Amber snickered. “She doesn’t so much stop it from happening as she thoroughly distracts him from anything other than her. All she has to do to accomplish that is walk into the room with him.”
Nicole flushed.
“Probably Evelyn,” I muttered, my anxiety igniting at the thought of her out in the wilds as a wolf. While I knew Fenerec were tough and capable of taking care of themselves, it was likely my fault that Evelyn was running wild with Richard and Vicky. I couldn’t imagine what I’d do if she was hurt.
I didn’t want to think about it. The thought she might not come back made my throat tighten and my stomach churn. I pushed away my coffee.
“Just who is she, anyway?” Nicole demanded.
Amber patted my hand. “I’d bet that she’s his mate.”
I froze, even more aware of my father’s stare boring through me.
“Excuse me, but did you just say his mate?” my father asked, his tone chillingly neutral.
Nicole’s smile terrified me. Bringing a cup of coffee to my father, she leaned over the counter and looked him in the eyes. “He belongs to us now, as does his brother. If you or the Inquisition touches either one of them, you’ll regret it. Am I understood?”
“What does Elliot have to do with your pack?” my father countered, meeting her gaze steadily.
“His mate belongs to us, which means he does too.”
I groaned, slumping over the island. “Now you’ve done it, Nicole.”
“What? It’s the truth.”
Amber rubbed the center of my back with a hand. “You’ll get used to it. Most of the time, she’s this docile, angelic girl. When we least expect it, she turns around and does something like stare Richard down. Sometimes she slugs some idiot into next week, reminding us all that she has a sword for a spine.”
My father pinched the bridge of his nose. “You two are going to be the death of me. Are you seriously telling me that you both have taken complete leave of your common sense?”
I draped both of my arms over my throbbing head. “Yes, sir. Why are you here, anyway?”
“No yelling,” Nicole ordered. “There are sleeping children in this house and we are guests.”
“There are sleeping children in the house,” Gerald confirmed.
I lifted my braced left arm in a wave. “Good morning, Gerald.”
“Good morning, everyone. I’m relieved to see you made it intact, and with the hitchhiker as well.”
Amber kept rubbing my back, working her way up to my neck, which she massaged hard enough to hurt. With laughter in her voice, she said, “He was doing a good impression of a lost puppy. Nicole felt sorry for him. It’s a bad habit of hers, picking up strays. One of these days, I’ll beat it out of her.”
“Why do you have coffee, Dante? I’m pretty sure I told you no coffee last night,” Gerald said. Before I could make a grab for the cup, he stole it and set it in the sink. “How many have you had?”
I held up three fingers. “The first two were terrible.”
“You tried to make the coffee, didn’t you?” Gerald grunted, opened the fridge, and in short order, set a glass of orange juice in front of me. “Drink that and take these.”
Six pills waited for me, including another dose of the anti-nausea medications. I sighed, poking at them.
“Before you continue your discussion, I would like to point out that Dante has a concussion, is under a lot of medication, and is not fit for any sort of argument. If you pick a fight with him, I will have Amber shoot you and deposit your corpse in my basement for Elliot to deal with.”
I made a mental note never to anger Gerald.
“Don’t worry. Mr. Leclerc. I have no intentions of causing you—or him—any problems. Dante, I came because someone called me in tears, telling me that his brother had been in a plane crash. At the time, all he knew was that someone had been pulled out of the wreckage, but no one knew who.”
“Way to go, Elliot,” I mumbled, making a second mental note to have a long talk with my twin.
“He has a concussion, a sprained wrist, required a few stitches, and had a transfusion, but otherwise emerged in remarkably good shape for someone who had come within several inches from losing his life,” Gerald reported. “I’d like to keep him that way.”
“As I said, don’t worry. The person he really has to worry about is his mother. Fortunately for all of us, she’s in Atlanta making Inquisition heads roll.”
The doorbell rang.
“I’ll get it. It’s probably Elliot,” Gerald said.
I groaned. “Just kill me now.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll protect you,” Amber said, patting my shoulder.
“Think you can convince Gerald to let me have my coffee back?” I complained.
If I wanted to survive through having most of my immediate family nearby, I was going to need something. With two women present, I swallowed back the myriad of curses I wanted to spew. Sitting up, I grabbed the collection of medications Gerald had set out for me and swallowed them back with a single gulp of orange juice.
