Alpha's Legacy (Black Moon Saga Book 3)

33. Back and Busy: Pete

Standing inside a conference room of yet another Solace Hotel, this time in Utah, and leaning against the far wall as I wait for the others who will be meeting here to file in, a feeling of surrealness and disbelief washes over me. I can’t believe I’m here. I can’t believe that Kylie and her mates are going to be here, when I haven’t seen them in so many years. I have mixed emotions about all of that, but most of all, I can’t believe why we’re all gathering here.

In fact, I’m still reeling from the fact that Tian and Eramund were the ones who called me. They called me of all people, even though it isn’t yet Anna Jade’s birthday, so she still isn’t of age. I thought it was some strange prank when I first picked up the phone and it was Eramund's voice I heard on the line – the last time I spoke to him, he was chasing me around the Black Moon packhouse yelling at me about what I’d done to his daughter.

Although, I suppose it didn’t help my case any that I thought I really had done something worth yelling about, and I opted to try apologizing rather than calling him out on the fact that I was innocent. But technically, knife-throwing fell into the category of dangerous things that Kylie had strictly forbidden me from even showing to Anna Jade, let alone teaching to her, and yet we’d been practicing knife throwing just two weeks prior. I thought that the kid had accidentally ratted me out or something.

But then when Eramund finally got too tired and winded from running after me, I took pity on him and went back to try talking to him. Big mistake. Even stationary, he couldn’t keep himself from yelling at me about how I got his baby girl pregnant when she wasn’t even of age yet. Except I hadn’t taken anyone to bed in long enough that any child of mine would have been years older than Anna Jade, who at the time was only ten, and oh yeah, the girl was only ten!

When he’d finally calmed down enough to explain himself, it turned out to be some dream he’d had that had gotten under his skin, and not anything that I’d done wrong. I never did confess to the knife training because just judging by how he reacted to imaginary things that only happened in his dreams, I wasn’t brave enough to confess to actually deserving his wrath. It did hurt to discover how little the man trusted me, though.

I would never have hurt or touched Anna Jade in the way he was accusing my imaginary future self of, but that didn’t seem to matter. I’d always taken exceptional care of her, spoiled her even, and she was more important to me than pretty much anyone else, but all it took was one dream for him to decide that I was bad news. He banned me from the packhouse that day, on the spot, and later, he tracked me down at home and told me to pack my things and leave the Black Moon territory entirely.

“Not permanently, of course,” he assured me, standing in my own bedroom leaned up against the doorway, all full of ego and nonsense. “I just won’t be able to rest until you’re nowhere near my underage daughter. The girl deserves the chance to be a child and to live an innocent, carefree life until she’s of age. She doesn’t need her mate losing patience with waiting and rushing her into adulthood responsibilities.”

Oh yeah, and that’s the other thing. He claimed that his dreams told him I would turn out to be her mate, and that I’d recognize the bond two years before she did. I didn’t know what to think of that revelation, not yet willing to even call it that because of my skepticism about his dreams being anything more than nocturnal fairytales, like anyone else’s, but I could also feel the potential truth of it. It wasn’t all that surprising considering other recent events and revelations, and it also made sense.

Maybe he didn’t realize it, but the age of sixteen is when fox-shifters come of age, and it’s when they can start thinking about mating and starting families. Mating for my kind is a bit different than for werewolves, and we don’t usually discover that we have some mystical bond pulling us to settle down with some specific other person, unless that person is a werewolf and a fox-shifter happens to be fated to them. Or in my case, once I turned sixteen, I started to feel a pull toward one of my best friends from school.

Kylie. I thought for the longest time that I was her mate. By the time that she was finally of age herself, or when I thought she was of age anyway, I was already hopelessly in love with her. But I didn’t know two important pieces of information then. First, that she was only thirteen when I turned sixteen, so that pull that I felt toward her couldn’t possibly have been a mate bond like I’d thought because she wasn’t old enough. And second, that she’s just wired that way.

She has some rare genetic traits that manifest themselves as special powers, and that was one of the earliest to show itself. She bonds with people, all people really, and the closer someone gets to her, the more the effect is felt. We were good friends, and even though I could tell she was a werewolf when no one else could (just after my inner fox awakened – thanks, fox nose), and I assumed it was a mate bond because of that, it was just her unique little twist on a friendship bond. I didn’t even know that was a thing back then.

