Dancer's Heart (15 page)

“Just don’t leave us in the dark, whatever
happens,” she said, her voice cracking with emotion. “I’m sorry for
all you suffered, Adam. I hope you get your mate back, and I hope
that someday you can forgive us.”

The snow crunched under his boots, bringing
him back to the present. It was easy to blame his grandparents for
the current situation, for his shitty childhood and the bad luck of
the draw he’d gotten in his dad, but the truth was that he’d failed
Dani. It was all on him that someone had drugged her in their own
damn backyard and he didn’t know if he’d ever get over the sight of
her falling to the ground, helpless.

A door creaked, and Adam saw Dani as she
raced toward him, calling his name.

* * * * *

Dani thought Adam would never arrive. Time
seemed to slow to a snail’s pace as she stared through the window
toward the gate. After the reindeer were finished dousing every
building with accelerant, they changed into security uniforms
they’d found and stood at the barred front gates to deter anyone
who happened by.

She saw the gate open and the uniformed
guards walk through with a small group, and she knew it was Adam
and the pack. Without a word, she opened the door and rushed
outside. The scent of gasoline hit her full force; the air was
saturated with it. Her eyes watered, but she ignored the sting and
screamed Adam’s name.

He broke through the group of wolves and
raced to her. They met, arms immediately wrapping around each other
and lips pressing together. She couldn’t stop the tears that fell
from her closed eyes as Adam held her tight, a growl rumbling in
his chest.

He cupped her cheek, his eyes the bright
amber of his beast. “Are you hurt?”

She swallowed the lump in her throat and
blinked at the tears that obscured her vision. “No. Are you?”

“Don’t worry about me.”

“Can’t help it.”

He pressed his forehead to hers. “It was my
dad. He gave you up to get out of a debt.”

“I know. He’s here, in the barn.” She
burrowed against him, opening his coat and sliding her arms around
him.

He went very still, and she lifted her head
and peered at him. His face was stony, but his eyes were blazing
the amber of his wolf. “Is he alive?”

“No.”

His arms tightened around her and his
expression darkened. “We were on the way here when you called. My
grandparents had put a tracker on their car, and my dad took
it.”

Releasing his hold on her with one arm, he
traced her jaw with trembling fingers. “I was scared out of my
mind, sweetheart.”

That made the tears spring back. “Me
too.”

He kissed the tears from her cheeks and
hugged her close. She could have stood there forever, but she knew
they needed to leave.

A throat cleared and she lifted her head.
“You must be Adam,” Liam said.

“You helped my mate?” Adam’s arms tightened
around her a fraction.

“We were looking for our sister Tesli, and
found her with Dani.”

“Where are the people who were running this
place?”

Liam’s eyes narrowed slightly, but then he
nodded. “They’re in the main barn. We waited until you arrived, but
we’re planning to torch this place. Before we killed him, one of
the humans who was instrumental in both Tesli’s and Dani’s
abductions told us that this place is no longer in use, and their
gang took it over as a way-station for abducted shifters.”

Adam frowned. “Why were they abducting
shifters?”

“From what we were told, it was a new
venture. They were looking for rare shifters to sell at an
underground auction. Whether they would have become brides or sex
slaves or who the hell knows what else isn’t certain, but we were
very close to losing Tesli forever.”

She pushed against Adam’s weight when he
moved to release her. “What are you doing?”

“I need to see my dad.”

“He’s not alive,” she reminded him in a low
voice.

He stared at her for a long moment and said,
“I still need to see.”

She rose onto her toes and kissed him, his
fangs pressing against her lips as he growled, his chest heaving
with emotion. “Go see. I’ll stay with the pack.”

“Jeremiah!” Adam barked. His friend joined
them, and Adam said, “Keep her safe.”

With a final glance at Dani, Adam followed
Liam toward the barn where she’d been kept captive. Acksel joined
them, and Malachi came over to stand with her and Jeremiah while
the two uniformed guards went back outside the gate.

“It hasn’t even been twelve hours,” she
said.