“You can’t have the coffee, Dante. What are you, a child?” Gerald asked.
I twisted around to level a glare at him.
My brother stood behind Gerald, halting when he saw me. “Dante—” When his gaze slid over to our father, his mouth dropped open. “Oh, shit.”
“Language,” I snapped. “If I can’t have coffee, you can’t curse. Evelyn’s missing, and I am not up for your—”
“Shut up, Dante. You’re going to get us both in trouble,” he warned, closing the distance between us to hug me. He thumped my back, and I hissed as he hit a tender spot. “You worried us all.”
“What did you do to your face, Elliot?” our father demanded. “You’re a sight to behold. You look like the plane crash victim, not him.”
Elliot straightened, pulling away from me to scowl. “What are you doing here, Dad?”
“It was either me or your mother.”
“Oh my God,” I whispered, shuddering at the thought of facing my mother. I hadn’t seen her since I had been evicted from the Anderson household and put into fostering with my godfather at age five. All of my life, I had lived under the impression that she wouldn’t care if I died. Things would have been much simpler for her.
I wondered what I had done to deserve the hell of my family storming back into my life after so many years. “Have you forgotten that I don’t exist? I haven’t.”
“Well, this could get ugly,” my brother declared, claiming a stool and sitting between our father and me.
Amber’s hand dropped to her side, and with a shift of her weight and a flick of her wrist, she revealed a holster. “All I have to say is that I’m armed, dangerous, and haven’t had enough coffee or sleep for this. I deal with enough of this shit between Nicole and her father to put up with this right now.”
“Dante, please,” my brother begged.
I scowled, wondering why it was
my
fault.
Maybe I was a witch, but I had been five years old. At least I hadn’t blabbed about my uncomfortable relationship with the dead. Most of my family believed all I could sense was gemstones, witchcraft that couldn’t threaten them. Sometimes, late at night, I still wondered what they would have done if I had developed stronger powers.
My godfather had been happy to take me in, although I had spent most of my time on my own.
“Don’t waste your breath, Elliot. He’s completely justified. The last time we spoke, if you can call it that, I was dressing him down in an email. I had told him to clean up his act or start praying that the Canadians liked him enough to let him stay. I’m pleasantly surprised he’s grown into a well-adjusted adult without nearly as many abandonment issues as I expected.”
I tensed, holding my breath. A shiver ran through me.
Evelyn hadn’t abandoned me. I kept thinking that, but it didn’t ease my surging anxiety. She had no reason to believe I had a chance of survival. She hadn’t abandoned me.
Richard was smart and a realist. To them, I was dead, and their lives came before that of a corpse.
It wasn’t her fault that I hadn’t been killed.
To cover my dismay, I took a sip from my orange juice. Maybe if I ignored my father, he would disappear. “Where’s Alex?”
Elliot frowned at me. “He’s currently in his wife’s custody. They are getting ready to go ATV shopping, which will be necessary for any trips into the bush looking for Evelyn.”
“Credit cards are in the wallet,” I replied, digging it out of my pocket and sliding it to him. “If you get Zachary to send you one of my cards, just charge it.”
“A trip you won’t be going on, Dante,” Gerald said, taking my wallet. “Yellowknife’s pack is perfectly capable of buying their own ATVs, Jackson. As an aside, should the Inquisition be foolish or stupid enough to push a deportation case, Canada would get involved and it isn’t a situation you want to be in. That’s our official stance on the matter. His work is too delicate and important to be risked by a dated familial dispute that belongs in the fifteen hundreds.”
My father grimaced. “I’ll make certain they’re aware of that.”
“Good.”
“Don’t forget Richard, Gerald. If we’re throwing threats at the Inquisition anyway, remind him that both of the Anderson brothers are officially part of the Yellowknife pack due to their status as mates of pack members,” Nicole added, her tone ice cold. “I’m sure it wouldn’t take too much convincing to get Richard to act.”
“Take it from me, Mr. Anderson. The last thing you want to do is come between a Fenerec and her mate. Add in the fact that every member of the pack will join forces to protect their own, and you’ll have quite the incident on your hands,” Amber warned.