I’m also still a little bitter about when Adam broke that news to me by comparing me to a pet cat, though. Well, no, that’s not exactly how it went down, but he did mention something about her charming her grumpy old cat the same way that she did me, and it hit an awful lot like being told that I meant no more to her than a damn cat. Ouch. But maybe that stung so much mostly because of how long I’d held onto my hope that she’d eventually come around and see me for what I’d been convinced I was to her, and I’d held on for so long because of how badly I wanted it to be true, because of what it would have meant for me.

Werewolves mate for life. A true, fated mate pairing does, anyway. And if I was meant to have a werewolf mate, well then, I wouldn’t be doomed to follow in my parents’ footsteps or those of so many fox-shifters before me. My parents were great together when I was little, and I looked up to them. I loved and cherished their passion for each other. But then one day, seemingly for no reason, they split up and chose to go their separate ways. I think I was about 13 then, and though it was explained to me as just the way it works for our kind, I couldn’t accept it. I didn’t want that for myself.

A werewolf mate would have made it so that I didn’t have to embrace that life. I could be a one-woman man and settle down somewhere, within a werewolf pack most likely, and have a whole brood of pups with her. I’d probably have some boring job just like my pops, but I was fine with that. He always seemed happy enough. Of course, there was more going on in his world than I ever realized, not until much later anyway, but that’s another story entirely.

But back to this story, there I was with Eramund telling me exactly what I’d always thought I wanted to hear. I had a werewolf mate, or would have one eventually. It’s what I’d spent years begging and praying to Kylie’s Moon Goddess for, and what I'd pushed down to live only at the very back of my heart and mind for so long after that. I’d given up hope once I was shot down by both Kylie and her real fated mate, especially once the poison had taken hold of my body and my inner fox, but now here was my prayer suddenly being answered long after I’d stopped asking.

It wasn’t how I pictured it, of course, because nothing ever seems to be. I didn’t imagine that it would be my mate’s irate father delivering the news to me when she was only ten, and I was a bit unsettled by the idea of my life partner turning out to be the daughter of the same woman I’d fixated on for so much of my life. The irony also wasn’t lost on me, not about that, and not about the other thing either.

Phoebe, the sweet, young fox-shifter hybrid who developed her own unhealthy fascination with me while I was still stuck on another, and who eventually gave up on me and left, accusing me of not being able to accept her because of the half of her that was a witch. Half of Anna Jade is a witch, too. I doubt that it’d be taken kindly if I called up Phoebe to point that out, though.

Anyway, it hurt all over again to have Eramund standing there assuming the worst of me and accusing me of things I hadn’t even done yet and couldn't see myself ever doing, and it was even worse that he was so willing to act on his feelings about a dream without giving me the least bit of the benefit of the doubt. I may have already been thinking about leaving, but I didn’t want it to happen like that. I didn’t want to be forced out and told that I couldn’t come back for eight years. Black Moon was my home, and it had been ever since my crew ousted me and left me behind to deal with my new poisoned reality, when Kylie took me in and offered me a new purpose and lease on life.

Ah yes, Kylie again. Despite the history we shared and the decades that we’d been friends, not to mention my unwavering loyalty to her and her family, she took Eramund's side. But of course she did. He’s her mate and Anna Jade’s father. I can’t say that it didn’t hurt the most to hear it from her, of all people, though.

“I’m not accusing you of anything,” she’d made sure to tell me. “I’m skeptical that you’d actually violate my trust and step out of bounds in the way that Eramund is convinced you will, but I’m also a firm believer in being safe rather than sorry. And not to mention, if you turn out to someday have a different sort of relationship with Anna Jade than just being good old Uncle Pete, then it might be best for the two of you to have had some distance leading up to it. Otherwise, it might just be weird and uncomfortable to make that shift from extended family to lovers.”

“Did Eramund tell you that he thinks I’m her mate?” I asked her, wondering if when he told me that it was a mistake to reveal that to me and swore me to secrecy thereafter, he hadn’t included his mate in that.

