Now that he thought about it, Jesse didn’t remember his parents ever sharing a room. They must have at some point. They had five children. But Jesse didn’t remember it. He had been just a child of nine years old when Rachel McCaffrey had died giving birth to Jake. Honestly, he barely remembered her. She was just a distant memory.
So, why was someone in her old room?
After his mother passed, the room had been off-limits to Jesse and his brothers. Jesse remembered his father going into a rage the one and only time he had tried to go inside. Andrew had whipped Jesse hard enough that he spent two days in bed recovering. That was one memory he would never forget.
After Jesse banished his father, the room had remained vacant. It wasn’t that Jesse was trying to preserve the memory of his dead mother. He just didn’t have a use for the room. But from the noise he could hear inside the room, someone did.
The racket from inside the room grew louder as Jesse stepped closer to the door. It sounded like someone was looking for something. Jesse racked his brain and tried to remember if his mother’s stuff had been packed away after her death, but he just didn’t know. Since he wasn’t allowed inside the room after her death, he had no way of knowing.
Damn.
The door was closed. Whoever was inside would hear Jesse the second he opened the door. Jesse would have to confront them on his own and hope the element of surprise worked in his favor. It was too late to go get anyone else.
Jesse grabbed the door handle and took a deep breath. He pushed the door open and stepped inside the room he hadn’t seen in nearly twenty years. Jesse’s claws shot out and his canines dropped. He growled the moment he spotted the man on the far side of the room.
“I wondered how long it would take you to join me, Son.”
Jesse’s jaw clenched. It took him a moment to be able to speak. “Father, what are you doing here? You’re not allowed to step foot on this ranch.”
Andrew McCaffrey’s face darkened as he kicked out at a box lying at his feet. The box scooted across the floor several inches before coming to stop at the edge of a chair. “This is my ranch. I built it.”
Jesse felt his sharp claws dig into the palms of his hands as he clenched them at his sides. “You were banished.”
“You can banish me from the pack, but you cannot banish me from my own property.”
“This ranch is no longer your property. You lost the right to this territory when I beat you.”
Jesse’s eyes almost bugged out of his head with shock at the swiftness with which his father moved. One moment he was across the room. The next, he stood in front of Jesse, his hand wrapped around Jesse’s throat. Jesse grunted as pain shot down his back when his father slammed him into the wall.
“I will never relinquish control of this ranch to you.”
“You—” Jesse licked his lips. They suddenly felt as dry as the Sahara Desert. Fear swamped him as he remembered exactly how violent his father could be when he was angry. “You don’t get a choice. I challenged you. I beat you. I won the ranch and the pack in a fair fight.”
“Fair? Bah!” Andrew slammed Jesse into the wall again and then spun away, stalking across the room. He lifted a box off the floor and started searching through it. “You were lucky. There was nothing fair about that fight.”
Jesse bristled with anger as he rubbed his throat where his father had grabbed him. It had been a fair fight. Jesse had gotten tired of watching Andrew McCaffrey run roughshod over everyone at the ranch, striking out at the smallest infraction.
When he had beaten Jake yet again, it had been the last straw. Jesse had gathered his brothers together to keep Jake safe and then confronted his father, with his brothers as witnesses. He hadn’t thought at the time he had a chance in hell of beating his father, but he couldn’t watch Jake get beaten one more time. It was his duty to protect his baby brother, even from their father.
He could care less that Jake was the omega of the pack.
“You need to leave, Father.”
“This is my ranch,” Andrew snapped back. “I’m not leaving.”
“Yes, you are.” Jesse advanced across the room, intent on making his father leave. He didn’t need the complication of having Andrew McCaffrey on the ranch when he was trying to find Sam.
Sam!
Jesse suddenly stopped as a terrible thought filled his mind. “Where’s Sam? What have you done with him?”
“I haven’t done anything with that stupid boy,” Andrew snapped as he grabbed another box and started riffling through it. “You never should have brought him back to the ranch after I told him to leave. He’s bad news, Son.”
After a moment, Andrew tossed aside the box that he had been searching through and reached for another one. It was obvious that he was looking for something.
“Wha—”
“You can’t have two omegas in the same pack, Jessup.”
Jesse gritted his teeth at his father’s use of his birth name. He hated being called Jessup. No one ever called him that except his father, and it was usually followed by a beating of some sort, which put Jesse on edge. He had no doubt that his father was planning something.
“What makes you think Sam is an omega?” Jesse asked. “He’s not even Lycan.”
“That remains to be seen.”
“Is that why you made him leave?”
Andrew suddenly spun around, dropping the box in his hands and pointing his finger at Jesse. “I know what you did, Jessup. I saw you kiss him.”
“So I kissed Sam. So what?”
“I refuse to allow that type of behavior in this pack.”
“You made Sam leave because you don’t like the idea of two men kissing?”
“I could care less if you kissed every man on the planet, but I will not allow you to take up with an omega.”
Jesse felt his eyebrows shoot up to the top of his head but he was unable to stop the surprised gesture. “You didn’t want me kissing Sam because you think he’s an omega?”
“I know he’s an omega, just like that no-good brother of yours.” Andrew’s lips twisted into a small snarl as he reached down for the box he had dropped on the floor. “Both of them should have been strangled at birth.”
Andrew stared at Jesse for a second with a sardonic expression that sent Jesse’s temper soaring before resuming his search. Jesse was furious at the vulnerability he felt when facing his father, the demon from his past.
Alarm rippled along Jesse’s spine when Andrew suddenly held up a small black box. The delight on Andrew’s face as he gazed at the box belied his evil words from just a moment ago.
