“I can’t promise anything, Bishop.”
He wasn’t finished pushing Colin. Too many lives would be affected. “There’s a half-human woman named Rachel who is an excellent nurse. She’s been a great help to Dr. Mike these last few days.”
“I would take that under consideration. I’m not heartless.”
“Devlin is in love with her. He’s found his mate. He hasn’t asked for permission to marry yet, but I expect he will once the matter of Alpha is settled.” Devlin’s situation was unique in that run law forbid any but Gray Wolves from marrying humans. Laws simply did not exist forbidding a run loup from marrying a half-breed, because half-breeds were not part of the run. Ever.
Until now.
Colin’s eyebrows rose. “You would grant a high-ranking Black enforcer permission to marry a half-breed, knowing full well he would never have offspring? Half-breeds don’t belong in sanctuary towns by law, much less marrying a Black Wolf.”
“A hundred years ago, humans were forbidden from marry loup period. A human discovering our existence was punishable by death. Now Gray Wolves can marry them. Nothing changes if you don’t challenge a law.”
“Do you really believe runs are stronger for the humans they include?”
Bishop thought of the forty-three humans in Cornerstone, all very loyal souls who had the odd luck to be part of the town. “Yes. Humans aren’t weak, Colin, they’re simply different.”
“Their children are inferior.”
“Our humans are forbidden from having children, and they know that. No one in Cornerstone has ever broken that law.”
“Potomac broke it upside down and sideways, and now the survivors are here.”
“Yes, they are, because they had nowhere else to go. Families were torn apart. All anyone is thinking about right now is survival.”
“And a year from now? When one of the Potomac half-breeds falls in love with another of your Black Wolves? Will you lose another chance of offspring? Children are the only way our runs survive, Bishop.”
“I’m fully aware of that, Colin.”
“Your own brother is marrying a half-breed. A child of the Alpha, a strong Black Wolf, left to a barren future.”
Bishop bristled. “No one knows for sure if Rook and Brynn can have children. There’s never been anyone like Brynn before.”
“You’re setting a precedent that could dismantle everything that’s been built here. Have you considered that?”
“We’re not so weak that a few childless marriages will destroy us. You’re speculating a future that most here can’t even think about yet. Our Alpha is dead. We still have a deadly enemy snarling at our doorstep. Most of us can’t think past tomorrow, much less a year from now.”
“And I respect that, I do.” Colin placed his palms flat on the table. “Look, I can’t make any promises about the half-breeds you have here. Quite frankly, I don’t believe I need to justify any decision I may or may not make in the future. In a few days time, one of us will be dead and what the other wants won’t matter.”
Bishop’s temper couldn’t find its way to the surface, held down by the gentle weight of Colin’s fear. Colin wasn’t positive of his own victory. Once again, Bishop couldn’t make himself hate the man.
“Fine,” Bishop said. “Thank you for your honesty. I prefer dealing with people who are straightforward. Hidden agendas piss me off.”
“Likewise.”
Done with the conversation, Bishop stood and collected his mug. “Are you sure you don’t want to go to the soccer game?”
“Positive. Enjoy your time with your people, Bishop.”
Nothing stopped the unspoken words from filtering through his mind.
Enjoy your time while you still have it.
“My apologies, gentlemen,” Agnes said. Her voice was a welcome interruption from the patio doors. “Alpha McQueen, you’ll want to come with me downstairs.” Her smile made his heart flutter with hope as he followed her without question.
Agnes descended the basement stairs at an agonizingly slow pace. Bishop forced himself to stay quiet and not shove his way past her. He had no idea what to expect in the basement. As they neared the closed door, the flutter beneath his breastbone gave one solid hint—someone was shifting. Panting and soft keening found his ears. Two different voices.
At the bottom of the stairs, Agnes turned the knob with care. The sounds grew louder as the door swung quietly open. She stepped to the side, and Bishop finally understood.
Knight and Shay lay close together on the floor, separated by the iron bars, both nearly finished shifting back to skin. Their spines rippled, the fur almost completely gone, bare skin covered in sweat. Shay cried out as her jaw realigned.