“No, he won’t say for sure, but it’s the only explanation that makes sense,” she explained, smiling wistfully and shaking her head. “Plus, I can’t get what Anya said out of my head, so I’ve already been suspecting it on my own. We all have.”

Anya, the witch who’d been puzzled and scratching her head all those years that I was afflicted with a debilitating vampiric sickness. She’s a healer, the most powerful in the world, in fact, and yet she couldn’t figure out how to cure me. She couldn’t even figure out how to help me, not even a little bit. She couldn’t restore my inner fox, she couldn’t help me breathe, she couldn’t even slow down the progression of the disease that was slowly suffocating me to death.

But Anna Jade, a little girl of only ten years old, squatted down with me in the middle of the woods behind my house, gave me a worried, panicked look, and then crawled into my lap. In only a few magical moments, she took away all that pain and darkness that had been following me around, and my life hasn’t been the same since.

She hugged me, nothing more, and that was all it took. No fancy magical tools or spell components or even that stone that Anya uses when she heals. Just a hug, with her bare hands laid flat against my bare back, and before I knew it, the sickness was gone, and my fox was awake.

And I almost lost Anna Jade because of it. When Anya came to her hospital bed to check her over and see what she could do, she managed to stabilize her and keep her from dying, but she also gave me a look that I’ll never forget.

“She had to have been fading well before she got to this point,” she told me accusingly. “You didn’t notice her skin paling, her eyelids fluttering, her breath stuttering, or anything off about her?”

“No,” I answered her honestly. “She was smiling. Excited. She was determined to help me, and we were talking throughout the whole thing. She had no idea what was happening and didn’t even realize that it was her magic until I told her, but there was nothing off about her. Her cheeks were flushed, but I attributed that to what she was doing and how excited she was about it.”

Then Anya gave me that stern, tight-lipped expression of disapproval and shook her head the way that I remember my mother doing when she was upset and disappointed in me. I mean, I already felt absolutely terrible that Anna Jade ended up in such a state, and blaming myself was the first thing I did afterward, so I didn’t need her standing there judging me to feel like crap about it.

My only solace was Kylie, who never blamed me in the least. She only thanked me for taking care of Anna Jade and carrying her straight home. But Eramund? He never looked at me the same after that. Even Tian seemed quiet and subdued around me, and considering the state of mind that I was in, I figured it was because he blamed me too. Adam was kind, but Adam is always kind, even when he thinks I’m getting too cozy with his mate, so he probably had thoughts about me that I wouldn't have wanted to hear but was just better at hiding them.

Despite whatever emotions and resentments may have been brewing between us, we all paused and listened intently while Anya stood at Anna Jade's bedside and explained her theory about how a ten-year-old was able to achieve what no other healer in the world had been able to do.

“The two of you must share an incredibly powerful bond, because that’s what it would take to achieve something like this. And there’s only one sort of bond that I’m aware of which can explain it – the bond between a healer and her true love.”

“Uncle Pete has always been her favorite person to visit, but I don’t know that I’d go so far as to call him her true love,” Kylie argued in disbelief, looking over at me with big, worried eyes.

Which is how I should have seen it coming that she’d want me gone just as badly as Eramund. The idea of me with her daughter was unsettling for her, though I tried to brush it off as just a normal reaction for a parent whose daughter was only ten at the time. No parent is ready to picture their children having grown-up relationships so many years before they’re actually grown.

Honestly, I couldn’t even blame her for feeling uneasy about it. That was my initial reaction too. I mean, I was insanely grateful for what Anna Jade had done for me, but if the reason why she was able to do it was … that … then I was left not knowing what to feel.

Which is why even before Eramund came after me, I’d already been pulling away from her on my own, not letting her come over as much as she was used to and spending less time with her overall. Because, well, her apparently unhealthy obsession with me nearly got her killed, and there was nothing in the world that could help me feel better about that.

Anya was right. I should have known better. Even if I didn’t see any sign of anything being off about her, just the fact that she was doing what she was doing was a giant clue. No one else could do it. Not grown women who’d been healing for decades, if not centuries, who had volumes upon volumes of knowledge and experience, and who weren’t only ten years old with newly awakened magic they didn’t even know how to control.