“Feels like an eternity, doesn’t it?”
Jeremiah asked. “When Honey and I were kidnapped, time felt like it
slowed to a crawl. It felt like days, but it had only been
hours.”

“Dani?” Tesli called from behind her.

“Come and meet my pack,” Dani said, holding a
hand out to the young woman. After being introduced to Malachi and
Jeremiah, Tesli handed a piece of paper to Dani.

“I wrote my information down for you. Liam
and Dragos are talking about starting up a website for our people
to communicate through, but in the meantime, I don’t want to lose
touch with you. I like what I heard about pack life.”

Malachi’s brow arched, but he said
nothing.

Tesli laughed. “I don’t mean joining the
pack, I mean that I like the idea of being in one place and taking
care of each other. Being on the road all the time is a hard way to
live, and no way to raise a family.”

“I’d like to stay in touch,” Dani said.

“Good. I know we can’t replace the family you
lost, but I think you can never have too many friends, especially
if they know where to get reindeer moss wholesale.” Tesli’s brows
wiggled and Dani laughed.

“Do I even want to know what that is?”
Malachi asked.

“A reindeer delicacy,” Tesli answered with a
wink.

* * * * *

Adam’s head pounded from the scent of
accelerant. It was everywhere – puddled on the wooden floor of the
barn and dripping from the rafters. Underneath that smell was the
metallic tang of blood and the sickly sweet scent of death. He
hadn’t wanted to leave Dani’s side, but he trusted Jeremiah to keep
her safe, and he absolutely didn’t want her to suffer any further
by being back in the barn where she’d been a prisoner.

Males wearing park uniforms were pulling
bodies off each other and making a line in the center of the barn.
It looked like a psychotic game of dominoes.

“This is my brother and the king of our herd,
Dragos,” Liam said as he stopped twenty feet from the first body. A
large male turned from where he was watching the males work with
the dead and faced them.

He extended a hand to Adam. “I’m sorry your
mate was taken, but I’m thankful we were able to free her when we
found Tesli. Our sister was abducted a week ago. I’ve had many
sleepless nights trying to find her, but I can’t imagine the hell
you suffered with your mate being taken in front of you.”

Adam shook his hand. “Thank you for freeing
Dani.”

Dragos snapped his fingers and the workers
stepped back. “Take your time.”

Adam wasn’t sure what to expect, but staring
into the lifeless eyes of a dozen males wasn’t among them. It
hadn’t surprised him to see that the men who had captured Tesli
were dead. Judging by the well-armed, muscular males who were
pushing around bodies like they weighed nothing, Adam thought that
the fact they were prey in their shifted form was clearly
irrelevant. They were most likely deadly in their shifts, too.
Which made him want to find out how to teach Dani to protect
herself. Not that he planned to let her ever be harmed again.

Shaking himself from his thoughts, he
concentrated on the dead. He didn’t recognize any of them, until he
reached a very familiar face. Richard’s arms were folded over his
torso, and his eyes were closed as if he was sleeping, but there
was no doubt that he was dead. A crimson stain had spread out from
a hole in his chest. Wolves healed quickly, but there were some
injuries that were too severe, too deadly.

Relief and sorrow churned together inside
him. He was thankful that Dani was safe. The people who had taken
her were dead, his father among them. Adam had been planning to put
his father down himself, to meet him in a death match and come
through on the other side victorious. That had been taken from him,
and in a way it closed the door on his past, while also leaving a
gaping wound because he would never get to reconcile his feelings
with his father.

“I hate what you did to me,” Adam said in a
low voice. “I hate that gambling was more important to you than me,
your only son. I was just a kid, for fuck’s sake, and you got in so
deep someone tried to kill you with a firebomb that ruined my leg.
Then you tried to take the most precious thing in the world from
me. You died too fast. You deserved to suffer for a hundred years.
It’s not much comfort to me that you’re not breathing anymore, but
I’m walking away from you today, and I’m not going to let the
shadow of your ugly behavior rule my life anymore.”

He lifted his head and howled. Triumph.
Regret. Hope.

