“I understand.” Kind of. “When?”
“Tonight.”
His chest ached at the thought of losing her so soon.
“It has to be tonight. I can’t explain it, Rook, but everything in me is screaming to go back and see what my father knows. I’m afraid if I wait, I’ll lose something important.”
“You have to follow your instincts.”
“I do.” She pressed her shoulder to his. “I know it’s irrational, as we’ve only known each other a few days, but . . .”
“I understand.” This time he meant it. He knew too well what she couldn’t say. “With the sun going down, it’s dangerous to leave town. We don’t know if the hostiles will try something tonight.”
“I should have left after supper was over.”
“Why didn’t you?”
She looked at him, her eyes shining with emotion. “First I had to convince myself leaving was the correct next step when my heart insists I should stay. Making that decision was too difficult while you were close by, and even with distance it wasn’t easy, but I know it’s what must be done.”
“Stay ’til morning, Brynn, please. I can’t bear the thought of Fiona lying in wait where I can’t help you. Your scent was left behind at that trailer. She and Victoria will be able to scent you out in a crowd.”
“I thought Magi smelled the same to loup.”
“They do, but you have loup blood, too. It helps make your scent unique. You smell like wildflowers.”
An indeterminate emotion flashed in her eyes. “It’s strange. Even though I’ve accepted that I’m part loup, at least intellectually, I keep forgetting. It’s as though part of me continues to reject the notion.”
“It isn’t easy to change a lifetime of thinking in just a couple of hours. Discovering a new heritage isn’t the same as deciding to get a tattoo.”
“True.”
“Please don’t leave tonight.”
“Rook—”
“One more night. Ten hours. It’s less than two from here to Philadelphia.”
“I can’t.” She glanced up at the dusky sky. “If I go now, I can get to the highway before the sun’s fully down.” She raised his hands to her mouth and kissed his knuckles, determination and a silent promise in that action. “I can do this. I will be back.”
“I should go with you.”
“You can’t. Your family needs you. If the hostiles attack and you aren’t here to defend the town, you’ll hate yourself.”
He would. “I’d hate myself if you were attacked and I couldn’t defend you.”
“I’m not your responsibility.”
“Not yet.” He freed one of his hands and cupped her cheek. Tilted her head up to his. The simple contact sent a jolt of awareness straight to his heart. “One day I hope to change that.”
Her kiss caught him off guard, and then he hauled her close, needing contact wherever he could get it. Memorizing her touch and scent and taste—it had to last for however long she was gone. His beast whined at the knowledge that she was going where he couldn’t follow, but the man understood why this was the best option. Maybe the only option.
As they parted, he brushed his lips across her forehead. “I’ll walk you to your car,” he said.
“Thank you, Rook.”
“Don’t thank me yet.” He stood and pulled her up from the lounge. “You may not like what you find in Philadelphia.”
“You may be more right than you know.”
***
For thirty-five minutes, Rook paced the auction house parking lot—long after Brynn’s taillights had disappeared down the dusk-shadowed forest road—until she called from a public payphone at an interstate rest stop. She was safe. Hearing her voice, clear and truthful, as well as the sounds of vehicles whizzing by and horns honking, reaffirmed the words. It didn’t quell the storm of worry in his guts, but it lessened the riot a little bit.
They spoke briefly, as planned, and then hung up. She wouldn’t be truly safe until she reached her family home outside of Philly, and she couldn’t do that standing at a roadside gas station. With that particular item checked off the to-do list, his next task was to explain her absence to his father.
Father hid his reaction well. He sat behind his office desk, rigid as a slab of wood, hands folded on the blotter, while Rook talked. Rook spoke calmly and rationally, impressed with his own ability to articulate his decision to let Brynn go without rambling a single time. After Rook finished, he maintained an at-attention stance between the two wicker chairs opposite the desk. Father studied him, his expression blank.
“Brynn didn’t give you any indication of what she thought she’d learn by returning to her father’s home?” his father asked after a good sixty seconds of frustrating silence.