I knew it was her magic, and I should have stopped her. I should have picked her up and dragged her back to her mother, or insisted that she stop until we got to where a doctor could observe what was going on, or pretty much anything besides selfishly sitting there and encouraging her to keep going because I was ecstatic about my inner fox reawakening after all the years that he’d been dormant. But I didn’t, and that decision nearly killed her.

So, in that moment when Anya suggested that the girl might be in love with me, I already knew that I should leave. But when her father came at me and confirmed her connection to me while simultaneously insisting that I go, threatening violence and undesirable repercussions if I didn’t, some stubborn and still selfish part of me balked at that.

I wanted to stay just to spite him, and also because I didn’t want to face Anna Jade and have to tell her that I was leaving. I knew she’d take it hard, and she did. But at least I had the balls to tell her myself, in person, instead of leaving it for Kylie to do after I’d already gone.

The last in-person interaction that I had with Anna Jade was at my house, with her clutching Kylie’s hand and fighting back her tears as I told her that I was planning a trip and wouldn’t be back for a while. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that I already knew that it would be at least eight years before I returned, or that it was possible that I never would if I could somehow manage to talk some sense into myself in the meantime.

She’s a sweet, innocent girl. She deserves better than someone with a past like mine. She’s too good for me, and I knew it even then.

She’s the sort of person who was still only thinking of me even as her own heart was breaking. I could see it on her face how much it devastated her to think of me not being around for any length of time, and yet the words that came out of her mouth were, “Don’t worry, Uncle Pete. I’ll take care of the garden for you. Your plants will be so healthy when you get back.”

I should have told her not to bother with it. I should have told her mother to give the house to someone else and let the poor kid have some much-needed closure, but I didn’t. I also didn’t tell her to stop calling me her uncle, hoping that she’d either eventually quit doing it on her own or decide that that was all I was to her. If I never came back, then she’d never know that I could have been more. But I couldn’t bring myself to break her like that, even if it would have been for her own good.

So instead, I told her, “Thanks, kiddo. I know you’re going to take such good care of all my stinky plants.”

And then I crouched down to her level, ruffled her hair, kissed her on the cheek one last time, hugged her mom, and walked out of her life.

I’d already called Bria, found out where she and her crew had been holed up, and asked to crash on her couch for a few weeks. She made some stupid joke about how I must miss the feel of vampiric deathtraps slowly sucking the life out of me and was obviously gunning to be sent back in for some more, and I can’t say that she was entirely wrong. I mean, she was completely wrong, but it was that whole experience with the vampires and their poison that fueled a lot of the decisions I made after that.

She’d wanted to give me some closure of my own and ended up taking me to see some of the stuff they’d recovered from Raja’s “laboratory,” which is what they called the tunnels beneath Black Moon where I’d met my doom against some fledgling vampires. And I don’t know what got into me, but I became obsessed with that stuff. I spent years tinkering with it and trying to figure it all out, until the day when I finally did. Then I became obsessed with figuring out how to use it against them, until I did that too.

I eventually stopped sleeping on Bria’s ratty old pull-out couch, but that’s because I work for her now. I have my own room at all their safehouses, and at their main base, I even have my own floor where I eat, sleep, and work. “The Mad Scientist’s Lair,” Bo likes to call it, and by extension, he calls me Sci, which is short for "The Mad Scientist." I’ve also been called “The Savant” and “Rain Man” and whatever other not-so-clever nicknames strike their fancy on a given day, but mostly it’s Sci.

Not that I care. Some of the nicknames I have for them are just as bad. Worse, even. We get along great, and they’re much cleaner than the mercenaries I sometimes run with, so there’s not much to complain about.

But most importantly, it feels like a win every time that they take another big, bad rogue vampire off the street and recover as many of the victims as they can. They do all that with a lot of my help these days. I’m all done with running around underground tunnels acting as bait for them, but I do make a mean vamp-poison cocktail that’s even better. Plus, they like the weapons and projectiles I make for them, and it’s nice to be able to put a life’s worth of specialized skills to good use again.

I just hate that this particular day has come. I knew that the hunters were planning to have Anna Jade stay with them for a visit, though nobody seemed to want to listen to me when I offered my input about it. I really wish they would have.

