Alpha's Legacy (Black Moon Saga Book 3)

25. Best-Laid Plans

When Tian joins us in the morning, I learn that it’s with an allied pack called Crescent Peak that we’ve been staying. My borrowed bed belongs to Alpha Lamont, son of the former Alpha Omar, who both of my dads spend a fair amount of time educating me about as we pack up our things and prepare to set off. I know from my history classes that this pack and their former Alpha were involved in the war for Black Moon which eventually led to my mother becoming the Alpha there, but my dads also have a lot of eyeroll-worthy war stories to share with me.

But never having Alpha ambitions, I find that meeting the people from my school’s history books in real life isn’t nearly as exciting as maybe it should be. Although I suppose that could also just be the residual effects of everything that happened at Luna’s Grace with Lee. I’m over it enough to be ready to get on with my life, but not over it enough to be doing it all with a smile. Not a real one, anyway.

The warriors here are apparently some of the best, and Alpha Lamont seems eager to let us observe their morning training so he can show them off to my dads a bit, but even that doesn’t interest me. The idea of a bunch of bulky, sweaty men hopping around in a training field just doesn’t sound appealing to me, though I think that’s an all the time thing. If it was Lee out there, before Margot showed up and ruined it all anyway, then maybe I’d feel differently, but the idea of watching all these strange guys just isn’t doing it for me.

“We could probably spare half an hour for that, couldn’t we?” Tian asks me as we’re heading out to our vehicle.

Alpha Lamont is walking with us, and it’s becoming painfully obvious how badly he wants a chance to impress Tian. He’s the Alpha here, and yet, it’s Tian who has held the control for most of this conversation. At just the mere suggestion that he may have gained the interest of my vampire dad, the Alpha’s face lit up with an enormous smile.

And though I’m grateful to Alpha Lamont for allowing me to camp out in one of his guest rooms and skip all the formalities and pleasantries to get there, I really don’t feel like humoring him right now. This situation reminds me too much of when I was asked whether I could spare an afternoon to hang out with Maggie. I should have said no, because it wasn’t at all how I wanted to spend my afternoon. My gut instinct on that turned out to be right.

Which is why now, I almost don’t think about it before answering, “My apologies, Alpha Lamont, but I would really rather get going. That’s not to say that I don’t appreciate your hospitality and wish that I had spent more of my time here out exploring your territory, but I really just do not have the time to spare today.”

Oh wow, Anna Jade. I’m actually a little surprised at myself for how easily an outright lie slipped out there. I don’t even know where we’re going yet, let alone know or care when we’re supposed to be there. I just want to be moving along instead of staying here any longer.

Tian side-glances me in a way that I can’t quite read to determine how he feels about what I just said, but doesn’t wait long before adding, “I suppose she is right. We’ll have to be sure to make a return trip soon so I can train with your men and see how they’re keeping up on their vampire handling skills.”

“But I could probably stay and observe,” my father chimes in. “I plan on using a teleport to get back to Alpha Kylie, so travel time is not even an issue for me.”

“Sure, rub it in that you’ve got magic and can just blink your way around the globe,” Alpha Lamont chuckles, seeming pleased about my father’s offer. “Well, then I suppose I’ll tell the two of you goodbye and steal your dad from you, Anna Jade. It was a pleasure meeting you, and I wish you safe travels. Good seeing you again, Tian.”

He reaches out to give Tian’s arm a friendly squeeze and then turns and starts walking in the other direction with my father, the two of them already chatting away before they’ve even taken three steps. It kind of seems like my refusal is not even a big deal and they’re already over it.

But just about when I’m feeling pretty smug and proud of myself for not getting cornered into yet another thing I don’t really want to do, and also kind of wondering what Lee would have thought of that interaction and whether he’d be proud, Tian finally shares his thoughts.

“Alpha Lamont has been very cordial and compassionate about your situation, though he’s seen very little of you or Eramund through the duration of your stay. It wouldn’t have killed you to put a smile on and give him a small bit of your time, the same way that his children would have done if they’d visited our pack, but especially since he has been so kind to you.”

“Yeah, well, the last time that I screwed my smile on and went along with something an allied Alpha asked of me, I ended up abandoned and lost in a strange city.”