The sound echoed in the barn. Adam stared for
a moment longer at his father and then he turned and walked away.
He didn’t say anything to the males as he passed by them, their
heads lowered in a gesture of respect. When he was out of the barn,
he looked up at the morning sky and took a deep breath of the crisp
winter air.

He moved to Dani, and she jumped into his
arms, wrapping her legs and arms around him, dropping her head to
his shoulder and weeping. He held her close and stood for several
minutes in silence, thankful to have her back.

Acksel, who had been speaking to Dragos in
the barn, joined them with Dragos and Liam. “We should get on the
road. The herd has business to take care of,” he said.

“I need to find my grandparents’ car so I can
get it back to them,” Adam told him.

“It needs to be cleaned to make sure there
isn’t anything that will lead someone back to us,” Liam said. He
opened his cell and said, “If you give me your grandparents’
address, we’ll deliver it to them in a few days.”

“I need to tell them about…him.”

“Of course. We’ll just leave it outside of
their home with the keys in it.”

Adam had to use his phone to look up their
address, which he rattled off to Liam. Then he said, “Thank you for
freeing my mate and keeping her safe.”

“Tesli wants to keep in touch. Perhaps if we
ever come by Wilde Creek we’ll be able to visit,” Liam said.

Dani lifted her head. “I’d like that.”

“Me too,” Adam said.

Dani and Adam said goodbye to the reindeer
and followed Malachi and Jeremiah back to the SUV. Acksel spoke to
Dragos for several more minutes before joining them. Dani didn’t
want to let go of him, so Adam carefully got into the second row of
the SUV and held her on his lap.

“If I never see a petting zoo again, it’ll be
too soon,” Malachi said as he made a U-turn in the street and left
the park behind. Adam glanced behind him and saw a plume of smoke
billow into the sky. The park was out of the way enough that no one
would notice the smoke for a while. With her abductors dead and the
park about to be destroyed, at least no other shifters would be
abducted and sold from that location.

“I love you,” Adam whispered, nuzzling Dani’s
throat.

“I love you too.”

* * * * *

Although Adam wanted to put the whole ugly
business behind them, he knew he needed to tell his grandparents
what had happened. He called his grandmother, wanting to get it
over with so he could close this chapter of their lives.

“You found him?” she asked, but he could hear
in her voice that she didn’t hold out any hope of him being
alive.

“He was killed with the others who had
kidnapped my mate.” He opened his mouth to say something
comforting, but he realized he didn’t have anything nice to say. He
hadn’t been there when his father drew his last breath, so he
didn’t know – had he begged for his life, had he tried to promise
to change his ways so the reindeer would let him live, did he ask
for them to let his mom know he loved her?

“It’s okay, Adam,” his grandmother said,
drawing him from his dark thoughts. “You don’t have to tell me
anything more. I knew one day that we would get a call like this.
Parents always hold such hope for their children, and I always
wished that he would have a change of heart. Losing a mate is an
awful thing for a wolf to go through, but he shouldn’t have let his
grief take over his life the way he did. And we failed you. I
understand that you might hate us for the male he became, but if
you ever want to come see us, know that you can and that we’d
welcome it.”

“Take care,” Adam said, ending the call.

Dani burrowed against him and rested her face
against his throat. He could feel the warmth of her breath as she
spoke quietly. “You don’t want to see them again, do you?”

“No.”

“Good. You’re amazing, and they don’t deserve
to be in our lives.”

“Our kids will have your mom to be their
grandma.”

She lifted her head and stared at him, her
blue eyes luminous. “Do you think our kids will be reindeer or
wolves?”

He tucked a lock of her golden hair behind
her ear. “Wolf DNA is dominant, but it would depend a lot on
whether they took more after you or me. Either way, we’ll love them
and protect them.”

“I hope they’re fierce like their dad.”

“And beautiful like their mom.”

She smiled, and it made all the darkness
inside him dissipate. Things could have gone so differently;
instead of seeing his father dead, it could have been Dani. He
wrapped his arms more securely around her and released a deep sigh.
They were going home, together, and that was all that should
matter.