First, she’s not of age yet. Sure, Bria has worked her ass off making sure that there was a location where every possible precaution had been taken to keep her safe, but why do all that and then overlook the biggest one? The built-in one – her wolf. A month, that’s all they’d have had to wait for her to have her wolf, but Bria overruled me on that. She apparently has some big plans for next month that will mean that the A-team will be out of contact for a while, and she wanted to have Anna Jade come for her visit before they left.

But secondly, she might be my mate. It killed me to know that she was going to be there with them and I could have been there to see her too, if it wasn’t for the fact that I can’t see her yet. I promised Eramund and Kylie that I’d have no contact with her until her 18th birthday, and I’m a man of my word. So, with that in mind and with Bria still stubbornly insisting that she was going through with it now instead of in a month, I left and went to the main base, planning to tinker and putter around and try to keep myself occupied enough to take my mind off my frustration.

Not the least of which had to do with knowing that if I am her mate, then her scent lingering all around the house will likely drive me nuts when I get back. It's not like I can just not go there for a while. I can't. I'm needed there, and that's where I've been spending most of my time lately. I’ve been closely involved in helping them tame Scott and Deborah, the fledglings they’ve been rehabilitating in that house. I left knowing that I’d probably have to douse the whole place in scent neutralizer as soon as I got back or risk having a rage fit right along with them.

I’m trying not to be bitter about it, but I feel like this whole situation could have been avoided if Bria and the others had just listened to me. I haven’t talked to her yet, and I’m sure she’ll make some argument about it that will make me reconsider, but according to Tian, Anna Jade was taken from the hunters mere hours after he left her there with them. He didn’t give me a lot of other details, only that they suspect that she’s now being held captive in some tunnels beneath Riptide territory (Vegas, of all places? Really Bria? You had to take a job in Vegas right now?), and that they might need someone with my skillset and contacts to help them get her back.

Uh, yeah. I’ll say so. Luckily for them, Bria and the hunters aren’t the only people from my past that I’ve been in contact with over the years. I officially work for Bria, but I usually spend my personal time sliding back into my former life and freelancing for various supernatural mercenary groups.

I avoid my old crew like the plague because let’s face it, I’m still sore about them leaving me behind. I might even give preference to the groups that I’m aware of being their direct competitors, but I still know people, and they know me. Some of those people are old and familiar, others much newer, but any and all of them are likely to have the skills and know-how that he’s looking for. It took me about fifteen minutes after my call with Tian and Eramund ended to round up a ragtag band of merry men who are willing to help, and I have them waiting on standby so we can work something out after this meeting is over.

Once the meeting finally starts, that is. I heard Eramund flipping out on someone in the next room, and I think I also heard Bria’s voice in there, so something is happening. Just not something that involves me yet. Or this other kid, a guy I recognize from back in the day who breezed into the room a few minutes ago, nodded at me, and promptly proceeded to ignore me by busying himself with his phone.

Marc, that’s his name. Adam’s kid. Used to be an Alpha himself, though last I knew, that job belongs to his son now. I suppose I should stop calling him a kid since he’s around the same age as me and also about a foot taller, but it’s a habit. I never liked the guy, and he’s never cared much for me either. He loves Kylie, though, and Anna Jade is his stepsister, so I suppose I should resolve to get over that. Like, now.

And I guess he must be thinking along those same lines because just about when I’m getting ready to uncross my arms and go sit myself across from him, he sighs, tosses his phone down on the table, and looks up to make eye contact with me.

“You can get in there and get her back, right?” he asks pleadingly, almost like a lost, scared little boy would do.

Which I suppose I can forgive him for, even if he is a grown Alpha wolf in his forties who used to run his own pack. His little sister is in danger, and not in such an easy-to-fix way. I’m scared too, truth be told. Not that I’ll ever admit that to him.

“I’ll get her back. You can count on it,” is what I do say to him, meaning every word.

I know I’m promising that to myself as much as to him, but it doesn’t matter who I’m talking to as long as I make good on it. I’m getting her back. That’s why they called me. They know I don’t quit, and I don’t accept defeat either. I’ll make sure that she comes home in one piece, with or without me, even if it’s the last thing I do with my life.