“I’m not—”
“Elliot, shut up. All of you are giving me a headache. It’s too early in the morning for this.”
“It’s about time some of the men in our family decided to grow a pair,” my father said, surprising me with his laughter. “I could have told them twins were nothing but trouble. But no, no one listened to me. Okay, so let me see if I understand the situation. Both of you boys decided Normal women weren’t dangerous enough for you? I assure you that they are. I should know; I married your mother. Elliot, you I can understand. But you, Dante?”
“I think you have it backwards,” Elliot muttered. “Why would you think I’d be the one involved with a Fenerec?”
“Your brother has loyalty issues and hasn’t even looked at a woman since Suzanne’s death, that’s why. You, on the other hand, are good looking, very wealthy, chronically single, independent, capable of taking care of yourself, and hold a substantial amount of power. Any smart bitch would want to sink her teeth into you.”
I groaned, rubbing my forehead in the futile effort of driving my headache away. “You’re disgustingly well informed. You’re also a racist. To add insult to injury, you’re playing favorites again.”
“If it makes you feel any better, you
are
twins, which necessitates you also being good looking,” my father replied.
Amber rested her chin in the palm of her hand. “This is like watching a drama but better. I wonder how many graves they’ll dig for themselves before they kiss and make up?”
“That’s disgusting,” my brother and I said.
“It’s true, though,” my father said, once again startling me with a chuckle. “Dante, I thought you would have guessed by now that your mother and I had absolutely no say in what happened when you were little. Frankly, we’re lucky that we didn’t get the ax ourselves for daring to spawn a witch instead of the pure Normal boy they wanted. I didn’t agree with it then, and I don’t agree with it now.”
I didn’t want to buy his pretty words; he was either the world’s best actor, stringing me along with a lifetime of lies, or he really did care if I lived or died. The fact he had come to Canada at all supported his claim, which unsettled me. In an effort to dodge the issue, I said, “Elliot, you heard him. We were spawned.”
“Impossible. If we had been spawned, you’d be capable of swimming. Fish can swim. You can’t.”
“It’s true. I sink.” I rested my chin on the island, stretching my arms out in the direction of the coffee maker. “Gerald, can’t you tell the doctors I need coffee?”
“Are you sure you’re not Canadian?” Gerald asked. “No coffee, Dante. Beg for mercy at your appointment today. You’ve had enough, considering you weren’t supposed to have any at all.”
“Elliot, there’s a black box in the gym bag. Would you go get it, please?” my father asked.
For a moment, I thought Elliot was going to refuse, but he grumbled something under his breath, got up, and did as he was told. He returned with a shoe box. My father took it and placed it next to me. “I am under strict orders to offer this to you as a peace offering, along with a message, which I’d take as a warning, if you’re wise. Your mother’s in Atlanta, probably killing people with her tongue alone. Once able, she is expecting your presence so she can fulfill her motherly obligations and tan your hide for scaring her so much.”
I eyed the box warily. “Who are you? My father and mother don’t do open gifts or peace offerings. The threats, however, I readily believe.”
“Deserved,” my father acknowledged. “But, consider this, Dante. We’re asleep when sometime around seven in the morning, Elliot calls us, doing a good impression of your mother, which sets
her
off once he stopped blubbering enough to tell us you were in a plane crash. Your mother kicks me out of bed and informs me that I am going to Canada on the next flight out, or my balls were scheduled for a visit with a vice. So, by nine, I’m in the air on the way to Toronto, since no one had any idea where the plane had gone down, just that it never arrived in North Bay, Ontario.”
Standing up, he approached me, and before I could do anything other than tense, he dug his fingers into my shoulders and began digging in, massaging at the knotted and sore muscles. I grunted, going limp as he worked.
“You’re knotted all to hell, boy.”
“Whiplash, probably,” Gerald said. “I’ll make sure a chiropractor has a look at him, so that when his wife comes back, he’ll be fit as a fiddle.”
“She’s not my wife yet,” I mumbled.
When my father found a particularly sore spot, I yelped. Instead of having mercy, he jammed his thumbs at the muscles. “Let me give you a piece of advice, boy. Send your mother an invitation to the wedding. I’m still getting shit over the fact we didn’t get invites to your first. She’s going to skin you for that reason alone when you cross paths.”