Jace (20 page)

They crossed the short landing. From the bedroom to the left, Miri could hear the sounds of a woman speaking in soft tones. More a murmur than actual words, the sounds and rhythm were clearly meant to soothe. Miri peeked into the room. Allie was sitting in the chair with Joseph on her lap. He was wrapped in a bright blue baby blanket, his head tucked into the crook of her elbow.

She knocked. Allie looked up. Her smile was as soft as the baby’s skin looked as she motioned them forward with a flick of her fingers. “He’s almost asleep.”

Miri tiptoed over to her side and about melted when she saw his face, his lashes fanned across his cheeks, his little mouth parted slightly. “Aw, he looks like an angel.”

“He looks like Caleb.”

He did. Even though the baby was too thin and his perfect skin paler than it should be, Miri could see Caleb in his chin and the shape of his eyes, and Allie in his forehead and his cheekbones. There was no doubt who his parents were and, looking at him curled in Allie’s arms, no doubt that he was loved.

Allie looked up at her from under the thick fringe of her bangs, her eyes looking very blue. “How’s your little one doing?”

“Good. Jace says she’s telepathic.”

“How cool! Can you hear her?”

“Not yet.” Probably because they weren’t bonded.

Allie smiled serenely. “Don’t worry, you will.”

Miri flipped her hair behind her shoulder. “Can I quote you on that?”

“Absolutely.” She glanced down at little Joseph. “Are you going to be able to do that someday, urchin?”

Joseph made a little smacking noise with his lips.

“Urchin?”

Allie shrugged. “After the way he’s been keeping me up, I didn’t want to give him too cute a nickname. He can’t think both his parents are pushovers.”

“I’m guessing the pushover would be Caleb?” As hard as that was to believe.

“Beyond a goner.” Allie shook her head, kissing Joseph lightly on his slightly furrowed brow. “He actually worries ahead of time, if you can believe it.” She rolled her eyes. “Having him around is like trying to sleep in a hospital. Every time Joseph starts to drift off, Caleb wakes him up to check something.”

“That’s kind of self-defeating, isn’t it?”

Allie snorted. It wasn’t a ladylike sound. “Totally. I sent him off to fetch you so Joseph could go to sleep.”

“I was wondering why you sent for me.”

“I needed saving.”

“Glad I could help.”

“You could always just threaten to withhold Caleb’s bear paws pastries to keep him in line,” Raisa suggested.

“I’m hoping to avoid going to extremes.”

Allie gave the chair a little rock, cradling Joseph in her arms, looking so contented and at peace it hurt Miri just to look at her. She wanted that, with her baby. With Peanut.

“Miri?” Raisa asked.

Miri blinked. She must have been projecting emotion. The tears she’d been fighting ever since Peanut came into the house burned her eyes.

She motioned to Allie. “I just wish I could be like that.”

“With Peanut?”

Allie glanced up. “Seriously, you need to give her a better name.”

“I need to do a lot of things, starting with being able to hold her.”

“Still having the panic attacks?” Allie asked.

“I did make it to the side of her bed.”

“That’s improvement.”

“But not enough.”

“You’ve got to walk before you can run,” Allie offered.

“I’m sick and tired of being damaged.” She ran her fingers through her hair. They caught on snarls. It was the absolute last straw. She yanked them through, accomplishing nothing more than pain in her scalp and creating a mat. “Damn it!”

Raisa grabbed her hand and put an end to her yanking, drawing her hand down and untangling the strands from her fingers. Her gaze met Miri’s. “You’ve got to give yourself time to heal.”

The only thing that kept Miri from lashing out was the fact that Raisa had been there, too, knew what she was going through, because she must have gone through some part of it herself. “I don’t want to be like this,” she whispered. “I want to be strong again.”

“You’re one of the strongest women I know.”

She bit her lip. “Not inside, not where it counts.”

“Inside, outside, and everywhere else.”

Raisa gave her a hug. The first they’d ever been able to share. Miri just stood there as Raisa’s arms came around her, paralyzed by the past, a desperate voice in her mind screaming a warning,
Don’t let them see. Don’t let them see.

Raisa’s voice.