“Nothing specific.” Rook gave an internal sigh of relief that his first question hadn’t been more along the lines of “What the hell were you thinking?” Maybe he’d made the right decision after all. “I’m sure it has something to do with the half-breeds, but she refused to say anything without actual proof.”
“An honorable, if problematic, stance for her to take.”
“Problematic?”
“If she doesn’t come back, then we’ve lost our only contact within the Magi community.”
“She’ll come back, unless she’s physically prevented from doing so.”
“How do you know, Rook?”
“Because she said she would, and I trust her.” He didn’t have to hesitate. He trusted Brynn with his entire being, and if she promised to return to Cornerstone, she’d do her damndest to come back to him.
“I know you do, son.” Father relaxed into his chair, which let Rook relax his own posture a fraction. “I also know that you’re developing feelings for her.”
Rook didn’t deny the comment.
“What are your feelings for her, exactly?”
“I don’t know exactly, but I think—” He swallowed, nervous now. “I think I could fall in love with her. I think I’m starting to.”
“You’ve known her for three days.”
Rook bristled—the first time he’d ever reacted in such a manner to his father. “You told me once that your beast knew our mother was your mate the moment you met. That you knew you’d love and marry her after the first hour you spent together.” His tone of voice bordered on disrespectful. He did not, however, apologize.
His mother, Andrea, had not been born in Cornerstone. She was from the Rockpoint, Nevada, run and she’d been sent to live in Cornerstone when she was fifteen—a month after Cornerstone’s White Wolf died. Thomas had been seventeen, a promising successor to his own Alpha father, and according to Thomas’s stories, he had fallen for the young White Wolf almost immediately. They married on her eighteenth birthday. Rook also knew that his mother’s required change of address at a young age had fueled her need to protect Knight from a similar fate. She hadn’t wanted Knight to be separated from his family, as she’d been from hers.
Rook knew little about her family in Rockpoint. As per run law, Andrea had ceased contact with them when she moved to Pennsylvania. In theory, it helped the displaced White Wolf concentrate on building relationships within the new run, rather than maintaining ties to the past. Rook couldn’t imagine the loneliness of being shipped two thousand miles away and never allowed to see or speak to his brothers again.
Father’s mouth opened, but his response never articulated itself. Rook would have placed a double-or-nothing bet that the words he almost said were “That was different,” or some variation. In some ways, yes, his parents had been different—they were both full-blooded loup garou, both with established positions within loup society. Rook was a full-blood loup, while Brynn was a Magus with some loup blood.
Rook and his father were the same, though, in that they both loved beautiful women with very special abilities.
“I suppose it would be hypocritical of me to deny your feelings for Brynn,” Father said. “So long as you’re certain what they are.”
“I wish I was certain.” Rook wasn’t sure how to talk to his father about this stuff—that he didn’t know what it felt like to be in love, because he’d spent his whole life running away from any chance of it. The closest they’d ever come to a conversation on the topic was the day Rook left for college, and his father warned him (for about the fiftieth time) to not sleep with any of his classmates because of the chance (protection wasn’t one hundred percent effective) of siring a half-breed child with a human. Rook had mostly listened.
“Be certain, Rook, before you act on your feelings. Loving Brynn isn’t out of the question. I’ve given permission for outsiders to marry our people, and you know I would do it again to see you happy.” Father leaned forward and propped both elbows on the edge of the desk, hands steepled in front of his face. “But you need to understand that you’d be giving up any chance of succeeding me as Alpha.
“I know you and Bishop are in an unusual position, and I know that you’ve been working incredibly hard to prove yourself worthy of leading our people one day. You and Bishop would both do me proud. However, the run will never accept a half-breed as the Alpha female. If you choose Brynn, you give up your claim to Alpha.”
Hearing those words spoken so plainly drove them home in a way his own musings never had. He knew he could be happy as Cornerstone’s Alpha, and that he would be successful with Bishop by his side. The run would eventually accept him as they’d already accepted Bishop, and he would live a full life. He just didn’t know if he’d be happy without Brynn there, too. A future with her wouldn’t be easy. She wouldn’t be accepted by everyone, and their biologies may not allow them to have children. She might not even want the same future he did. But where would she go if he denied her now that she knew her mixed heritage?