Tian just got here, and I don’t want to be at odds with him already, nor do I want to push my luck over the line and into spoiled brat territory, so I decide to just leave it at that, though there’s more I feel I could say.

Like how hard it is to put any sort of smile on right now. How much I missed him and don’t want to spend the morning entertaining or fighting about strangers. How no one even asked if I wanted to come here or allowed me the chance to consent to the implied social demands of it. Or how much I just really don’t want anything to do with men right now, present company excluded.

“I figured that would be your response, or something along those lines, and I can understand the feeling behind it,” he says, reaching out to grasp my arm and hold me in place before I can escape into the vehicle. “But I want you to understand something, too. There is a fine line between standing up for yourself and just simply being snotty or selfish. It was a different situation at Luna’s Grace. You could and perhaps even should have refused Alpha Magnus’s request because he was asking for a lot, and you’d already given him plenty. You’d made your public appearances and showed him all your polite manners for mealtimes and various group activities.”

He brushes a stray strand of my hair away from my face and then leaves his hand there to cup my cheek briefly, a trick that I think he uses to ensure that I’m making eye contact with him because that always seems to be my natural reaction to it.

“He was taking advantage of you,” he continues saying, his expression intense and serious, “and I hate to admit this part, but I actually could not tell whether you were genuinely interested in what he had in mind for you. I don’t know much about Maggie, but she is around your age, and I thought that perhaps you were excited by the prospect of getting to know her and possibly even making a new friend. So, I didn’t intervene, even knowing that you don’t tend to refuse any requests made of you regardless of how you feel about them. But here and now, with this Alpha and this circumstance, it’s a bit different.”

“How am I supposed to just know the difference?” I challenge him, though I’m careful with my tone. It’s a serious question.

“I think you already do know the difference, but you’re not in the mood to make the distinction,” he answers. “Though I’m not having this discussion to scold you, not this time. I do understand what you’ve just been through, and that’s why I didn’t bother to argue with you. Not then, and I won’t now either. But I do hope that you’ll be willing to at least consider what I’ve said.”

“And that’s all you’ll say about it?” I ask, hoping that it will have the intended effect of making him smile.

It’s something that both he and my father tend to say to end their lectures or to punctuate some discussion that has moved into uncomfortable territory. For my father, it’s usually how he lets us know that he’s not willing to speak about things he’s seen that he feels he has no business talking about. And since Tian knows I’ve spent multiple days locked away with him in a guest room, I’m sure he understands just how much I’ve been hearing it lately.

But I also kind of hope that it works to end this particular lecture, preferably with a smile.

To my relief, he does smile and exhale a short laugh through his nose.

“And that’s all I’ll say about it,” he agrees. “Though I do wonder, where is it that you’re in such a hurry to be off to?”

“Anywhere but here,” I answer him, hoping he also takes that as a joke, even though it’s one of those jokes that’s actually the truth.

Then it suddenly occurs to me where I do want to go. I remember the conversation I had with my family before I left. I wanted to leave because I’ve spent so much of my life safely contained within pack borders and mostly only visiting other packs. And now here I’ve been spending so much of my “road trip” mostly visiting other packs.

It’s time to get back to the point and channel the Anna Jade who so boldly requested to go to the zoo not that long ago. I want to get back to seeing cool stuff and visiting cool places that are not just more werewolf packs.

“How about the Grand Canyon?” I suggest. That’s still basically in this same region and shouldn’t be perceived as too big of an ask.

“Sounds perfect,” he agrees, smiling at me warmly for what feels like the first time all morning.

And seeming to sense my need to explore, that’s what he allows us to spend about the next month doing. It starts with a Grand Canyon tour but doesn’t end there. We stick to the western part of the country for quite a while, going back to California and exploring the Death Valley National Park (though only for about a day – that’s as long as either of us cares to spend in that heat, despite there being so much of it left unseen), touring the more northern regions of the state and swimming in Lake Tahoe, happening across a married couple and their dune buggies and spontaneously going off-roading and camping with them for a few days, and then hitting various stops along our California exit route that takes us back down to Arizona and then eventually up through Utah, following my whims instead of a plan.

