Reclaimed and Restored

PART I: THE PAST

Marcus woke from the same dream that haunted him almost every night―one that lived within him every day in the form of a memory. His mother’s terrified screams and his father’s angry shouts still rang in his ears, and fear leaked from his pores as if he were still that helpless ten-year-old boy cowering under the floorboards, not the twenty-nine-year-old man who had trained for nearly two decades so that he could kill the monsters instead of hiding from them.

His breathing was ragged, affected by the adrenalin and potent fear pumping through his veins, and Marcus hated the sound of his shaky and loud gasps. They were a sign of weakness even after all this time, a sign that he was still that vulnerable boy who had done nothing while his parents had been dragged out of their home in the middle of the night, never to come back.

His gran had known there was nothing they could do after Marcus had told her what had happened. Still, they had put up missing person posters, and Marcus had spent months hoping his parents would come back after miraculously escaping Master Gold’s clutches, but it had all been useless, a child’s naïve hopes. Nothing more than wishful thinking.

Marcus flung the sheets off his sweat-covered body and drew on his rage to get rid of the lingering terror that always plagued him after those dreams. One hundred sit-ups later, and his anger was still a living, breathing thing, but at least the fear was gone. One hundred push-ups later, rage still festered underneath his skin, but he felt more in control.

The warm water from his shower helped to ease some of the tension from his body, but like always, it could never entirely rid him of the effects of his dream. Somewhere in the same building, the man responsible for his parents’ deaths was roaming free and unpunished, the smug bastard unaware that the child of his victims was living right under his nose, watching and waiting.

A different last name was all that protected him from being discovered as the child of the previous New York Alpha and Luna, but he wondered if he’d even needed to take the step to change it from Walker to Jones. Gold had thought he’d gotten away with it, so would he ever suspect Marcus of having ulterior motives after all these years? Did the Master even remember the names of the woman and man he’d killed without cause?

It hadn’t taken Marcus and his gran long to figure out that the Council Master had killed his parents for the crime of becoming the most powerful Alpha and Luna in North America―possibly more powerful than the Council Masters themselves.

After the Brooklyn pack’s Alpha had died without an heir and Marcus’s parents had agreed to the neighboring pack’s request to join the already powerful New York pack, they had enough numbers to rival almost any werewolf pack in the world. That clearly hadn’t sat well with Gold and most likely the other nine Council Masters, who relied on the Council’s sheer size for their position of ultimate and unrivaled power.

His parents had lost their lives so that ten men could continue parading around like they were the most important and influential people in the world. That knowledge had created a near-uncontrollable rage in Marcus that had ruled almost every moment and decision in his life.

As he had so many times before, he considered finding Master Gold and simply driving a knife through his cold and black heart, damn the consequences, but an image of his grandmother’s smiling face flashed across his mind, and he knew he couldn’t do it. He had to be more careful than that.

If Marcus were caught, which he most definitely would be after murdering one of only ten Council Masters, he would be killed or imprisoned, and his gran would be left with no one. Marcus was all she had, just as she was all he had, and he wasn’t going to let his revenge, no matter how important, separate them. Not after everything his gran had done for him―the woman had raised him since he was ten and loved him with her whole heart, and he refused to let his recklessness leave her without any family.

Showered and dressed in dark jeans and a black shirt, Marcus was ready to go downstairs to join Silas and the others in the Council building’s dining hall, his cool mask firmly in place. Cold and detached, that was what he had needed to become when he had joined the Council.

Sentiment and attachments were something he couldn’t afford anymore because they would only distract him. His gran was the only exception to that rule, and he was determined for it to stay that way―the fewer people he loved, the better. He’d learned the hard way that love only led to pain.

After he had locked his apartment door behind him, as if the woman had sensed his dark thoughts, Marcus’s phone rang with a call from the only person who was more important than his plans for Master Gold.

His smile felt strange and unfamiliar on his usually blank face when he answered the call. “Hey, grams.”

“Marcus,” his gran sighed happily. “How’s my boy doing?”

Hearing the slight tremble in her voice, Marcus swallowed the lump in his throat. “I’m good. Just been keeping busy with training and all that.”

“How was Dallas?” she asked, referring to the investigation he’d only returned from the previous afternoon.

“The Alpha there is a real piece of work, but unfortunately, the Council can’t remove him from his position for simply being an asshole,” he grumbled. He was still pissed off that the sexist, racist, homophobic piece of s**t would continue to reign unimpeded over the second largest pack in Texas.

Marcus had been sent to the city because numerous complaints had been filed against the man, but according to Council law, the Alpha had technically done nothing wrong, so Marcus’s hands had been tied.

“Language,” his gran snapped.

He winced. “Sorry, grams. This job just really got to me.”

A heavy sigh came through the speaker on his phone, and he knew what was coming next. “I wish you would come home,” she whispered. “It’s been eleven years, Marcus. I miss you, and nothing you do now will bring your parents back.”

Guilt pummeled Marcus’s chest, but his resolve didn’t waver. It never did. “I need to do this, gran. I miss you too, but I’ll be back in New York in July, like always. We’ll watch those old cheesy movies you like, and I’ll help you make your famous cannolis.”

“You know I would never let you near the kitchen,” his gran scoffed.

She was a baker at heart, but her perfectionism in the kitchen meant that she hated having other people assisting her. Everything had to be done just right, and she was under the impression that she was the only one capable of properly following a recipe.

“Two weeks every six months isn’t enough,” she added before Marcus could respond with a quip about how pedantic she was when it came to baking. “I miss my grandson.”