“Is that what you’ve been searching for?” Jesse asked softly. He was more afraid of the answer than he was afraid of his father. The fascination with which his father stared at the box scared the crap out of him. “What is it?”
“It’s mine!” Andrew shouted as he clutched the small box to his chest.
Jesse frowned. Confusion crawled along his skin like tiny red ants, biting at him. He had never seen his father look so fanatical before. His eyes seemed wide and kind of glazed over, almost as if some drug was floating through his system. He held the box like it was the answer to his very salvation.
“What’s in the box, Father?”
Andrew started backing up. His eyes darted from side to side as if he expected someone or something to suddenly jump out at him. The fanatical gleam in his eyes was starting to turn even more intense.
“You can’t have it!” Andrew shouted.
Jesse wasn’t even sure his father knew who he was talking to anymore. There was something about that black box that had the man totally freaking out. Jesse knew he couldn’t allow his father to leave with it. He needed to know what was inside.
“Give me the box, Father.”
Andrew held the box against his chest as he ran for the double closet doors behind him. Jesse jumped after him, grabbing his father around the shoulders and spinning him around. He reached for the box, getting his clawed fingers wrapped around the edges just as the door behind him crashed open.
“Father?” came a whispered question from behind Jesse.
Jesse could hear the confusion in Nate’s voice, but he didn’t have time to stop and reassure his brother, not when Andrew was trying to peel his fingers off of the box. “Help me, Nate.”
Jesse was glad his brother was there when Andrew raised his hand to hit him. Nate caught their father’s arm before it could descend and flung it back, pushing Andrew back at the same time. Andrew’s fingers slid off the box as he stumbled back through the closet doors.
Jesse quickly handed the box off to Nate. “Hold that and don’t let anyone get it,” he said as he followed his father into the closet. Andrew was screeching at the top of his lungs, swiping out with his claws at anything he could reach. He was clearly in a rage.
Jesse tried to dodge his father’s claws by ducking down and going in low. He still felt his long, painful scratches in his back as his father swung out at him. He knew his back was bleeding and his shirt was in tatters. It didn’t matter, though. He just had to stop his father.
Jesse grabbed his father around the waist and took them both to the floor. He could feel Andrew’s arms starting to ripple, fur sprouting up along the rough skin. He grabbed his father’s head and slammed it into the hardwood floor as hard as he could.
Andrew’s eyes widened for a moment then slid slowly closed as his body slumped against the floor. Jesse knelt over his father, panting heavily as he tried to draw air into his lungs. Once again, he had beaten his father in combat, but he was pretty sure he’d have to face him again. A deep knot in his gut told him that this wasn’t over.
Jesse’s legs were shaking as he slowly stood up and pushed himself away from his father’s prone body. He stumbled out of the closet to find Cort standing beside Nate, both of them with worried looks on their faces.
“Was that really…Father?” Cort asked.
Jesse nodded his head. “I want him tied up and taken downstairs to the cell in the basement until I can figure out what to do with him. And, Nate, I know he’s our father, but don’t let him get into your head. He’s dangerous.”
Nate nodded as he handed the black box over to Jesse and then went into the closet. A moment later, he came out with Andrew McCaffrey’s body tossed over his shoulder. Jesse grimaced as he watched Nate carry their father out of the room.
“What is he doing here?” Cort asked.
“He was looking for this.” Jesse held up the box in his hand.
“What is it?”
“I have no clue, but Father seemed almost obsessed with finding it.” Jesse pulled the lid off of the box and stared at the contents—a small gold earring loop no bigger than his pinky. And there was only one.
“It’s an earring,” Cort said.
Jesse wanted to roll his eyes because he had already figured that part out, but he understood Cort’s confusion. “I don’t ever remember Mom wearing earrings. Do you?”
“No, but I only remember that long blonde braid she always had in her hair, so I could be wrong.”
Jesse smiled at his brother. “Oh yeah, I remember that,” he murmured.
“I loved her hair,” Cort whispered reverently. “She used to let me brush it.”
“Yeah.” Jesse chuckled softly. “I remember that, too. She loved to have her hair brushed out.” Jesse rubbed the tendons on the back of his neck as he stared down at the earring again. The tension was growing, and he was starting to get a headache. “But why would there only be one earring? Don’t they come in sets of two?”
Cort’s eyebrows shot up in a look of astonishment. “You’re asking me?”
“Well, I figured one of us might know.”
Cort put a hand to his head and pushed his ear forward. “Do you see an earring?”
Jesse chuckled, putting the lid back on the small box and sliding it into his pocket. “We’ll discuss your accessories later. I want to search the rest of the top floor and then find out if anyone else found anything. We have to figure out how to get Sam and Sarah back.”
“Do you think we can?” Cort asked as he followed Jesse out of the room.
“We will one way or the other.” Jesse just barely kept the growl out of his voice. “Sam belongs to me, and I’m not giving him up.”
Jesse and Cort searched the rest of the upstairs but found nothing. Jesse was still trying to figure out how his father had gotten inside the house unseen and promised himself he would go back later and search his mother’s room more carefully.
Right now, finding Sam was his first priority.
Jesse glanced over the balcony to the first floor when he heard the front door slam open and several sets of footsteps thundered into the house. A moment later, Gabe and the ranch hands came into view. They all looked worried, especially Rocky, which was strange considering he hadn’t been there to witness anything that had happened.
Jesse hurried down the stairs, coming to a stop right in front of his ranch foreman. “Rocky?”
“Tell me what happened,” Rocky said quickly. “Tell me exactly what happened and don’t leave a single detail out.”
Jesse sighed as he turned away and pushed a shaking hand through his hair. Where to start? “We were eating breakfast, laughing because Sam had put peanut butter, jelly, and mustard on his waffles and—”