There are several places in Utah where I feel an insatiable urge to park, get out, and take some time to appreciate the beauty of all the natural splendor. I pause and stare off the edge of I don’t even know how many cliffs, just admiring the vastness, the fresh crispness of the air, and even the unique twists and turns in some of the ancient trees. Tian does his best to be my own personal tour guide, pulling up facts and statistics about whatever random places I decide to park and stretch that he reads off to me as we admire our surroundings.

I think it’s all the gorgeous rock formations that really capture my interest. And by choosing just the right place to stand and look down upon the lowlands, I can feel a thousand feet tall. It’s like standing at the edge of Lee’s hill, but so much better. The best part might even be that each spot feels like it’s all mine. I drove us there, I decided to stop there, and Tian always seems to sense when I need some space and lets me stand there alone and claim the experience for myself.  

Then we spend some time in Colorado, which is a place that I enjoy even just driving through. It’s breathtakingly beautiful, so much so that Tian actually offers to drive so that I can take the opportunity to press my nose to the window and take it all in. It might even just be that he doesn’t trust me not to let myself get distracted by everything that I’d much rather be looking at than the road that winds along a river and through the mountains.

And once we get out of the vehicle, it’s even better. Hiking, camping, and even just strolling around some of the towns and cities we stop in. Maybe I’m just biased by how different it all feels from back home, but I find every second of our time there to be exciting.

Tian even takes me fishing, something I’ve never done before in my life. We don’t catch anything, and he warned me that we probably wouldn’t because of his aura, but I don’t care. There’s something about just holding the pole and hoping for the best that I seem to enjoy enough to do it for multiple days and in multiple places.

Pete would be so proud. Going fishing is something that he always wanted to do with me, though we never got the chance before he left. I can’t wait until he finally comes back so I can show him all the new skills I’ve been learning. I’ve even noticed that my legs have been getting stronger from all the physical activity I’ve had lately, especially all the hiking and backpacking.

It takes me a while to catch on, but toward the end of it all, I finally notice a pattern that should have concerned me long before it did. The more time that passes, the more drawn into himself Tian seems to become. He still smiles sometimes, but not as often or as warmly as I’m used to when it’s just us together like this. He’s grown quiet, too. So quiet, in fact, that I’m actually starting to miss his long-winded lessons and lectures.

And then it hits me. He hasn’t left my side since Crescent Peak, which means he hasn’t been home to see my mother in as long. They talk on the phone every night, but that’s not enough. Not for two inseparable mates who’ve never been apart for this long before.

I take back every sulky complaining thought I’ve ever had about him, as well as every time that I’ve ever been annoyed by him. He’s the most selfless person I know, and I’m a selfish brat. I’ve made this whole trip about me and my happiness. He hasn’t bothered taking me to any allied packs after I made the comment to him about being sick and tired of visiting werewolf packs while I’m supposed to be traveling and exploring new things, which also means he hasn’t had any opportunities to leave me with trusted friends so he can return home for a night or two.

We’re sitting together in a boat when I have my epiphany, but I wait until after we’ve made it back to our rented lakeside cottage to mention anything to him about it. It’s night, and we’re both getting ready for bed before I finally figure out how to introduce the topic in a way that he won’t immediately dismiss or brush off.

“Tian, back before we went to the zoo, you said that we were free for that week and I could choose where to go, but you had plans for us that following weekend. Obviously, they didn’t happen because of everything that went on at Luna’s Grace, but I’m still curious. What were those plans?”

He gives me a strained smile and drops himself into the easy chair he’s been resting in every night that we’ve been staying here since there’s only the one bed.

“Nothing that matters,” he answers dismissively. “I don’t think it was along the lines of what you had in mind for your adventure.”

“Maybe, or maybe not. You could at least tell me. Maybe I would be interested. You never know.”

He glances over at me sitting at the edge of the bed and pauses to study me for a moment, seeming to be fighting his own internal battle before eventually deciding to just tell me.

“Alright, fair enough,” he finally concedes. “I had made arrangements with Bria for you to go and stay the weekend with her, so that you could catch a glimpse of what her life as a vampire hunter is like. Since she is one of the few people in this world that I trust with my daughter, I had also planned to spend the weekend at home with your mother.”