The fear that had held Bishop’s heart in a firm grip loosened, allowing it to beat at a furious gallop. Joy took its place, along with hope he hadn’t dared acknowledge before now. Shay had reached him. Knight was coming back to them.
As the flutter disappeared and the shift ended, Knight went completely still, his face turned away from them, toward Shay. Shay blinked hard, then skated a pale hand out to brush Knight’s knuckles through the bars. She whispered something.
Agnes shook out a blanket and draped it over Shay’s back. The action spurred Bishop into motion. He fetched the key from its hook by the door and opened the cage. He snatched a blanket from the pile by Shay’s folded clothes and took it inside. Knight hadn’t moved at all. His back rose and fell with each breath, the only sign of life, and some of that hope dimmed.
“Knight?” He knelt next to his brother and covered him with the thick, flannel blanket. “Knight, can you hear me?”
Nothing. He glanced at Shay, whose wide eyes betrayed her exhaustion. “Can you walk?”
“Tired,” she whispered.
“Agnes, get someone to help you take Shay upstairs. Get some food into her and then get her into bed.”
“Aye, will do, Alpha,” Agnes said, then hustled off.
Bishop checked Knight’s pulse. Steady but not strong. His skin was clammy and cool. Bishop carefully rolled him onto his back, tucking the blanket around to keep him warm. Knight looked like he was sleeping, finally at peace, and that worried Bishop.
“Can’t feel him,” Shay said. “Always could before.”
Surprised, Bishop studied the woman who’d saved his brother’s sanity. “His beast, you mean?”
“His beast only recently. Knight himself since I woke up here.” She blinked hard, eyelids drooping. “So tired.”
“Thank you, Shay, for doing this. You brought him back when no one else could get near him.”
“Had to. He saved me first.”
Agnes returned with Rook and Jillian, whose smile warmed Bishop deep inside. He needed that smile. Needed her near.
“How is he?” Rook asked.
“Unconscious.” Bishop tilted his head at Shay. “Can you take her upstairs? She needs to rest.”
“Sure. I called Dr. Mike. He’s on his way over.”
“Thank you.”
Shay insisted on standing up by herself, then immediately slumped against the bars. Rook whisked her off her feet and into his arms. Agnes arranged the blanket around her before Rook ascended the stairs.
Jillian crouched beside Bishop, her scent overwhelming his nose. Burning in his lungs. Heating his blood. So many different emotions had tangled up inside of him, and all he wanted to do was be in her arms. “Shay brought him back,” she said.
“Yes. Now he needs to wake up.”
“His body has been through hell, Bishop. He may be unconscious for a while.”
He pressed his palm against Knight’s forehead. “He’s too cold.”
“The floor’s cold. We’ll get him into a nice warm bed soon. It’ll be okay.” She wrapped her hand around the base of his neck, giving a firm, grounding squeeze. “Have faith in that, okay?”
Bishop wanted her faith so badly. He glanced at Agnes, whose age-lined face was pinched. Concerned. “What is it?”
“The lad’s deeply unconscious,” Agnes said. “I can’t sense him or his emotions.”
More of Bishop’s hope dimmed. “For a while Knight couldn’t sense anything from Rook, back when Mitch Geary nearly killed him. His body’s healing, that’s all.”
“Of course.” Agnes didn’t seem convinced.
Bishop shoved away her uncertainty. He knew his brother. Despite the emotional war he’d been battling, Knight had overcome his feral beast and come back to them. He wasn’t finished fighting yet.
“We might as well meet Dr. Mike upstairs,” Jillian said. “Get Knight off this cement.”
“Right.”
Physically Knight wasn’t injured, but using a fireman’s carry felt too cruel, too impersonal after everything he’d been through. Bishop hooked his arms beneath Knight’s armpits, while Jillian managed his legs. Agnes helped them adjust the blanket to keep him warm. The ascent seemed to take forever, his arm aching the entire time, but it was truly less than a minute. Dr. Mike met them in the upstairs hall, took one look, and instructed them to take Knight directly to his house while he checked on Shay.