“Fuck them,” Raisa whispered, picking up the chant in her head and bringing it into the light. “Let them see. They couldn’t touch us then, and they sure as heck can’t touch us now.”

Miri brought her hands up, shaking inside and out, emotion pouring out of her on a harsh sob. Feeling like the ground was disappearing beneath her feet, she hugged Raisa back, for a moment suspended over nothingness, trapped with no hope. And then, something shifted inside her, came forward from the hiding place where she’d buried it. Something she’d hidden so well she’d lost track of it. As it snapped into place, she could breathe. She dragged air into her lungs, hugged Raisa as hard as she’d wanted to hug her when they’d been imprisoned together. “Definitely, fuck them.”

Energy brushed along the edges of her mind.

Miri?

She stepped back and wiped the tears from her cheeks with the heels of her hands.

Jace?

You okay?

Miri looked at Raisa and Allie, who were crying right along with her, then looked inside herself for the missing piece that had come back. A fragile piece of herself. She took a breath and grabbed hold of Jace’s energy, concentrating, following it back.

I think I really am.

She felt his surprise that she’d answered and then his hope at the emotion behind the words. His energy came at her harder, stronger, wrapping her in warmth.

Damn it. Come home so I can hug you.

Miri walked over to the window and pulled the lace curtain back, looking at the cabin they shared across the way. Home.

She wasn’t trapped and alone anymore in that place where any caring led to suffering, where any weakness was exploited. This wasn’t an illusion. She was free of the Sanctuary. She had a future. Jace had given it back to her. And he wanted her home so he could hug her. She wanted that hug, but she needed a little more time to herself before she could share it with him.

I’ll be home soon.

An hour later, Allie’s cell phone rang. As she listened, her smile slipped until it became a full-out frown. She snapped the phone closed. “That was Tobias.”

“Tobias has your cell phone number?” Raisa asked, sitting forward in the wingback chair. “Does Caleb know?”

“Caleb doesn’t need to know everything.”

“What’d he want?” Miri asked, a queasy feeling starting in her stomach.

Allie tossed the phone on the couch beside her. “Apparently the McClarens have had a meeting, the results of which they wish to discuss with Jace.”

Raisa uncurled her feet from beneath her. “In regard to what?”

“They want to discuss Peanut’s situation.”

“She doesn’t have a situation.”

The sick feeling in Miri’s stomach grew. Pack law was absolute. Parents had a right to handle the deformed child any way they wanted. They could accept it, love it, or give it back to Mother Nature. In the absence of a parent, a pack taking in a child had the option of following the parents’ original choice or making a new one.

Miri took a breath, held it until she knew her voice would be steady, and then released it. “Yes, she does. The pack can decide that the parents’ original wishes should be followed.”

“Derek would never let that happen,” Allie protested.

“Derek isn’t here,” Raisa pointed out.

“What happens then?”

Allie and Raisa both stared at her while they waited for her to answer. They weren’t going to like what she had to say. “In that case, the pack could require the council to make the decision, and that’s a majority rules verdict.”

A council decision could go badly for Peanut. There was no doubt that the little girl Jace loved so much had been abandoned. No doubt the Sanctuary had taken advantage of that, and experimented on her, changing her from what she had been—fully were. It wasn’t Peanut’s fault they’d altered her chemistry, but the fact that she wasn’t fully were anymore would be enough for some members to want to enforce the parents’ original choice.

“Jace won’t allow anything to happen to Peanut.”

“I’ll take this moment to point out that this compound is full of weres,” Allie interjected. “The Johnsons are outnumbered.”

“That won’t stop the brothers from protecting Peanut if it comes to that,” Raisa said, her talons extending.

Allie didn’t look any less fierce. “And warring among ourselves will accomplish, what? We need a plan, not a pointless fight. So”—she glanced at both women—“what are we going to do?”

This was all her fault. “We aren’t going to do anything.” Miri walked over to the window. “What I should have done in the first place.”

“And what would that be?”

Only a sliver of moonlight lit the courtyard. It was enough for her were vision to see quite clearly. Jace and Caleb were standing on the porch of the cabin. A group of weres approached. Even from here she could see the tension in Jace’s shoulders, see the way his hands were laid protectively across the baby’s back. He’d die for Peanut and not regret it for a moment. A ripple went through the weres. It increased as Caleb came to stand beside him, feet braced shoulder width apart. One thing the pack understood and respected was a fight to the death for family. And from the way Jace was holding Peanut, it was clear she was family. Unfortunately for Jace, without a female were to speak for the child, his claim was void. “I need to set a misunderstanding right.”