After Marcus’s parents had died, his gran had decided that they would remain with the New York pack―she’d correctly hypothesized that they would be safe as long as they kept quiet about what Marcus had witnessed and didn’t disagree when their disappearance was ruled a terrible but unsolved tragedy―and she had stayed there when Marcus had moved to Boston to join the Council.

As much as the woman understood his reasons, Marcus’s grams hated the physical distance it had caused between them. He visited her twice a year, but even he had to admit that those visits never felt long enough.

“I know,” he quietly said as he walked down the empty staircase that would take him into the Council building’s lobby. “I miss you too, grams. So much. But I can’t give up now. I’m getting close.”

He knew his gran wanted to argue and insist that he come home, but she seemed to know it would be a lost cause. “Please be careful, my boy. I can’t lose you too,” she told him, her voice catching.

“I’ll keep safe,” he promised, his voice rough with emotion. “I love you, grams.”

“I love you too, you stubborn mule,” she replied, making Marcus chuckle.

“Listen, I have to go, but I’ll call you again tomorrow,” he said, aware of the glances the Medial who was on duty at the front door was giving him.

The Council was made up of hundreds of members, dozens of Medials, and, of course, ten Masters. A member could only be promoted to Medial if they were the best of the best, and even then, most members who became Medials only did so in their late thirties. Marcus had made quite a name for himself, his skill in training classes surpassing all of his peers, and it wasn’t the first time a Medial had looked at him with interest, but he would prefer that he wasn’t being analyzed while speaking to his gran.

After they said their goodbyes, Marcus strode toward the open door of the dining hall, leaving the curious Medial behind. As he always did, he paused in the doorway to scan the room for danger, realizing too late that three raven-haired werewolves were headed toward him, and he was now blocking their way.

The two men in the group noticed him quickly and stopped, but the woman was so preoccupied with talking to them that she walked straight into Marcus. Her fast-paced and excited voice cut off, and she let out a small yelp as she comically bounced off of Marcus’s chest. If he were a different man, he might have smiled or, hell, even laughed.

Her hands clutched at his arms to save herself from falling on her ass, and Marcus’s hands instinctively went to her waist. His palms and fingers met bare skin, and it was so unexpected that he removed his hands as if the woman’s skin had burned him. As soon as she had steadied herself, she pulled away, giving him the opportunity to look her over properly.

She was relatively tall for a woman, but she was still a good foot or so shorter than him. Her head was tilted back slightly as she looked up at him with wide hazel eyes that had so many different shades of greens and browns that Marcus could have easily gotten lost in them.

A tube top that was only big enough to cover her breasts left her sides uncovered and was all she wore under denim dungarees. The small piece of material explained why his hands had met naked skin when he’d grabbed her waist.

Marcus would never have thought that dungarees could be sexy, but it seemed he’d been wrong. He quickly killed the flicker of interest he felt toward her though―she looked no older than a college freshman, and he was not the kind of man who went for younger women.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” she said in a rush of words that melded together.

“No problem,” Marcus replied before he stepped around her, moving past her and the two men without so much as a smile.

He walked toward the long counter at the far end of the room, where he loaded a plate with eggs, toast, bacon, and some fruit. He could afford no distractions, especially not the romantic kind. He had dated in high school, but it had never been anything serious, and after he’d moved to Boston, Marcus had sworn off anything more than one-night stands. He wouldn’t drag some innocent woman into his life, not when he was planning to kill one of the most powerful werewolves in the world.

For the most part, Marcus was grateful that he hadn’t found his mate. He had never even felt her go through her first shift, which either meant that his mate had died before turning eighteen, or he simply hadn’t been blessed―or perhaps, in his case, cursed―with a mate. Of course, most werewolves would kill to get the chance to find their mate, but he couldn’t help but feel that it was better that no woman was ever tied to someone like him.

Apart from the fact that anyone close to him would only get caught in the crossfire when he went after Gold, after his parents had been taken from him, love had turned into something dangerous. If he ever found his mate only to lose her, he knew it would destroy him.

“Morning,” Silas greeted him when he sat down at their usual table.

Marcus responded with a single nod, but Silas took no offense to the terse greeting―he never did, which is one of the reasons that Marcus liked the man, not that he would ever admit it.

Shaking off thoughts of relationships and mates, Marcus dug into his breakfast. As he chewed, he listened to Silas and another Council member discussing the new move they’d learned in the previous day’s training class.

“Your problem was that you were grabbing my arm too high up,” Marcus explained when Silas complained that he couldn’t get it right.

The two of them had been paired together as they almost always were, so Marcus knew why Silas had been unable to perfect that particular move.

Silas raised an eyebrow and scowled at him. “And you couldn’t have told me that yesterday?”

“I tried to, but you cut me off and told me you could figure it out yourself,” Marcus reminded him.

Silas grinned. “Oh, right,” he said with an amused shake of his head. “Next time, I’ll stop being a stubborn bastard and just listen to you.”

Marcus's lips quirked up into a ghost of a smile. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

He and Silas might not have been friends, but sometimes, in moments like that, it was easy to forget that they were nothing more than training partners. But he had no friends, Marcus reminded himself before the ice around his heart could thaw.

His gran was safe because she was hours away in New York City and because he had changed his last name so that the Council Masters didn’t link him to the former Alpha and Luna of the New York pack. Silas would have no such protections from the consequences of Marcus killing a Council Master if they became more than just acquaintances.

No friends, no romantic relationships, no distractions. Those were his rules, and Marcus wasn’t going to break them.

At least, that’s what he told himself, but only a week later, the universe decided to laugh in the face of his rules by gifting him with the kind of distraction he couldn’t ignore.