The street was quiet thanks to the impromptu soccer game, and there was no sign of Colin or his men. Agnes followed, and they settled Knight into a downstairs exam room, since all of the beds upstairs were still full. Bishop tucked extra blankets around his brother, hating how quiet and still he was. Hating how helpless Bishop was to fix it.
Rook burst into the room, slightly breathless from what was probably a hard run from one house to the next. He moved opposite Bishop, intent on their brother. “Anything?”
“No,” Bishop said. “Agnes can’t sense him, either.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means the lad’s deeply unconscious,” Agnes said. “It could be that his mind is healing itself and he needs peace for that to happen. A place still far away from the emotions of the run.”
“But he’ll come out of it.” Rook didn’t phrase it as a question.
“Aye, let’s hope so.”
They stayed until Dr. Mike shooed them all into the waiting room so he could run some tests. Bishop couldn’t make himself sit still, so he paced. The last time he’d been there like that, he’d been waiting to hear if Rook would survive his wounds. He hadn’t allowed himself to feel the fear that night. He’d known how strong his little brother was, how determined to make their father proud. Bishop had had faith that Rook would live.
Losing their father had shaken Bishop’s faith in his family’s ability to overcome any obstacles. Father’s death reminded him that they were mortal. Fallible. Sometimes even fragile. He wanted to have faith in Knight’s survival, and in his own future as Cornerstone’s Alpha.
He didn’t.
“Take a walk with me,” Jillian said.
Bishop took three more steps before he realized she was talking to him. “A walk?”
“You need it. Rook can call you if there’s any change.”
He bit back a snarly comment about her knowing what he needed. He didn’t mean it and Jillian didn’t deserve it. “Fine.”
The cooler twilight air did little to calm his fraying nerves or settle his raging beast. Jillian nudged him down the sidewalk away from the center of town. She stayed close, keeping a slow pace that prevented him from breaking into a run. He needed to run. He hadn’t shifted and run in what felt like ages. The last time he’d indulged had been the night Rook nearly died. Despite his arm being mostly mended and strong enough for running, he couldn’t risk it.
“Something besides Knight is bothering you.” Jillian’s voice broke the silence around them. The street ended at a wooden fence, and beyond that was a lightly treed field that went on for a few dozen yards before melting into the thickness of the forest. Little light from the distant houses reached them, painting the area in shadows.
“There’s a list as long as my arm of things bothering me.”
“Right.” She leaned against the fence, arms crossed, and pinned him with the intent stare he’d come to recognize as her “don’t bullshit me” face. “How’d your chat with Colin go?”
Damn she was good. “I like the guy.”
“Really?”
“Why does that surprise you?”
“He’s your enemy, not your friend.”
Bishop braced his elbows on the top of the fence, facing the opposite direction. Toward the forest. The breeze pushed her apple blossom scent his way, caressing his skin and livening his senses. She was only a few inches away. So easy to touch. “He’s a loup doing what he’s told by his Alpha.”
She angled her neck to look down at him. “Meaning?”
“Exactly what it sounds like.” He’d already said too much, and Jillian was too smart not to put it together.
“Colin is challenging you because his father told him to?”
Bishop didn’t reply to that. “I’ll make you a deal. I’ll tell you all about it after Colin is beaten.”
“It’s that serious?”
“It’s that personal. For both of us.”
“I can accept that. But you know that anything you tell me in confidence stays that way. You can trust me.”
“I do trust you, Jillian. Implicitly. I promised Colin.”
She was silent a long while, then nodded. “All right.”
Bishop allowed the simple calm of having her close sooth his nerves, content by her nearness—for now. He needed more. He wanted her so badly but he couldn’t have her. Not yet. Not in the physical way his body and beast craved. “Do you trust me the same way, Jillian?”
“Yes, I do.”
She’d either trust him, punch him, or walk away. He needed to know. “Will you tell me about the baby?”
Beside him, the strong woman he’d known these last few weeks crumpled.