He had a decision to make.
They
had a decision to make.
“I understand,” Rook said. “I do.”
“Good. All I want is for my boys to find joy in their lives, in whatever form that comes.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
***
Rook slept little that night, his thoughts waking him every hour or so, and when the first light of dawn crept in through his bedroom shutters, he let out a deep, relieved sigh.
The hostiles hadn’t attacked.
For now.
Chapter Twenty-one
The Atwood family home was located in Chestnut Hill, just outside of Philadelphia. Brynn loved the town for its historical flair and architectural beauty. The house she grew up in was a three-story cottage-style home built more than two hundred years ago, with three brick fireplaces and its kitchen in what was once a separate building.
“Compound” was often used to describe the house, which amused her in many ways. Compound conjured up images of high-voltage security fences and armed guards. The house had no standing fence, no guard dogs, and no visible security of any sort. All security was of the magical variety. No one could cross a specific, invisible border without Archimedes knowing.
The magic border kept Brynn in her car overnight, parked a block away from her own home. Crossing the border would alert him, and she needed him oblivious to her presence. As dawn streaked the night sky with shades of purple and pink, she began second-guessing her plan to face him on neutral ground.
The front door opened. Brynn sat up straighter, heart beating harder. Archimedes stepped outside and paused. Tall, thin, with the same black hair as every Magus she’d ever met, he tilted his head to the sky and squinted at the rising sun. He was oddly dressed for the summer heat in a gray sports jacket and navy jeans. In fact, Brynn had never seen him dressed so casually.
You’re dressed to blend and not attract attention. But where are you going?
He didn’t go to his car, which she expected. He routinely left early in the morning, dressed in a dark suit, and then drove into the city for Congress business, only to return late at night. A routine he followed every single day, even on weekends. Today, he trotted to the sidewalk and strolled toward the next street. She would never be able to follow him with her car. She had no disguise, except the Lancaster County t-shirt she had purchased on a whim at the rest stop the previous night, and the red bandana she’d tied around her hair. She had to try, though, so she palmed her keys, got out, and trailed her father down the sidewalk.
He led her to Chestnut Hill West. Once a trolley station and now a converted newsstand, it was also the nearest SEPTA train station. He was going into Philadelphia.
Without a train schedule, she had no idea how long she would have to wait and she couldn’t risk poking around to look. Her wallet had still been safely hidden in her rental’s glove compartment, so she had cash for the fare and she bought her ticket from the teller at the window. The real test was getting on board without Archimedes noticing. A handful of early morning commuters were waiting on the platform. Not enough for Brynn to disappear among them, so she stayed down near the corner, out of sight. Her cell phone was still locked tight inside of Alpha McQueen’s office, so she had nothing to pretend to fuss with while she waited. No way to let Rook know she was all right.
Archimedes stood alone, halfway across the platform from her, eyes straight ahead. He didn’t fidget or gaze around, or even check his wristwatch as other commuters did. One woman in a black business suit kept shifting a black briefcase from hand to hand, alternately fanning herself with the other. Brynn was hot enough in her shorts and t-shirt, and she did not envy that woman her layers and heels.
The train finally roared into the station with a blast of hot, oil-scented air. Brynn clenched her trembling hands, waited for Archimedes to step into the first car, then quick-stepped her way into the middle one. The train was nearly full of commuters, hot bodies sweating together in the paltry air-conditioning. She managed to find a seat close to the door and settled in as the train hurtled on to its next stop. She barely looked at the conductor as he came around to check tickets.
At each stop, as riders entered and exited in various quantities, she watched. At six-foot-four, Archimedes was easy to pick out of a crowd, and soon the train was bulleting into the heart of center city Philadelphia. She’d never been in the city alone. Her father had never allowed it. On the few occasions she was given permission to see a museum or visit the zoo, she was always accompanied by one of her tutors. Traveling to a small town like Cornerstone had been a huge step for her, but that experience was nowhere close to the fear and intimidation she was battling as she went deeper into a major city. Alone.