don’t like the idea of keeping something from you, but it’s complicated. I ask that, as my Beta, you trust me for now.”
Cal works his jaw. He wants to argue, wants to demand that I tell him what’s going on. Not because he has a habit of chomping at the bit, but because it’s his instinct to collect information that serves his purpose as my Beta. He just wants to do his job well, and I’m making it difficult for him.
He takes a deep breath, then forces out a faux-calm, “All right, then.”
I nod once at him, then close the door. A moment later, I’m peeling off into the night.
It’s been two days since I last set foot in West Pond, and I’m going insane at the separation. I can barely remember how I got through the past ten years. It’s like, ever since I learned where Alina is and that my son is with her, every cell in my body is screaming for me to go to her. To reclaim her.
But I saw Kseniya in town earlier today, and it was a stark and painful reminder about why I can’t do that. I can never have Alina. Not fully.
Still, I can protect her. I can protect Noah.
It doesn’t take long for me to get to the outskirts of West Pond. The roads are mostly empty, and the route is familiar enough by now that I can test the speed limit without careening off the road from a sudden sharp turn.
Within half an hour, I’m pulling into the driveway of Alina’s house. The lights are on downstairs. It’s dinnertime, I think. Noah will be heading to bed soon.
I hop out of the truck and breathe in deeply as I head to the porch. There’s no sign of the sour Blackburn scent, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be lingering within a few miles of here. Those beasts can be stealthy, after all. It’s how they managed to kill Alina’s parents-by sneaking up on them.
My knock on the front door is loud and insistent.
Light, rapid footsteps follow. Alina yanks open the door, a scowl already on her perfect face. She’s barefoot, wearing leggings and an oversized tee. There’s a sponge in one hand and a soapy spatula in the other. Cleaning up after dinner, then.
“What are you doing here, Rowan? You can’t just show up out of the blue like this.”
“I need to talk to you. Can I come in?”
“No, you can’t-“
“Alina.”
“Go awa-“
“Dad?” a soft voice calls from within the house.
Both of us pause. Soft footsteps emerge in the silence, and then Noah appears at Alina’s elbow.
“Hi, Noah,” I say to him.
“Hi…Dad.”
I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it. I’m a father. A father. It’s incredible.
Alina purses her lips. She’s been caught at an impasse. She doesn’t want to hiss and snarl at me in front of Noah.
Then, all at once, she loses the fight, because Noah offers me a tentative smile and asks, “Are you coming in?”
Alina glares at me. A victorious smile tugs on my lips. With a subtle roll of her eyes, she steps aside just barely enough for me to cross the threshold and slip past her.
The door slams a little too loudly behind me. She whirls away and stomps back to the kitchen. Noah remains where he is in the entryway, craning his neck to look up at me.
“Noah, honey, please go finish your homework upstairs,” Alina tells him.
“But-“
“Listen to your mother, please,” I add gently. “We can talk later, okay?”
Noah lets out a huff of annoyance, but he does as he’s told. He’s a sweet kid. Not a pushover in his obedience, but respectful in the way he does as he’s told by his elders. He can recognize the importance of roles and hierarchies. Leadership will come naturally to him.
Neither Alina nor I says a word as Noah’s footsteps thump up the stairs. It’s not until we both hear his bedroom door close that Alina plants her hands firmly on her hips and faces off against me.
“You can’t barge in at seven on a school night like that, Rowan.”
“I’m sorry, but I had to come,” I insist. “We just got confirmation that Samson Blackburn is, in fact, scheming to claim Whiterose land for his own. You need to get out of here. You need to-“
“Come back to the Greenbriars?” She rolls her eyes. “That’s predictable. How convenient, that an old enemy is now once again stirring the pot, and it serves your purpose to get your son into your clutches permanently.”
“That’s not-I’m not lying, Alina. Henry’s Betas know it. That friend of yours, the healer, probably knows it, too, given that she’s treating the same elders who are allowing themselves to be forced inland from the western borders.”
Alina furrows her brow, confusion causing her hatred for me to cool slightly.
“Zahra wouldn’t keep something like that from me.”
“My point is that you need to get out of here before the Blackburns attack. You know how they move, Alina. One day, everything is fine. The next day, people are dead.”
She looks away, swallowing hard. “I know.”
“At least cross the border into our territory. I can set you up with a house there. It’ll be quiet. Nobody will bother you.”
Fury sparks in her dark gaze. “And what about Noah? He has to go to school, Rowan. He has friends. He has a life here. I’m not going to relocate us to the fringes of a pack that I’m destined to ruin just so that he can learn what it means to be ostracized by his own people before his tenth birthday!”
“It wouldn’t be like that. Trust me.”
“Trust you? Are you joking?”
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.