Allie came up to the window as Caleb invited the men inside. “And what would that misunderstanding be?”

Miri headed for the door. “That Jace is in this alone.”

Raisa grabbed her coat. Allie scooped up Joseph and smiled. “Now you’re talking like a Johnson.”

ALL
sound stopped when the women walked into the living room of the small cabin. Everywhere Miri looked, male weres stood with shoulders squared in a way that said they had an opinion and they wanted it heard. Caleb, Jace, Jared, and Slade stood with the same determination. She hadn’t known the last two would be here, but it figured. What touched one Johnson brother touched them all. They were amazingly pack-like in their behavior. It was always comforting to realize that.

Tobias stepped forward, blocking their path, a slight smile on his face. “This is a council meeting.”

Allie breezed past him, striding through the group like a queen walking to her throne, undeterred by the frowning weres around her. She even went so far as to wiggle five fingers at an elder were and give him a saucy grin.

“Allie…” Caleb warned, his face a bit too serious, probably to counter the smile ghosting the corner of his mouth.

“What?” She looked innocent. “Just because it’s a council meeting doesn’t mean I can’t say hi to the people I know and like.”

Caleb caught her hand as she got close, pulling her in to his side and dropping a kiss on the top of her head. “Hate to break it to you, but pretty much, it does.”

“I’m sure kissing your wife at council meetings isn’t considered appropriate, either.”

This time it was Tobias who answered. “Pretty much.”

Raisa walked through the men with the same confidence in her step as Allie had showed, her gaze holding her husband’s as love radiated between them in an arc of energy so pure Miri could almost see it. “You-all really have to modernize your meetings,” she informed the weres in general.

“We kind of like things just as they are,” someone called from the back.

Allie gave the man a dismissive glance as she leaned back against her husband’s chest, little Joseph snug in his sling. “People always say that when it’s time to change.”

It was an intriguing idea, that the highest resistance occurred right before change. Miri looked over at Jace standing there between his brothers, prepared to fight for what he wanted. Had he truly always wanted her?

Yes.

The mental answer didn’t spark that familiar dart of fear and knee-jerk denial inside her. That was a good sign. Maybe she was healing. Maybe she could do this.

A murmur of displeasure went through the crowd, flicking over her upbringing. As if echoing the disapproval, pain flared in her abdomen. Across the room, Jace’s gaze met hers. Not with passion, but with a question. She didn’t know the answer. She didn’t know if she had any backbone left. Peanut fussed. With a rub of his big hand on her tiny back, Jace soothed her before handing the baby to Raisa. All the while he watched Miri, the question still in his eyes.

She pushed away from the doorjamb. If there was one thing she’d learned in the last year, it was that one couldn’t walk away from one’s heritage. The reality was that she was an Alpha were female. She had responsibilities to her pack, to the other wolves around her, to Jace, and to the baby he held in his arms. The baby who needed her now as much as her own baby needed somebody to be holding her. Miri stepped into the crowd. She would find the backbone to do what needed to be done.

The men immediately closed in around her, pressing close. She wasn’t surprised. Instinct alone would have them blocking her access to a vampire, but that reflex was totally out of place in this instance. Jace was her mate. Pack law gave none of them the right to come between him and her.

She growled low in her throat. A warning. On the other side of the crowd, she heard a “Jesus” and then Caleb’s caution to someone: “Stay back.” Even she knew that wasn’t going to happen. Jace wouldn’t let anything come between him and her, and the weres were obligated to put up at least a token fight. If for no other reason than to make a customary display, to prove her worth to them. From the snarling, to sounds of fists meeting flesh, Jace didn’t care much for custom. Two seconds later, several male weres were tossed to the side and Jace was beside her. His face was half morphed and his fangs were exposed, and when he reached for her, his talons glowed dully in the lamplight. He was a very scary vampire. The were nearest her snarled a warning. But he was also her Jace. She placed her hand in his.