“Wait, what? Tian!” I feign outrage. “Are you kidding me? A weekend with vampire hunters? That sounds like exactly the sort of adventure I’m looking for.”

“I’ll try to ignore how excited you sound at the prospect of hunting my kind,” he jests, though the flatness of his tone is at odds with his intent to be humorous. “Truthfully, I’m well aware that you would enjoy such an ‘adventure,’ as you say, which is why I made the plans in the first place. What I said before was an excuse and my weak attempt to deter you from asking more about it.”

“Then I guess I’m confused.”

“I know,” he sighs, his shoulders slumping as he resigns himself to losing whatever battle he’s been fighting with himself that I do not at all understand. “I didn’t bother to reschedule because I changed my mind about wanting you to go after the conversation I had with your father the morning before we left Crescent Peak.”

“You know, for a guy who keeps claiming that he doesn’t want to use his dreams to intervene in things and mess it all up, he certainly does seem to keep telling me ‘no’ and blaming it on the dreams,” I can’t help commenting just a touch bitterly.

“No, you have the wrong of it,” Tian insists to my surprise. “He didn’t tell me not to send you. He told me to let you go.”

“Well, now I’m really confused.”

“Which is why I was trying to avoid having this discussion,” he chuckles, though it sounds more heartbreaking than humorous. “It’s what he didn’t say that has me worried. There was a look in his eye and a break in his voice that indicated to me that he wasn’t just telling me to let you go with Bria. He was telling me to let you go as if he was alluding to that weekend with Bria somehow being the beginning of something much greater, something that might take you from me, and I’m just not ready for that.”

“Oh, Tian,” I tell him, wondering if all this weighing on his mind is partly responsible for how quiet and withdrawn he’s been.

I get up and shuffle over to him in his chair, dropping myself into his lap, and reach up to wrap my arms around his neck.

“I don’t know why he would have said it like that, knowing how you worry,” I say, leaning my head against his shoulder, “but I do know that of all people, my father is not somebody you have to worry about telling you to do anything that will put me in danger. Need I remind you of the no motorcycle rule?”

“I suppose you have a point there,” he chuckles again, although it feels warmer this time.

“Plus, I bet you’re dying to see Mom, which is why it kind of seems like tomorrow would be perfect timing for refreshing those plans with Bria, yeah?”

“Tomorrow, huh?” he laughs again, still smiling as he pets my hair and kisses my temple. “So, am I to assume that a certain young witch is feeling rather eager for a visit with the vampire hunters?”

“Am I to assume that a certain vampire is suddenly much happier because I mentioned a reunion with his mate?”

“Guilty as charged.”

“Same here.”

He smiles at me appreciatively before growing quiet again, seeming to mull it all over as he continues petting my hair, neither of us bothered by how I’m still sitting in his lap even though it’s not something that I’ve done since I was a child. It seemed necessary, though, and maybe even still is if he's still worrying about whatever my father might have meant about me.

“I suppose I can give Bria a call in the morning,” he finally concedes with a sigh.

“I think it will be good for us both,” I say as calmly and reassuringly as I can manage through the grin I can’t seem to keep from taking over my face.

“I’ve made it a practice not to let teenagers overrule my gut instincts, but you seem to be the one exception to that rule. I only hope you’re right, Anna Jade.”

Me too. Not just because I really want to go, but because I know what I said is true. My father wouldn’t advise him to send me somewhere that he knows will turn out to be dangerous. He was probably just getting emotional about me growing up. I'm so close to adulthood now that I bet all my parents are feeling something similar.

It doesn’t even occur to me until the middle of the night that hanging out with Bria was how Pete got sick. But I pretty quickly manage to convince myself that there’s still nothing to worry about, just like I told Tian.

Bria would never let anything like that happen to me, and she’d never allow me to get into a situation that carried even the slightest potential for it. I already know without asking that the plans with her don't include taking me on any actual hunts. She'd never let me anywhere near a hostile vampire. That's why even Tian trusts her with my life. He as much as said so.

This is the right move. I just know it. I don’t know how or why, but the last time I woke up feeling like this was the day that my power awakened, and I healed Pete. Something good lies ahead for me, and Bria is the one who will show me the way. I can feel it.