***
All of the joy Jillian had savored while in Bishop’s presence fled from the darkness of his question. She sagged against the fence, heart pounding, angry at herself for having commented about loss at all. Her anger over his monopolization of grief and love had loosened her tongue that afternoon, and she couldn’t take it back. Avoiding the question would hurt him, and he’d been hurt enough.
“Elizabeth.” Saying the name, even two years later, still shocked her heart with grief. “I named her after my mother.” She turned and leaned against the fence, mimicking Bishop’s stance. It allowed her to study the field instead of him. “Derek and I had only been married for a year. Elizabeth was a welcome surprise.”
“A baby made out of love always is.”
“My dad was so excited to be a grandfather. I had to threaten bodily harm to keep him from announcing it before the first trimester was over.” Joe Reynolds’s unbridled joy at the news of his first grandchild was as fresh in her mind as the pain of his death. The two emotions warred inside of her, leaving a tangled mess of uncertainty. Her eyes burned. “I was five months along when he told us he planned to retire within the next year and officially turn the run over to Derek.”
“You both must have been so happy.”
“We were. We decided to go out and celebrate with dinner and a movie. We hadn’t gone out to a movie in ages.” The burning left two hot, wet trails down her cheeks. “Our car was hit by a drunk driver. Derek was killed. I was out of it for weeks because of complications with the human medications. It wasn’t until I finally got out of the hospital and home that I understood I’d miscarried my daughter.
“It took a long time for me to come back from that. I think getting away from Springwell these last few weeks helped me a bit. I left behind so many bad memories, but now all I can remember are the good ones that burned down with my town.”
Bishop’s hand curled around hers. “Your memories aren’t gone, sweetheart. The good and the bad, they’re part of you. It’s how you treat those memories that truly defines you.”
Jillian’s stomach ached with an emptiness she’d never been able to fill. “I miss her every day.”
“Of course you do. You don’t have to stop missing her. She was part of you.”
“Just like Victoria’s baby was a part of Knight. The baby’s death hurt him, no matter how the child came to be.”
He growled. “How it came to be? My brother was raped, Jillian, that’s how the baby came to be. He was lured out, tied up, fed from, and raped, maybe more than once, and the whole time I was fucking useless in the quarterly cage.”
His rage prickled across her skin, stirring her beast into a frenzy—a need to avenge his pain and punish those who’d caused it. Her beast had no enemy to fight this time. This was all internal. Bishop’s heart was breaking for his fractured family, and she had to keep him whole. No matter what.
“What happened to Knight was not your fault, Bishop.” She tugged him around to face her, palms cupping his cheeks. His copper-flecked eyes glittered with tears that didn’t spill. That had probably never spilled. “Say it’s not your fault.”
“The day our mother died I swore I’d protect them both.” His voice was rough, stretched thin. “I promised her.”
“You can’t choose your quarterly. It isn’t your fault.”
“I should have made Knight talk to me.”
“It isn’t your fault.”
“Stop saying that!” He jerked away from her touch, then leapt over the fence.
She wasn’t letting him off that easily. Not this time. She jumped the fence with ease, and then stalked after him. “It isn’t your fault.”
He whirled, arm swinging, blinded by rage. Jillian ducked the blow, grabbed his wrist, and twisted his arm up behind his back. Then she sent him face-first into a wide oak tree. She pressed her body against his, savoring his warmth, his pine scent. “It isn’t your fault.”
Bishop’s snarl meant war, but she had no time to prepare for the hard shove that tumbled them both backward. She landed hard on her ass, Bishop on top of her, a sudden weight that made her lungs heave. He rolled off and away, coming up in a crouch. Panting. Intently focused on her in a way that was both arousing and terrifying.
A predator sizing up its prey.
The light and noise from town was so far away, outside of this bubble of time surrounding them. Making everything else melt away. Only they existed, and Jillian’s beast was tired of ignoring her mate.
She growled, as much a challenge as an invitation.
His nostrils flared and his eyes narrowed to slits. Even in the gloom, she saw his hesitation. Brain battling instinct. Just this once, logic could go fuck itself. She tackled him to the ground, pleased to have caught him off-guard. Her thigh pressed against a thickening erection, and need coiled tight in her belly. Her blood heated and pulsed.